Supercell‘s seed investors have money to burn. They were among the first to invest in the Helsinki-based social gaming company, which experienced rapid growth. At one point, Supercell was reportedly raking in $2.4 million every day thanks to the Clash of Clans strategy game and farm sim Hay Day.
Earlier this week, Supercell investors, Paul Heydon, David Gardner and David Lau-Kee, made their first investment since the gaming firm’s $1.5 billion mega-exit. Their new venture isn’t another gaming gem, — it’s a fairly unknown financial technology startup, Bright Sun Group.
On Bright Sun’s website, you can access information about private companies, including the amount of funding that a startup has raised to date, its burn rate, approximately how much money it has in the bank, a prediction of whether the founders are currently looking for funding, bios, and more.
Bright Sun is plugged into a variety of data sources, such as CapitalIQ, CrunchBase, AngelList, Appstores, Alexa rankings, company head counts on LinkedIn, press articles, and sites that the government use to track private companies, like CompanyHouse.
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According to Bright Sun’s founder Stephen Piron, the investment came from these individual angel investors, and not a fund. Lau-Kee, Gardner, and Heydon invested about $200,000.
We first covered Bright Sun back in June after I met with Piron in West London. It’s a compelling story: Three self-proclaimed “ex-hedge fund quant nerds” developed it. In the height of the recession, they decided to quit their steady corporate jobs and launch a startup.
The goal for Bright Sun is to use data to help venture capital and private equity firms find the “diamond in the rough” investment and not just fight for the attention of the trendiest startups.
Piron doesn’t believe that Bright Sun’s technology will replace human investors. But it can work in conjunction with traditional methods, like in-person interviews and due diligence. The tools should help investors find deals and track dozens of companies.
“The method of finding great investments hasn’t evolved much in the last 20 years in venture capital and private equity. Bright Sun’s algorithms and platform could be a real game-changer here,” said Heydon in a statement.
The company competes with Mattermark in the U.S., a San Francisco-based company. Mattermark helps investors track thousands of fast-growing startups.
Read more about the “Moneyball revolution” in venture capital here.
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