Kobojo: an Epitean Start-up
Kobojo, an innovative Parisian start-up and the European leader in the world of games for social networks, was created in 2008 to offer new content on the French networks. Today, thanks to the success of its games, the company entertains tens of millions of players per month both in France and throughout Europe.
The story began in June 2008 when Frank Tezlaff (EPITA alumn 2005) joined Vincent Vergonjeanne (EPITA alumn 2004) in Dublin, at a time when the latter was working for Microsoft. Together, they developed their first Facebook application called "Adopt me". The USD80 of sales revenue generated by this application seemed paltry compared to the effort, but the fact of having touched 100,000 people opened multiple perspectives for them. Six months later, a few friendly discussions make it reach 8 million users in two months. The trigger: Franck and Vincent, with the help of Philippe Desgranges (Epita 2005), who brought his designer’s touch to the team, began to develop the structure.
The next application, called "Doctor Love", reached more than 5 million users in February 2009. But the progress achieved by these three Epiteans does not stop here. Mainly based on gossips and discussions among friends, these applications reached a target audience of teenagers. The creators wished to go beyond this audience.
In July 2009, they released “Goobox”, an application that offers a variety of simple games, customizable and tailored to personal tastes. The game reached 3 million users in a month, but 3 million users this time came back. Goobox is now their flagship application. From three members in September 2009, the young start-up grew to 21 employees a year later. The team is now working to adapt to the social networks of more traditional games, games based on time management, that is, mostly management games with a component of recurrence over time: a mechanism that is highly successful on social platforms
The team Kobojo, 22/10/2010
In the area of social gaming, there are a handful of companies in Europe. The biggest are Wooga and Weka Entertainement. Kobojo is in an acceleration phase. Next thing on the agenda is an increase in capital, business development plans, opening towards the outside world, and to other social networks like My Space, Orkut, Hyve in Holland, Sonico in South America, or i-Jet in Russia. Kobojo is also accelerating its mobile development. An expansion that must go hand in hand with its trademark image – games noteworthy for their quality and production methods while being extremely agile.