It's not an easy task with everyone from Zynga to EA to various startups moving into the space. But Buckley, founder and CEO of MinoMonsters, has reasons to be excited. His company has raised $1 million in seed financing from Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Y Combinator, Yuri Milner, General Catalyst, Ignition Partners, Raymond Tonsing, and Alexis Ohanian.
He's the youngest entrepreneur funded by Andreessen Horowitz and was the youngest at Y Combinator as well. MinoMonsters cofounder TJ Murphy was cofounder of early social gaming startup Social Gaming Network, which was later acquired by MindJolt. Most recently Murphy was at Zynga.
MinoMonsters is preparing to launch its 99-cent mobile iPhone game in December. It's a pet monster game that is meant to harken back to Pokemon, but updated for today. In MinoMonsters players can use their monsters to battle and trade with friends.The game has social hooks focusing on in-person real-time game play. MinoMonsters uses Bump Technologies to connect two players face to face on separate phones. Then they can play and see each other from opposite perspectives in the game.
They also want to take on Angry Birds. Because he doesn't see mobile gaming as strictly a tech problem, Buckley's focused on design and creative. For a tech company it has relatively few engineers--only three--and eight creative people. He sees Angry Birds' graphics as relatively limited compared to what he is doing and wants to do.
Most mobile games on iOS shoot up to the top of the App Store and slowly decline. To prevent that, the company tested out the game by launching about 10 small versions of the game on the iOS platform under different names. It did so that MinoMonsters could test the ability of a game to rise on Apple's App Store leaderboard--and stay there. "We measured how much people come back," Buckley says. "Now we've got a game mechanic so that the game can hold onto its leaderboard position once it hits that spot."
Originally from Kent, England, Buckley was 11 or 12 when he built his first websites and started selling them for $200 each. At age 14 he sold a website for $2,000 which convinced his parents that he was doing something useful. At 15, he created a gaming community website called Menewsha. He eventually sold it in October 2007 for "six figures." He spent some time then figuring out what to do with the money. Eventually Buckley decided in 2009 to start another company, focusing on mobile gaming. In between, he finished high school in 2010. He was accepted to various universities but decided not to attend, and instead applied to the Y Combinator incubator. He participated in the program in the beginning of 2011 and then met his cofounder TJ. Now he's preparing for the launch.
