New Startup AppLift Raises $13 Million, Is Already Profitable

AppLift, a mobile games marketing platform that serves Electronic Arts EA, Zynga ZNGA and numerous others, has yet to celebrate its first birthday. The company began in August 2012, became profitable at the end of last year, and has just raised $13 million from Prime Ventures. Hanno Fichtner, a partner and co-founder at HitFox Group (an incubator focused on founding and buying companies within the mobile and online games distribution market), is responsible for the launch of AppLift. Fichtner co-founded the U.S. branch of AppLift and serves as the division's General Manager. Fichtner said that AppLift will use the new funds to invest in technology that can help the firm optimize traffic quality. The funds will also be used to hire somewhere around 50 additional engineers, product specialists and business development professionals. "…It looks like the money we got will put us into a very good position," Fichtner told Benzinga. "We believe that from this position we basically won't need additional money, but it could always change. The situation can always change. But at the moment it's been the big boost that we need and then we're at a very high level." AppLift's growth is no accident. HitFox Group also founded ad2games, "Which is delivering basically the same business model for online and browser games," Fichtner explained. He said HitFox was able to base AppLift's model on the success it had created with ad2games. The company was also able to hire a "great team" early on, which gave AppLift the kick-start it needed to grow quickly. AppLift has helped than 80 mobile games publishers receive up to one million "high-quality" installs each per month. In its official announcement regarding the investment, AppLift said that its media partners, which include RTL and Closer, "benefit from the opportunity to monetize in a non-intrusive and user-friendly way and receive eCPMs of up to $75." "Our perspective was that Prime was a very fitting partner for us," Fichtner said of the investment. "We're interested in having one partner really supporting us. We don't need many investors; that can create difficulties for us, because you'd have to coordinate with many investors. We are very happy to have one strong, very focused partner." Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at 248-636-1322 or louis(at)benzingapro(dot)com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ