Kleiner Perkins Harvests Over $100 Million From Ngmoco Acquisition
It's a good day for ngmoco, which was just acquired by Japan's DeNA for up to $400 million. But it's also a good day for ngmoco's first investor, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In one deal they've completely paid off …
Context & Ripple Effects
Kleiner Perkins' payday on ngmoco lands three years after the firm publicly halted new Web 2.0 investing in late 2007, when the sector had fallen out of favor with VCs — making this mobile-gaming exit a pointed counterexample from the same partnership.
The buyer matters as much as the seller: DeNA is a Japanese mobile platform operator paying up to $400 million for a young American App Store studio, a cross-border structure that gives venture-backed mobile startups a liquidity path that does not depend on a US public listing.
First-order effects
- Kleiner Perkins banks more than $100 million in cash from DeNA's acquisition of ngmoco, effectively repaying the firm's position in a single deal.
- ngmoco's founders and staff move from independent iPhone-game publisher onto DeNA's platform, where their titles become distribution assets for the acquirer.
Second-order effects
- The return strengthens the internal case at Kleiner Perkins for backing mobile-first consumer startups despite its own 2007 retreat from Web 2.0, putting fresh capital behind the next cohort of app-era bets.
- Rival mobile game studios gain a marked-up comparable: with DeNA setting a price of up to $400 million for a two-year-old publisher, founders and other Japanese strategics now negotiate from that benchmark.
Third-order effects
- If foreign platform operators keep acquiring distribution-ready US mobile studios, consumer-mobile venture returns consolidate around M&A exits rather than IPOs, and fund economics come to hinge on a few fast strategic sales.
- The pattern pushes mobile gaming toward ownership by platform companies — the studios that survive as independents are those that either reach scale quickly or price themselves as acquisition targets.
The trend: Venture-backed mobile gaming is shifting toward fast strategic exits to overseas platform operators, with single deals like ngmoco repaying funds years ahead of the traditional cycle.