On October 3, Irem Sumer signed a document that team leaders of nerdy crews worldwide dream of inking: a term sheet that raised $30 million in Series A funding for her Istanbul-based game company, Talemonster Games.
Less than 24 hours later, Sumer, the startup’s CEO, was signing another important document — her marriage license.
“It was the most chaotic two weeks of my life,” Sumer told Business Insider, adding that at one point, she told her then-fiancé that wedding planning would be left to him, and she’d just show up to get married.
That day in October capped off two years of work on the game “Match Valley,” the game title. The funding round was led by Arcadia Gaming Partners and Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Point72 Ventures and General Catalyst.
This comes after a seed funding round last February, when Talemonster Games’ five cofounders raised $7 million to make their game and take it to market.
“I wasn’t planning to fundraise in September because I believed it was a bit too early for us. But the metrics were good, and there was a lot of strategic interest in our company,” Sumer said.
Quitting together, staying together
Sumer, a civil engineer by training, worked at Pfizer and Google before joining Peak Games as a product specialist in 2020. She worked there for just over three years, where she met colleagues who would later resign from the company alongside her to start Talemonster Games.
“I wanted to be in tech, and gaming was my passion, but I never thought that I could make money from it,” Sumer said.
The five-member founding crew quit the same week, Sumer said, and resolved to dedicate 100% of their time to making what would become “Match Valley.”
Sumer estimates that her team played “hundreds of games” during their first month of market research. They then built the game together, pulling 18-hour shifts on most days to build its levels.
“It took us around three months to come up with this idea and lots of prototypes,” Sumer said.
“Match Valley” is built on basic puzzle-solving mechanics, much like “Candy Crush,” where gamers need to match objects to progress in levels. It’s also integrated with tower defense and has a cast of hero characters with unique abilities.
The team launched the game in August after its seed round, when they had a stable version of the game at 200 levels. Then, they started to “suffer from success,” Sumer said.
“People consumed all our content in 10 days, and then they turned away from the game,” Sumer said. “We had to stop everything and start building more levels. I designed levels myself, too, and also we had to grow the team.”
“Match Valley’s” current engagement metrics, Sumer says, helped convinced investors that their small startup is worth pouring money into.
“The game’s core audience is still female dominant, but they are spending one and a half hours on average per player in the game,” she told Business Insider. On average, players spent two and a half hours in their first day in-game, she said.
The game makes money from its in-app purchase model, Sumer said.
Sliding into the LinkedIn DMs
Sumer said she and her cofounders managed to get investor Josh Lu and his team at A16z Speedrun on board with Talemonster after a message on LinkedIn. Sumer says she slid into Lu’s LinkedIn DMs after a post he made about being on the lookout for interesting games.
“I thought, he’s basically describing our prototype, that can’t be a coincidence. So we reached out to him with a cold text, and he just fell in love with the prototype,” Sumer said of her exchange with Lu.
In a press release announcing the Series A funding, Lu praised Sumer and her team for never taking “the easy route.”
“They’ve built an original product and a culture that isn’t afraid to challenge the industry,” said he added.
The $30 million funding round will go to growing “Match Valley,” and building a new game that they plan to release this year. TaleMonster has 32 staff, working across engineering, art, product management, level design, and marketing.
“I don’t plan to hire too many people,” Sumer said, adding that she likes “lean, high-responsibility teams.”
Tips to build a gaming startup
Sumer told Business Insider she has three pieces of advice for people looking to build a gaming startup.
“When you are starting from scratch, I think it’s on you to be brave. You have nothing to lose,” she said.
Secondly, it’s important to pick the right partners.
“The team you create, the culture you create, the investors you accept, they have to share the same vision with you,” she said. “And it’s a painful process because you have to say lots of nos.”
And lastly, she said to celebrate wins, despite the daily anxiety of running a new company.
“You are always in this grind mode, and you always have to think about your next goal, and the next after that,” Sumer said. “I think you have to stop and say, ‘I mean, we are achieving great stuff, so we have to celebrate it together.'”
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