money for unity co from Sequoia Capital

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/20/unity-technologies-raises-5-5-million-from-sequoia-capital/

Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity game development platform, has closed a $5.5 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital. Unity is a powerful tool that allows developers to build 3D worlds for games running on a variety of platforms, including the iPhone, PC, Mac, and Nintendo’s Wii.

 

Yes, 'tis true, we've secured some investment. I will note that this news was unfortunately leaked earlier than we had planned thus the lack of coordination in announcement and sharing of news (was supposed to happen on Monday ). But either way, you bet, this is awesome news for all of us as it means we can accelerate and push even more knowing that we have the extra capital in hand. Our daily order of business is the same: create the world's best game development platform!

So never fear, this is an incredibly good bit of change for all of us and it's made all of us at Unity Tech giddy with excitement. Onward and upward we go!

 

Wow congrats Tom and others, thats a nice little windfall. Great to see this happen for ut..
AC

 

I have absolutely no idea what this article means.

I'd love to be educated, but I'll wait until Monday if you're busy, Tom. 8)

 

yes its great news have a few beers and Unity rocks

 

What happened is that we went out seeking investment money to help us accelerate the growth of the company and the ongoing development of Unity. We were not out there looking to sell the company outright, far from it. We went out in search of someone willing to invest in a part of the company, giving us some added cash for hiring and aggressive growth while letting us retain full control over the company's future. So Sequoia, one of if not the leading VC firm in the tech space, came to us with an incredible offer to invest in part of our awesome company, and along with that the offer to lend their experience, their talents, their rolodex and their knowledge to help us grow our business. In these difficult economic times it bodes well for all of us that we found not just a willing investor, but one with such an incredible history as Sequoia!


FWIW, did we need this? No, not at all as we've long been a profitable company even without this investment. Will this help us, and help us a lot? You bet! We can move aggressively to expand and grow during this prime window of opportunity we have in front of us.


So to everyone out there please know that this means nothing big in terms of the face of our company and how we want to go about business. We are here to make kick ass game development tools just as always! What will change is the pace we can maintain, the aggression with which we'll go after new markets, competitors and product growth.


As I said above, we're giddy with excitement about the future that lies ahead. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades...

 

Does this mean that you guys will also be tackling a bigger portion of the Wish List than you previously expected to?

Or maybe enough resources to dedicate towards an Autumn of Code, Winter of Code, and Spring of Code?
:wink:

 

I wouldn't say that, we've been working on this investment deal for *months* so to us, this is nothing new and it's been a part of our planning for a while now. It will let us continue to hire though, and with more bodies comes more bandwidth to tackle things on the to-do list!

Possibly. The additional cash reserves are to be used for a variety of tasks, including marketing and promotion which involves conferences, events, sponsorships, etc. So you might see more "<season> of Code" like efforts in the coming months, I'm not guaranteeing anything in specific other than "more" of something!


Of course step 1 is to order new mice for everyone...



Then step 2 is to hit the grill shop for some new teef!

 

Wheres my cut.... :wink:

 

awesome news

 

Wow, congratulations on this! I know VC firms are pretty squirrely these days, so it's got to be a huge vote of confidence that a big firm like Sequoia feel secure enough about Unity to invest a significant chunk of change in it.

Oh, and make sure to have everyone's new grills for the next meeting with the VC guys. You've got to show OFF them teef, yo!

 

umm fixed! congrats!

 

Very nice. Now Joachim can go and buy a bigger trampoline for the backyard in Copenhagen so that not every n'th jump someone flies out of the safety net if the guys are jumping again all together instead of single usage. I remember David having a hefty flight out of it...

 

Congratulations UT

Shows how great the tech and the business practice is actually

 

Congratulations guys. That is truly excellent news.