Scaling StarBerry: +5M€ funding, Merge Mayor success and new office

It’s been more than 12 months since I last shared a StarBerry update. In that time, we launched our second game, Merge Mayor, to players worldwide, closed a 5M€ funding round, and moved to a shiny new office in Berlin. We’ve been busy.

Fuel for growth 🚀 — 5M€ funding from our investors

We closed our Series A round in November 2021. Supported by our existing investors Play Ventures, Big Bets, byFounders, Reaktor Ventures and a few angels, we raised a bit over 5M€. Their continued investments are a testament to the trust they have in our vision and team. We’re grateful for the support, advice and guidance they’ve provided over the last few years and we’re excited about our future together.

The additional funding will be used to ramp up our user acquisition efforts for Merge Mayor. As of May 2022, we’ve had 3+ million downloads on iOS and Android combined so we want to continue growing Merge Mayor’s player base. We’ll also be using the funding to tackle long-term growth objectives which include scaling our team and launching the development of new games.

Merge Mayor — 👀 One to Watch by Apple

Merge Mayor launched globally on April 15th 2021. The reception was warm and we knew we were on the right track. We were honoured by the recognition we received from the Apple App Store Team, who selected Merge Mayor as “One to Watch” in June 2021.

Merge Mayor — 🎂 First anniversary

In 2020 when we first developed the concept for Merge Mayor, we secured funding from the BMDV. This funding was also crucial to the team which developed the game players know and love today.

Merge Mayor turned 1 last month and we took the opportunity to look back on how the game has evolved since launch. We shipped 28 major updates to push the game from version 1.0 to 2.18. We’ve made a lot of improvements and updates so I can’t enumerate them all, but below are some highlights:

• Big features: Daily missions, piggy bank, new inventory system and landmark upgrades
• Live operations: Seasonal events (Halloween, Xmas, Valentine’s & Easter) and special activity events happening every weekend
• New city areas: Townhall, mall, fire station, museum, school, multiple parks and residential areas
• Community: Over 32k members have already joined our Discord server
• …and the much requested scissors boost to un-merge items and introduction of new characters (like Todd :D) in the storylines

The Merge Games category is on a pretty wild growth ride, and we’re confident these games will attract and entertain a growing audience in the coming years. Merge Mayor most certainly has a roadmap packed with plans to innovate and push the genre forward.

We received additional funding in 2021 from the BMDV for the initial production of a game concept called “Merge Game”. We can’t share too much about this new game just yet, but let’s just see you should keep StarBerry on your radar ;)

New HQ for growth 🏰 — Join Us!

As with many companies around the world, we went fully remote during the pandemic. Now that restrictions are lifted, we’re gradually returning to in-person collaboration. Prior to the pandemic, we had a flexible work policy which our team members enjoyed. We spent Mondays and Fridays in the office together, and the rest of the week everyone was free to work from anywhere. Our team grew during the pandemic and as of January 2022, we had outgrown our office.

In April we opened the doors to our new HQ in Friedrichschain. It’s located in a wonderful, old factory building which in true Berlin fashion, has been renovated in an eclectic style. It boasts high ceilings and massive windows which fill the entire office with light. Most importantly though, we now have plenty of space for our team to grow and more than enough meetings rooms with modern tech.

Although the pandemic years were challenging, we were able to make key hires. Today the StarBerry team is composed of 27 full-time employees, with 16 different nationalities and countless years of experience in our industry’s leading companies. What we all share is a passion for building and operating top tier quality mobile casual games. We’re always looking for new talent to join our team. If you think StarBerry could be a good fit for you, check out our open positions. We’d love to hear from you.