Trailmix is about to “hypercharge” its hit game Love & Pies after a $60m investment from Supercell, which has now taken a majority stake in the London studio.
Formed by ex-King duo Carolin Krenzer and Tristan Clark in December 2017, the studio was kickstarted by Supercell’s $4.2m seed round right from its beginnings. And after the success of merge game Love & Pies, launched in September 2021, today Supercell has agreed to invest $60m – a mix of equity and debt financing – and acquire a majority stake in the studio.
“We’ve been working with them as our investor for the last four and a half years, so we’re obviously incredibly happy that now we can take the relationship to the next stage,” CEO and co-founder Carolin Krenzer tells mobilegamer.biz.
Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen also tells us: “We are very excited to be acquiring a majority stake in Trailmix – the team has done a marvellous job with Love & Pies, and the company is setting a great example for the industry in having a positive impact on players.”
“It has been a privilege to get to be a part of their journey from the beginning,” Paananen continues. “Trailmix’s vision to build a diverse team to create inclusive games for everyone has inspired us, and we can’t wait to see what their talented team comes up with next.”
The investment will be used in the short term to invest in Love & Pies, says Krenzer, with studio expansion and more to come after that.
“We are hyper focused on Love and Pies,” she tells us. “Obviously a game with those metrics only comes around once in a lifetime, or for most developers once in a lifetime. The long term retention metrics are absolutely incredible, our day 180 retention is still 10% which is completely crazy.”
The Trailmix team is around 30 right now, but is hiring for multiple roles and is aiming for “sustainable growth,” says Krenzer. “We are quite proud of the fact that we have been growing slowly over the last few years,” she says. “It is incredibly important to find people who have the same values and the same focus as we have.”
And there’s more to come soon on what the team might be doing next. “The collaboration with Supercell does mean that we can really go for the big opportunities and that is on the one hand Love and Pies, but it is also our mission of reinventing what casual means for players and creating games that are truly different and that are truly missing from people’s lives and the moment.”
The Trailmix team is already engaged with information sharing among Supercell and its portfolio companies, and Krenzer says today’s deal will naturally deepen that collaborative work.
“There are quite a few different initiatives,” she tells us. “For example, our art team gets together and shares learnings and so do our dev teams, and there’s a UI/UX society within the Supercell companies. It’s mutual learning and I think we all can teach each other something.”
