Hitmarker, the largest jobs platform in esports, launched its equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube on Friday 1st November and had raised 250% of its target by the following Thursday. The company will now seek to double its full-time headcount in order to expand quickly into the wider video game industry.
Hitmarker’s initial equity crowdfunding target was £80,000, which was offered in exchange for 4% equity, and the company set a cap of £200,000, which was offered in exchange for 9.43%. The campaign had a runway of 30 days to raise just the minimum amount but ended up being concluded after just six when Hitmarker hit their upper target well ahead of schedule.
This amount was pledged by a total of 405 investors from 37 different countries and the average amount invested was £500. Over the six-day period, Hitmarker averaged one investment every 20 minutes.
In a comment, Hitmarker’s Founder, Phil Huggan, said,
“Before we launched our crowdfunding campaign, we created cash flow forecasts based on the different amounts we thought we could raise, and £200,000 was accounted for in these. We’ll use the extra £120,000 wisely, by increasing our marketing spend and paying more competitive salaries with the view of dominating the video game industry’s hiring landscape, just as we’ve done in esports. We expect this to increase the number of jobs on our platform five-fold and lead to a similar surge in the number of users we have.”
“What we’re perhaps most excited about is the 24 extra days we now have that otherwise would have been spent managing and promoting the crowdfunding campaign. This sets us up really strongly to attack the wider video game market from the very beginning of 2020, as we can begin to roll out our hiring and marketing plan to take effect in the New Year.”
“Our whole team is blown away by the support we received during this raise. The esports community truly is second to none, and now that we’ve welcomed a portion of our users and followers as shareholders we’re more motivated than ever to get back to work and continue providing exceptional value, not only to them and the esports industry, but also to the broader video game market as well.” Philip concluded.
Hitmarker will begin its hiring process imminently to build the workforce needed to execute a successful and swift expansion into the video game jobs market.
