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eRepublik gets €550,000 to build a bigger world

Ernst-Jan Written on 10th June 2008                                                                                                              7 COMMENTS some text
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Almost everybody sometimes secretly fantasizes of leading completely different life. Don’t you? The people behind eRepublik probably realized this when they were building their massive online multiplayer social strategy game.

eRepublik gets €550,000 to build a bigger world
Co-founder Alexis Bonte at Menora TechTalk 2008

Players can become journalists, politicians, soldiers, nurses, or whatnot, in different countries. Most of the fantasy societies are user-generated and players can either choose to play casually or for the money. Yet they have one thing in common, the time it takes them to play the game: 14 minutes a day.

The Madrid-based start-up is in a private beta since November 2007. Private is a very broad definition, as 395,000 users are testing the service.

Till today, the service took €200,000 in angel funding. But now they’ve closed another round and received €550,000 – mainly from French venture capital fund AGF Private Equity and a large group of business angels including the founders of Lastminute, Livra and Intellego. The co-founders Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru will use the money to expand the game.

Erepublik received a honorable mention at the Le Web Start-up Competition last December. I think that was absolutely correct, considering the impressive number of users and the stickiness of the game.

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

7 comments/trackbacks to “eRepublik gets €550,000 to build a bigger world”

  1. Jun 11, 2008: Alexandru Ionescu » Blog Archive » eRepublik.com finantat cu inca 550.000 euro

    [...] ERepublik.com a fost finantat cu inca 550.000 euro in schimbul a 11% din actiuni, de catre fondul de investitii, AGF Private Equity (200.000 euro), un grup de antreprenori internationali si angel investors (200.000 euro) si Alexis Bonte (150.000 euro). articol integral in zf.ro si thenextweb.org [...]

  1. By Gen|G^2 on Jun 15, 2008

    MAYBE WITH THIS NEW FOUND WEALTH THEY CAN FIX ALL THE GOD DAMN BUGS IN THE GAME.

    OH WAIT, IF THERE WERE NO BUGS IN THE GAME, IT WOULDNT BE EREPUBLIK.

    I BET THEY SPEND IT ALL ON WIGS

    Reply

  2. By William on Jun 15, 2008

    “The co-founders Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru will use the money to expand the game.”

    aka Wig parties.

    Reply

  3. By Tanso on Jun 17, 2008

    If you want to play Erepublik I have invitations left. Just send me a note and I shall invite you.

    martins.oberg@gmail.com

    Reply

  4. By Hossein on Jul 28, 2008

    Get Quick Erepublik Invation in less than 2 Hours: http://blackmice.org/erepublik

    Reply

  5. By Ian on Oct 5, 2008

    I have 5 invitations left email me at ithomasimpson@yahoo.com

    Reply

  6. By Me on Jan 24, 2009

    Ive never seen such a waste of a prefectly good idea. Programmers are a bunch of absolute incompetents, servers are more time down than running, the admins are biased towards certain countries and the moderator team…not that ive had any problem, but they have a fascist-like attitude most of the time, press censorship being the least.

    As i said, a perfect manual on how to ruin a good idea.

    Reply

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