After two years of building a tabletop gaming platform with a digital flair, Denver startup The Last Gameboard has brought on capital to push its production over the finish line.
The company announced the closing of a $4 million seed round this week, led by TheVentureCity with participation from SOSV, Riot Games, Conscience VC, Corner3 VC and more. This round brings The Last Gameboard’s total funding to $4.8 million.
Since launching in January 2019, The Last Gameboard has been building a portable, 3D touch tabletop game product for gaming fanatics. The 16-by-16-inch Gameboard’s internal technology can bring your favorite board games to life.
The Gameboard pairs with a companion app for iOS, Android and browsers, and will support interaction with physical objects like game pieces, cards and more. Anything from a chess set to traditional board game pieces can be equipped with the company’s tags, allowing it to be used with the board.
Company co-founder and CEO Shail Mehta said the last year was a crucial one for The Last Gameboard’s development. While Covid-19 caused production issues, the team renewed its focus on the product.
“For us, it [Covid-19] was good in the sense that we got to focus on core products and didn’t have any distractions,” she said. “We got to really understand what our audience was looking for and how people were thinking about connection and playing together.”
With more people spending time inside and isolated from friends and family, Mehta said the interest in board games rose and the market became even more clear for her company.
“A lot of people started playing board games during Covid, and suddenly the industry I had been shouting about went digital,” she said.
As they inch closer to production for their nearly 8,500-person waitlist, Mehta said this round of seed funding will be primarily focused on delivering the first edition of the product.
She expects to have the first round delivered to the company’s earliest backers before the 2021 holiday season. The company has 15 full-time employees and will add to that in the coming year, Mehta said.
While the initial focus of the product’s launch, including its summer beta program, will be focused on the hardcore sector of gamers, Mehta said the company hopes to eventually shift its gaze to a different type of consumer.
“As we scale and go up market toward casual and family gamers, we really want to give them games that they’re familiar with as well,” she said.
To date, The Last Gameboard has formalized partnerships with a number of digital and tabletop game developers, including Asmodee Digital, Dire Wolf Digital and Nomad Games, to name a few. Mehta said a key factor in her company’s growth will be adding new developers and games to The Last Gameboard’s library.
