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Scvngr Inc. is on track to make $1 million in revenue in its first year of existence, but founder and “chief ninja” Seth Priebatsch doesn’t think that’s enough of a growth curve. So the company will be doubling in size from 20 to 40 employees in the next two months.
To help accomplish that massive staff increase, Boston-based Scvngr will be holding an open house on Dec. 8, in hopes that free food and drink will attract plenty of applicants. Priebatsch said that the main reason for the sudden surge in staff levels is to cement its position as the leader and first mover in the mobile location-based gaming field.
Priebatsch, 20, even has a new name for the text-message and smart phone application-based scavenger hunts and interactive tours the company makes using its platform — “geo-gaming.”
Having the company approach $1 million in revenue in the first 12 months was something Priebatsch dreamed of, but didn’t expect, he said.
“For us, that was sort of like the ‘blow everything away’ goal,” Priebatsch said.
For the last six months, Scvngr has been experiencing more than 40 percent growth in revenue month-to-month, Priebatsch noted, and the company now has more than 350 customers. It just landed its first overseas customer in London.
Scvngr’s growth has been so strong, Priebatsch said, that he has hardly needed to tap into the $825,000 in funding from Highland Capital Partners the company took in December of 2008. And the new growth will also be achieved through cash flow, he said.
To handle that growth, Scvngr is looking for new engineers for what Priebatsch calls “rockstar” sales people, and business development field marketers. That growth will be aimed at making Scvngr, which already is just about the only company doing what it does, the default go-to source for this new convergence of location-aware activities and social gaming Priebatsch calls geo-gaming.
“We want to be the platform on which that gets built, on which that will run, and on which the next innovation occurs,” Priebatsch said.
Being the major player in a brand new field will give Scvngr the same sort of head start that Apple Inc. achieved with the iPod in the digital music player market, Priebatsch hopes. And the size of that potential market could be enormous.
“Is it a billion-dollar opportunity? We sure as hell think so,” Priebatsch said.
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