Press Releases in 2000
Black Cactus
ICON secure £1m start up funding for software designers Black Cactus
May 2000
Black Cactus Holdings Limited Raises Over £500,000 bringing the total raised to over £1 million. Group now valued at £10,000,000.
Black Cactus Holdings has raised over £500,000 from a private placement of about 5% of its share capital, valuing the group at over £10,000,000. This is the second stage of funding for the group. The funds will be used to complete Warrior Kings (the groups first PC CD Rom Real Time Strategy game), recruit additional staff and launch two other "seedling" projects.
Jamie Thomson, Chairman and Creative Director said: "This is a powerful vindication of our strategy and the software factory concept. I am now confident that we can move from building our toolset towards our mission of delivering better games, faster, cheaper, on time and on design. I look forward to realising our ambition of creating a true super developer over the next few years."
David Bailey, Managing and Finance Director said "I am delighted at the confidence our investors have shown to us as directors, but most importantly to the excellent team here and superb quality of our products. It has been a very difficult time to raise funds for a software company but, thanks to superb support from our advisers, we succeeded and are now capable of realising our ambitious growth plans for the Black Cactus Group."
Commenting on the deal Kevin Gate of ICON added: "At a time when technology stocks have taken such a hammering and the demise of Boo.com, this funding represents confirmation of the quality of the Black Cactus management team. These guys are going to go far, definitely one to watch for the future."
Advisers to management:
ICON Corporate Finance, Kevin Gate (corporate finance)
Olswang (legals)
About Black Cactus
Black Cactus Holdings owns Black Cactus Games. Black
Cactus Games creates the tools, concepts and processes
that developers and designers will need to create interactive
entertainment. The company then makes world-class interactive
entertainment products from those tools.
The group was incorporated in January 1999. The core team of 8 people came from the internal development department of Eidos in May 1999. Black Cactus Games already has 17 highly creative designers, artists and programmers based in offices in Morden, South London.
Jamie Thomson. Chairman and Creative Director.
Jamie has developed and designed games titles over
the last fifteen years including best sellers at Eidos,
Gremlin, Games Workshop and Virgin. These include "Way
of the Tiger" (Gremlin) which was a number one
seller in the UK, "Falcon" (Virgin), "Tower
of Despair" (Games Workshop) and "Death-Trap
Dungeon" (Eidos). Immediately prior to taking
on Warrior Kings™, he was responsible for assessing
and specifying the on-line gaming strategy for Eidos,
assessing computer games proposals from independent
developers, and trouble shooting over-running development
projects. Jamie drew the current development team together
and has managed the business full time since April
1999.
Jamie has extensive writing and design credits, with experience in cross-collateralising designs between books, television, radio, games and on-line entertainment. He has authored or co-authored books that have sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide. These include tie-ins with Sega products and a variety of innovative fantasy and interactive storybooks. He has credits for television and radio plays including elements of "The Crystal Maze" and "The Heart of Harkun" (BBC R5). Jamie has a teletext game running on UK Gold - arguably the first interactive entertainment on set-top boxes
Ian Turnbull. Commercial Director and Marketing
Director
Ian brings with him experience from over ten years
in the UK computer games industry and over 20 major
games titles for three major UK developer / publishers.
Having started as a systems engineer on the design
of airborne weapon systems, Ian moved on to becoming
a European technical trouble-shooter for one of the
major Japanese computer companies. His commercial skills
were honed while business development manager at Itochu,
where he was responsible for generating new trade opportunities
between Europe and Japan, as well as direct inward
investment into UK manufacturing companies. Having
identified the games industry as the next big market,
Ian made the move to a Japanese publisher and worked
on the first Japanese football game (a No.1 best seller)
before moving to Ocean Software as development manager
and then Eidos as director of development.
David Bailey. Managing Director and Finance Director
David is a Chartered Accountant (qualified January
1990) with 13 years experience at Deloitte & Touche,
where he started a career in audit in 1987 specialising
in high technology applications and companies. This
included several royalty audits and reviews of intellectual
property income. David has been involved in many corporate
finance related transactions and investigations. In
1994 David joined the forensic accounting department
and specialised in enterprise risk management and fraud.
Over the last two years he recruited and ran his own
cutting edge forensic computer technology team.
Dave Morris. Consultant and Shareholder.
Dave designed Warrior Kings™. He is a well-known
fantasy gaming writer. Dave Morris and Jamie have worked
together for nearly 15 years. The UK's best selling
author in 1991, he has written over 70 best selling
books with total sales well in excess of 4,000,000.
Best known for the "Dragon Warriors" series
of role-playing game books, he has just published the
top selling "Computer Games Architecture and Design",
which is the definitive guide to computer games development
(this title is currently available from http://www.amazon.com).
Many of the examples given in that book refer to Black
Cactus Games and they are at the heart of the design
of our software factory and creative engine
