The economic recovery has hardly been fun and games for Connecticut businesses, but at least a few local companies have capitalized ”“ specifically, those in the toy, game and sports industries.
Bite Tech Inc., which has offices in Greenwich and Minneapolis, raised $2.5 million in the second quarter as it recruited multiple big-name athletes to promote its mouth guards, including Olympic skier Lindsay Vonn.
At the close of the second quarter, Milford-based Heyday Games Inc. was acquired for stock worth nearly $2 million by eGames Inc., with Heyday management taking over product development for the combined companies, focusing on games tailored for social media sites and mobile applications.
Heydey executives Gene Mauro, F.J. Lennon and Jeff Kesselman claim credit for hit games like “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” and “Poptropica.”
Playlore Inc., meanwhile, raised $3 million in capital as it builds a business producing characters, concepts and other contributions to online games on an outsourced basis. Playlore has its U.S. office in Westport and its main development lab in Recife, Brazil.
And Tegu Inc. built a $400,000 round as it sells wood blocks embedded with magnets, allowing kids (or adults) to build shapes with cantilevered projections. Founded by Chris and Will Haughey, the company derives its name from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, where Tegu has its main factory.
In all, more than a dozen area companies raised venture capital or other forms of growth equity in the second quarter, including a few that list Fairfield County as their home base but which have yet to build anything more than a negligible presence.
A Westport startup dubbed Ayablu Inc. listed a $9 million tranche in a securities filing, but the company could not be reached to confirm the amount and comment on its business.
Connecticut Innovations Inc., which was formed by the state to invest venture capital, invested in multiple Fairfield County companies in the second quarter, including Trumbull-based Sustainable Real Estate Solutions Inc., which raised $1 million; LiquiFix Inc., which received $500,000 as it creates green lubricants and degreasers; and DomaniCom Corp., which landed $150,000 in pre-seed financing as it develops a system to integrate TV, WiFi and other home systems such as electric meters or surveillance cameras, under a single management system.
In July, Rocky Hill-based Connecticut Innovations funneled $150,000 to Westport-based Interactive Mobile @dvertising Inc., which is focused on the travel and tourism industry.
Connecticut”™s largest financings so far this year remain the $20 million rounds each injected into Rib-X Pharmaceuticals Inc., a New Haven company developing antibiotics, and Orange-based SurgiQuest, which is creating devices for minimally invasive surgery.
At press deadline, PricewaterhouseCoopers had yet to release its PWCMoneyTree survey of venture capital investments in Connecticut in the second quarter. The state is coming off a strong second quarter with nearly 25 transactions for $56 million, the largest number of deals since the first quarter of 2001 that represented the collapse of the Internet bubble.
