Bouncity’s Future: Integrated Into Qeon’s Social Gaming Platform
Following the recent news of Bouncity acquisition by Qeon Interactive, former Bouncity CTO and co-founder, Jeffry Anthony approaches us about Bouncity and its future. Anthony is the only co-founder (there are initially four of them) who still remains with the company and joining Qeon as the CTO. He’s in now charge with the development of Qeon social gaming platform.
先日のQeon InteractiveによるBouncity買収のニュースに続いて、Bouncityの前最高技術責任者であり共同創立者のJeffry Anthony氏がBouncityとその未来について、私達に話を持ちかけてきた。Anthony氏は現在も会社に残る唯一の共同創立者で（当初は4人いたのだが）、Qeonに最高技術責任者として加わっている。彼は現在、Qeonのソーシャルゲームプラットフォームの開発を担当している。
BouncityがQeon Interactiveにより買収されたという少し前のニュースに続いて、Bouncityの前CTOで共同創業者のJeffry Anthony氏がBouncityとその未来について我々に語ってくれた。Anthony氏は今も同社に残っている唯一の共同創業者であり（当初は4人いた）、QeonにもCTOとして加わっている。彼は、今やQeonのソーシャルゲームプラットフォームの開発に対して責任を負う立場にある。
First, he told us about the acquisition process. Bouncity was acquired on June 2012 by PT Qeon Interactive, an Internet Value Added Service provider which runs and operates Qeon Social Networking Service (SNS) and also an online game publishing company which managed to launch Shadow Company first in Indonesia before any other countries.Qeon Interactive is also a part of Midplaza Group, which owns Biznet, Midplaza building, Intercontinental Hotel, and Ayana Resort.
Qeon Interactive acquired Bouncity for an undisclosed amount of cash in a transaction in which PT Qeon Interactive receive the rights to operate Bouncity platform, including its mobile applications and databases, and to retain all members of the development teams.
Second, Bouncity (and also Tiket) was not owned by PhaseDev, but both of them was developed and initiated by PhaseDev, which consists of Anthony, Wenas Agusetiawan, and Dimas Surya. Although the three of them own the majority shares in both companies, they can’t just simply address PhaseDev as the owner of them since there are also other shareholders such as Kevin Osmond and some others who opted to be anonymous.
さらに、2番目として次のことを語った。Bouncity (そしてさらにTiket）はPhaseDevによって所有されてはいなかったが、両サービスともにAnthony氏、Wenas Agusetiawan氏、そしてDimas Surya氏により構成されるPhaseDevによって開発が進められ、立ち上げられたのだった。彼ら3人が両社の株式の大部分を所有していたが、彼らはどうしてもPhaseDevを彼らの所有者と呼ぶことはできなかった。 なぜならKevin Osmond氏や匿名でいることを選んだ何人かのような他の資金援助者たちもいたからだ。
Third, Bouncity service would not be killed, but instead, it will be integrated into Qeon’s social gaming platform. There will be some major changes on our mobile applications which may involve some re-branding as well. He assures that Bouncity won’t be the second Koprol that fired all of its members.
Talking about the reason of acquisition, Anthony said that the co-founders feel that Bouncity, being too ahead of time here, is slowing down in gaining traction and was having some difficulties in getting new customers and making sales without any real marketing effort. Before it was acquired, Bouncity was relying solely on its merchants to do the marketing because, as a start-up, Bouncity was run and operated in a full bootstrapping mode which means it didn’t have any financial backings to do any marketing campaign to help gaining the traction that it needed to leverage the business.
That’s why when Qeon Interactive came over and made a really good offer, the Bouncity owners could not resist. The situation is simply because all of them believe with this take over Bouncity will be able to bounce back and acquire more users faster by utilizing the channel of Midplaza group and also the gaming contents from Qeon in order to take the service to the next level.
According to Anthony, as he’s now both Bouncity co-founders and Qeon CTO, this acquisition is not only good for Bouncity, but also good for Qeon Interactive since now they have a really good development team and enough technical talents to further develop its SNS service. The team will integrate Bouncity into their social gaming platform and to utilize Bouncity mobile apps for their content delivery.
