Nate Mitchell’s Mountaintop Studios Raises $30M in a Span of One Year

Nate Mitchell’s Mountaintop studios, a game development company founded only a year ago, has raised $30 Million in its series A round of funding.

The funding round was led by Jon Lai at Andreessen Horowitz, who is most likely to collaborate with the Mountaintop team with his expertise in game development from when he worked at Riot and Tencent. There was also participation from companies like Spark Capital, Founders Fund, and Detroit Venture Partners.

Announcement: I'm thrilled to be leading @a16z 's Series A investment in Mountaintop!@itsmountaintop is an elite team of game developers building core competitive experiences for a wider audience. Their first project is a unique take on PvP shootershttps://t.co/IX5vwcUr40

— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) August 18, 2021

Mountaintop was founded to focus on creating a collaborative, diverse, and inclusive culture in game studios, in response to crunch and obnoxious competition in this particular arena. In a message to the readers on Medium, the company described its vision to bring together a community of ‘exciting and unforgettable challenges.’

Mountaintop’s founding members include Mitchell’s colleague Mark Terrano (creative director at Oculus), Matt Hansen (former COO at Double Fine), artist Rich Lyons (Naughty Dog and Vigil), Jake Van Wingen (founder of Gastronaut Studios), and Lee Horn(head of products at Apex Legends).

Mountaintop plans to utilize the money raised to expand the team, and build an advanced tech stack. The current team at Mountaintop consists of 35 game developers across the globe. The company believes that stellar games originate from communities that nurture trust and respect among each other. As a company devoted to being fully remote, Mountaintop can engage people globally and create a one-of-a-kind studio. As a rather small team, the company targets one project at a time which helps work and complete tasks efficiently and on the right kind of priority basis.

The company, formed by a team of industry veterans, had collected $5.5 Mn in a seed round of funding from acquaintances in February this year. Following the seed funding, the firm disclosed its first title, called the PvP shooter. The capital generated from this round was directly used for their first title. Since PvP shooters were the most famous and successful names in the industry, with the likes of Fortnite and PUBG, there were speculations on how well could the newbies serve as possible competition to industry biggies.

But the urbane, and sometimes selfish corporate attitude isn’t a part of the company’s policy, since the close-knit circle that forms its core team has no shareholders making them work at gunpoint. As an independent company, who raised its fund through family and friends in the seed round, this way of functioning enabled them to work efficiently without burning out quickly.

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