TinyCo is getting bigger in Vancouver.
The San Francisco-based mobile game developer is opening itsfirstCanadian location with a new studio in Vancouver. It’s part of a hiringflurry at TinyCo following an $18-million venture capital financing itsecured in February from Andreessen Horowitz, the VC fund backed bySilicon Valley marquee names Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The pairwere early investors in tech heavyweights Twitter, Skype, Zynga,Groupon, Facebook and Foursquare.
TinyCo, whose games include Tiny Monsters, Tiny Village and Tiny ZooFriends, said today it’s putting down new roots in Vancouver in anannouncement featuring a tongue-in-cheek shout out to Canada from its“chief people officer” Laurie Deneschuk.
This logo will be appearingsomewhere in a Vancouver office when TinyCo opens a new location there.
“The wealth of top talent and strong community make Vancouver theperfect place for us to continue to grow. We see a great opportunity tofurther cultivate our winning culture, infrastructure, and creativethere (sic). It was an easy choice already, but it didn’t hurt that Ioriginally hail from Saskatchewan!” Deneschuk said in the announcement.
TinyCo didn’t say how many people it plans to hire in Vancouver. Butit’s clear from its job postings page that the company is expanding ata brisk pace. There are currently 28 open positions posted on that partof its Web site for jobs in San Francisco, Vancouver and Buenos Aires,Argentina.
Founded in 2009, TinyCo was named of the top 50 game developers in 2012by Pocketgamer. The company has also set up TinyFund, which invests upto $500,000 per title in games created for iPhone, iPad or Android byindependent developers. TinyCo also kicks in marketing, development andbusiness assistance to game projects accepted for the fund.