Play Ventures

Founding Partners Henric Suuronen and Harri Manninen set the firm's strategy from Singapore and Helsinki, respectively. General Partners Phylicia Koh, Anton Backman, and Kenrick Drijkoningen lead individual deal sourcing and portfolio support. Suuronen's exit track record — including the sale of Nonstop Games to King — anchors the investment committee's operator lens.

Sourcing relies heavily on the founding team's operator networks across Nordic and Asian gaming hubs. Both Suuronen and Manninen are former founders who exited to King and Disney; their angel portfolios and prior studio roles feed top-of-funnel deal flow. The firm also uses its Helsinki and Singapore offices to cover two of the densest mobile-gaming talent markets globally.

Play Ventures is a venture capital firm structured as an asset manager, not a family office. It raises discretionary fund capital from external limited partners and deploys through two flagship early-stage funds plus the Play Future Fund, a blockchain-focused vehicle. The firm manages $175M in total AUM (per the firm).

The firm invests from pre-seed through Series A, often leading or co-leading rounds before a startup has a live product. Portfolio evidence includes a pre-seed check into Social First in 2023 and earlier pre-seed backing of Bigger Games before Index Ventures led its $6M round. Play Ventures will also participate in follow-on rounds.

The firm does not invest outside of gaming, playable consumer apps, and the B2B infrastructure serving those verticals. It has not disclosed priorities in life sciences, hard tech, or traditional enterprise SaaS unrelated to gaming economies.

Play Future Fund is a separate vehicle within the Play Ventures umbrella, managed by General Partner Kenrick Drijkoningen. It invests in equity and tokens of blockchain and crypto-native gaming companies, distinct from the equity-only mandate of Fund I and Fund II. Drijkoningen previously founded LuneX Ventures to back decentralized web infrastructure.

Yes, the firm routinely co-invests with global gaming and generalist VCs. Confirmed co-investors in portfolio rounds include Tencent (mod.io $26M Series A), Andreessen Horowitz and Riot Games (Mainframe Industries $8.3M round), Index Ventures (Bigger Games $6M round), and Composite Capital (Mobile Premier League $95M Series D). These partnerships signal a collaborative, syndicate-friendly approach.