The Believer Company raises $55 million to create a new game studio in Los Angeles. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Andreesen Horowitz (A16z) led the round with participation from Bitkraft Ventures, Riot Games, 1Up Ventures, Don Thompson’s Cleveland Avenue, Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, and more.
The CEO, Michael Chow is a former Riot Games employee who was executive producer of League of Legends: Wild Rift. Michael was also a cofounder of Words With Friends developer Newtoy. The Believer Company’s other co-founder is Steven Snow who serves as the chief product officer. Steven Snow was a founding member of Riot Games and was the executive producer of League of Legends.
Other team members include:
The CTO is Landon McDowell (Microsoft, Riot Games, Linden Lab);
The chief creative officer is Jeremy Vanhoozer (Bungie, Electronic Arts);
The COO is Tim Hsu (Twitter, Riot Games);
CMO is Shankar Gupta-Harrison (Riot Games, Dentsu X);
The director of operations is Grace Park (League of Legends: Wild Rift); and
The vice president of design is Jeff Jew (League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra).