OREANDA-NEWS. July 13, 2012. GameFounders is the first business accelerator in Europe that is purely focused on the field of gaming. The accelerator, cofinanced from the Startup Estonia programme, offers starting game companies also startup capital in addition to high-level mentors and a global contact network.

“Startup Estonia is glad to support the first European accelerator in the field of gaming, which provides an international startup company with a high level business development and financing programme. With the establishment of the accelerator in Estonia, we wish to create a gaming sector on the same level as Finland has done — across the gulf, in the past ten years, the field of gaming has been very systematically developed; thus, good results have been achieved, for example, the global success story of Angry Birds,“ Dmitri Burnashev, Director of Business Start-Up's Division of Enterprise Estonia said about the accelerator. “As a result of a community with global reach and the strength of the Finnish gaming sector, we have at our disposal a large number of experienced experts and investors in the field of gaming. In cooperation, we can establish a favourable environment for making it in the world. Estonia has demonstrated itself as a successful startup environment country,“ Burnashev added.

“Participants in the accelerator are selected based on both materials submitted in writing as well as interviews conducted. The applicants must definitely have a beta version of a game or platform ready and the team must be motivated enough so that they could be helped along exponentially in three months,“ Kadri Ugand, the initiator of GameFounders described the candidates that are welcome. “We welcome to apply not only the creators of games, but also makers of applications that use game mechanics – such solutions are used in education, sports and medicine, for example, and other fields as well,“ Ugand said.