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iWin, a San Francisco online gaming company that offers puzzle, card and game-show online games, has raised $5 million in a third round of funding from angel investors and individuals.
Among iWin's more popular games is Jewel Quest, which has seen hundreds of thousands of downloads.
Chief exec CJ Wolf said his team is experienced enough to decide it wasn't worth taking venture capital at this point. Venture capitalists were likely to want a large ownership of the company, for a lower price than the iWin team wanted, he said. "The object was to stay away from the whole VC community," he said. "We didn't see the added value of bringing on a VC" -- although that might change down the road as the company grows, he said.
PE Week reported on a regulatory filing a few days ago that suggested the money was raised from venture firms Clarity Partners, Nazem and Ridgewood. That was wrong, Wolf said. Those investors had backed an earlier company called iWin back in 1999, but that was a different company. CJ Wolf founded Next Game in 2001, and acquired the iwin.com domain in 2003, and then took over the name.