At the worst possible time of year – is there ever a good time to shut down a business? – the week before Christmas, and coming after the huge high of this year’s record-breaking West Tech Fest, the local startup and tech scene has been shocked to hear of the collapse of Ninja Software and Ninja Syndicate.
Led by two well-known stalwarts of the local tech scene, Alex Dunmow and John Nguyen, also co-hosts of the Tech Society podcast, with Alex having appeared the week before on the Perth Angels annual breakfast panel, administrators were called in a week ago, with The West Australian breaking the news on Monday.
Startup News has spoken with some former staff members, who are putting a brave face on it. “We hit all our goals,” said one, “But in the end, the business needed the completion of a capital raise, and that did not eventuate.”
“We created a company we wanted to exist in Perth. The plan was to grow the industry itself,” said John Nguyen in a LinkedIn post.
Both Alex and John were keen to give back, helping young people develop tech skills.
“This one kid would come every Wednesday,” said Alex Dunmow. “He was home-schooled and a fantastic video game developer. He’d spend the whole day here and be able to ask developers questions.
“One of the things I’ll really miss is being able to provide that. I remember myself as a budding developer … Perth was a lonely place.”
On LinkedIn, there was shock and support expressed from the local community with “sad news” being a common sentiment, but also “we are always looking for good devs” another.
With the well-publicised collapse of crypto exchange FTX, raising additional capital for the metaverse gaming studio had become impossible. An investor over east had allegedly promised a US$500K investment, but that had come with the proviso of an accompanying US$1.5M raise, which did not eventuate. The company had been trying to raise at least US$3 million, but (understandably) had found the sentiment very bad for tech investing, let alone anything related to web3, metaverse or crypto.
Earlier this year, the six-year-old consulting and software development company Ninja Software had pivoted into a product company, launching its metaverse Battle Royale type game ‘Supremacy‘, which, according to the directors raised in excess of $4 million in token and other income in the first few months. The two founders were also featured in a video as part of the new West Tech + Platform.
Talent
“Suddenly, we have a team of 55 very talented, driven individuals who have stayed with us to the very end,” said former Ninja Chief Sales Officer Lan Tran on LinkedIn.
These are the remarkable men and women from the legendary Ninja studio. Their passion, their work ethics and their incredible output consistently as a team are world-class!
Lan Tran, Ninja Syndicate
We have Devs, Graphic Designers, 2D-3D Artists, Sound Engineers, Media Production, Writers, Social Media, Marketers and Community Builders who are experienced in both web2 and web3 space.
The company had grown to 55 staff, all from Perth, who will now be looking for work. Given the distinct skill-shortage of gaming developers and such talent locally, one would hope many (if not all) would be snapped up pretty quickly.
Anyone looking to contact the staff can make contact with Lan Tran on her LinkedIn page, as she’s making it a personal mission to find jobs for them all.
Let’s hope so. Merry Christmas everyone. 🎅
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