Ex-executives of Riot Games, Viber, Netflix, Expedia, Amazon, and Omnicom have formed a ‘gamified’ digital messaging venture aimed at millennials as well as strategic digital content partners. Whipper’s new global headquarters in Limassol will join Cyprus’ rapidly growing tech and entertainment community, inclusive of Wargaming and Viber.
Clark Westerman, CEO and Co-Founder of Whipper remarked: “We started here in Limassol a few months ago, and rapidly got serious about looking for a larger, more contiguous space in to headquarter the company. Having lived here in the recent past for many years, I’m very pleased to ‘officially’ return back home and formally announce our presence here.”
Whipper’s development focus is on an immersive and cheeky ‘chat and play’ messaging platform that empowers users to speak and interact with their friends as any character they want to be, real or imaginary. Whipper characters are to be charged up with user-definable superpowers and customisations that create an exciting virtual stage for unrestrained self-expression and fun. “We’re tapping into millennials' desire for shareable, unconstrained, and highly viral visual content,” enthuses Westerman.
The company already contributes to the high-tech and entertainment start-up scene via its London satellite offices, hosting monthly knowledge share learnings that have seen the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Popcap, Space Ape, Expedia, Squanchtendo, and Riot Games leadership and former alumni attend as well as give thoughtful, highly confidential, SME ‘learnings’ presentations.
Whipper is serious about its highly collaborative, empowering corporate culture, led by a founding team of executives and advisors, who hail from Riot Games, Netflix, Swiftkey, Amazon, Echo UK, Omnicom, and Viber. “We’ve assembled a formidable ‘AAA’ team with ridiculously strong domain experience,” says Westerman.
“Whipper's product is under active development, and our video game publishers, ad agencies and their brand clients, streaming content providers and online gambling partners all have a strong appetite for our deeply engaging platform. Whipper will easily delight millennials, Gen Z and indeed anyone that enjoys irreverence mashed up with highly gamified messaging and play. “I'm part of a team that helps encourage and nurture creative voices,” adds Westerman. “We’ll be doing a great deal of licensed, original and user generated content development, and we want the best, bleeding edge creatives contributing to Whipper.”
“The functionality of the office nicely drives collaboration and will help us flesh out our ideas, which ultimately leads to thoughtful product ideation. I think of the Whipper HQ as our idea factory," Dave McKinley, Whippers Chief Product Officer, commented. “We're committed to creating and nurturing a work culture that will attract the best and brightest in engineering, animation, 2D and 3D character artists as well as the usual suspect key support functions.”
Whipper advisor, Hillik Nissani, Managing Partner of Cyprus strategy firm Habaneros, former CMO of Easy FOREX and former exec at publicly-held 888.com, added: “The time is perfect to announce Whipper’s presence and decision to headquarter in Cyprus. Our team of advisors and Whipper co-founders have been seminal in significant, multi-million and billion plus dollar exits – Riot Games to Tencent, Swiftkey to Microsoft, Viber to Rakuten, PopCap to EA – we have the talent, capital, connections and creativity to build a world-class consumer brand right here at home. And we look forward in playing a helpful and hopefully inspiring role in the Cyprus venture community and innovation economy as well as gateway between EU, Asia and Israeli tech. We want to give back at a local level.”
ABOUT WHIPPER
Whipper is a gamified messaging platform that gives people around the world the ability to chat and play in real-time as their favourite characters across the media and devices of their choice. Headquartered in Cyprus Whipper also has a presence in London, Whipper is currently funded by angel investment in Cyprus, England and the United States. Whipper is represented globally by IP & Digital Media, Consumer and Corporate law specialists, Taylor Wessing.
