ONE MORE THING:GIVEN IT will be operating in a virtual world, Fantom is probably an appropriate name for the Dublin-based tech start-up that hopes to make its fortune from trading collectors' cards online.
Fantom this week closed a €490,000 seed funding round that values the business at €1.1 million. This was led by the AIB Seed Capital Fund and included Bloom Equity, Irish private investor Kevin Neary (former founder of GameStop Group here) and Enterprise Ireland. They’re good investors to have on board.
Fantom is taking the classic schoolyard trading game online. Aimed primarily at 10- to 12-year-old boys, it will offer decks of digital collectibles in music, sport, TV, fashion and film.
Its users will be able to buy, trade and win rewards through its website – or they can simply own the cards.
“We’re taking it online,” founder Paul Healy told me this week. “We’ve been building this out over the past nine months. It will be an interactive experience by making it a multimedia card with social media aspects.”
The site will launch in coming weeks and Healy hopes to take it to the US market next summer. “Revenues will be modest ,” Healy said. “We have to validate the market first, but I think this could be very successful.”
Fantom has already signed licensing deals with some wrestling groups and is in negotiations with Beano, that long-standing favourite of young lads. “We’ll make some cards harder to collect than others.”
Healy is a former technology journalist. He was also a co-founder of recruiter JobFinder, which was sold on to Stepstone. He had previously worked for Dermot Desmond at his e-learning company Intuition. “I didn’t have too many dealings with him but he gave me some good advice in 2006 when he told me not to buy property here.”
