Novel began in early 2009 by uniting a talented young three-person team (art, development, and business) to begin executing on a vision. Novel then acquired an incubation opportunity from a generous and established local videogame studio, Gas Powered Games, where we began building the engine and tools required for our first products.
Novel quickly grew to become a team of 8 funded by a fortuitous opportunity provided by Bill George, best-selling business leadership author, Harvard professor and former CEO of Medtronic—the world’s largest medical technology company.
By late 2009, Novel had begun receiving international recognition from Entrepreneur’s Organization, and were elected the student age Entrepreneur of the Year (2009) for the Pacific Northwest. We also received an Innovation Award from Microsoft at this time due to this same competition.
In early 2010, we began to receive investment offers, and partnered with a strategic venture capital firm from Vancouver, BC. Shortly thereafter, we began growing again and hiring a dream team of talented individuals. Our core management team now has over a half century of professional leadership experience from some of the top companies in our industry including Microsoft, EA, Bungie, Playdom and more.
On September 23rd, 2010 Novel was selected by Entrepreneur’s Organization as the student age Entrepreneur of the Year (2010) for the West Coast, and will be competing for the global title in November of 2010. In the meantime, on October 1st, 2010 our first product, Empire & State, went into alpha.
And, the story continues…