BigLittleBang: Aim for real money in a musical virtual world

BigLittleBang founder Chris White sets up for his pitch at the Angel Summit event in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Kiwi-grown BigLittleBang offers children the chance to collaboratively create their own music through an interplanetary space journey in their own virtual world.

Founder Chris White's initial concept was aimed at adults who wanted to make music via the internet, but he quickly worked out that the big money lay in children.

"The sweet spot is really between 5 and 15, where the kids really want to be social but don't have permission to go out and be social."

Virtual worlds for children have proven to be big business, with Disney paying US$350 million in 2007 for Club Penguin, where children interact through the guise of penguin avatars.

The Angel Summit showcase was part of BigLittleBang's third funding round: White secured $100,000 of seed funding in 2009 from early-stage investment company Sparkbox, K1W1 and the Government's seed co-investment fund (SCIF), and $1 million in 2010 from Auckland-based angel group the Ice Angels (who featured in The Business in August).

Now White is back, hoping to secure another $1 million. The company is almost at the financial tipping point, he says, but needs capital to further develop the game, "aggressively promote" it in the US and Britain, and transfer the technology to mobile devices.