Simon Newstead is co-founding (confounding?!) CEO of Frenzoo, creator of mobile 3D lifestyle games with it’s Me Girl™ series. He’s all about about fun, creative and positive apps with emotional impact.
Prior to Frenzoo, Simon ran the emerging tech team for Asia at Juniper Networks and is originally from rainy Melbourne.
We sit down with Simon to give us some insight into his startup and the challenges he faces as one of the more successful pivots in the Hong Kong startup scene:
What is Frenzoo?
Me Girl™’s tagline is “Fabulously Me”. What does that mean? It means our sole purpose in life is to make amazing 3d lifestyle games that make women feel fabulous. Our debut game Style Me Girl™ was the world’s first 3d fashion game on mobile and has grown to millions of downloads (not that we’re counting, well actually…) Behind all Me Girl games is some awesome 3d and online tech that brings our characters to life. Frenzoo is backed by the co-founders of Skype and we have an amazing office reconverted from a dance studio, with brilliant views of Hong Kong!
How did you come up with this idea?
It was a pivot from our first concept, a web 3d virtual world. We found that the avatars were the big hit, not so much the virtual chatting. So we took the best part and fused it with mobile gaming and Me Girl™ was born. It also helped having and being surrounded by hardcore female gamers, from Sims to Bejeweled to WoW and everything in between. That gave us really good early validation and drove us in the right direction.
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
We’re targeting girls and women around the world who play games on smartphone and tablets, estimated globally at approximately 300 million (gulp!). Asia represents a big chunk of that, and features into our plans for global domination adoption.
What are your future plans for Frenzoo?
Go from 1 to several Me Girl™ games this year, build out the brand and the portfolio, as well as the team.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
Benefit – passionate smart people with a love of technology and diverse sources of inspiration, from Korea, USA, Japan, Europe, China etc and of course homegrown.
Challenge – being able to hire fast enough! We need lots of people fast! We have a great referral program and I’m not shy to plug it! Email me [email protected] 
FRENZOO:
- Site: www.megirl.com
- Twitter: twitter.com/megirl
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/MeGirlGames
Connect with Simon:
- [email protected]
- Twitter @simonhk
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/simonnewstead/
Here are links to some coverage Simon has received:
