Pittsburgh Ventures

Webcarzz, our portfolio company that is building an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) car design/racing game to cater to boys aged 6-12 is giving away a limited number of beta codes to users, young and old alike, who would like to get a look at the game during closed beta.  If you are interested, you can request a code HERE (UPDATE:  sorry; I have been asked to hold this back until next week; we are running to a closed measured audience this week, but should be able up to more later this week or next – thanks for your patience!).

Webcarzz is interesting because it is the fourth investment in our portfolio, but our first shot at building a company from scratch under the Meakem Becker roof.  We came up with the idea behind Webcarzz at an exceedingly dull conference that Dave Becker, Aaron Tainter, and I attended in South Carolina; after the whole partnership had a chance to discuss the idea, we were a go.  We worked with three CMU/Tepper technology-savvy guys to build the business plan – Bob DiMaggio, Matt Humphrey, and Wei-An Wang (Bob is still working with Webcarzz in CA, and Matt Humphrey has founded his next stealth startup called Kickball Labs – you can read Matt’s guest post on this blog from late last year; Wei-An is back in Singapore, I think).  Then we hired a CEO/co-founder, Chris Bergstresser, who is a long-time gaming industry veteran, and all-around good guy.  The new team moved out to the mecca of online gaming, the North Bay (San Rafael, CA), and is working with a game developer, MCS, to build the dream into a reality.

Webcarzz came out of stealth mode late last year, and generated several good pieces of press – you can find some of them here (VentureBeat, DigitalMediaWire Daily, and Virtual Worlds News).

Have fun designing your own race car and zipping through any of the virtal cities and racetracks you find at Webcarzz!  All feedback is welcome…