With the 12th annual Meffys, supported by F-Secure, open for entries and set to return to London, we are taking a look at some of last year’s winners to find out what winning a Meffy meant to them and what they’ve been up to since they celebrated their win. The deadline for entries is 17th July so if you haven’t started your entry, get moving!

This week, we speak to Pollen VC, 2014’s winner of the Monetization and Engagement award, and CEO & Founder, Martin Macmillan.

What did Pollen VC win a Meffy for?

Pollen VC won the Meffy for Monetization and Engagement. We help mobile developers unlock their app store revenues so they can invest in paid user acquisition and build their user base faster. The Pollen VC platform plugs in to a developer’s app store account which lets us see exactly how much revenue they are earning in real time, and then we calculate their accumulated earnings which we then pay out every seven days, rather than the usual 30-60 days it takes to pay out from the major app stores.

Alternatively, a developer can choose to reinvest their revenue into user acquisition – they simply select how much they want to pay into an ad network using our customer dashboard and Pollen VC allocates that money into the developer’s ad network account. We’re able to credit the developer’s ad network account with sales revenue they made the previous day, which means they are can exponentially speed up their user growth if they have a user acquisition formula that works.

“Pollen VC is a disruptive service because we bring together the old world of financial services with the new world of digital marketplaces. Before Pollen VC arrived, no one had connected the dots…”

Why do you think the judges picked your entry?

I guess we’re a little different from other nominees or winners in this category as we provide a funding source to enable acceleration of monetization, rather than developing the strategy or carrying out campaigns ourselves. Pollen VC is a disruptive service because we bring together the old world of financial services with the new world of digital marketplaces. Before Pollen VC arrived, no one had connected the dots, although there was a clear need to bridge the funding gap which mobile developers often face when launching an app or game. Pollen VC provides a real solution where developers can use their earned revenues to build their business, rather than relying on credit or needing to raise more equity cash.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsG6Y7nxzRA&w=400&align=right]What have you been up to since winning the Award?

We’ve been scaling at a good rate. We now work with developers all over North America and Europe, including Finland where we have had an especially good reception. The gaming industry is really thriving there and we found it really interesting that the developer community is so close knit; everyone helps each other out.

We’ve also grown our business development team in the US, as that’s where most of our customers are based right now.

What are your plans for the year ahead?

We’ll be continuing to grow internationally and we aim to open offices in Helsinki as well as other locations. At the moment I travel to the US about once a month as well as all over Europe to meet developers, so we’ll be taking on more business development people so I can focus more on the business!

Which mobile sector is most exciting to you right now?

What’s exciting is that we’re now seeing the maturation of the app store economy. Many of the mobile developer companies we work with have had previous experience in the industry and may have worked on superstar titles but they know that overnight success is very rare in the overcrowded app stores, so they are focussing on building sustainable app or games businesses which build up loyal player communities over time.

We teamed up with Priori Data to see how widespread the growth was and we’ve seen noticeable increases in the number of developers earning $5,000 to $500,000 every month. This is a segment of the app store that might not hold the top rankings of the app store charts, but they are making serious revenues every month because they have established themselves within a niche and figured out how to monetise their game effectively. We’ll be tracking this over time, as it’s amazing to see how such a young industry has already matured so far.

Judged by expert panels of international journalists, analysts, academics and VCs, the Meffys provide companies and innovators with an unrivalled opportunity to be considered for the global mobile industry’s top accolades. With categories covering Apps, Consumer Trust, Enterprise, FinTech, mHealth, Mobile-First Markets and Consumer First, the 2015 Meffys reflect the broadening mobile ecosystem. Deadline for entries is 17th July 2015 – get yours in now.