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Swiss finance firm Digital Capital emerged earlier this year, co-founded by Todd Tribell and Stew Kosoy. While Tribell has no previous experience in the games business, Kosoy has plenty, most recently working at ISM where he handled the Digital Illusions deal with EA for Battlefield 1942 (which eventually lead to EA's acquisition of DICE). Previously he has worked for MGM Interactive, GT Interactive and Sega America.

While there are multiple new and emerging channels for developers to get access to funding, Digital Capital's model is clear - if it likes your project it's looking to fund it to completion, from concept to the final product. It may be somewhat secretive about the amount of funding it has, but it has already invested on one business, bank-rolling Powerhead Games' Jason Schrieber and his new digital outfit based in Ireland.

Here, in an exclusive interview with GamesIndustry International, Kosoy and Tribell discuss how the business operates, what it's looking for from iOS to PC projects, how it differs from other VC companies and what exactly developers can expect from a partnership.

Q: The way I understand it is Digital Capital represents a group of people with money to invest in video games, but can you break it down a little more for us?

Todd Tribell: We have access to a number of very high wealth individuals and it's our sort of starter base, if you will. The way the process works is they don't know anything about this business, this is not what they do, and even some things that get pitched to them they're not interest because it's so far from what they know. You know, one guy likes Barbie, another guy likes GI Joe, and they're not willing to cross-pollinate. So cars or golf, bowling, whatever it is that people like, we just tend to go to this group of people and say "you like his and she likes that." We try to tailor it as much as possible. I know Stew loves tanks, so if I had something for tanks I'd call up Stew and say "Stew, I've got something you might find interesting." And of course we do a whole lot of preparation for them on the financial side, on the monetisation side, and so forth and so on, so it involves a good amount of research.

Stew Kosoy: Basically we are more than investors and we're more than matchmakers. We take 25 years plus years of triple-A experience, find partners who have the ability to deliver and partners that we feel are valid, put together a plan that covers the cost of development, the cost of marketing, the cost of support, run numbers, see if it's viable. If it's viable we either have our own money or we have access to money and we put together a partnership where we all participate. The development creative people, us, and the investor.

We're very reticent to get involved with any inventory situation, it's really digital distribution. We don't need bricks and mortar, it's very heavy and it costs

Stew Kosoy

Q: So what attracts your investors to the games business? What do they see that they want to invest in?

Todd Tribell: I think for each individual it's a different attraction. Our model allows us to bring people into the business with the security, as he said, that we're actively involved, we're active participants in what we do, of having someone they respect or trust look into managing that investment.

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Digital Capital: Mind on the Money