Markets are drooling over the millions to be had from the forthcoming IPOs of Candy Crush and Alibaba. The stock of King Digital, maker of the addictive smartphone game Candy Crush Saga and the fastest-growing company in the UK, is slated to start trading on the NYSE on Wednesday ($21-$24 a share). And Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, is rapidly boosting its portfolio – this week it announced its $215 million investment in the US chat app Tango – while planning a US IPO this summer. Tango allows users (mostly teens and millennials – it’s free!) to make video calls, text, chat, share pictures, play games, and send music to 50 people at once. Its 200 million registered users don’t need Facebook or Twitter to chat or play; Tango taps into a user’s smartphone contacts to communicate and discover other available content (including other apps).
Busy monitoring what the youth is up to, Tango might see a rise in apps like Level Money – a real time money meter which calculates income and spending (it’s linked to personal banking and credit card accounts). Geared to millennials who don’t like to sort money into boring categories like food, travel, entertainment, etc., Level Money just lets them know how much they have left to spend. For instance, enough to buy more Candy Crush lives? Noting that millennials save almost 10 percent less than young adults 50 years ago, Level CEO and co-founder Jake Fuentes said, “Budgeting is dead.” Level is built to bring budgeting back, but in a way that’s cool.
