Entrepreneurs and investors

Written by Sara Ponnert | April 28, 2010 | No comments

Of course its always interesting it hear about how successful entrepreneurs have found founding, but it’s a bit toothless when we hear the guy who eventually got is company bought by the largest player on the market for enormous amount of money.  Good for him, but what can we learn from that that we can apply on the everyday small developer out there. We see that it can be done and we can get inspired to keep going.

We learn that all these success stories are different and people find money in different ways, their ideas are different, the teams behind them are, they live in different countries. So the out come have to be to find your own way and just do it, but as we learned yesterday, think it through first.

investors panel

The investors in the panel after today’s lunch was picked to be there because they are passionate about games and have already invested in games for years. Again, its great to hear what they like to see; predominantly a good business opportunity where the company looking for founding know what they will make the money and return of investment of.  They do not have to see the story of the game, or what the characters will look like. They see the team behind the proposal as the insurance, so it has to be a well put together team behind it as well, one that is not only programmers or idea makers, there has to be business sense in the company as well.

But I really would like to hear from investors that has Not invested in games before since there is all this talk about that the investors has to be educated to games to be able to invest in the branch.  We should invite them instead and ask  them what it is they need to know  and what would make them invest in this for them new media/culture/branch.

“I asked a developer who their customer was, and they replied that it was the gamer, the end consumer. But that’s wrong, it’s the game Publisher! I then asked who the publishers customer where, and the developer tried again with the end consumer, but again wrong, the distributor! Remember who is buying your game when you pitch the idea!” a good point made by Siggi Kogi .

But some of the learning’s from the panels where: All the money you get should go to the product not marketing – if the product is good enough it will do the marketing for you.  Know whom you talk to – find the proper partner and do not tell them what they like to hear to get it sold.
When you have an idea – go for it – pitch it to get feedback on what to change and what to elaborate more!

Can the games industry learn anything from other branches here? Have the movie industry any answers that they can steal, or is this a problem in all types of cultural and media business in the search of founding?

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