GameFounders is the first company dedicated to accelerating the growth of gaming industry startups in Europe. App 2 Top talked to her co-founder Kadri Ugand during their demo day at the Slush conference in Helsinki.
Tell us about GameFounders
GameFounders invites the most promising startups of the gaming industry to participate in the program, which will be held in Tallinn for three months, and offers them a small seed capital in exchange for a moderate share of shares. About 60-70 curators from all over the world will take part in the program, who will help companies with the development of the game, as well as in establishing contacts with publishers and investors. Thus, they will be able to build a successful gaming business.
How do you find the best gaming companies?
To do this, we mainly use our network of mentors. We have about 100 mentors around the world who are really famous in the gaming industry. We attract them and ask them to place ads on our behalf. To date, we have already contacted game developers from more than 60 countries around the world.
Your fourth three-month session will begin next spring. Can you tell us about the selection process?
The deadline for the 4th round is set for December 8. The evaluation of applications will take place in December and January, that is, we will review the recorded and submitted information, products and prototypes, conduct interviews with teams via Skype, and then we will have a very intense selection with 20-25 candidates, from among whom we will select a maximum of 10 companies.
At what stage of development should the company be in order to participate in the selection?
They don’t even need to be a company. We had very small teams. However, from the point of view of the product, they should have something like a prototype or demo. Some of the companies have already released their products, but this is not a requirement.
It should be borne in mind that the teams have a lot to do during the three-month program, so they will not have much time to develop a product from scratch. They should be able to show mentors something to get feedback, that is, this program will not work for those whose ideas are implemented only on paper.
Now the promotion of games, retention and attraction of users entails huge costs. Leading companies currently allocate more than a million dollars for these purposes. What advice would you give to startups that don’t have such capital?
It’s not very popular to invest in small game studios right now. So our participants rather need to familiarize themselves with the search for publishing offers and an independent publication in order to establish their business. Many of our game studios are currently using quite innovative business models, often combining various successful monetization strategies in their games. These games have a chance of success, because if you copy a good monetization strategy, there is a high probability that you will be able to earn, at the same time, if you use an approach that does not make money, it is likely that your game will not make a profit either.
But I believe that companies have the opportunity to break through without large investments. As in any other business, the team just needs to be really smart and it should use a completely new approach. In addition, there are many ways to find financing for these expenses, for example, crowdfunding or parallel employment. In this case, teams will finish their games, try to achieve some success, and usually get to the point where they can acquire users. I have seen our participants try different options, and each of them finds their own solution.
Which of those solutions that you’ve seen works best?
Well, of course, it would be great if the team could cope with the problems on their own, publish their games, be successful and keep 100% of the shares of their company, but, unfortunately, this does not happen too often. So I think in most cases it’s better for the team to find a good publisher. Because in addition to the release of the game, teams can see the marketing and user acquisition strategies that the publisher uses, so they will be able to implement them themselves in the next game. Usually the first game doesn’t bring much wealth, so why not use it to gain knowledge?
GameFounders is looking for companies developing games or gaming applications for its 4th session. Teams should have a beta, prototype or demo version of their project and be ready to launch their business. The upcoming three-month cycle, already the fourth for GameFounders, will begin in early March 2014, applications must be submitted no later than December 8. More information here www.gamefounders.com .