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Gamefounders - European accelerator for game startups
If you are developing games (or better have already released games), and you think your games are worthy, but they are not getting you the amount of money you think they are worth.
Apply to http://gamefounders.com/ first European game accelerator startup, which would provide you with some seed capital, mentor you on designing and monetizing your games and provide lots and lots of interviews and pitches to lots of events and investors, to get better investment for your games.
Just thought any of you might be interested in it. They are collecting new batch for September, so it's the right time to join
Apply to http://gamefounders.com/ first European game accelerator startup, which would provide you with some seed capital, mentor you on designing and monetizing your games and provide lots and lots of interviews and pitches to lots of events and investors, to get better investment for your games.
Just thought any of you might be interested in it. They are collecting new batch for September, so it's the right time to join
Comments
Games: Android
We will give free license and mentorship support to the next cycle. \:D/
Likes: fxone
And create a company in Europe with a help of accelerator in the process.
But this is just to show you, that it is actually quite possible to get in and boost your gaming start up if you are really serious about that.
Since we applied and wanted to get in, I know lots about this accelerator, so you can ask me here if you have any questions
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=My+name+is+Originality
I don't understand who really need this. If you good enough to join it then you earn these money(5k euro) for 1-2 months. And you'll have to pay rent for a living space in Estonia.
And you will be traveling a lot, pitching to investor, and last demo day is usually at San Francisco.
Apart from the experience from mentorship and lots of contacts, lots of participated startups (I think almost half of them) also got the next round of investment through Gamefounders, which is an awesome ratio for the gaming startups.
http://doteebubble.blogspot.com/2013/05/gamefounders-full-of-gamefailures.html
If I were a gaming company, I wouldn't join. It looks like the people running it have no experience, but they get a % of your company. Do you really want those type of people with some control in your company?
But yes it is bad that tax payers money is wasted, but on the other side, every company joining would need to have a company in Estonia, which makes it possible for the to return that money to the budget.
As I said amount of money is not big and yes maybe they don't have the experience in gaming industry, but they have a lots of contacts that do have experience, which come to visit batch and lecture them/ teach them, so the experience and this contacts, which you can use for promotions, cross promotions, etc is what you actually gain.
They take 9%, and I can't know all the details of contract. And yes that might sound too little money for such share, but on the other hand, there are not very much options for gaming startups to start with.
But it was actually quite nice to read on such opinion, the problem is that there is too little information about GameFounders and the startups that applied there.
As for the advice they give. Looking at their website, they have too many mentors, and I think a lot of them don't really get involved. But let's pretend they all did get involved. -- you'd be meeting with 2-3 mentors per day. That's a waste of time, and it's better to be working on your game instead.
I have been a mentor, and I've also been mentored. What I found works best is to meet at most once a month, unless there is some special event (like some other company wants to acquire you or something). A mentor's job is to give very broad, strategic advice, and not get involved in any day-to-day decisions or tasks.
Now, if GameFounders was run by people with a proven track record of success in the industry, I may think differently. But when I compare them to incubators in the US, then I don't think GameFounders is really worth it.
My advice would be to take that same amount of time that you would spend at GameFounders, and instead work all day and night on your game. By the end of 3 months, you'll have a great product read to sell.
With the time spent there, you won't have a time for development (unless you will be working on evenings or nights), all the time spent is preparing your business plan, monetization, attending presentations/lectures, meeting with mentors, preparing for pitches, and then traveling to lots of events and pitching there.
So you got to have a ready to use product, you won't be able to develop it while you are there.
I really don't know about amount of mentors and they involvement, I have no experience there what is good and what is bad, thats why I appreciate your feedback on this.
But the biggest problem is, that spending 3 months hardly working on your product, won't get you anywhere (or at least there is a very little possibility of this happening) especially in mobile game world. So yes, maybe if GameFounders is not the best option, I'm open to other suggestions, because simply developing game, releasing it and doing your own 0 budget marketing just won't cut anymore.
With gaming specifically, there is less of a need for a business plan, pricing policies, etc. It's a lot simpler, because you already know your distribution channels (app stores), the 2-3 revenue options (in-app purchasing, app pricing, etc).
You can actually bootstrap in this industry reasonably well. No need for pitches to VCs, who probably won't fund a game anyway. They are looking for certain overall revenue numbers, exits, and returns. The 2 exits in this industry are IPO and acquisition. Both mean you have to be at a really big scale, and that's hard to do. Then there's the fickle-ness of game players -- that makes it difficult from an investor's perspective. Your game could be #1 this year, and #1000 next year because people got bored of it. Look at Zynga for an example of that.
Marketing is the difficult part, which is why I'd say look at niche games. You really can do this on your own, in this particular industry. Look at various small gaming shops, like Creative Mobile, for examples.
Now, if you were developing an enterprise software product or a console game, I'd give totally different advice. In those cases, strategy, positioning, pricing, etc is all a lot more important. But mobile gaming is a relatively simple model from a business perspective, and easy to figure out on your own. Good luck!
Likes: fxone, phongtt