Gamefounders - European accelerator for game startups

ar2rsawseen

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

albert988

If not from Europe, would that be okay to join?

deniz

Gideros is one of the sponsors of Game Founders.
We will give free license and mentorship support to the next cycle. \:D/

ar2rsawseen

@albert988 well I think most probably everyone could apply, but you will need to move to Estonia for the lockdown period of three months, while getting mentorship
And create a company in Europe with a help of accelerator in the process.

ar2rsawseen

My http://jenots.com team actually applied for the second batch, just to check what we were worth, and we actually got in. Unfortunately we had to decline due to various reasons (like me finishing University, other team mate getting married, etc).

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

fxone

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.

@ar2rsawseen I agree, but it would be appropriate to have some team as you and also in 100% disposable as you said. I think for now from this forum it's excellent possibility only for developers like Nightspade and Guava7. BTW Is here any team from Europe besides Jenots?

unlying

Seed capital is too small.
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.

ar2rsawseen

@unlying those 15k (5k per founder) are basically to cover living and traveling expenses, nothing more.
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.

gameplayer

This blog wrote about GameFounders, and they were not very positive about it:
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?

ar2rsawseen

@gameplayer not trying to defend GameFounders, me and my team also had lots of doubts before joining (and still do).

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.

gameplayer

In terms of the money they give you, well you have to pay to get to Estonia, and your living expenses while you are there, so that costs a lot of the money they give you already. In return for giving you money to pay for your trip, they take 9% of your company. So from a strictly financial perspective, I don't think it's worth it. You can get that same amount of money by asking friends and family (and living at home), or doing a Kickstarter project or something.

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.

ar2rsawseen

@gameplayer yes money is basically for living and traveling expenses nothing more, so no one would get any other ideas

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.

gameplayer

I'll write briefly since it's pretty busy for me. I actually mentor a lot of startups, so I can provide some advice.

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!