Financing games. Maz Spork, Growing Games 2015

Financing games: Is there any hope?

Where is this market going?

History of me

The Enigma

• The video game industry has growth of >10% CAGR • Denmark is supposed to excel in creative industries • There is a lot of capital in the market • Video games are underfunded. • What’s going on?

What are you guys pitching, anyway?

• A game?

• A business?

• A vision?

• A dream?

• A pipe dream?

- and to whom?

To your bank? GTFO

Industrial investors aka publishers

Venture capital?

Seed funding

Seed funding

Seed funding

Seed funding

Seed funding

Crowdfunding

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_crowdfunding_projects

The reality of construction projects

What the investor sees

What the investor feels

It’s all about investment competency and risk

• Investors need to balance risk and reward • Your business model typically looks like this in stage zero

• In other words: the knowledge/assumption ratio is low

Aside: is a high knowledge/assumption ratio good?

(Schema Theory)

- and there really are only two kinds of investors

Financial Strategic(wants to get out) (wants to stay in)

So is there hope (the Enigma)?

• Game developers can

• Go for the grammar

• Find evidence

• Work together

• Investors can

• Spread the risk

• Find talent

• Work together

There’s another hope (a third kind of investor)

Startup incubator & accellerator

Most importantly

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Thanks for listening

[email protected] Twitter, etc.: @mazspork https://dk.linkedin.com/in/mazspork

Sam Altman’s Stanford lectures on “How to Start a Startup” videos and ebook can be found at http://startupclass.samaltman.com