Beat the Bear: Raising Funds in a Challenging Landscape - Matthew Buxton, MYSTiC Games.

[Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to the stage yeah um we're going to talk about beating the bear aren't we about raising uh raising funds in a challenging landscape exactly exactly so it's going to be fun um and yeah like just give everyone a little bit of time to sit down and defrag the room if possible um absolutely so ladies and gentlemen I'll give the stage to Matthew

Buon from Mystic Forge my Mystic games um always good so I'm I'm Matt from Mystic games Mystic Forge I don't know um let's see how it goes um but yeah this is our presentation and I think it's always good to like since it's late uh we've been here a long time some people are still hung over first off are you in the right presentation I have a handy flowchart to determine this so do you know what this is um so this is my first question anyone who doesn't you're in the right place um anyone who does well let's see do you own one that's another question just one with your own money go write a LinkedIn post about bootstrapping so if you're already loaded um this is about the time that you would go to LinkedIn and you would write a post about bootstrapping and how hard it is how you can no longer afford $66,000 shoes and all of that good stuff whereas if you don't own one you should

probably stay here because this is about how normal people raise in this environment and about the hidden rules of fundraising that no one tells you if you're just a normal employee you're trying to start a game studio if you do own one and you also own these items here's my Telegram and um we have already 1.9 million soft and you can download and we're ready for a seed round right now cuz you're obviously a VC anyone who carries water bottle that's suspiciously large and also wears Patagonia please contact us so um now we've established who should be here it's everything you didn't want to know about raising VC money what VC funding isn't I think this is one of the things that is worth explaining because a lot of people come in with this idea that VC funding Works in a particular way or it's always going to go to particular people so let's have a look at it so we have all of these exciting names of VCS flying falcon light speed outlier makers fund oneup play Ventures cisu which is the name is

The untranslatable Finnish word for like bravery on the on the brink of death so you take risks right right what you should actually think of as VCS are firsttime parents of a money baby and as all firsttime parents know you're very concerned about your money baby you have a monitor you sing to it at night um you're hyper aware of all the risks and why is this because even if you are the best people the best team the best startup we heard it from the previous talk as well the landscape is rough and it's always been rough um and about 90% fail if you keep throwing money at rich white people then I don't know why 90% fail there's always another startup um but that's why people um understand that everything VCS do is risk it's the same as if I was to just walk down the street and someone comes up to me and they say hey give me a tener and I'll give you back 20 in 3 years I don't think it's going to work out and that's what we are to them unless you're already someone who's done

it before so what VC funding isn't it's not a meritocracy it follows the power curve law there are only so many people in the world and everyone's like intelligence follows a bell curve whereas people acquiring power and money somehow doesn't and that's because it compounds the more successful you are the more likely you are to do this and when you actually need the money the more likely they are to do that and give you that value ad have you talked to that person please I just need to pay people was like I thought you were already rich enough so the other thing is it's not a massive Advantage a lot of people think that you get VC money and you can immediately just win um that's not necessarily going to happen you'll probably get the money you need the money you deserve most likely um and you still need to prove yourselves um it's not this Soul case that you've raised VC money suddenly every every door is going to open so there's always going to be better funded competitors probably doing the same thing and probably they're even more handsome than you are which is really annoying

um so why would you do it desperation masochism naivity a combination of all three um or just you have a team already you have a vision and you're just bloody determined to get it done and I think that's really what it's about it's about horrible persistence in the fact that you're probably blacklisted on every single mobile game Studio to hire until death um so you've got to you got to have a team you got to have this kind of spirit that even if you have kids and a family and all the other um the middle-aged trappings that I do you still have to just push it because it's it's going to be hard so how do you do it this is how long a VC will spend on average looking at your deck that you spent weeks on thanks Doc end um it's a little bit shorter in reality but if you do a teaser pitch expect them to flick through every page super quick because they have hundreds of these things that arrive on their table thousand thousands of people like us trying to beg for

money from them and many of them are terrible so how do you stand out from the rest well you need to do a lot of research I would suggest Elite game developers is a great place to start out they have everything from cap tables to how to organize your first pitch deck to how to make sure that you're sort of investable what kind of teams look good on paper and what kind of teams look good in reality you should also research the VCS you want and then you should stack rank them in power order basically take the the least your least favorite VC send your deck to them talk to them add them on LinkedIn and then two months later contact them so that they've forgotten that they just added you randomly that's always a good method but once you have that you go from the ones that you don't want until all the way up to the ones that you're really really um certain on and the reason for that is you get feedback you get to test your deck you get to learn what they want um and all of that but all of this research not so fast um I don't know if you know

this fell he's a lovely guy um but you need to know the hidden rules and the hidden rules of VC funding are high quality deck and I promise you I didn't know anything about the news today so apologies if you are with Riot or were with Riot but um better than Riot because it's the only VC company that game uh only games company that VCS actually know and do you need us why um because basically VCS are looking for Traction in everything even an unreleased app so this is the kind of thing the first thing they'll say is like oh I can see it on my phone how many how many players have you got I was like it's out yesterday I was like ah it's not that's not a hockey stick um but no it's good and you you only get one chance so you need a high quality deck because they will not come back to you um if you can't break them out of their malays they will never actually contact you and this is why you can have the most informative deck in the world but if it doesn't tell them something exciting or a good story then you are [ __ ] out of luck um they don't read that is true I i' I done a study in all of

our um VCS every single one of them on telegram replied to whatever pitch we put with take out more words um and these are people who gave us money they're like remove more words until it was just sentences vague random sentences saying money soon later um narrative pitch compelling pretty um and this again apologies about the riot thing I had no idea but do you work at Riot if so there is a position at Mystic games whichever you want uh collect your equity and it's a competitive salary in the same way that American cheese is cheese so we have some some like nice pre-worn swag that you could wear as well but essentially it's one of these it's one of these Tempo companies that VCS know and it goes the same for Fang um the Facebook Netflix all of those kind of things if you have people who are in those power companies as well it's going to make your rise significantly easier and then the do you need us so you have Metro right and you

need to have some metrics whether it's signups whether it's people playing your game whether it's like um days or weeks or months of statistically significant data don't even think about trying to fake it they will check it's the one thing they remember from econ 101 it's literally the one thing they will do is check your data um so don't even think about it but you have to have mindboggling data of something so you have to push something out there get some good numbers and then hopefully fingers crossed you'll get to the real h which is it's all about fomo um it's engagement farming the whole thing is just engagement farming after all of this and after all of this are you investable and all the rest of it it's did their friends tell tell them about you did the other VC say oh these guys are raising and the thing is they all know each other it's um it's a bit like streamers that they all have this inner drama with each other so they all know each other and that's why when you start raising with VCS that's why you started the the ones you don't want the most because then hopefully the good rumors

filter up so by the time you hit your lead potential lead VC at least three or four of them have said have you heard of this company and they're looking for feedback from their lead so use events to your advantage like this speak um be choosy don't get to events that are just like everywhere um find out where they'll actually go because they're a little bit like um vultures they will descend on some free food and then they will take it away and disappear to an ensive dinner where they will complain about free food I know I've been invited once um and fellow Founders are just as important like we actually managed to secure our raise by talking to some awesome people at FCC which was an event in Paris when it was 41° it's like being inside a haird dryer um so also BL the VIP I mean I I know that Chris will probably be a bit mad at this but if you don't have a thing in the VIP if you can see something they have from it like a wine glass and it's not from anywhere else if you're holding the wine glass no one questions you and

you can just get in there and chat to them this is not Financial advice don't follow it well that was easy wasn't it um so when Lambo um we have Lambo at home and this is what you have to build um like this is why it's really important to get multiple warm intros to find the right VCS and uh when you're in the process the thing is that you might already run out of money before you actually raise the money or take the money even if people like you um there's a lot of legal wrangling sometimes they will not understand things like um their own bank so uh you'll have to be there and fill in all the details and work out how to bank wire transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars from America and uh you'll sound like a [ __ ] on the train if you talk about that loudly though so don't um and it doesn't count until it's in your bank we've had people who' promised us lots of things and then suddenly evaporated we've had people who were going to give us this amount and then it's half then they wanted more then

someone else came in and then they wanted to come in after a while you're like I've I've probably spent like 400 billion on lawyers already just sending all of these contracts it's now not worth taking the investment because they will have cost as much um and if it actually happened Don't Panic uh but the clock is ticking and you'll need a support network and that goes for if you are a loan founder if you have um friends or you're doing it with a co-founder you need to have a support network of people this is one of the things I kind of forgot about when I started was all of those industry contacts you built up over the years just message them like no one wants to see you do it alone if they've hired you in the past and if they're like your friends or even if they've been your bosses even if you had a mild distaste for each other as long as you're not working in that kind of same hierarchy it's good to get feedback it's good to ask because it could be as simple as finding the right payroll provider for a non-eu citizen working in an EU environment there are so many things in your network that will benefit

you so it's also really important to have other people who are also going through the hell because you can't really sit there with um your employees and say it's all on fire because that will scare them and that's not nice so now what so you start prototyping um this is the next big stage and then you build the rest of the [ __ ] game uh which is what we did um and so we've got call of the Void it's out now on um IOS and Android and essentially that's it for [Laughter] [Applause] me fantastic thanks so much uh highly efficient talk also which means we have room for questions so if there are any raise your hand and a microphone will be brought away all the way in the back I see someone where's your watch where's my watch I left it at home cuz I was really I was in a hurry um and then yeah it's in it's in Stockholm it's in in your Lambo yeah it's in my Lambo my

cardboard Lambo any other questions that was a good [Laughter] question all right maybe the talk was so high energy and everyone's still processing it but if you have any questions I'm sure uh you know be happy to take questions outside of the room yeah of course of course thank you so much all right well in that case uh thank you so much for that thank [Applause] you