Cyprus LIVE #2 Investment Secrets You Didn’t Know!

Next up to the plate, we got the jitters out. I'm joined today by
My name is Andre. Uh I moved to Cypress like four years ago. My background is mostly on the corporate development investment. I was like corporate development guy in a couple of companies. My place was next GDEF and now I do independent investment advisory here for games.
Okay. So what are you seeing in Cypress right now? When it comes to investments, I'm seeing a lot of capital flowing into real estate. Is it coming into games too?
Games is not only about Cypress. Games is kind of global stuff. So as everywhere it's not very like easy time to raise the money and also not easy time to sell something. So that's why the criteria I think the investors have for the product to invest or to acquire they're pretty strict.
So that's why I think it's not only about Cypress a global business.
So you've been here 4 years. Yeah.
What changes have you noticed in the game development scene?
I joined gaming actually uh in the middle of 2021. So the wipes of the flourishing time of post pandemic was already there and the valuations was

kind of high. Uh everybody still continuing invest into games and games was like the multiples was pretty good. I think in the somewhere in the beginning of 2022 mostly about ADF and also the war also changed thing for the companies which are here uh because like they faced a lot of operational problems. So that's why I think many companies spent like one year at least to put things back on track and to overcome all of these operational issues like moving people putting like processes back on track putting creativity back on track like cope with the stress of all of this. So I think it's some like kind of individual situation which affect the developers most of the developers here. It's not like in the global scene I think the times became tougher and you can see it like on the metrics everywhere that there's not such growth as it was before like that huge investment interest in the field.
What about here? You think it's slowed down here? When I look around Cypress at

least what I see today or what I've seen previously is it seems like exploding at least here. Maybe not globally for for for
No, I mean I mean like uh people doing business, people doing work. So I definitely believe some people changed their uh focus maybe like they quit games and I think and I heard like a lot of conversations about that but many decided to stay for example if we talk about myself I was like doing M&A and I wanted to continue doing M&A but to be honest like there's not so like huge deal flow everywhere but I decided to stay in gaming no matter what because I like the community. I play the games from my childhood. So I I I want to be there at least for some time and see what I can do on myself. So finally I decided to find some projects on my own. And I think many other people did the same. Some of them succeed. Some of them are like searching for something. Maybe they don't have like a great times right now but they are like continue to push it through.
Have you done any advisory for firms around the area? uh yes I have a couple of companies with

whom I working uh mostly on kind of investment side and I was happy that project with whom I working they are pretty good on metrics so that's why I think if if the company have a good metrics
probably the changes are not that
frustrating but if you want to do something from scratch right now or like establish a new product it's much more trickier
so when you think about the firms that you've worked with here and firms you work with abroad outside of Cypress do you think there are any differences in how you describe describe them or their approaches or their team.
I mostly work with companies in Cypress and before that I was like in Russia. So I worked in the tech sector like and not not in games itself. I was working for the internet company.
So have you seen that the mindset has changed when people have come over here?
I don't think so. I mean uh because before that I worked for tech but this was local tech. So it was like located in in Russia and it was between the tech companies in Russia. Definitely like the Russian speaking people, they're pretty great at tech and pretty great at games. They have like Russia, Ukraine or

Belarus.
But I think if we talk about gaming, all of the successful gaming companies, they are truly global actually in a nutshell. You cannot like make a game especially mobile one and focus only on one region except
what about dream except USA.
Dream Dream is looking pretty Oh, you mean in terms of
Yeah, I mean in terms of your users. So your users are definitely global. You cannot make a good money in gaming unless you are working globally.
So that that's the point here. So basically if you do mobile game for example especially mobile game you always focus globally especially on the US market if you want to make some good money.
It doesn't like depends where you originally from you compete on a global level and you're working with users from all over the globe. So basically I think mindset pretty much the same. Maybe the marketing is not that easy it was before but people finding a way. What ways do you think they're finding here? What are the strategies that are emerging or at least the hope? Like we just heard from someone who was working in puzzle. Is there any other interesting genres that you see happening here? Like I I see

that there's this puzzle segment. There seems to be a little bit of PC console for more gaming. Is there anything else going on here in terms of like genre that you're seeing emerge?
One of the biggest uh initially hyper casual but now it's like everybody's moving to hybrid casual companies. They're here like say games.
There is also
Say games is here. Yes,
I didn't know that. Okay,
that's that's it. Also, in terms of PC, there is not only word gaming. For example, all cat, they have a big team and they're also working from here.
We might hear from them later
if if the CEO is still around and the wine bottle hasn't been emptied.
Maybe maybe for example, in terms of mobile, I know that there is a forex studio making forex game and
score warriors.
Score warriors warriors and and it's like uh everybody keep telling that it's like maybe the biggest forex product which not out from China. So that's the point. So these guys are also here and they are pretty successful. Next is here. Yeah, they do like one of the biggest RPG game and there are definitely some part of the teams of players actually maybe from Gajin part

of the team also here and from some other bigger companies. So that's they're pretty good mix. I think it's mostly skewed to mobile PC is less presented here but both platforms are presented here. And also there is the guys who are making like the competitor to the strikers guys. Uh they're actually it's pretty interesting guys that they they're out of wiser. They obviously making like a also big puzzle game Klondike and they also launched a product like strikers. They get some investments and they're making like a football simulator.
Yeah. I mean we've seen uh what is it? Gold in Sweden has emerged. We also have the rematch which came out recently. I saw
Yeah, it seems like people are going after EA. It was Ser on the web 3 side. people are trying to eat at that empire.
Also, one thing that the deal between the EA and FIFA is not here anymore. Maybe you also can get some organics here and and compete also in terms of like distribution.
Is there anything else you'd like to say?
I like your podcast, so it's it's really

fun to be here and uh very unexpected, but it's pretty cool.
Thanks for being on the cast.
Thank you very much.