Funding Early Stage Gaming - Zvika Pakula, Product Madness

foreign [Music] [Applause] is about funding early stage gaming and I welcome to the stage speaker pakula from product Madness so idea for a mobile game and at its core it's a chance based game that's free to play you know it's going to be the next top charting hit in all app stores the kind of game that goes viral introducing Madness mentors a

one-of-a-kind Game Dev launch platform designed to help develop market and launch your game to the world empowering your idea your game globally now it's your time to create design develop and grow your dreams our Madness the winning combo built with Madness mentors madnessbenchers.productmadness.com good afternoon everyone so give you one minute to sit down thank you we just ask everybody to sit down quietly please thank you

so again good afternoon everyone happy to be here happy to see a full house hey what do you mean by finding a game what do we need to fund the camp so maybe we can go to the next slide let's start by what's your introduction sorry so this is me with a bit black beard and my name is srika pakula I'm from product Madness and I'm responsible for the strategy and business development product Madness to the ones that are not familiar with the company we have been established in 2007 acquired later by Aristocrat which is a public company in Australia we have today over 800 employees we have six game in Social Casino and we are very proud to be in the top 25 Publishers in the world with seven local or seven sites uh five in Europe to the US

so this is about me what about you just help me a bit how many of you here already raised in the past money for new Venture can you raise your hands how many plan to raise money in the near future wow impressive so the ones that already raised money I assume you know it's a journey the one that are planning to raise money you should know it's a journey and when we say journey in a lot of meaning we look at it so when you plan a journey it doesn't matter if it's a travel if it's you know a new experience a new project you have to look for like a checklist of activities so first so what do we start from you know I'm flying to a new location I'm going with a car or in our case what do I have the concept prototype I'm ready for soft Lounge

so I would say that soft Lounge when we go to funding probably you're looking for round a b c i will focus more about the early stage today about the concept the prototyping and why because practically this is the Romantic stage in our life we believe so we have an idea we believe in it and practically we say there is no way to not succeed and only you as entrepreneur can get to this stage because the ones that are coming with the money has to be the other side the one that will ask the question theoretically they're realistic but not not more than that because no one can know the future so the second question which road with past we are going to take so it's really related to the genre that you are in so if you are an hyper casual theoretically you can have a game within a month out there I will not touch the hyper casual if you are in casual in a RPG related in Social

Casino you have to understand it will be a bit longer okay so I understand potentially I have a longer a journey but what does it mean so first of all what the other Travelers in this world so they are competitors competitors when I'm talking about competitors is other games are in the market and other new games that are looking for the money that all of us are looking for so the next one okay so where do I going what is my target what is our target audience and again there is more than one target audience but in a simplistic way I would say do we have our players that we hopefully will play our game and we have the investors both of them in this stage are our target audience now if you look at those target audience at

this stage let's focus on what are the questions that we need to ask ourselves regarding them so first of all if you're talking about the players there are two main questions usually that you will be asked when you start to raise money but practically it's not concerning money it's concerning your idea first how many potential players we have for this new game and why they will come to me versus the alternative the other games second why they will stay with me because if you are not in hyper casual that you expect a very short of Journey after you launch the game you want those players to stay with you so why what you will do different regarding the other target audience is the investors practically what are they looking for so we had the panel before and there are a lot of questions the team the product great all of them are mandatory but

a lot of the investors in the early stage can put their head and to say to you the Romantic the Believers that there is no chances will succeed because many other reasons but really what they would like to understand is how do you understand the market how do you are going to address those challenges in the market and what is the differentiator The Innovation element that you have in your idea that can make it a breakthrough now practically at this stage you identify that might be gaps between what you want to present what you know about the market about the audience about the game industry or the game competitors and what your target audience are looking to hear from you and this is the point that we need to understand that it's I say it personally that many are being challenged by this so at this stage

you're looking for option so we talked about AI before so I went to chat GPT and I asked what are the options to funding again saying nothing new here I can self-fund it I can go put to publishing if I'm in quite I would say quick to the market I can go to financial bankers and I can go for strategic partner the question Rich option I will tell you a secret the best option if you have customer they are the best Founders the best investors in your game the problem is that you don't have it today hopefully down the road you will have it and then the question about funding will be much easier but at this stage these are your options what does it mean so let's connect the dots if it will work so I took it by example we have a new company it can be a few people

that join together winning game studio and they have a great idea for a social casino game concept now they're looking at their journey and the first question where are they emulate so if you look really in the mirror for most casual and if you go Central Casino RPG it's not that within six months you will have a game the reality to take you between a year to two years this is the reality sorry if I'm saying something else maybe AI will shorten some of it but reality this is the time period now when you plant funding and you are in early stage your concept stage or prototype stage the reality is that you don't know if the market is accepting what you are planning to offer so you need to understand that the first Milestone the

first Junction that you have to approach is Market sensing the ability to do Market sensing is depends from genre to genre the ability if you have a self-funding or you need money just to do this Market sensing but this is the first Milestone and actually what you look is to prototype as quickly as possible and I can tell you personally I mean a lot of companies a lot of things great ideas some of them are very very strong in product and games and they love and the fair have fun okay so in this stage they are trying to build the game to the maximum they can with whatever they have as funding but they never met the market when you would go to investment it will ask what is your kpis what your attention they want or data down the road retention day seven they don't have it so instead of doing the full blown game start plan for time and for kpis

this is the first stage and for this unit funding you need to find the partner that understand this journey the second if you have those kpis you extend your option for funding because at this stage it's not just about your idea and about the concept it's also with some kind of reality check that happened already in the market and your option to fund increase so some of the check GPT probably will be more relevant now at this stage you have also to understand that the game will take you at least another year from this prototyping to the lounge so you need to make sure that the partner that you choose can bring you to this point but unfortunately it's only the starting point when you will launch your game and today I had many speakers before it's about user acquisition unfortunately organic is not the way that we can plan at this stage we need to plan for every investment so

a quick math for this opportunity it will take you about 15 to 20 million dollars to get kind of a market share initial market share after two and a half two years this is the journey you need to understand it you need to ask when you speak with someone and they offer you tomorrow morning five million dollars for seventy percent of your company or 50 of your company sounds like a lot of money but it might be that it will not take you even to the point of soft launch so make sure that you understand and when you speak with the partner that he understands where you're going to go together so practically believe in what you're doing but be realistic at the same time and I'm on time right thank you very much [Applause]

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