Inside the Mobile Finance Collective

[Music] purposely I've chosen a quiet place so we can actually get down into some depth here. Martin Martin McMillan here who is I think part of pocket gamer because pocket gamer connect you've been speaking here so often different approaches different companies now the mobile finance collective what is that tell us about that so mobile finance collector or MSC as we as we call it is something I've been wanting to do for a number of years so I spent 10 years as a lender into the gaming and app space uh in a company called Poland VC And over those years, I saw the same thing repeatedly happen, which was that the founders of the company would run the finances until it reached a sort of it reached a moment which was ten generally around $10 million in revenue and then

what they would do is they would go out and they would hire a CFO. one day they would wake up and they we need to have a proper CFO because as a founder you're doing all the different things but actually you know so there was this moment that they realized they needed a proper CFO and they would generally hire people from outside the industry typically with an accounting background and this person would then be catapulted into the role and of course they're all generally extremely competent CFOs but there was so much technical knowledge to learn right so if you're a CFO who's been classically trained excuse me and then you get you get transplanted into this world of cohort analysis and predictive LTV modeling. There's a lot to learn. Now, what struck me and again this is from empirical experience of working with hundreds of CFOs over 10 years is um that if you work in a gaming studio, if you work in user acquisition, you work in ad monetization, there is lots of community, right? There is a there are conferences you can come to pocket gamer you can you know go to Las Vegas you can

do all these things and that's where you can kind of learn your trade you know meet industry connections and peers etc and you know knowledge share but in finance absolutely nothing there was no community whatsoever and very often these CFOs were it's a very lonely role so if you talk to some of our mentors or explain a little bit about that but um everyone has found it to be a lonely role and they the CFOs find that everyone's looking to them for the answers. They don't necessarily have the answers and yet there's no community. So they're sitting there behind their, you know, big Excel sheets trying to figure stuff out on their own. And so what I wanted to do in terms of launching and building uh MFC was to create a community for anyone doing that role. So whether it's a CFO or VP of finance or often it's a COO, sometimes it's even the founders, anyone who's holding the purse strings who's responsible for financial planning. uh and for financial you know for analysis and so on that's who really we're targeting we create a

community for them um where they can learn from each other interact with each other and then also the other thing in terms of setting it up was really obvious to me is like I've never been the CFO of a gaming company so what do I know but over the years I've got to know lots and lots of CFOs so we're lucky enough to have a like a really great rockstar lineup of mentors who have been there and done that and then they're happy to give back to some of those maybe at an early stage earlier stage in their career and um you know mentor them whether it's you know direct mentoring it's just office hours or it's even chiming in we run lots of different town halls and content etc. So I I mean I have to say I have to say what's also really interesting is that you've brought them in from the industry because you said sometimes you'd get a CFO from somewhere transplant them into a gaming company. I was at your dinner. You have um Era from uh I think it was uh Supercell. Supercell. Yes, exactly. Thank you. And a number of others I met who really know their stuff from in the

games industry. I think that's really important here. Yeah. I mean that that's the thing. So because it's the community is really like it's an inch wide and a mile deep. So this isn't a community for everyone in gaming or anything at all. But if you if you are in that CFO or that finance role, this is super super good fit for you. and the idea of being able to learn from people who have really been there and done that. So that there were two really strong reactions from all of the mentors that we invited in. One is the acceptance is it's a very lonely role. The lonely was an adjective for every single one and yeah but the other thing is they were like ah I wish this had been around in my day because I had to figure out all of these things on my own. So the other thing that's become really obvious is that the the problems that CFOs or finance leads are grappling with on a daily basis, 99% chance the exact same problem has been solved by someone else in the community. So rather than suffer in silence or even worse, go back and pay

your accountants to figure out problems, you're way better to ask a community of people who have already solved the problem you're having. So I'm not saying I'm not saying absolutely everything but very often it's exactly the same issues that keep coming up. So what kinds of issues are there? I mean the CFOs in your in your community will know that but when I'm thinking about the pocket gamer audience we're also talking to sea level saying you know a little bit more of yeah understand what your CFO is grappling with because then you can also be supportive at some level. So what is it they struggle with? So here here's a great example. It's actually the panel we're doing later this afternoon. So um one of the CSVOs in the community said just posted a question out on a on a town hall meeting which was who can I trust as a source of truth? So I'm getting conflicting data from my MMP from my own user acquisition team and BI and then all of the ad networks and they're all telling me different things. So who can I trust? And it was like a really open question. So so the answer to that is multi

multifaceted. So first of all there's the external answer. So when for example this is this is through one of our mentors been through I think 18 different acquisitions in a previous life. Um standard set of definitions. What is an install? What is a 7-day attribution window? All of these things there was there was huge scope for interpretation between. So potential acquirers had to really get their heads around this. But it also turns out that even internally and this is one of the things we're going to discuss um in the panel there is a huge amount of conflicting data even between departments. So user acquisition may think of an install as this but the finance people may be looking at a different you know maybe a calendar window instead of a UTC 24-hour look back or something like that. So lots of different things can slip through the the cracks. So it's really important the thing that we teased out from that is it's really important to have a standard set of definitions. So everyone is on the same page whether that's for an

internal audience or an external and this was the sort of thing that we sort of teased out of everyone and we came up with a um like a a solution a program of how to sort of fix it. That's fascinating because you think about it you're coming up with standards. It would be great if you had in your community or maybe this is part of what you're thinking is you can you can strongly suggest it. You can never enforce anything but you can strongly suggest that when we're discussing these matters these are the definitions we want. So you know network partners MMPs let's try to be on the same page. I mean is there hope for that? 100% it's absolutely in the works right now on and not just on terms of definitions but on multiple levels. Um, so and because we're a community of people, we don't we're not a vendor. We don't have an axe to grind one way or another. So the whole idea of community sourcing, whether it's definitions or it's best practice or models or whatever it may be, is super important. Um, so yeah, so there's lots planned on there. The other thing is we're working on a training

course as well. So, we wanted to create a, you know, you don't have to be a member of the community um to participate in this, but for anyone who's doing a finance role in a gaming studio or an app company, we're creating a a whole suite of learning materials just to uh called finance fundamentals just to help you get up to speed with this and then hopefully show you the power of community. Part of it is to help you get your knowledge up and then the other part of it is to show you what you don't know and then how being part of a wider community can really help you in that. Absolutely. I was going to say you have the community there. So the these educational modules will be, you know, on the mark. They'll be on point. And then if you need more, you can join the community. You can talk about this with them. How does one join the community, by the way, Martin? Uh so we have um you you can join the um through the website which is mobfin.co. Uh there's an application to apply, but you it's not something you just apply for and then sign up to immediately. We have to vet. Um now but the the vetting is the

vetting is to ensure we keep the quality really high. So we don't want to have you know a bunch of vendors and ad networks and you know aspiring founders and so on in there. So we keep the quality of the conversation really high by making sure everyone is in a finance role. Um whether that's an explicit or an implicit right. Very often it's like fractional goes too. Yeah. I think I mean who whoever's holding the purse strings that's really the qualifying factor. Um, and in terms of the community, we want to make sure people will be active members. We don't want passive members. Even if they sit there and they pay their fees, they just sit there with video off and don't participate. That's not really what we're looking for. So, active participatory members um is really what what it's what it's all about. And when did you launch it exactly? Because it I know it's been your dream for a while because you have that background. So you know these problems and now you can kick back a little with all of your experience and start to solve them.

Well, it's been something I wanted to do for probably the last six years. Um, and only last year, you know, did the bandwidth become available to to do it. Um, so I very quickly realized that it wasn't something I could kind of do myself as a as a sort of side project. So if we were going to do it, we were going to do it properly. So um Anna Nicolina joined us to run the community on a full-time basis and we have a team of kind of freelancers and so on that we've you know people I've got to know over the years to um to help with you know design and socials and lots of other aspects. So the town halls all of that that you know a lot of it's going to be remote as well obviously but um what is it like in the in the in the networking there? what you have planned in the way of just making certain that everyone is working in the right direction and that there's knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing is so important and you're going to have to tackle that remotely but you probably have some meetups some ideas. I went to your dinner so you obviously have some

uh what's what's on the books. So a key thing that we're doing is we do monthly themes. So excuse me and and doing a monthly theme it keeps you know it makes it easier for us to curate content and we have a series of things. So the community tells us what they want to know about and we'll go and curate interesting speakers, panels, town halls, fire sites. So for example towards the end of last year we did um AI in finance um and we had a bunch of different we had a showcase event. We had some practical sessions, we also did um forecasting analysis. So we had some super technical sessions on you know various different forecasting techniques and different software to do that. Um excuse me. Then we did um you know user acquisition month. User acquisition lots of things gravitate back to UA but we're not trying to be solely focused on user acquisition. And then you know the other topics that we've got coming up this year are M&A but with a focus on integrating companies post transaction. Um it's like a really really really big topic and there's lots of people we can pull in to

learn from that. Um and then also you know some of the grittier aspects of it like HR. So if you're a CFO, you've got these days people working in 15 different countries on a remote basis. How do you make sure that you're up to date with all the regulatory environment and compliance and so on as well? So there is it's not always the sexy user acquisition stuff. There is a lot of the kind of the gritty, the more mundane accounting system migrations and these things as well. Anything that's on the CFO's plate, we're trying to and and they need help with that the community can help with. Those are the topics we're looking to address through that sort of monthly theme basis because also the role of the CFO has evolved very differently. You know, it used to be really just get stuck in into the Excel sheets, but now it's it's strategy, it's forecasting. I mean, these are data driven companies. Game studios are data driven. Everything is data driven. and therefore the CFO it's like you know understand the tools

understand things that they were never trained for. So one of the key observations in the first um whatever six seven months of running the community is one of the key things to get right is having an understanding of the other areas of the business. So finance function is generally isolated out completely separate from most the other areas. Where we've seen it work really well is where finance take the time to understand other areas particularly on the user acquisition side but also products and live ops and so on as well and also vice versa. So taking the time to understand each other's business will always engineer better results. Um so that's something we you know from an organizational design point of view we advocate for really strongly and we've seen you know great results when when again particularly with finance and user acquisition um there is a there is a better understanding of each other's business which is very much a two-way street. So what are they doing? You know we

talked about it being a lonely existence but it's changing. You know you're going to bring some richness to that conversation some knowledge there. What are studios doing now currently that maybe they're not aware of but they should be avoiding or changing and doing that this year? In other words, it should be top of the business agenda, top of the finance agenda. What would that be? So, I think particularly in slightly leaner times in the gaming industry, making sure making sure you're you're engaging in best practice and everything. So just because you've done it a certain way for the last n years, that doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. So one of the key things again we advocate for is talking to others about how they're doing things. So again, one of the key themes of the community is like I'm on it. I think I'm doing a pretty good job, but I'm very interested to know how other people are doing it. I don't want to know their numbers. I don't want to know anything confidential. I just want to know the methodologies to make sure I'm sort of

constantly evolving. And I'm very interested to know what others are doing because I can always glean something from that insight. So whether it's, you know, whether it's a a town hall call on a particular topic or it's a mentor call with within the office hours framework, um, everyone's always very very keen to learn. No one comes to the community with all the answers. No one has a monopoly on the right answer. So you may think you're doing a you know pretty good job but you're always keen and these are the sort of members we're looking for always keen to kind of push push the needle figure out if there's a better way to do something because there are so many models I remember when we met which is over a decade now 11 years um and you were always watching this because you had the financial background in an industry that wasn't anywhere near that and um just the discussions with you of what is LTV which model um you know, we have a long way to go. And now when I'm hearing about the single source of truth, I mean, there's going to be a

lot that you're going to have in these fundamental courses, um, everything else, I mean, it's never dull with you, Martin. What do you want to be telling me in about a year when we meet up again and you'll be telling me about your finance collective? What do you want to be saying was a huge contribution? Well, I mean, look, we we've got pretty big plans. what started off as a as a sort of passion project if you like is you know it's it's it's getting a lot of different legs. So for example we have um uh I've I've pitched I must have pitched like 15 calls in the last few months from different head hunters. So saying, "Hey, we're looking for a CFO for X company. Is there anyone in your network we should be talking to?" So this kept kept coming up and we're thinking, well, actually, if we've got the best curated community of CFOs and finance professionals, you know, particularly as we start to expand out into into associate members and so on as well. We we have a pretty interesting kind of pond to fish in. So we're going to launch our own jobs boards and some

of these things as well. Um and then obviously for uh in terms of um in terms of sponsors, there's lots of people that find you know curated CFO audience really. So we're looking at a few different um sponsorship options where again if we can subsidize content by having a sponsor come in we can just make it available for more people. The more people that have access to it then you know the greater the strength of the community. Absolutely. And we don't want them lonely anymore and we do want them smart. And I mean I can imagine you know something like your your and they ask for it you know AI and finance and then that lends itself to you know some fantastic AI companies who can come in and not do a marketing thing but actually like how do I use the tool right how do I use it to its best yeah we did a showcase event in I think October where we had a number of different AI companies and the focus was then each of them had like 10 minutes to and you know it's yes it was a pitch it was a curated pitch it was like here are here are different ways that AI is

changing the gaming business from the point of view of a CFO. So here are potential cost or time savings or both. Um and then the way the CFOs are thinking it's like it's not just all about cost is if I can get this product to market quicker. um if I can you know improve these metrics whatever that I'm incentivized you know so there are lots of different ways AI can help obviously from a kind of gritty finance point of view in terms of like you know using you know some of the some of the LLMs or chat GPT whatever to analyze financial statements or look for mistakes or reconcile tasks particularly on reconciliation there are huge huge opportunities for AI to just streamline all the all the kind of the the kind of numpty processing stuff that people spend a lot of time doing but also to have a good understanding of how AI's you know can change you know uh ad creatives or content creation or even you know we had a voice response company coming and showing how you can use voice

response as a way of re-engaging you know churned players lots of different ideas all using AI and they have to be up on this they have to know because they have the purse strings but that also controls where we're going to experiment you know if a studio says hey we really want to do They have to be on board. They have to know about it and make a decision. I can say, Martin, it's actually fantastic that you finally have the bandwidth to put this together because it wasn't there. It didn't exist. There's nothing more exciting than a blue ocean. Well, I managed to scratch the itch and it had been a it had been a, you know, I think it was probably about six years before I first had the seed of the idea. So, it's nice to be able to kind of bring it to market. And of course, you launch something, you don't really know how it's going to go, but it's really it's really nice when you get, you know, not only the validation of people wanting to join the community and so on, but lots of external parties now coming, you know, whether it's asking questions or sponsorship opportunities or, you know, it's really nice validation to uh to to to see and you know, good for the community. I mean, the the power is basically in the members. So, the more

members we have, the more participation, which is super important, right? We really do not want people who will just sit on the sidelines. Um so participating members and then it's you know when you bring people interesting people together then you know interesting things happen on the side. So yeah it's been really fun and for us every time we get together an interesting conversation Martin it is always a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. Thanks Begie. This show is all about how to do your job better. How to make an amazing game. how to market it and you have a say. So if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you. We want to hear from you. We want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market in all its wonderful complexity and stranges. So if you have any suggestions for us, if you have any feedback for us, you can always get in touch. You can email us at podcastpocketgamer.biz. You can find us

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