Panel: Show Me the (private capital) Money! Let’s Discuss Unlocking GameDev Dollars

[Music] thank you orful uh joining us and thank you J for being here uh so as we dwell into our discussion I'm curious to learn about each of your primary objectives for this conference and could you highlight the types of talents projects and teams that would benefit from connecting with you uh hi I'm kley uh from Nao it's an older Korean company a primary objective to be here is to meet really good friends and then perhaps make some new ones and of course to visit the beautiful city uh krov and uh probably

when we talk about um projects that we were looking for teams will be something that has both ambition and also uh real realistic approach hi everyone my name is Misha cats from aranco we're a gaming focused Investment Bank based in London we advise companies on mergers and Acquisitions in in the gaming space and uh I uh already had some pis here in kov so I guess my main objective of one of them has been uh fulfilled but I uh there is more to do but in to be honest on a serious note we're um very keen to connect with ambitious Studios that want to learn about their you know Financial options down the road in terms of raising Capital selling equity and so on uh so happy to connect work there we go hello I'm Curtis from makers fund uh we're Global VC investing really early in mostly Studios building games that have really bold ambitions for me why I'm here a lot

of it is getting to know the people in the Polish ecosystem whether they're working today at established Studios or thinking of starting something new and looking at their options to bring that to Market but a big part of it is just sharing how we think about partnering with Studios early on and raising a bit of awareness that this is an option to bring a game to Market and we'll talk more about it over the course of this panel but it's really just about awareness and and building a relationship early on as opposed to hi nice to meet you here's a term sheet not really the best way to forge a partnership so yeah okay so that's a great breach to our next question and um let's talk about the investment landscape for fresh Studios and projects and since we have uh the like you know representatives of uh two important potential uh investors in studio strategic investor and Venture Capital investor um I would like to um

give you some information about the differences of perception and uh how those two groups invest so ctis and um K can you give us a rundown on how you like to invest the approach that works best with you what catches your eyes in the pit and what kind of uh companies you are most likely to back yeah so um maybe it's a little bit too General but um I will I want to build on top of what I've already explained it's the ambitious and also uh how realistic it is uh obviously want to look at projects that would have either a unique selling point either targeting a new market having an expense having a possibility to expand certain space but at the same time we wouldn't be able to invest into a studio if we don't see how that studio would go to that path right so for that to happen the the plan probably has to include um has to be

very specific has to include the right teams and talents in then and we would want to know if there's something going rough on the road like how are we going to like tackle those challenges so at a B I'll start very basic at a basic level we're doing minority Equity investments into Studios not projects so it's very much about what is the identity of that studio and on a very longtime Horizon um why do we believe that it can grow and become become something with uh massive audience and and a ton of engaged people in the community what that means more tangibly for us honestly a lot of the time is what's the background of the people that are building that studio have they done something relevant in the space before um what's the vision for it and like why does it need to exist what need are they meeting and fulfilling in the consumers of games more broadly that isn't met today or that they think they can address uh in a novel way and better than the other options exist and then

doesn't make sense the road map to get there and so it may not be I think a lot of the perception of VC is hey we want to only invest in things that are like multiplayer live Services huge audience forever games and eventually that does fit the archetype of the risk reward profile we're looking for but it is much more about like what is that studio role and identity within the ecosystem and how can they compound that expertise to get to a place where they are like the the best option to deliver that so it's not like when someone approaches you they need to pach you the longer story than just a single title that they are working on at the moment yeah definitely definitely and I mean the immediate title is really important and we're going to spend time on that because without the immediate title working there's not a studio to build after the fact but it doesn't always need to be that the first project is is

the Home Run success and I can point to probably more Studios that are examples of compounding that expertise than I can point to ones that nailed it their first shot out at the gate okay thank you so before I go to Misha I uh wanted to tell that uh this discussion is meant to be as inter interactive as possible so if anyone from the audience is interested in asking our panelist about anything if you want to add anything if anything that we said is not clear for you please ask there is a microphone there and we are here for you and you can you can ask the questions at any time not only at the end of the panel uh Misha um you look like you know the you have probably the broadest perception of the market because you are looking at um every deal that that is happening uh Misha spank is like you know worked on like half of the deals that that happen the biggest deals that happen on the market so this is like you know a great

knowledge so um looking ahead for the like next 12 months how do you predict how do you think who could be the most uh probable investor for the young polish uh Studios rather strategics rather uh VC funds how um polish investors should polish young Studios should uh look for the investors or it's a what group big big question wondering if some of them are sitting at at on this panel but I think just to stepping back so we're a uh kind of a third party an advisor in a lot of the uh strategic m&a deals or financing deals um the latest stage ones in particular in games with a kind of larger team uh focused on that globally between London San Francisco Berlin um and obviously we've seen like like a cycle you know evolve and and the change in in that cycle over the last um three four years with the

rise of uh a lot of the Venture Capital funds focused on the space uh well so that has been a an fascinating sort of phenomenon seeing you know specialized VC funds going after uh content or even everything except content but if you compare that and it feels like oh there's so many new funds being created Etc still if you uh compare that to the size of the industry and just put it next to let's say uh soft like non gaming non-entertainment software like uh just SAS in general like it's just still a microscopic sort of universe and um we tend to see that like not every company not every deal is kind of VC compatible so we should talk about like what say a deal that fits the VC criteria what is a deal that can fit more strategic criteria what should just be

what project should be working with a publisher or a project Finance kind of partner um so we've seen that that evolve and go from like the the crazy kind of covid years back to back to normal and back to very kind of rational investment uh thesis around okay what is you know what are the scenarios around this project with cost going up with Market sometimes feeling feeling saturated Etc so I think uh r to your point on who is is active um well you have The Usual Suspects uh like very large players from from Asia from from Europe as well who look more and more into uh geographies with a lot of talent and more attractive kind of cost structure than let's say uh um kind where you sit right Santa Monica in a way so that's uh been a trend and has put definitely Poland uh on the map

uh we see more private Equity Capital uh the K out here being that for a company to be a studio to be like private Equity compatible it needs to fit like certain criteria of being like predictable Revenue maybe like the right size and being essentially a platform to then add more games more teams more Studios on so we just worked with um a few weeks deal that closed recently jagex like a you know you know very old uh company from from England doing RuneScape RuneScape is 20 years old and had its sort of biggest year in revenue and profits in 2023 with that you know massive audience that's very engaged and so on so so this is a a small Universe of those type of companies that are kind of fit for the the private Equity uh landscape uh so you have VC you have PE and then a lot of like different strategic players who uh are I guess have to be more rational

than like three years ago uh but still have to fill their pipelines for you know 205 26 and Beyond uh and if they go too deep into you know cutting projects killing Studios like you're going to have that cycle will sort of turn again and you'll have the opposite of like not enough content being shipped uh so definitely an interesting moment in you need to add something this um I guess it's um I want to add a little bit on um how we would we would be more maybe not necessarily comfortable but more um resonate on when students want to build their the company into the next stage and it's not necessarily well it it at one in one half probably we want them to build on their IP and then build the fan and then um create the next project with with uh with a better team or bigger

team with experiences and then we have on the other half all the um next Riot games next exploiter like the these companies that they they're going for Life operations and and making games that they would have that would be on top of in the market for for the next 10 years and then there are definitely a lot of games in in the convergence where it started off with a good IP and then they add a lot of elements in game the thice like operations and probably um a lot of strategics also played a big role in in in maybe incentivizing or investing big amount and and and trying to capture uh that market so it's it's it's probably um a good good market for us to always look um in in different areas for us that's it that's why uh we try to be more on the western markets that's why we tried um on the areas that other Korean companies traditionally didn't focus on um so it's it's it's it's an exciting period of time for

sure thank you um each of our uh panelists uh has some experience on polish deals and I think that it's also interesting that each of those deals probably present a different uh kind of deal different perspective because K invested in a Content studio um Curtis invested in more like Tech R um and VR uh Studio um and Misha worked on some exits so like the end of the cycle um so I wanted to ask you to share you know some experience of your work with the Polish entrepreneurs and polish Studios and maybe starting with you K what did you like about the studio invested and what you look for in the next po deal I think on that specific case it's uh I have I want to be honest it's it's probably a it was a big surprise for me it was a big surprise for the whole team I got on

top of uh Cong congratulations from my colleagues in the in the industry uh I I got uh tons of message from my colleagues in the same company that they were actually surprised that that we closed this type of investment and partnership and the reason for that obviously is Neils was not a type of a company that has has active um presence outside Korea and the only reason why it could have happened is is on top of all the all the Ambitions and realistic plans that we saw it's more of not just some people agreeing to the deal but a lot of people uh both sides of the executive having meetings after meetings and and and actually getting down to some of these challenges that they it would expect to happen in the future and how how um transparent they can share and and then expect what to do next that that gave them a really good confidence level and and that's that's not just um Happening by some things doing right

it's it's more more of um have having a really unanimous agreement of of how it could have happened and what I want to add to about like you know this particular investment is that I think that uh in in this this company there's a great combination of a development talent and a business Talent what is I think still not very probably often in in Poland and we have great men a great group of development talents but I think that uh we still need more business talents that could work with with those development um talented people and and help to build the Great companies together um because is you have two companies that have some aspects connected with with Poland meaning the Polish funders um one actually launched their product last week right Vinci games um so can you you know share with us your Insight your perspective of working with with the Polish funders and

yeah definitely definitely so Vinci games just contacts their VR Studio they make a game called black top Hoops it's uh basketball very social very like third space for people to hang out in virtual reality targeting a bit of a younger demographic I would Echo what you said of typically what we see here and why I'm spending time here and why I think people are getting more and more excited about Poland for Game Dev is the product Tal is awesome people are very very thoughtful about the experiences they're building and who they're building them for and Vinci was very much a case like that where they were super embedded in their Community they went on live on applab I want to say like a year a year and a half ago had a couple hundred thousand people in the community and just spent a ton of time with them understanding okay why do you love this product how do we make it better and iterating on it and building that Community with that feedback um generally speaking I think that's the profile of studio in Poland

that makes a lot of sense for Venture is very product focused not chasing something super high budget VR is a great platform where I mean gorilla tag is the perfect example of super low Fidelity not investing a ton of money in art and graphics and animations but instead really honing the experience and finding something super fun and it's a scrappy team and so if you raise some money you have a lot of time under that construct to iterate work with your community find the fun before trying to scale um the other one is million pugs it's less in the studio vein it's basically honey the Loyalty app for gamers and so they strike Partnerships with a bunch of big developers and offer rewards for people spending on other platforms but probably less relevant to this audience and um just one thing about Vint games I also think that this again the what I said because in Vinci like business is coordinat by an American W development is done by mostly

polish uh talents yeah definitely and with the right partner if you're very product focused the right VC the right strategic the right publisher depending on what you're looking for can offer that support um so we do have some Founders in our portfolio that are just like product product product and then we run the pipeline with Publishers or platforms if we need to and the other thing I guess I don't know how it how it would work for Neo but I guess that here could help you that they have also great Angel Investors and it's always good to have an angel investor in your cap table probably because it shows that there was someone that is recognized on the market that uh believed in in this IDE it's that but then it is also they have Capital to build the product in the community to a point where it makes sense for us to come in and invest a couple million dollars versus it's harder to raise that money and show that proof when when it's like a Tre a team

and a dream where they have a concept they have a pitch deck but they haven't actually executed on anything yet and it's no fault of their own people have to pay their own salaries they have lives to leave but Angel Investors can help bridge the gap to get you to a point where it makes sense to go and raise a larger financing ground uh I wouldn't typic I mean uh specifically comment on Angel Investors on this case but uh when we meet when uh in my experience when I met a lot of um good talented Studios I do seem to see there a a lot of them who has Le less experience in establishing a company growing a company having uh knowledge in financials or the experience of negotiating negotiating so it it would obviously help to have either an annual investor or advisor or maybe someone um in the co-founding member who can actually really help in in this regard from from your experience in working on

the like you know with the Polish entrepreneurs um is it any distinctive characteristic that that you can see or any like you know particular advice that you would give to polish teams to ensure their ventur stand out or like you know get particular attention in the Pro in in in the processes and their transactions sure so we were fortunate to advise the the flying well hog team on on the sale to to embrace her and then we also sold the business to 10 square games a few years ago on um simulation company um on the mobile side I don't think there is like a specific kind of you know polish theme here but the great things about the ecosystem and and cus you mentioned that like um well it is a big community that has been so the talent pool is is Broad and there's um also experience that sort of compounds like that you know even today I've been meeting teams that have been together as like founders of this of one

company for like 20 25 years sometimes and that experience is is what like opens gives opportunities down the road like you wouldn't be a Lian or a bers gate free without like all the accumulated experience from uh doing you know turn-based RPGs for like years and years so I think there are elements of that in the in the local ecosystem um obviously the I guess the the fact that I think at some point during covid cdpr was the largest the biggest publicly listed company in in Poland and it's still probably a top 10 or top top five right by market cap and it's obviously not the whatever pre cyberpank market cap but it it's still a massive business and the fact that in in this country you have a gaming stock that is has been like the largest business I think is something yeah the the ecosystem should be very

proud of like I'm I'm French and there the biggest french companies are you know either luxury goods have been around for hundreds of years or uh are utilities or oil and gas Etc here you have basically you know a tech business that is a massive big employer and also makes like the country shine through um throughout the world so um you have experience um you have uh that's accumulated um knowledge and uh people who are yeah like passionate about about their craft I think um there so nothing that would be like specific to to the region in in that sense um but is definitely like ticks a lot of the boxes for uh for acquirers today and we've we've seen that both on like the the buy side and and and sell side so I understand that you show us that CD product is a success that was created shorter in one lifetime so it could be

an inspiration for the new aspiring teams to start their own projects because good way to say okay um so uh now I would like to discuss briefly about the current train Trends and maybe starting with the biggest of them all now meaning artificial intelligence uh and especially generative AI so um do you see this Trends in your transaction does it have any impact on the transaction that that you work in um I think on the so where we do see this is around the legal you know sort of terms on you know when uh in the details of a contract and the Reps and Warran that the company that is selling itself should give about this is like really your Universe right around proper like property of the IP or if it's training some models can they are they allowed to do that um I think obviously it's it's so it's fascinating and it's

so so early in in that uh adoption cycle and I think at at some point it's just leveling the the playing field for everyone but there's probably that uh kind of period where uh they are a cohort of early adopters of those tools who will get there faster than the kind of AAA U massive teams that are fully staffed fully kind of budgeted for a more like kind of traditional development uh cycle so we I think we will see a few billion doll companies run by like one per like one person two two like a handful of people uh created with with AI but it still feels like a little bit in the making and we haven't had like a an m&a deal where uh content or

uh production as such U felt like a AI D well that was a USB obviously in so many companies development now is done like with you know co-pilot and as on the side or you can generate some art Etc um but uh there is right now still more I think not risk but some level of um extra diligence into those topics uh but the next way W will be fascinating to see okay because now we are early and all those legal stuff is not is not certain but exactly very unclear like uh in the end I think triaa teams will have a bit of an edge in terms of the data they own and can use uh more more freely uh but uh they might take a little bit longer to adopt that so there is probably a window there uh to accelerate or maybe I guess l lower budgets as well to some extent so Curtis do you think

that it opens some window of opportunity for the for the studios yeah I would I would totally agree that I think there's a window right now where Studios with a greater risk appetite can kind of punch above their weight in terms of production quality speed of delivery while the aaa's take their time to deal with some of the legal headache deal with changing processes or like it's a three-year production timeline and they're not going to implement it until the next game um so there's definitely a window right now where Studios can use it but I don't think it's a persistent Advantage the other interesting thing in AI is net new content enabled by Ai and you see early versions of this in narrative driven games because the language model is such a natural fit for it but there's obviously a lot more head room to explore there even the idea of dynamic difficulty like the idea that if I play a campaign I choose from four difficulty levels is gonna I I think be a thing of the past and it will be

dynamic and similar to what you see in the largest mobile games today so there's I get there's three things here there's smaller developers being able to punch up in terms of what they can deliver there's I'd say increments on existing products Dynamic difficulty more reactive adaptive content and then there's entirely net new genres of gameplay that will emerge from the amount of control players can exert with AI but all quite early right now I would say but the teams that are willing to experiment take that risk and think about the experience they can deliver with the tech today there's definitely a window for them rather so VC is like we love risk we love risk and I mean if there's the same

outcome potential with lower risk of course we'll take it but that's not how the world works I wouldn't say that if I see AI I'm like oh my God invest invest which I think some Founders think that's it because the amount of pitch teexs I see that are like by the way we use AI it's like two years ago when every game had an nft um it it made no sense right but what does get us interested is when people think first principles about here's the experience I'm delivering and why this is something new or better than what I could do before without this technology and K was is your perspective from Asia from the US because you're like you know closely working with with all those markets I think I I definitely agree that um in whichever situation the studio can take advantage of technolog they should definitely do that but it's also going to be naive to think that bigger companies would would be slow on this this is it's probably not just

going to be a legal issue it's not not going to be just because um they cannot fire all the art people and replace it to AI they they don't do it because it's not not effective enough in in their size and whenever they they get ready they will they will do it much better than than than small work companies in in certain area so it of course like we we should still I mean small work companies they should still take advantage but um still need to be prepared of what the other big guys could could can do in the future so understand the question here is whether those big companies like Risk as much as the like you know typical portfolio companies of venture capital firms because that that was what I understood that uh some of the younger teams may be willing to risk or to test different approaches different capabilities that that can AI offer and it maybe connected with the risk the bigger players may not be interested in taking the risk while event Capital funds may be willing to back those risk

taker Risk Takers those young entrepreneurs or companies that are taking the risk and then you know cross the the the open window of opportunity yes for sure for sure I think it's was also already mentioned that uh different platform different uh gameplay using AI are probably are bigger companies they cannot risk uh to have uh build build building a new game uh costing hundreds of millions of dollars and try to benefit from having all AI characters that would do uh realtime communication with with the users or with different users and using not just uh mobile or or PC but but uh other functions that you have on your mobile phone which would actually you have to cooperate with uh with with other platform holders with with other OTS uh with other with with other um service companies and probably that's that's easier although bigger if bigger company would want to do they would probably be able to do it but it's probably going to be easier for smaller

companies to try out build a product and then test it out uh as a as an R&D product um with other potential partners and and try to build a certain position with it so yes definitely true and the other thing that I'm taking um thinking for myself from from what you said is that as I understand uh probably getting the materials that are required to present a team to the potential investor is could be cheaper or could be easier because the young like you know Studio can just use um generative AI to produce some products showing what they want to achieve like what what game they want to to build and with this they can they can try to Market their their team and their idea to to the investors and then like you know on this AI some teaser or some like I don't know some playable materials they can build

up with more traditional tools no I I'll say yes but not yet um okay I would the generative tooling that feeds into gameplay like a lot of it is just not there quite yet I'd say It suffers from like the last mile problem where it gets to 60 80% of what you would actually need and when you pull back the layers it's like okay this 3D asset looks reasonable but suffers from being generated from one Viewpoint has no underlying geometry I can't rig it it's completely merged and then you're in a situation that's harder to prototype with but I do think in the near future you're right that it will enable more rapid prototyping and teams to test Concepts and find the fun and something novel a lot faster than they could in the past I and that's a good point I think to to your uh question redim about like

does can those tools help Studios generate market like pitch materials faster was there I know if you saw there was this um thing about uh like AI generated startup IDs that would get anonymously like rated by V and they would rate higher than the real pitches so maybe that's there maybe there's something because they they're based on so many like previous good examples but I think um reality is there's so many lwh hanging fruit that uh teams can use in production rather than in that sort of fundraising exercise which is a little bit commoditized now like everybody has seen like how the decent pitch decks look like what sort of and and there's almost an uh opposite effect of when it's too polished you know it's actually been tested with too many people before so there's something wrong there sometimes it's more like just more genuine Etc so I would I think it's

obvious to say but like encourage spending more on building the product and probably less on trying to fine-tune the details of um of that you know Peach Pit materials but just an example on those low hanging FR we had a client on the m&a side already like a year more than a year ago so that's more to say about like AI or or Great Tech to Tools in general that is a team in Sweden that was able to basically automate like entire your voice over of the game so team of like 15 people right that with a an kind of AI tool and and being an early adopter of something that wasn't even commercially available to the broader Market was able to have like a fully voiced over game uh but made uh obviously kind of with with AI and that's just just you know time to market cost saving and and less risk eventually for you know the the team and the investors so you can afford a bit more run way a bit more maybe an extra shot

at the goal with uh being an early adopter of uh of th those those tools so we see it's not necessarily like the geni ETC because that's also changing so quickly but we see teams that are like very deep into being the biggest like Houdini users and being like the new testers of whatever the new version that's that's a bit of an edge sometimes versus the the biggest uh Studios that have to kind of uh if I may like idiot proof like every process to be able to scale to you know 300 people production but sometimes those smaller teams are just naturally more more agile and I think we see a lot of that here as well where experienced senior teams are still building things right and not like managing uh people any other important like investment or business trends that the people should be aware of of or wory of that that you can see I would say like

just don't follow a trend for the sake of following a trend and always think about what is the product and the experience that you're delivering and I think any smart investor publisher whoever will react to okay the community is using this and enjoying it as opposed to like this is doing something cool with a cool new thing cu the novelty wears off kind of do you want to touch something I think uh when when we are trying to um impress like potential Partners potential investors potential Publishers we try to put something fancy there and in in in in in a lot of cases that's something that's already fanc in the market which which is probably the trend and um it's it's um it's nice to have but in the end you will face uh tough challenges you will face the tough uh question why I build this why why why would it would this be better than

what's already trending like what's the solution on from your opinion so unless you are prepared for that that answer and it I think it it makes sense to to know and and maybe not follow but study the trend because I think you you you can expect uh some type of question from from your potential partners that wants to pick your ideas and because similar things will happen in the future again you will you will you will sometime have have Trend um on your direction that you will feel more comfortable but sometime it will be the opposite direction and and how prepared can you be probably probably not every time and and I guess that's why it's it's always beneficial to prepare on on those question that that if you're already expecting a meeting with them M how how do you think which companies will um emerge stronger from the current industry termo that we have yeah I think there's always been you know Buzz words around like you g you mentioned like every pitch de had nft and then or game as a service has

been like the best word for uh a lot of that you know covid and even postco hype and then like people realize oh wait like the game is the freet to-play live UPS games like they cost a fortune to build and they and you have like 70% of the engagement is in the same you know games that have been around for 10 years so people have like pivoted uh from that I think there's a a general uh with stating the obvious like trend for um more from I guess the M what we see on the m&a landscape in those more conservative times of people who uh buyers who look for um predictability in in a franchise uh in okay maybe you have a an indie IP but it has a even a niche fan base but have players who have come back who have bought DLCs at like very healthy uh take rat who are engaged on

your Discord Channel who are really waiting for the squl uh you have like good Metacritic scores you sell for that long tail is is kind of healthy and uh well some would call that like a back catalog and actually you see today like a lot of the mid Market Publishers are relying on on those back catalog sales uh a lot so uh but then this IP franchise it gives a lot of opportunities down the road right even to get it to someone else to develop or just kind of royalty or sometimes it's cross media in the days of everyone kind of looking at that so uh sometimes it's less kind of shooting for you know the okay let's try to do double digit million units like that's very few few or even millions of units uh is is so rare but uh uh building for a niche that you understand really well uh I think that resonates uh a lot with the kind of

investment landscape mhm thank you you know we've got in our panel years of unique experience so if you want to learn from this experience even if you have any questions okay can you go to the microphone please p and then uh we have also the question yeah so recently on rebot develop J Graham from Humble announced egg funding do you think we'll see more and more L stage protype find thing because right now to get the funding you need an investor or the team of the portfolio there are many T people in here who just need to go to this first stage when they build a vertical s protype so do you think this might be a trend a new one I hope so um it's someone that comes from a fund that will typically be the second investor and not the first um I would hope to see it and from conversations with people in the industry it's seems like everyone is waking up to the amount of talent here

and the fact that that's like a huge opportunity area to invest at good valuations in really high quality teams if you put like $500,000 into a studio in Poland you get like five to 10x what you get in California and people people are wising up to it but it will take some time yeah I definitely agree that sorry I would definitely agree that um it I would love to see it happen um more more often than not and especially more so if uh the the the the the company can find a very early investor who can help them in a different aspect they might be they might have a very good Network they might be they might have different experiences in different markets different region and um with communicating with different type of companies so that that kind of relationship you actually want to um take advantage of it as as an investe as well um I I would just add I think uh comparing games financing to like other technology sectors is still very early

in terms of like Financial engineering and sophistication for some of the models around like for example in in in mobile games I know it's probably smaller Community here uh in this room but we've seen the rise of like debt financing uh enabling growth like you can Finance your user acquisition with your marketing with with with debt showing your kpis Etc and that's been a a non dilutive way for a lot of Studios uh to to grow and you create like Equity value this way I think similarly we'll see new models around uh more kind of sophisticated financing like maybe um uh we've been hearing people talking about like slate funds of hey let's invest in five projects uh and raise capital on the back of you're doing what a five or 10 double A triaa uh um companies and you can sort of

cross collateralize it so if you one fails you have another nine to kind of get your money back so those things are it will take time to really kind of P out but even on the earlier stage there is certainly a market for um kind of mix of let's say some equity and some kind of project F like Revenue based uh financing kind aligning interest in a way where you can still go for you know publisher deal etc down the road but would be uh getting your uh giving your an investor some you know first like a little recoup CT and then still Equity uh on the back so I think those models like are going to be more mixed with between um project Finance Equity other forms of of capital so hopefully the options are going to be uh also wider for and then obviously there are games that can be financed by uh well sales

future sales like pre-sale some um also can um Early Access uh sales we've seen like even free-to-play Studios be able to like support it by uh communities of fans and that's I guess the perfect scenario not uh for everyone but uh that's uh I think the the number of boot successful boot trapped uh Studios have have just realized on like friends and family kind of capital uh is is astonishing it's actually like we as an adviser in the space uh real have to realize like there is an entire universe of companies that have never really raise capital and even need any form of transaction that's sort of the the real iceberg in in the industry which is something amazing in and only possible in games where if you get to like positive returns you're usually outside

returns you can't really build a SAS product uh without diluting it massively so that's I think the beauty and so in the unpredictability of the sector question thank you I'm Albert from martial media I think arim have they've anticipated what I was going to ask I'm going to ask you anyway um what areas fenny do you see opportunities investment opportunities in early stage mobile games what the opportunities or challenges and what would an early stage mobile game company have to show to an investor of your profile Define early stage like are we not not someone who's invested 500 million and generated 1.3 billion there's there's a there's a huge they've got stretch from zero to 500 think is it early metrics is it no metrics they they've got a prototyp maybe done the soft launch yeah so I mean the big idfa changed the entire early

early stage mobile landscape everyone knows this teams that think about if you have metrics you show you can acquire users profitably it's very easy not very easy but it's much easier to raise money but there's a huge time lapse in between soft launching a game and I work with a bunch of our portfolio companies that are in this stage and getting to Ras positive at any reasonable scale the advice I would give is one like focusing on distribution and thinking about that like the conventional Playbook doesn't work anymore you need to do something novel and you need to think about embedding distribution into your product because otherwise you're going up against the likes of dream and King and all of the people that are sponsoring this conference um that can just spend way more on a user than you can because they've honed the monetization machine the user segmentation you need a way to either access users that aren't being targeted by your competitors or to

acquire them much more cheaply whether that's social features K Factor things like that the other thing I would focus on is if you can't get monetization to that point in time you can still think about one like the engagement in the retention profile of those users and really optimizing for that and then the second is building a compelling plan for how monetization is going to be built in in the future so example have a studio I work with that just raised a bunch of money with almost no Rass because they were able to build a really compelling monetization plan and show that hey compared to our peers we're much more retentive we're much more engaging and so it's a there's no Silver Bullet answer here but I think it's about understanding the things that investors will evaluate and if you can't show metrics or proof you need to show a pretty good plan does that answer your question yeah I think it's a really long plan because uh I've I've I've raised money as a founder for a games company nearly 10 years ago and we had a strategy with with Brands and it kind of

worked but there's just such a distance between something which is even profitable and then competing and going there just seems like the Market's kind of winner take all like quite violently so it does seem that way right now um I'm hopeful I'm bullish mobile but I think I'm in the minority of of early stage investors thanks I we can accept one last question a short one yeah Rim thanks for bringing interesting voices and as you said in the title Global Investors so my question is uh from your Global P perspective when you invest uh in Polish companies uh how big issue for you is that the compan is registered in Poland LCC in Poland quite often I I discuss especially West Ventures must be Delaware what what whatever structure but not Poland uh from your point of view where where is Poland in IND investing in Polish Polish legal system now how do you feel about it I'll say it

doesn't really matter to us um as a company gets more mature we would encourage to set up a top company in the UK or in Delaware um but that's mostly because I think other investors care more about it than we do but if you're like a small Studio I wouldn't for us I wouldn't advise spending time and money on that but that's just our point of view uh I I think it really doesn't matter so so much for I would say more on the m&a uh side of things you have a like robust like legal system IP lws Etc employment is fine the main cave out here would be the uh if you're the there's a massive cohort of publicly listed companies here uh that are kind of a little bit subscale for by like International standards for public markets right and those I think are complicated to know invest in buy out like you almost don't really know what

to do because it's complicated right you need to D List It Takes several months you don't know if investors will so that's where we almost see as like financial advisor like an a bit of an anomaly of that the size or the outsize uh number of of publicly listed businesses here that took that you know opportunity to get some you know retail money and that was I think maybe better than not raising Capital but uh this is a difficult kind of spot to be in and there's no real comparisons anywhere in in Europe or Beyond of being you know a 5 to 10 million market cap business with no liquidity but still regular reportings Etc so that's uh I think a problem for you know going inter as to your point like International capital I think we are one of the proof that uh region wouldn't really matter but at the same time I think you would also want to be prepared uh that um for as an international company or a Korean company more specifically we don't

understand how things work here so the communication cost for our offices for our accounting Financial offices to understand what's going on in the Polish Financial State me that it takes some time to um increase their understanding but I think that General the message in general the message is positive that's like you know um being invested as a Polish company established here is not a deal breaker or anything very difficult for the at least game def investors and with this positive message thank you all and like you we have our panel still together with us so we encourage you uh to start more informal discussions after the panel thank you