The importance of leadership and business know-how when creating a successful games company

[Music] hello everyone Wow well I have a disclaimer this is my first time speaking in a game conference I've never done it before and I've never done a game in my life I've played games so I basically have two messages for you the first one is obvious that we have a program called game executive and i'll tell you more about that so that's the first message but i'll tell you a little bit about myself and how i ended up doing this and a little bit about aalto university executive education this is basically my first memory of playing games I was

eleven twelve addicted to the arcades and the second piece of information about these pictures that I'm I'm Lebanese I grew up in Lebanon and we I'm from a very poor family so I had to steal money from my debt to go play and he found out about me doing that and being very strict he tied me up face down and started beating me up on my legs and I was my legs were bleeding so that was painful and I deserve it but that didn't stop me playing games so what I've done I started making friends with the owners of those shops I cleaned their shops I bought groceries I walk their dogs and they gave me free coins and

basically that was my first memory my first entrepreneurial memory ever and I didn't know about this stuff before I didn't know that I'm entrepreneurial but it was driven by passion it was driven by love for games and the idea that I I had to play games i had to place those those particular games like more tacoma you know some metal slug some basketball or football games but anyway from this we come to the idea of entrepreneurship for games has been in my blood and this is exactly what we do mean and my work so part of the program is to inspire people to be entrepreneurial

so the three things that I think that helped me build the program and the three things that I think that makes Finland strive after being entrepreneurial everything is three things first one is Cecil everyone knows about that and we everybody mentioned it the second one is being better than sweets you always try to do that and the third one is education so I'm trying to build a story here that entrepreneurship in games and education that's exactly what I do at aalto university executive education why why do we have the game executive basically in alter we believe in the impact so our slogan is to is to help executives to change the world to build

a better world through better education and we're among the best so we are among the top 50 in the world in executive education and we're triple accredited we work with about 60 is 6,000 participants every year and from one thousand different companies why is this important it's important because we know what we're doing and we've been doing it since 1975 1995 and we're in many countries so we're we're based in Finland but we also have a subsidary in Singapore and we have programs all over the world now about the game game executive we don't teach about programming or design what we help or what we do is we teach managers directors to learn more about business and I personally believe that stronger

leaders build better games and we all know how difficult it is to have a successful game the main thing about the program is to inspire people so this is the second message the first message the game executive program exists the second message is that we inspire people we cannot solve all the problems I it's not logical the whole program is one week and if you come to the program and you spend one week and you're inspired it's more than enough but in my opinion and it in my experience so far the good games the games that are succeeding they always had something ready to good strategy they had a good business model they had raised funds they have done the marketing properly they have led their people say have led creative people they have led let them

they have retained them they have created these kind of processes that help them we teach all that we teach based on many topics that we covered and these topics we're actually gathered together together with experts from Finland so if I name few people who are the godfathers of the game executive who helped us actually create it it would be some elisa very welcome coppa hiltunen a URI part and in locis a panel and so on and all these guys they either spoke and our programs or contributed to it in one way or another but look at these topics and it's it's very difficult for every for any studio to decide on what kind of struggle struggles they have so what we're trying to do like using

this inspiration that we want to inspire them we want to show them this kind of roadmap or checklist from the business point of view and we want to help them validate few things we won't want to help them avoid mistakes we want to help them make the right decisions from the business point of view because it's important if you're an indie game maybe he would be you would want to join the program but it's it wouldn't fit in my opinion unless you really strive to make business out of it the program has been running since 2014 and actually tomorrow it's the fourth cohort so today we have the opening ceremony and tomorrow it starts the fourth first time to have any other online in the room do you have anyone who participate in the program no we normally have multi the multi well we

have many people from different nationalities participating normally it's 20 to 25 people and we had we have had more than 20 professors from aalto university from Harvard from Assad a business call from Gothenburg University and we also had few consultants doing the sessions we also have partners in the industry for example in Finland like neo games the igbo we have legal firms finance firms and I'll explain to you a little bit about the structure but these partners are key they're important for us and then we have 62 experts so people who are speaking in conferences or experts in the industry there they talk in our programs and we have had 74 participants now registered in the program and this is basically the structure of how it goes there are six days there are two days in the middle like three days two days of three days and we try to

cover all the topics that are needed to basically succeed as a business company as a game studio so we help you build a successful game company and it all starts with strategy I mean from my experience I've met with so many startups and I've talked with so many project leaders and so on and and we I always start with them with a strategy so where do you want to go with this game what do you want to achieve who's your first you know early adopters who's going to download the game and play it how long are they going to stay these things you actually in my philosophy you should really think about about them before even building the first line of code but again i'm not an expert it's just my own personal opinion as an entrepreneur and as a entrepreneurial educator but then we go to business models so once you have a good strategy you need to know how to monetize it or at least have an idea where to go with it so if it's fun game that a lot of people will play and you

want to go into free-to-play what's next how you going to make money and this is interesting because we don't have these boring lectures we actually have hands-on workshops so during that business development we have a business model workshop and people spend the whole day working on those and then we have an interesting discussion in the end and then after you have the business model you start looking for funds we teach you how to raise the funds how to understand investors and we have a fundamentals of pitching coach who's coming to the program then you have topics like finance being a leader and internationalization the interesting thing about all these topics they're all based on leadership so you have to lead by making the strong decisions that strategy you have to lead by making financial decisions you have to lead the team you have to lead the marketing decisions

so that's the importance of being a stronger leader to build a better game in the industry as I mentioned we partner with a lot of stakeholders and actually part of my job I have traveled around Finland and I have talked to almost everyone and I'm really looking forward to seeing finland in a better place I mean yesterday I Somaly so I woke up where do you see finland in five years he said the revenue would be four to six billion and my next question was how are we going to do it so he thought that I'm promoting my program but i'm not i'm just curious how are we going to do it how where are we going to get the right people to do the right things how are we going to help them how are we going to fund these projects so part of my job is not only to design and deliver the program it's also help or

find the right key stakeholders in Finland and abroad to help them get to this level like six billion euros in revenues and for example I'm arranging talks in I'm arranging partnerships with the universities in the UK and Spain so I see this program being two days in Finland two days in Spain in two days in UK so imagine participants from all over the world traveling and doing for example fundraising in London doing the talking about community management in Finland and marketing in Spain so the value dairy it grows but the most thing about the industry and the collaboration between them is that we are this invisible layer that is helping a little bit the game development we for educating leaders and experts to become a little bit better or to inspire them and what I've noticed in the last eight

months is that there's a lot of talent in Finland I've talked to a lot of studios and there's something missing I mean we know how to build good games in Finland but the next step is to lead those games to succeed no one can deny that Finland is a very unique place so people share people care and we have an amazing community and startups this is my favorite topic one thing I did this here is convinced newco Helsinki to support startups and to come to the program and they paid seventy percent of the fifo for studios and that's already an achievement there is outside of my scope I mean I didn't have to do that but part of this journey is to really support startups to help them get to a better place and there's going to be a press release regarding

that but coming very soon like who are these startups what they learn and and maybe two months from now we will we will see a little bit about what they're doing and the most interesting thing is that I don't know if any of you saw the assembly 20 cause presentation yesterday but he listed these 30 companies that are doing well in Finland based on revenue based on number of employees and six or seven of these companies have been in our program so I cannot claim that we help them get there but I can say that we tried to inspire them and we tried to help them think on in this on this next level and who knows maybe we can produce together the next 2 / 7 next review in Finland two more points the business ecosystem

is developing slowly but it means you know 50 years ago Finland has been a farming country then you had Nokia and he had a lot of inventions and then he had you know the games the game is very young the gaming in this is super young from the business point of view other countries are doing it better but in Finland because there is there's something missing and there's something that we can really do about I mean we can help Game Studios pitch better we can help Game Studios learn more about business and I'm actually volunteering at egged on i'm doing i'm arranging i'm trying to arrange these regular sessions where we talk and tell them about the business side well this is remains to be seen and education in Finland is a very serious thing so we really care about it and it's the reason behind all the successes

here so i would really welcome some questions about what you think about the program and anyways for partner for partnerships abroad or in finland and four ways we can I can help you so thank [Applause] [Music] you