Steps That Will Help Every Start-Up Owner Find Investors and Stay Out of Debt

Every big company was once an idea. Ideas are the seeds that facilitate the growth of all businesses big and small. It has always been true for gaming companies, which almost always start up with a gamer’s dream of designing their own imagination. Almost all gaming start-ups have more emotional value as compared to other contemporary start-ups. That is one of the leading reasons for the crippling financial insecurity nearly 80% of the gaming franchises and start-ups are facing today!

Raising capital for any company is crucial for the fruition of a venture. Ideally, the founder should spend the lion’s share of their effort, energy and time in developing reliable strategies to attract new investors. Crowdfunding and angel-funding are the two most common ways start-ups procure their capital. So a huge part of these tactics includes attending conferences, meets, pitching to venture capitalists and approaching other potential sources of investment.

Since almost all new entrepreneurs begin with similar zeal, there are a few factors you must remember to stand apart from your competing gaming start-ups. There are only so many ways to distinguish your company from another start-up that will not see success!

Create a working prototype

No good and trustworthy investor will be ready to fund an idea. Investors need something tangible to understand where the company finances might be in the next couple of months. Most investors are interested in multiplying their profits. Only a very few of them will be engaged by what your company does.

Prototypes can be PowerPoint presentations or videos highlighting the USP of the product. You can make a flowchart that outlines your idea and the profit generation machinery.

Let an expert sample your product

When you have the prototype in hand, go in for testing. Reach out to groups of your potential customers and find out what they have to say about it. It is great for all kinds of A/B testing on the prototype. Keep immaculate records of their experience and take notes for adjustments.

Always ensure that your customers understand what you are trying to sell. This way, you can always create your own market research report. In fact, a market survey based on the prototype of the actual product is far more accurate as compared to the report from any competitor survey.

Time for a funding drive

Once you know what changes your prototype needs, you need to dedicate almost all your time to bring in more investors for creating a working prototype of your game model. Building a game takes tons of money. A simple, yet high-resolution game, something that can easily run on an iPad Pro or a Samsung S8, costs money!

You can always reach out to newer potential investors and banks, or you can opt to consolidate your existing loans and take out a bigger loan to pay off all pending debts. The new consolidation loan has enough funds to support a functional prototype deployment. Here you can know about loan management, loan consolidation, and cash flow management.

Get the functional prototype working

After you manage the capital, it is not easy to fund the development of the operational prototype. The transformation of a 2D prototype into a functional one is not easy, and it is one of the crucial steps of game development. Thankfully, it is not yet time to get the final product ready. The basic idea is to put the pieces of the puzzle together, which helps your investors, a few future customers and your employees later on.

The idea is to protect your intellectual property during the development process. Try to approach different people for the development of various sections and features. Do not give them the description of the entire project. It is black boxing the idea, and it protects the intellectual property rights of your start-up.

Get more people to notice you!

Since you have already approached people for running sample tests, we are guessing you already have a small database in place. Now it is time for you and your marketing team to try and expand the customer database. Print and TVCs should never be your target since your product depends on a digital generation.

The best place for finding new customers is social media. Social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are great for securing potential buyers. YouTube is a great video platform for introductory videos, trailers, and teasers for games. Getting a marketing team that knows about customer behavior and market trends makes all the difference for gaming start-ups. Market surveys can tell you who your target customers are and where you can find them.

Monetize the process

Here, you must think about the business model your company may want to follow in the future. Identify your primary, secondary and tertiary stakeholders and determine the financial policies, business operations, HR policies, administrative policies and state regulations accordingly. Developing a sound business strategy will help you to garner more funds and proceed to the next level.

Scale up the product

When you are making games, you will have to design them for hundreds of thousands of people. You cannot develop a high resolution, enhanced graphics MMORPG game for just one or two players. You need to be ready to scale up production for a mass of potential gamers and followers, who are prepared to experience whatever you are prepared to offer.

It requires market analytics, server expansion, mass production, and supply. Your startup will eventually have to scale up to accommodate a larger demand. It will again need some level of monetization, but that usually becomes easier when a successful business model already shows specific signs of profit over a span of time.

Finally, you need to monitor the activity and performance of your competitors to understand the pulse of a potential market. You need to refine your product based on customer review, and you need to launch your product to the new markets that show promise. Sadly, no foolproof business plan works everywhere for everyone, but these steps are what help start-ups stay out of debt and see the signs of success early in their days.