GameRoom.com

Expanding on the post about Gamester I have decided to change the company name to GameRoom for several reasons.  First, GameRoom sounds like the concept; a digital representation of a game room where users can join up and play digitized versions of "physical" board games.  GameRoom puts the focus back on meeting up with your friends in a "space" to play games face to face rather than playing a video game.  Second, I wanted a quick word that could be used as a noun or a verb much like Facebook.  I want users to be able to says things like  "invite me to your GameRoom" or simply "GameRoom me." 

More on GameRoom.com

The initial instance of GameRoom.com will be a social network website where users can manage contacts, create gaming groups, trade game ideas, and host games.  Hosting a game will allow the host to create an instance of a digital model of a game room one might invite their friends to in real life.  The focus will be on the game table which players will be able to add images and overlays (grids or area maps for partitioning the game table.)  The model itself will not monitor the game play (i.e. nothing prevents a player from performing an invalid action within the context of any given game.)  Instead the game room model manages the state of the table (i.e. it maintains the location of game elements such as pieces and chits.)  The easiest games to run in this state are tactical miniature war games such as Warhammer and Chaimail.  Players will communicate via instant messaging or by a VoIP feature such as TeamSpeak or Skype.

Progression of the company

As the GameRoom grows I plan to include custom games that can only be played via the GameRoom interface to increase traffic to the site and to serve as a demonstration of the site's functionality.  Once the GameRoom has successful custom board game packages the company will try to solicit existing game companies to digitize their successful game titles.  Game companies that I have in mind include Flying Frog (Last Night on Earth, A Touch of Evil), Fantasy Flight, Wizards of the Coast (Avalon Hill, Dungeons and Dragons), Days of Wonder (Smallworld), and many others.  

Exit strategy

After building this company, its technologies, and its customer base the natural exit would be to sell the company to an established social network site such as Facebook.  These companies try to maximize the number of users and the amount of time these users spend using their service.  GameRoom has the potential to assist this strategy by including a group of users that are not currently being targeted.  This group's member are already accustom to setting aside hours of recreational time playing board games.

Guest Speaker John Dimmer

Last week we were visited by a seasoned entrepreneur and angel investor, John Dimmer, who gave and inspiring speech on entrepreneurship.  Dimmer spoke about the long hours and hard work that an entrepreneur must put into a start-up for it to be successful.  Though, at times, his speech painted the life of an entrepreneur as being bleakly driven by the sheer desire to succeed the majority of his talk was an inspiration to rise to the occasion and join the ranks of the successfully self-employed.  Dimmer spoke about funding a start-up company.  He quickly dismissed the notion of rushing to a venture capital firm to acquire large sums of money and, in fact, to be wary of a venture capitalist's attempt to extract business data.  Dimmer mainly focused on the primary source of initial funding; founders, friends, and family members before moving to angel's and angel groups for secondary funding.  Dimmer also spoke about when and why it is appropriate to seek outside funding.  The basic concept is that you only seek funding to reach the next milestone (which could include bootstrapping the company.)  Dimmer reminded us to be mindful of our audience when obtaining new funds and suggested ways for new entrepreneurs to capitalize on niche funding groups such as those that only invest in new technologies or companies owned by females or other business minority groups.

Guest Speaker Ron Kornfeld

The serial entrepreneur, Ron Kornfeld, was gracious enough to pop by our class and shed some light on the concept of the business plan, funding, and other business related concepts.  Kornfeld, a classically trained businessman, is the author of our EIT business plan template and was, therefore, the perfect person to expand on its functionality.  The business plan performs many functions within the operation of any successful business.  During the formation of the business plan the author is required to articulate the business idea in greater depth which can expose flaws at an early stage.  Once formed, the plan can be used to convey the purpose of the business in a standardized, formalized, and disciplined fashion.  The plan can then be used to obtain funding from investors as well as acting as the primary operational guide.  At the end of the business cycle the plan is used to assist the exit strategy.  Kornfeld gave an excellent example of this when he described how his business plan was used to help recover from a financial disaster when a venture capital investor vanished overnight.  The plan assisted in the sale of the company in an effort to spare the company's share holders from suffering losses.  Kornfeld also gave great advise for dealing with subject matter experts.  He advised to not overly generalize the abilities of any given expert.  By properly evaluating the abilities of the subject matter experts an entrepreneur can have reasonable expectations of its experts.

Guest Speaker Bruce Kendall CEO of EDB

While Bruce spoke mostly about Pierce County's economic situation and how his company, Economic Development Board (EDB), assists primary firms in Pierce County his speech had a lot of good information for beginning entrepreneurs.  The most important concept, in my opinion, is that business do not exist in a vacuum.  As I think about my business plan I find myself thinking about its chances of success or failure based on its own merits.  While this has a lot to do with the success of the business Bruce reminded me that there is a larger economic theater that can drive your business or bring about its demise.  Thinking about where to start a business seems to be an important consideration.  I have always figured that I would just spawn a company in the same city I where I hang my hat, so to speak, but now I find myself wondering about the economic environment.  What are the tax codes like?  What is the labor pool like?  What companies are willing to assist my company for direct or indirect returns to their company?  What kind of business clusters exist in a location?  Is there activity to grow these clusters?  These are all new considerations that Bruce planted in my mind.  I find most of these questions less exciting than the initial idea brainstorming but, none the less, these will undoubtedly be factors in my business plan.

Brian Forth

On Wednesday our guest speaker Brian Forth talked about his company SiteCraft and how it came to be.  The quick history about Brian's path to entrepreneurship was quite informative and helped to highlight the independent nature of an entrepreneur.  Brian's choice to create his own job as opposed to following his father's and grandfather's career path was empowering.  SiteCraft's choice to retain a core set of repeating customers as opposed to rapid expansion shows that building long term utility can create value and wealth.  The decision to focus on mobile web products over smart phone apps allowed SiteCraft to have greater control over their products and allowed them to build custom products quickly.  Brian also spoke about the culture of SiteCraft and how it has contributed to the company's success.  Allowing the employee's to take on projects independently gives them the opportunity to achieve their full potential.  It seems that when a developer can see their project through from start to finish gives the employee a sense of accomplishment.