<aside> 🧙🏽 Appreciate the depth and mindset required to found a startup growth company, especially if you’re considering venture capital funding. Try to answer the questions highlighted below.

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The “founder-problem” fit is the most succinct framework in understanding what makes a great founder, popularised by Y-Combinator co-founder Paul Graham in his legendary blog and built upon by many other great venture capitalists. The essence is that the best founders have a deep understanding of the problem they’re trying to solve (rather than an idea/solution/product they’re chasing), and that they’re obsessively passionate about solving it. If you’re making a game, the concept of the problem usually shifts to the form of an underserved audience and can be linked to a problem you see in any part of the gaming industry at large whether it’s process, platform, distribution, tech, etc.

This sounds obvious when you read it, but what does that actually mean in practice? The questions below aren’t an exhaustive list, or even all necessary. There will always be exceptions. However, being able to answer most of these, or seeing a path to an answer should help you on your journey.

Start with your Why

• Audience is king. The best founders learn as much about their audience as they can, often part of the audience themselves. Why do you care about the audience you’re building for?
• It’s in your bones. Successful startups are rarely born just from just a market gap analysis. There is a visceral deeper drive that helps craft the founder’s vision. What led you to this moment of wanting to start a company?
• A new method to the current madness. A new game alone idea is not enough, a fundamentally new way of doing things born from a thousand cuts can make the difference. Are you building a company that does something differently because you’re frustrated with the status quo?

I was living with a former college roommate at a West Hollywood apartment, a guy named Brandon Beck. We were good friends. We were both hardcore gamers. And we were always thinking about where the game industry was going and how it’s going to change and evolve. And that really became the catalyst to Riot, where we as players perceived that we were being underserved as gamers and wanted to create a game company that could meet the needs that we could deeply relate to an emotional level. — Marc Merrill, co-founder at Riot Games, interview with Mixergy

Sharpen your mastery and unique build

• Live and breathe your audience. This might sound like I’m repeating myself, but this deserves to be repeated. Your understanding should extend beyond demographics and comparable game MAUs. Do you know the ins and outs of your audience, tying together motivations and trends and cutting through to what matters? Do you have a granular view of why current games, studios, services are missing the opportunity? Why would the audience care about your product?
• Unique perspective. No one lives the same life and everyone has a different story to tell, it’s those with the awareness to notice that fact can see clearly what’s missing. What combination of your experiences, trials, tribulations, thought process, research, etc has led you see something others don’t?
• Know your eureka moments. There usually is a period from early forms of the idea to going all-in and deciding it’s worth founding a company to pursue**.** What moment(s) did you (and your co-founders) realise there is an opportunity? Have you done the work to explore and validate it? Who have you spoken to? What experiments have you run?

Chen wanted to make games that encourage the opposite—thought, compassion, and kindness. “I wanted to show games can be used to communicate, games can be about peace, nature, life flourishing, and they can create emotional climax,” he says… Around the same time Flower came out, social games like FarmVille were gaining popularity. “But they didn’t make me feel social,” Chen says. “I wanted a game that builds a bond between players.” That’s how Journey came to be created. The game, released in 2012, has players go on a pilgrimage together, forging a connection during these travels. Players can help each other and communicate through musical chimes, but they can’t speak, and don’t see each other’s names until the game is over. Nonetheless, they grow close to their fellow digital wanderers. — Jenova Chen, Founder of thatgamecompany, ****interview with Quartz in 2018

Understand the founder mindset and channel your passion

• Back yourself unwaveringly, back your idea humbly. Founders need an intuitive sense of when to double down and when to kill a product (even the whole game). Do you have the domain expertise from your experiences and the tools to know when you’ve struck gold or need to course correct?
• Unreasonably ambitious. This isn’t about how much revenue is required (although there should be a path to that), it’s about setting the stage to go after something big and meaningful. Are you confident you’re going after an audience that can eventually build a generation defining company?
• Be coachable. The most effective founders are able to consistently learn from others around them, open to being challenged and leverage their investors for asks. Are you someone who often evaluates advice and makes changes if it’s good?

In January 2012, Supercell had five games in development. Two would become Clash of Clans and Hay Day, the other three would be killed: the pivot had baked discipline and ruthlessness into the company's culture. "Supercell very nearly went bust," Lovell says. "It nearly went horribly wrong. It was a brave and gutsy move. I wouldn't underestimate how much that formative awareness, that making a radical change saves the company and informs a lot of how else they behave." — Nicholas Lovell, Founder at games consultancy GAMESBrief on Supercell, WIRED article

Be fully prepared for the road ahead, where you’re going might not have any

• Inspire the best people. You can’t do this on your own, and every hire can make or break before you even get going. Can you attract exceptional talent that are completely bought into your vision to take the leap and join you?
• Relentless commitment. The early days can be gruelling with huge ups and downs that test the most stoic of founders emotionally, physically and mentally. When necessary, are you willing to sacrifice other elements and comforts of your life?
• Don’t die, there are no respawns. A startup is not a small team in big company. The sense of urgency should be with you until you make revenue, as everyday is burning cash and once cash is 0, it’s over. Are you clear on your approach to iterate, move quickly and make decisions?

“There are so many challenges on the way to building a successful company. If you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, you’re going to wilt. You simply won’t persevere. But if you’re deeply motivated by what you’re doing, you’ll keep going and you’ll overcome obstacle after obstacle. And so that to me is one of the key starting conditions: founder-market fit, founder-problem fit.” — Roelof Botha, General Partner @ Sequoia, investors in Unity, thatgamecompany, REC Room, Dream Games, Tim Ferris Podcast.