Elite Game Developers Podcast

Tomi Kaukinen is a fellow Finnish entrepreneur, public speaker, and founder of Licence to Fail. After countless years of start-up life, founding several companies, Tomi hit the wall hard and burnt out. Now, through Licence to Fail, he speaks and writes publicly about entrepreneur life, motivation, and coping with the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. In this podcast episode, we talk about Tomi's experiences with startups and burnout, and how entrepreneurs can avoid burnout and leave a healthy life. Burnout should be on every entrepreneur's mind. What should you do about it, how to make big changes. It's a complicated topic, but I hope you'll get a lot out of this discussion.

In this episode, I'm talking with Ben Cousens who is an investor at Lakestar Ventures. He follows the worlds of gaming and crypto very closely and has backed a number of very exciting companies working at the intersection of gaming and crypto. In this episode, we talk about how Ben got excited about crypto, why gaming is a natural place for Bitcoin, how Ben got involved with ZEBEDEE, and what the future looks like.

This week I published my second Ask Me Anything podcast episode, where I answer people's questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurs related stuff. I will be recording another episode quite soon, so please submit your questions by filling out this form.

Jernej Cesen is GM and SVP of Distribution & BI at Outfit7, the makers of Talking Tom. With Jernej, we talk about being knowledgeable about your market, how you understand the players and the opportunities, and what it's like to operate with a big gaming IP like Talking Tom.

Today I'm talking with Andrew Green, who is the SVP of Operations and Growth at Stillfront Group. Andrew has been in gaming for twenty years, has founded two companies, and has worked for other gaming companies including Take-Two, EA, and TinyCo. He then did a two-year stint at Andreessen Horowitz, before then joining Stillfront. We'll now talk with Andrew about his journey in gaming and startups and what lessons he's learned.

Today I'm talking with Eric Goldberg, who is an investor and an entrepreneur in gaming, and he has been in the industry for close to 35 years now. Eric runs an investment company called Crossover Technologies. And he's now a co-founder with Raph Koster in Playable Worlds. In this episode, we're going to be talking about Eric's background, his knowledge of gaming funding, but also about some of these billion dollar game companies, how they've been growing in the recent years, and what has been changing there to allow these companies to come up.

Today I'm talking with Karoliina Korppoo, the founder and CEO of 10th Muse, a Helsinki-based startup working on an interactive romance reading and self-publishing platform. Karoliina started the company as a solo founder, building the vision, team, and the company. Her background is in PC gaming, where she worked as a lead designer on games like Cities: Skylines and Cities in Motion. In this podcast episode, we talk about Karoliina's journey into startups, where the idea for 10th Muse came from, and how the creator economy is shaping gaming.

I've got Ethan Levy back on the podcast and he wanted to ask me about startup valuations, what's all the terminology around the topic, how to prepare for a fundraise with a valuation in mind, and how investors and founders can think about the right valuation for a startup.

Today I’m talking with Salla Niemelä, who is responsible for Employee Experience at FuturePlay, a mobile game studio in Helsinki. With Salla, we talk about how game studios approach the employee and employer relationship, throughout the full lifecycle of the employment, from hiring, to working and developing the relationship and finally to an exit.

In today's episode, I'm going to be addressing some Ask Me Anything questions that I've been asking for on the Elite Game Developers newsletter. I sent out a survey form, where I asked subscribers of the newsletter to send out questions related to gaming studios, how to build successful businesses, and all things related. So let's get going with this first episode.