Introduction to investors and publishers

The “Elusive” Kind: Investors and Publishers

Conferences, Conventions and Fairs

Conferences and other professional game industry events are essential for finding private funding, publishers and collaboration partners. Many incubators organise conference trips for their companies. Sharing a booth with other companies can lower expenses significantly, and some incubators are even able to give out travel grants for their companies. If the incubator is well known, participating under its brand can make a company more interesting for potential partners. It is also very helpful to have both peer and staff support available at the conference, since they can be very overwhelming.

Matchmaking and Speed-Dating

For this you will need to be aware of the events where your teams will be able to interest their potential future business partners, publishers and investors. If you have a network of these stakeholders that you do not actively involve in your programme (e.g. as mentors or via pitch trainings), then you would need to support meeting arrangements at such events. But mostly, you’d need to think about encouraging the teams participate (and if you have the funds, also financing) matchmaking or speed-dating events, using meet2match infrastructures, applying for awards and competitions.

Pitching Sessions with Investors

The ultimate goal of an investor is to help start-ups become successful companies. As in most cases the first stepping stone of “success” is attracting an investor to finance their games, it is vital for an incubator to build up good relations with investors and publishers. A good preparation for the reality of competitive environments is having pitching session in a dry-run fashion at the incubator. The most effective “rehearsal” is to have investors and publishers ready to work with the start-ups.

Resources