Starting your own video game company

Its no mystery. Starting a new company is a challenge. Starting a business in the games industry, even more so, simply because its a booming industry full of people that would love to own their own Zynga or Capcom and the revenues associated with it.

And who are we kidding, its really cool too right?!

Right. However, it is a business in a space that is wrought with frauds, false promises, wannabes and an ever changing landscape of technology and trends.

There is great reward there too. As CEO of Sylien Games, I started mine in 2005 and it has gone well since then with a great plan, but most importantly, I started off finding great partners that had already some foothold as businesspeople in the industry and that could connect my new business to good development, and great distribution.

You see, the most important bit is to surround yourself with knowledgeable individuals so you are not alone. That way you can avoid many stupid decisions. Even so, you'll make some doozies, but that's part of the path as an entrepreneur.

Here are comments from Harry Holmwood, a passionate entrepreneur who used to make games for the original Playstation at Sony and has successfully started and sold a couple games businesses:

Harry Holmwood interview

In 2007, I started doing consulting for business startups, mainly creating business plans and helping out connecting starting businesses to developers such as web developers and designers as well as analysing some game designs and helping out with analysing markets etc...

After some years of experience doing this, I have analysed almost 100 businesses, from brick and mortar to software companies and have done various things to help them out. This year, I decided to formalize this consultancy by officially creating 123 Startup Solutions, a consulting firm that helps startups do just that: startup.

I'm not limiting myself to the games industry of course, but I am more specialized in that space.

I hope the information I give on this blog, on my new site and in the various communities I'm publishing to can be very helpful to everyone.

123 Startup Solutions

So in a nutshell, just like Harry says, get some experience if you can, but for sure, surround yourself with great partners. And if you don't have great ones, you can always contact me through my web site and I'll help you get what you need to go from idea to massive distribution.

Cheers!
Sylvain