GivePlay Case Study

Give Play Business Description

GivePlay is a community for independent gamers.

Industry and Market

Industry: Online Game Publishing & Social Networking

• Global Gaming Market: $23.1B in 2006 growing to $35.4B by 2010
• Online Gaming Market: $3.2B in 2006 growing to $9.1B by 2011 an annual growth rate of 23.2%
• Target Market: 117 Million US gamers who spend one hour or more a week playing computer games, with particular focus on the approximately 57 million gamers in the under served middle market; plus worldwide market.
  

Business Challenge/ Objective

For Josh Brown, GivePlay CEO, and Will Conant, GivePlay Chief Architect, knowing the right people has been the biggest challenge in trying to find funding. This dynamic duo, who previously created successful companies, encountered a new challenge when starting GivePlay.

“We have never done a business that required financial partners before,” Joshua explains. “That is where FundingUniverse has been so helpful. We have had to find the right mentors. We are kind of like, ‘Wow, so tell us what to do next.’ We understand how to run a business really well. It is very different running a cash business versus getting investment capital. They are completely different games. I learned how to run a cash business from experience. GivePlay requires a bunch of money before it will ever generate money. We had no idea what we were doing.”

FundingUniverse Strategy

With a business plan ready, Joshua and Will submitted it to FundingUniverse. The plan was then rated by the business analyst team. After receiving feedback from the FundingUniverse team, the GivePlay team went to work to improve the plan.

“We started out with our Business Plan,” Joshua explains.  “We went through the FundingUniverse rating system. We got 20 pieces of feedback of what investors want to see; we then spent three weeks adding in all the parts. A lot of the pieces were there, but we hadn’t put them in the actually business plan because we didn’t know what was important to investors.

Results

“A lot of the last year has been our education process on understanding the funding process,” Joshua says. “We might have launched earlier if we had known half the stuff we know now about capitalization, if we had known who we should talk to. Before FundingUniverse, we didn’t even know the Utah Angels existed.”

After fine tuning the GivePlay business plan, Joshua and will applied for the June 2007 Speedpitching event in Utah. The selection committee, impressed by the changes the GivePlay team had made to the plan, accepted the team as one of ten presenters.

“I am so glad we did the speedpitching event,” Joshua explains. “It helped us really accelerate the funding process. I don’t think we would be where we are at right now if it weren’t for FundingUniverse, seriously. Even before the Speedpitching event, FundingUniverse put us in touch with Michael McCabe. Your consultant’s feedback, on how to get ourselves ready for the market, was just awesome. We already have some angel interest. Now, it is likely, we will use the FundingUniverse package to hire Michael McCabe to go for our next round of funding.”

GivePlay Update

After the Speedpitching event, the GivePlay team had a meeting with the Utah Angels. One of the largest angel groups in the state.

“They [Utah Angels] came back to us and said, ‘well, there are six of us that are interested in funding this,’” Joshua says. “We found there were a lot of people who totally got it. It had been really exciting, actually.”

Joshua praises FundingUniverse for the role they played in helping GivePlay make the necessary connections with investors.

“I have really appreciated it,” Joshua states. “I mean seriously, what we got out of one Speedpitching event, the contacts we made, was exciting. We had contacts from four investors the day after the event. Just knowing these investors, getting a chance to talk to them for ten minutes, is worth millions and millions of dollars. The amount of value we got out of the business rating was really tremendous as well. I think you have a fantastic business. It worked for me. It is just what we needed.”