Playmatics

Nicholas Fortugno, the CEO of Playmatics, is a well known game designer. Although he instinctively started building games at an early age, his most successful game was DinerDash.

He talked to us about the gaming industry as well as how he came about to begin his own company. His business partner, Margaret Wallace and him had started a company named Rebelmonkey which unfortunately was short lived. But after that came Playmatics.

Playmatics is still a small company, comprising of about 15 people. Nicholas talked about the composition of his team and each member's importance in the team. The programmers, the artists, the game designers and the producer each having special skills.

Nicholas had several interesting opinions about gaming in general and the industry. According to him, games came up as an art form but are a combination of creativity and programming. To get a job in the gaming industry, one just needs to build a game and make it popular. He had a very strong opinion that programmers and game designers must be prepared to face the fact that their first prototype will have to be chucked. Hence, one must work on rapid iterations of the prototype to build a good game.

He also spoke about technology in general, the classification of whether a technology is good or bad depending on whether one can imagine everyday life without it.

This trip gave a very interesting peek into the gaming industry and I would certainly like to explore it more even though at the moment I might not have the best qualifications for it.

LookBooks

LookBooks is a company offering digital marketing solutions to the fashion, fine arts, architecture and design industry. Their software provides a portfolio service acting as an intermediary between models, fashion brands, and other clients who require their data to be represented in the form of portfolios.
Fashionindie.com, a website for fashion enthusiasts, is also owned by LookBooks.

Ryan, the CEO of LookBooks, spoke about how he came to start up the company after at several different job profiles. One particular strategy that Ryan spoke about caught my attention since it was something unique and I had not heard it before; when they built their software, their primary target was the best and biggest brands. His strategy was that only after the software succeeds with these high profile brands, they would work to target the rest. The fact that this worked for them impressed me to a great extent because as a startup one would rarely go for the riskiest client.

Samantha, the editor of fashionindie.com, spoke about the content that is put up on the popular fashion blog and also that its important to build great content related to the industry in order to attract the audience.  Arun, the recent NYU Poly graduate, talked about the production and development of the core product. He mentioned that in any industry, it is important to first understand the already existing processes before building your own product.

Adam, the CTO, and Matthew, the Creative Director of LookBooks both gave us a brief idea about their backgrounds and how the came about to working with Ryan. Adam is of the opinion that setting a brand is important. He talked about the technologies that their software is based upon, namely mySql, PHP and javascript. Matthew had an interesting background, one of the things was being a part of the first ever off-planet art show.

Each of these people we met, specialize in their areas of interest and that is one extremely important factor you need to keep in mind when you are out to start your own company; to work with partners who each have something valuable to contribute to your company. A business person, a technical person and a creative person, I believe these people form the building blocks of a concrete new venture.

Vision Education & Media

Vision Education & Media is a New York based company which caters to the after-school educational needs of kids up to the age of 13. Their main focus is on using technology & multimedia to create an early awareness amongst the younger generation through hands-on knowledge. They conduct classes, camps and clubs where the students can learn about robotics, video game making, digital videos, etc.

Laura, the Founder of Vision Education & Media, believes that the most effective learning method is to start off with a child's circle of interest and then introduce new concepts once the child is engaged. I strongly support that opinion because in order to engage a child in a learning activity after school seems like a tough challenge; hence it is important that the child enjoys while he/she is learning.

RoboFun workshops are the classes where the students are introduced to Lego robotics. My first reaction to that was, how can kids that young understand the complex concepts of robotics? and why robotics of all the topics? But as Laura and her team talked more about it, I realized that the basic concepts of robotics were introduced to the children in a fun way and it led them through a constructive learning process. EJ, who was in charge of creating these interesting robo models showed us a couple of them that she was creating blueprints for.

The company's revenue model is partially fee-based and the rest is grant-based (90% for profit and 10% for non-profit). According to Laura's experience, gaining funds for a for-profit organization is much easier and hence the division of their revenue model. About 85% of their revenue is earned through the creative computer clubs. While their team is fairly sized, comprising mainly of part-timers and a few full time employees, they have a very basic marketing strategy.

The visit to Vision Education & Media gave a helpful insight into a small company which is not out only to earn revenue, but also to help kids have a well rounded learning experience.

Union Square Ventures - Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a company which provides an opportunity to budding artists and creators to experiment and build projects of their interest. It operates as a crowdfunding platform for all kinds of creative projects. Union Square Ventures is one of the main investors for Kickstarter.
great initiative.

Cindy Au, the Community Director at Kickstarter, started off with a great presentation about the company. Anyone above 18 can submit their projects to kickstarter and quote the amount that they wish to raise via crowdfunding. If they manage to raise the quoted amount within the specified time period, they are successfully funded, and Kickstarter charges 5% of the entire amount, whereas if they fail to raise the funds, no one is charged.

The 'Backers' can browse through the various projects on Kickstarter, and choose to pledge any amount starting from 1$ and they get to be a part of the project they support by being awarded some non-financial reward. The reward can be something like t-shirts, DVDs, tickets, or any such thing related to the project.Cindy showed us some statistics which displayed that most people pledged amounts in the range of $11-$25 and 84% were one-time backers. In this way, even after the project has been funded and implemented, the backers can follow up with the progress of the project they supported. This is what appealed the most to me about the concept of a company like Kickstarter; it provides a platform to build new connections with the people in your area of interest.

The second speaker of the day was Gary Chou from Union Square Ventures. With his multifaceted experiences in the industry, he talked about how he ended up working at Union Square Ventures. He gave us some good advice explaining that you may not necessarily end up working in the field of your study. He explains that one needs to continue optimizing for learning throughout their career, keep creating new projects which display your creativity and to start with smaller projects before you jump to create the next Facebook.

Visiting a company like Kickstarter put me slightly at ease; its nice to know that any time in the future, having a crazy idea for a creative project won't be completely futile; there is a high probability that it will be supported and funded as long as it appeals to people and has some purpose. It was a valuable session in terms of learning about the stories of 2 successful people and gaining by their experiences.

McGraw Hill Companies

On the morning of the visit to McGraw Hill Companies I was very much impressed to find myself in the midst of a busy corporate street in New York and slightly intimidated by it all, it was my first trip to this part of the city. McGraw Hill is probably the largest company that we have visited yet and the contrast was quite distinct with respect to the other organizations.

Patrick Durando, head of the Global New Media team at McGraw Hill companies, briefed us about the different domains that are handled by McGraw Hill companies and also the locations of their offices all over the world. Until then, like most people, I had known McGraw Hill only as an educational publishing company and didn't realize that McGraw Hill companies had quite a firm standing in the financial services sector.

We were then introduced to Edward Ford, a passionate employee, in charge of handling the internal social  networking website, Buzz, for McGraw Hill companies. Although Buzz was introduced to the McGraw Hill employees only a few months back, it gained popularity very quickly. Edward talked about the expected impact of creating such a vivid and socially focused intranet; it is meant to increase the operational efficiency, create a flatter organization, provide a base for knowledge sharing and crow-sourcing and eventually help in the product development.

The last speaker, Ruth Neighbors, is in charge of usability analysis, which basically involves research, evaluation and designing the interface according to the test results. She spoke about all the research that goes into creating a user-friendly application and also about the differences between focus group testing and usability testing; the former is not too helpful to make your product better. Patrick, later on took us to the studio which was brought about mainly due to his efforts and is now being used for all the McGraw Hill video recordings.

What I most appreciated was that the new media team, although a part of a huge organization, manages to introduce some level of entrepreneurship into their individual work. It reminded me completely of my last job, being part of a huge multinational corporation where individuality is somewhat lesser significant as compared to the company at large. It also reminded me about the barriers that come up in such widespread organizations, where you cannot just walk over to talk to every other person and so the level of personal communication is minimal. Hence, I really liked the sense of community that can build up through such an informal intranet system that is Buzz and think that it is very much required in any organization which has employees across the globe.

CourseHorse Reaction

The visit to the Stern school of Business was refreshingly different from the previous media organizations we visited; mainly because Course Horse is still an upcoming company. Nihal Parthasarathi, the co-founder of Course Horse, gave us an insight into the challenges faced by entrepreneurs right at the early stages before the business is well established.

Being a finance and marketing graduate from NYU, Nihal has a solid Business background and a keen interest in the education industry. He described how he and his business partner, Katie, came up with the concept of Course Horse and how they share responsibilities. Market research, financial modeling, creating a prototype, compiling the functional documentation, approaching various schools to post their courses on Course Horse, product development and testing, these were some of the activities he has been handling. He mentioned that the development work is done by a small team from Philippines. Despite the language barrier, he maintains a great relation with the team, which in my opinion will take him a long way; personally, having experienced the other side of a similar situation, I can say that a good relation with the employer makes a huge difference in an employee's attitude towards work.

His advice for building your own start-up from an idea is simple: firstly, can it make money? and secondly, will it make the customers keep coming back to you for more? When asked as to how Course horse plans to keep its customers coming back to them, he responded saying that satisfied customers would spread the word via reviews. Course Horse offers & plans to offer some incentives such as loyalty points, certifications from Course Horse and graduation gifts, for taking up the courses via their website instead of going to the vendors directly. As compared to their competitors, Course Horse is very much particular about Quality Assurance; providing a high quality of courses and offering refunds for courses makes their system more user-friendly. One thing that struck me then was Nihal's readiness to accept ideas from a bunch of students like us and I realized how important any sort of feedback is, to a budding business.

Another thing I picked up from this session was the emphasis on presentation skills. According to Nihal, Course horse managed to win the Stern Venture Competition mainly on the basis of their presentation skills, and the ability to respond to questions confidently. Passion for your work is definitely at the top of the list of things for starting your own company, but the ability to express your ideas is very much important too. His thoughts on networking too were very helpful; when you are meeting new people, having a product already out in the market improves your standing and every time you make a new business contact, it helps to share your own contacts with them.

It was great to see a fresh and enthusiastic business in action. It is not merely enough to have a great idea for a new venture but also to have a large set of business and communication skills as well. It reaffirmed the challenging yet compelling nature of entrepreneurship for me. 

Delivering Happiness..

Reading about Tony's story of building a successful enterprise leaves me feeling amazed and determined at the same time. It made me realize the scale of commitment that is required to succeed as an entrepreneur, and all the finer technical details that you would never think of while ordering shoes online; the perfect symphony that must take place so that you receive your order on time. I found the book quite engrossing and an enjoyable read due to his almost-conversational style of writing.

The highlight of this book was the passion that Tony had in everything he did; right since his childhood days he had the drive to make money and to keep going after challenges that he was passionate about. His experiences with the worm factory, the button making experience, the Microsoft job; he made a point to learn relevant things from each of them and build up on them.

The process of having your own startup doesn't just suddenly begin one day, although the idea may hit you from out of the blue. The actual act of owning your own business is a long process which needs to be thought out and planned carefully. His detailed descriptions of the financial risks involved at every step gave a thorough picture of the tough situation that most startups must face. His ability to trust in what he believed came forth when he found out that his business plan might need to be changed in order to keep Zappos from disintegrating. The decision to hold their own inventory instead of just drop shipping the orders was probably the trickiest and best move that they made which saved Zappos at a critical stage.

 I particularly liked his thoughts on networking, building a relation with people with the intension of gaining trust and not just seeking immediate profit from it. The importance given to inculcating the right culture amongst the Zappos employees and hence creating the brand was remarkable too. Taking the effort to create a brand through your company's culture seems perfectly logical since that is the right place for it to begin. Talking more specifically about Zappos, as an online e-commerce company which basically thrives on customers' happiness, to focus on the customer service is an extremely important factor which was recognized by him and suitably taken care of. What I learn from that is, find out what is going to set you apart from your competitors and go the extra mile in that direction, and make it the focus or the core of all your activities.

It was intriguing to go through the entire process of building a successful company right from scratch through the perspective of an accomplished entrepreneur. I will definitely carry the information contained in this book a long way in terms of all his advice regarding entrepreneurship and all the planning that goes into it.