An Entrepreneur's Journey to the Game Industry

I am Dogukan Yelseli, co-founder and producer of Funverse Games company. Previously, I was a co-founder of Funmoth Games and Hi Games. In the style of an entrepreneur's diary, I will tell you the summary of someone who entered the game industry from scratch for almost 7 years. I believe that I will use a sincere tone during my presentation and enable you to empathise.

In February 2016, at the age of 21, I entered the gaming industry knowing almost nothing. The thoughts of 'I have an idea', which is the beginning of every entrepreneur, made me enter this sector with my two close friends. As an individual who used to play games before, after a while, I noticed deficiencies in the games I played and my "I wish they would have done it this way" statements pushed me to write my own gaming concepts. At first, we used to talk about the games I wrote among my friends and spend time chatting about them. Since I was a person with a high imagination, I used to play and develop the games I wrote in my head while I was lying in bed at night. I usually played MMORPG and FPS on PC and story games on console. One day, I showed my then-girlfriend, who is now my life partner, that I earned money from playing a game. But she evaluated this issue differently. Since she also knew that I had the ideas and enthusiasm I had previously described, she asked the question 'Why don't you enter the game industry?' This story came to this point today after she asked this question. I entered the sector at a young age, never to return.

Guys, it is 2016, unfortunately, as it is now, the concept of investor etc. does not exist in our country, especially in the Turkish game industry. The number of studios is small and knowing someone who develops games is close to a miracle. We know there is a cake, but let alone getting a share from there, connecting these people on social media is the highest point you can come to. Even the number of people you can consult is very limited. If I give an example, when we went to establish our company, we were told that 'there is no equivalent for your sector' and they registered us as 'internet cafe and informatics'. The officers who came to inspect the company saw our office as an internet cafe. I'm telling you this because it was much more difficult to start an enterprise back then compared to today. I mean, there's not a single reason why we shouldn't start an enterprise at this time. So, let's talk about what awaits an entrepreneur? What do we need to pay attention to and most importantly what awaits us?

Guys, the team always comes first. We entered this sector with our own resources with our friends. In the Funmoth Games journey that we started with Eren Er and Erdal Sarı, we came up with a mobile game idea called 'Hit and Boom'. We panicked because we didn't have any knowledge, so we sought advice from consultants in the industry. Perhaps our biggest expense was consultancy because you can't skimp on knowledge. For information on such matters, feel free to give even a percentage from your company if necessary. Maybe you will lose 1%, but the return to you will be many times higher than the previous 0 valuation. There is a huge difference between the percentage of a working and winning business model and 0 of nothing. However, in the initial stage, there may be a situation known as entrepreneurial misfortune. No matter how well your business is doing, or how accurately you plan, sometimes setbacks will occur, turning even anticipated outcomes into unforeseen challenges. You will feel that. I will list the negativities that may occur item by item, I am sure it will help you to be patient.

We established the office, we paid ourselves a salary, etc., but where did we experience what kind of problems and what kind of mistakes did we make?

• The consultancy we received was turned out to be wrong.
• We did not get information about the sector, we did not research enough.
• We didn't build the right team.
• We have created non-project expenses.
• We stopped the project we believed in and started a project we did not believe in.
• We've decided to outsource this project.
• Since we outsourced the project, we could not acquire development experience.
• This project, which we do not believe in, was cancelled by the other party due to certain circumstances.
• It turned out that we did the project at a 4 times loss in terms of cost.
• We thought that every business we discussed would happen and we believed in the good processes going on there.
• We took no precautions, we were excited.
• As partners, we didn't prioritize our own ideas and listened to consultants on every issue because there was a mode of not knowing the industry within ourselves. Without realizing, we saw that this situation eroded our self-confidence.
• While we were within TÜBİTAK institutions, we could not benefit from the funding packages due to some external factors.
• In short, nothing happened, is happening, or will happen as we said it would.

This period full of mistakes and misfortunes lasted exactly 2 years and the company went bankrupt. So what did we do? The biggest mistake we made was to dissolve and give up. We closed down the office and left. We made it a matter of pride because we talked about it so grandly to our family, and as a result, we moved to a separate house as 3 friends. Naturally, the problems became bigger and bigger. We didn't understand what company debts, official debts, etc., that we didn't know and didn't understand were all about. We understood that our money was gone, but we were encountering debt for the first time. We said there was nothing to do and went to work somewhere. We worked for 1-1.5 years for our debt. We had a long-lasting friendship, but in the end, we had to part ways. One of us joined to the army, and the other started working in different places. It shouldn't ended like this because until the age of 21, I was always successful in my friendships, education, goals and choices. I always motivated myself with the mindset 'I can do whatever I set my mind to,' but what I experienced was like a joke. It was like it was over for us, we were telling ourselves that the sector did not want us. "One day, my wife called and said to me, 'I don't know how you'll do it, but make money from this industry and stay in this sector!' I didn't listen to her, but this statement changed my perspective on the industry 3.5 years later because I was angry, very angry. My rebellions were never-ending, and I was constantly speaking negatively, declaring myself as always unlucky. But after that conversation, I decided to stop doing that and I said;

-I won't rebel anymore; it had to be experienced, and it's done. At least, if I get another chance, I know what I will and won't do. Let it be for the best."

This may sound disingenuous or romantic, but just one day after I said this, the Director of TÜBİTAK Martek institution called me and said "are you still working?".

And introduced me to the director Okan Ozbay. After the negativity and nothing going right, I didn't get excited with a phone call. I first discovered my experience here. As I continued my relations calmly, it continued in the same way. He wanted to develop a game for the movie he was going to shoot, but I convinced him to join our 'Hit and Boom' game, and I had only a three-stop time to persuade him. Later on, I not only gained investment from him but, more importantly, earned his trust in me. So, what did I do in this situation that happened 4.5 years ago? How did I start, and what lessons did I learn?

My first job was to find a partner who knows the sector, and most importantly, I will have the same mindset because I don't have any technical knowledge in the sector before, because according to me, these jobs are not complete without a companion. Having a dream and people around you who believe in this dream has always been my motivation in this life. I found my partner in my first meeting and that person was Tolga Ozturk. His awards and game fair experience, as well as his game-related initiatives such as YTU DOGDOK, immediately brought us together. And with Tolga, we revived Funmoth Games as two great partners and the goal was the same. We started this journey with 6 people including us. Tolga, Eren, Furkan Bice and I became the first official managers of this company. Today, Erdal Sari is the CEO of Game Factory. Well, if you ask what happened and suddenly changed, the answer is very simple. Team, belief, motivation, instinct and experience. Let's go into detail together.

• First, the team.
• To gain teammates, not employees.
• Choosing a partner.
• Not deviating from the vision, no matter the conditions
• Not to get stuck in the negativities, to evaluate them as experience.
• Not staying away from things that motivate you.
• Finding joy in even the smallest positive situations and realizing one's own worth.
• Not forgetting that everyone enters this business from scratch.
• Not seeing oneself as lacking, not seeking a place to crush.
• To go to the problem with a solution, to talk only and only about how we can solve it.
• Holding onto those who say 'no' more than those who always say 'yes' because then you will grow.
• Representing your team and partner with self-confidence in every field and never overlooking what they have achieved. Even holding weekly kickoff meetings with your partners and occasionally reflecting on what you've achieved from yesterday to today. Be sure it will be good for you, sometimes people forget what they've done.
• To know that as long as we want and believe, no one can stop us until we are.
• To build a team that believes rather than being very good at their job.
• Making decisions with your team, constantly listening to their ideas.
• Not to say okay to something just for the sake of it in investor processes.
• Not hesitating to discuss within the team and partners. If the sector is going to beat you, be beaten by the person you know within the team instead of someone else. Because what happens inside stays inside, but if it happens outside, it's annoying.
• To evaluate your partner and your team a bit like a parent. "How?" you may ask: When you have a fight with your parents, do you say, "I'll find a new parent"? If you have big ambitions, you have to look at your partner and team in this way, because there is no one out there you can't argue with. As we have always said, it is more important to say "no" than "yes", but only if it is fulfilled.
• Calling the fair the right and being fair in team management.
• To be transparent in difficult processes and to overcome the processes together.
• Most importantly, to be eager, to be enthusiastic and to walk with enthusiastic people who want to. Some things you learn on the way. The will is precious, it will lead you to the goal sooner or later. In my life, I have never seen a person who willingly works for a job, takes the risk and fails to succeed after paying the price. I guarantee you that.

These things I have written have brought us somewhere and will continue to take us somewhere. This year, thanks to this team spirit, we ranked third in the most valuable start-up in Turkey according to LinkedIn data, first in the gaming industry, and again according to LinkedIn data, we have become one of the companies that can 'change the world'. We are a team of 45 people and our valuation is not even 10M dollars and most of the people on the list are in billion dollar valuation, we have not released a game yet and we have not won, but we have become a team and being a team is a winner. As in every start-up culture, there were many times when we could not pay salaries for a long time. We even saw foreclosures for debts from the past. But we embraced our work more and more and our worst financial period became the year we achieved the most. Nobody quitted their jobs. The studio, which normally has to be disbanded three times, has grown bigger. This is not the story of those who live far away. The story of a lived and ongoing studio that you can reach me and be a guest and see with your own eyes continues in 45 people, although they say that you cannot make the motivation created when there were 6 people. People who care about the company culture have always stayed with us and I hope it will continue in the same way when we see 100 people soon.

Even if you come together with people with whom you do not get along in life or with whom you cannot do business, you will see that this changes afterwards. The processes that go badly at the beginning of the road can be recovered when you meet a few right people. My interactions with valuable people of the sector such as Okan Özbay, Murat Kahraman and İsa Turgut İnci showed me this. We have planned many good projects related to Yıldız Technical University in the near future. Although I had previously returned from such institutions in a negative way or without chemistry, thanks to the communication with Mr. İsa, this was exactly the opposite, and the business structures that I thought we could never create chemistry suddenly turned the opposite and made me excited about these processes again.

Sometimes, if something does not happen in life, it does not happen because it will be better, and sometimes the negativities experienced return to you in a positive way in the future. Do not be afraid of bankruptcy, failure and problems. If you think the path you are on is the right one and you are sure of the people you are with, embrace these experiences because no school can give you this experience. Therefore, the earlier the initiative, the sooner you will be ready. Do not delay and do not wait. Just get started because what is required from you is honest work, enthusiasm and vision. As long as you provide these, neither lack of money nor failure can stop you. With every failure, with every fall, you know that you are getting closer because life is forcing you to grow, preparing you for other serious days. If your problem is 10K ₺ today, tomorrow your problem may be $ 100M and in the same way, you may fall into the situation of looking for 10K ₺ again from the $ 100M target.

These things change, the only thing that will not change is your faith and it depends on you!

It happened, and it has been verified,

Sincerely regards.

Doğukan Yelseli