This has been another great week for networking, an important part of the process for building a game and virtual project such as Planet Postmoderna. It is an important process to building a business, period!
Many people that develop games (and businesses) and players alike, forget how important networking is. You need to get out there and just meet people! You never know who you will meet or where your next hot lead will come from. They could be business owners or others that have a lot of experience in areas you are week in. The next person you meet might not even be in business or even in the industry you are in but may just so happen to know someone that does and also has a lot more contacts that could possibly help you.
I go to Meetups a lot. Some are related to business and some are not. I go to the Peak Venture Group (PVG) 5-minutes to Pitch Meetup regularly, the Colorado Springs Startup Cheers (that one was tonight and I met some great new people) and more recently, the Startup Open Coffee Meetup (which is a new one for me). I even went to a cooking one last week called The Colorado Springs Cooking and Food Meetup. That one was fun. We made pizza! I actually met a lot of great people at that one and made some new friends too.
All in all, going to networking events, even if it is just for fun, is always a good idea. Even if, you don’t meet someone that can help your business, you’ll make new friends and expand your personal network. You never know where that will lead. That next person could be talking to someone influential and think of you. I am also now thinking and looking for leads for the marketing group I am consulting for, Colorado Springs Marketing Group. Still, the best part is really just the “meeting new people” part.
Outside of networking this week, I also went to see a counselor at the Colorado Springs Small Business Development Center (SBDC), at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. I made an appointment in order to see if I could get some more info and counsel regarding finding funding for Planet Postmoderna.
I had a great meeting with Chuck Bowles, one of their volunteer counselors. He is going to take a look at my business plan and documents and provide help and guidance. He made some great suggestions.
He said I should continue networking as I have been doing as well as possibly reach out to the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association up in Denver. That is a group similar to PVG but larger. He shared a few experiences he had with others that were able to be funded for their businesses through them. We both agreed that the current economic environment is making it hard to find investment dollars, but opportunities are still out there.
He also suggested something that I have been working on as well. He suggested I go after my initial seed funding first. Get the monies I need to fund development for the next 6 months so we can get a demo up and running. This way we can illustrate that we can do what we say. This will also draw interest from the industry, investors and possibly Mindark, the owners and developers of Entropia Universe (where we plan to build Postmoderna). It could also lead to other opportunities that could take us in another direction.
In any case, the counselor I met with will take a look at the business plan and make some suggestions on how to polish it. The selling and networking needed to pull this all together, is still up to me. At least I have been doing that for awhile now. Gosh, I should be an expert by now! But no, I still have so much more I can learn and more people to learn from.
Incidentally, I would recommend anyone starting a business (real or virtual) in Colorado Springs to visit the SBDC office. The SBDC is a great program and they have fantastic resources for businesses.
