April 2021

NOTE: Our first game, Journeys with Jesus, is now on sale at https://www.thegamecrafter.com/crowdsale/journeys-with-jesus

Evaluating the competitive environment for your startup will depend very much on the nature of the industry and the product. In general, you want to understand who your competitors are, how you are differentiated from them, and how those differences will translate into buyers’ decisions.

The board game competitive market is different from most in that it is not a preemptive market and there are literally thousands of competitors. Analyzing SDG Games’ competitive situation requires narrowing down the competitive set to those most likely in our buyers’ consideration set.

Read the full article here.

In the article linked here I talk about product definition (using the equity pyramid), product strategy, and product roadmap for SDG Games. 

Dennis Furia, a corporate brand strategist turned game designer, has recently introduced the Board Game Equity Pyramid (similar in many ways to a Messaging Pyramid) as a tool for game designers to define the essence of their game, both to ensure they hit the target during development and to effectively communicate the value of the product in marketing efforts. 

The product strategy (using the Purpose Pyramid) cascades off of the company’s business strategy and provides the direction necessary to more easily make product sequencing and timing decisions. The initial product roadmap lays out a hypothetical timeline for future game releases, linking planned milestones to the product vision and business objectives.

In an earlier article, I explored the target market for SDG Games, and in the process I came up with a rough market sizing. Today, I want to start building the market sizing story for potential investors.

A common way that startups explain market sizing to potential investors is by talking about it at three levels: Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM).

The most common market sizing mistake that entrepreneurs make is to say something like “the mobile app market is $200B and rapidly growing; if we just got 1% of that, we could grow our startup to a multi-billion dollar business”. A statement like that will likely ruin your chances to raise money from any experienced investor. In my opinion, the best approach is to build the market sizing bottom-up.

Read the full article for more details and to see how I sized the market for SDG Games.

One of the most common questions asked of a startup is “what is your business model?” In most cases, I think what people really want to know is, what is your revenue model — how do you make money? There are many different forms of revenue models that different companies have successfully implemented in different industries and markets. It is a fun and interesting exercise to think about how some of these models might work for SDG Games.

The top two revenue model options for SDG Games are to be a game publisher, manufacturing games and selling them to Christian families for a price with a markup above cost, and for SDG Games to license games to a game publisher who would then make and sell them to Christian families. 

Using a Strategy Sieve process not only helps us identify the best option, but also helps us see the strengths and where we might face challenges for each approach.

Read the full article here for more details on the process and on the approach we selected.