How to make sure your project is a success especially with financial backing.

I have never asked for financial backing for my company Mammoth Interactive. There have been several times where I could have asked for funding and probably received some financing. Especially because in 2008- ~2013 there has been a startup bubble and arguably a kickstarter bubble. This bubble of course is startups and projects getting too much funding for what they are worth. Personally I think this bubble has deflated a bit and that is really good which is a topic for another article on how startups spend their money.

Today we are going to look at a kickstart project that has been put on hold and we will talk about some of my failures and why I made the decisions I did. This is going to be an educational experience for all.

The project that we are going to look at is Exploding Rabbit's Super Action Squad. Now, let me be very clear that I am in no way trying to laugh, make fun of or ridicule the creators. They have actually made some very good points which I want to highlight. In fact I made the same mistakes. The only difference is that I didn't take people's money and make mistakes with somebody else's money.

You can read the article on how their project is being put on hold here. I would go read it because it really highlights what can go wrong in a project and so many of my projects went south because of the same reasons.

http://www.explodingrabbit.com/news/super-action-squad-is-being-put-on-hold

I would suggest reading every word it has very good advice let me put in the bullet points here. I will talk about my perspective on these topics and my failures.

Inexperience

Lack of understanding of scope

Unrealistic estimate of cost

Being apart of an in effective team

Software tools

No pre-production

Inexperience
This has got to be the number one reason why any project fails. Remember that failures are GOOD if you learn from them. I certainly have. This is why I plug making a small project and releasing it so much at Mammoth Interactive.com. If you have taken any of my courses, you will know that I plug this constantly.

How do you get experience? Simple just do it! Releasing a small project is the best way get experience. Plus what you do is put yourself ahead of all of the overeducated people who hang out at the coffee shop all day.

As silly as it sounds you want to release as many projects as you can and learn from each project. The more you release the better you get. What you do have to put in is time. The more time you put in the better you get. If you have a job try and work part time and work the remaining hours on you project, you will learn so much by doing this.

For me, I needed to learn to code in new programming languages so I bought some DVDs and I put in the time and out came an XBOX 360 game. I made tons of prototypes before that came out but in the end I do have an XBOX 360 game in my portfolio.

You are never too old to learn something and you don't have to go to a class to learn it. You can do it on your own. Now more than ever you can learn faster with online learning.

Lack of understanding of scope. 
This is a big one. The Exploding Rabbit article details this very well. For me this happened a lot and I will tell you about some of the times I had completely misread the scope of a project.

The best part of a project is the part where you discuss features at a coffee shop or a restaurant with some friends / business partners. This part is amazing because coming up with ideas takes about 1 millionth the effort it does to implement these ideas. Most of the time ideas are worthless without execution. Really what you should be looking for is execution of ideas and not simply ideas.

When I was 12 I took a programming course in visual basic at my local university. I thought visual basic mean "Let's make a 3D game". Sadly it was not and I legitimately thought that I could make something similar to Neverwinter nights in my room on my 486 computer. This didn't happen and the game never came to be released. Instead I made a small text based adventure game.

On a side note, I always say that if you have an idea of what you want to do, scale it back 95-99% and that's what will be released.

Flash forward to 2010 after I released my XBOX 360 game Circa, as soon as I uploaded it and as soon as it came online for people to play I started a new project. This project was going to be an overhead shooter that took place on a space station around Saturn's moon titan. It had an awesome plot and I knew that for sure this would make it big. After all Circa was a mild success and if I made a bigger game with a bigger scope then my career would skyrocket.

I programmed the mechanics, made the levels and started making the art. Along the way I constantly kept adding more and more features. I said "Let's add more because more features equals more sales". I couldn't be more wrong. This is why I practice subtractive production techniques. You can learn more about them at Mammoth Interactive. com if you don't know what subtractive production techniques are.

Always always always set the scope at the beginning of the project. Otherwise you are going to get out scoped. Which is what happened to this project. As I added more features the game became harder and harder to handle. Eventually, I woke up one morning and I looked at the work that needed to be done in order to get this game to about 80%. It was too much and I abandoned the project. At least I didn't waste other people's money. If I was in school, I would be punished for "failing" but going through the process I ironically would learn more than what I would learn in school. I learned the hard way that you should always set parameters at the beginning of the project.

I then worked on my next project which was a 2D platformer set in the 1920s. It also had a great plot. I wrote the script, programmed the mechanics and hired an artist to do the animation. Everything was going well. I thought that after my failure last time I would surely release this game. I was ready to put in the last 10% of the project. I was so excited. Then, Microsoft upgraded the XBOX 360 framework to a new version. It broke my game. In order to make the 2D platformer I had to use an engine and a lot of the back end libraries were not compatible. As a result I had a broken game. I was defeated and frustrated again. This time for a completely different reason my game was not to be released. It took 6 months for other people in the community to fix the problem. I had then moved on to another project. At this time, it wasn't as worth it to release a game for XBOX and I was working on iOS projects at the time.

This is 2 major games that were canned because of two different reasons. At least I learned this on my own instead of taking investor money or crowd funded money.

For the next few weeks I worked on a sequel to Circa called Circa reloaded. I was frustrated with the environment so I turned to iOS instead.

Unrealistic estimate of cost
This is another big one. Games cost at least 5 figures to make. It has to do with the interaction of art, software and user experience. I would say most of the time games cost 6 figures to make. Of course big companies that have the infrastructure can lower this but for the most part when you are making game budget 6 figures to do it properly.

The Exploding rabbit game should have cost around 300-400k not 53k. People think that they can spend about 2k on a game and become a millionaire. This is false. Occasionally you can get a simple game like flappy birds and make it big. Those are usually anomalies.

Being apart of an ineffective team
If there is any source of frustration that I had with development of any kind whether it was a game, app, video or music it was working with people who are ineffective. Most of the time when you work with creative people you will quickly realize that most people are useless. Often times these people don't even show up on time and when they do their performance is spotty and they don't have a work ethic.

Being super eager when I was 22 and fresh out of university, I quickly came to realize that most people under 30 have other priorities even if they say they want to be a _____. Their priorities are elsewhere. This is mainly why I worked alone. I couldn't deal with the malaise of the typical millennial attitude. I really wanted a job but this was 2008 and of course I was caught in that no experience no job conundrum plus a giant recession.

The flip side is that working with people who are 35 and older can actually get something finished. The flip side is they usually have a family and their priorities usually are conflicted between family and career.

I would say that if you can find somebody with ambition willing to go with you on the same journey as you, take it. Working with people is a lot better than working alone. If you can't find anybody, then work alone, it will be much better in the long run.

Software tools.
Before you even start a project look at the tools needed to complete the project. Choosing the right software is so important. In your project scope you need to
1. Find the platforms you are deploying to
2. Find the software tools that can do it
3. Find the tool that is easiest to use. Drop features if you have to.

If you are developing as an independent always go for the easiest solution. Software development is hard.

No pre-production
Pre production is important because it will plan out the scope of the project. Great game companies will do a ton of pre production. The best analogy I can think of for this is the way construction is done. When I was in University, I took a job landscaping. I put up an entire suburban park in one summer. It was a great learning experience. Most of the work was done before we put in the trees and the grass etc. In fact, the visual components were completed in a very short amount of time. You have to think of your software production the same way.

Conclusion
Where am I today. Well about a year after I released Circa for the XBOX 360 I started to release iOS games and several of them went to #1 on the app store. How did I do this? Experience, failure and a lot of perseverance.

Mammoth Interactive is a profitable company today with no investor funding. My reputation is not tarnished with failed projects, wasted crowd funded or investor money. Learn from your mistakes and drive the next project. If you believe in yourself you can do it!

Coding schools and education regulation.

First of all what is a coding school and second why are they regulated?

Well coding schools have popped up all over the place especially near silicon valley in California. What they are is a bootcamp like class where they take you from knowing nothing about coding to being a hirable developer. After all, knowing how to code is important and can land you a job. I am always surprised that even if you know CSS you can land a decent wage and by decent wage I mean like 60k a year. For those of you who don't know CSS is not that hard to code in.

What can be wrong with this? Coding schools offer a class for a skill set that is in demand. Not only does it help create jobs to teach the people how to code but it students can go get decent paying jobs. More jobs equals a better economy and who doesn't want a better economy?

According to local governments there is a lot wrong with coding schools. Perhaps because they are somewhat expensive perhaps because they offer no accreditation. I first heard about a coding school in Ontario Canada that investigated a coding school.  They have since then sorted everything out but I still thought it was unnecessary. We will get to why coding schools shouldn't be under investigation in a minute.

Then I heard that a lot of the schools in California threatened some schools to shut down, pay a fine and refund the money! Now this is getting serious.  Im sure that not every coding school is fantastic but the good ones get penalized. There is one simple reason why coding schools should not be under investigation.
They do no offer accreditation!

People know that going in and that's why they go. I should point out at this point that going to a coding school is in some ways better than getting a degree in computer science. Coding schools give you hands on training for relevant problems on the first day. CS degrees teach you more theoretical knowledge.

If I was 18 today, I would go to University and study something that I thought would expand my personal horizons. During the summer I would go to a coding school. Each system has something that the other lacks. As a young person you need the personal development just as much as you need the specific training. Your career will be better as a result.

If I was 30 and just need a job, I would go to a coding school because time spent in school is money lost.

Why are the governments shutting these things down. If I put on my tin foil hat, I might think that "Big Education" or the "Education Industrial Complex" has something to do with it. Maybe in the USA this could somewhat be the case as the colleges and universities there have a ton of money to lose. At the same time these coding schools show the American dream. They offer a better product for less, simple as that.

Taking off my tin foil hat, I can see that what is happening. There is a generation gap and a disconnect between what policy makers put in place and what job seekers need. If you want to learn to code you can go to these coding schools. Or you can hop on line and code today.

My classes help you with this. I offer a lot of courses that teach you the basics of programming in 1 hour and also offer classes that help you get apps to the app store. You can subscribe to my courses for a dollar!

https://mammoth.usefedora.com/course/subscription/?coupon=dollarmonth

Or you can start learning to code for free here.

https://mammoth.usefedora.com/course/Learn-to-code-in-30-minutes/

This will get sorted out. If you know how to code you have a job, simple as that.

Starting an online school

Like business ideas or babies, everybody has an idea on how to re-invent the education system. I constantly get emails from several online schools saying they want my material. Most of the other instructors that I know get the same emails. I will go over the process of what setting up a course on their website entails and then I will go up and then go over how to make any business process easier. 

Like I said above. Everybody has an idea on how to make education better so naturally there are a ton of online schools popping up with everybody's specific plan. Some of these schools have venture capital and others do not.  In another post I will talk about why a simple UI change isn't going to change education. What most of them need is teachers and content producers. Since they are in short supply they will take what they can get. Here comes the expensive part. You have to 

1. Put all of the courses up on your website

2. Pay somebody to do that

3. Make sure nothing goes wrong

4. Make sure it is a good user experience.

Now imagine this from the teacher point of view. As a teacher you have to put your course up on 10 different sites and make sure that nothing goes wrong. This is really costly, even if you are using somebody else's money, it still costs a lot of money to put up the courses. So much money is being wasted by having all of these different schools in different places. What makes much more sense is to put the courses up once and have other people sell it. 

Most people of course do not want to do this simply because they have an idea on how school is supposed to be. 

The major business lesson here is to make any process simpler and to not let start up costs go through the window. Even if you do not have to pay for the startup costs on the other end, that money can be better spent on advertising or anything else. Even if there is unpaid interns doing the job, the money can be spent somewhere else. 

Instead of setting up a school, the schools are already set up all you have to do is point your customers there. This way we can all enjoy the profits and stop running around in circles trying to set up courses on every different site. 

Why you shouldn't think that your business is going to go big

Every time I see a startup they want to go big. They want to go Google big, Amazon big, Facebook Big. Their pitch has all of the pie in the sky features which would be impossible to implement on a small budget.

Going forward after investment, every founder has very profound visions of what they want to do. I get all of that. I have visions and big plans and ideas that could probably go Google big, Amazon big or Facebook big.

Then I get hit with reality. I have no funding and limited resources so how can I make money today. I get the sense that most startups or business do not want to do this. They want to deploy the next Google, Amazon or Facebook.

What is even worse is that a lot of companies start with lots of man power. Hiring people is extremely expensive so why do it? Aside from the money the biggest and worst part about this approach is that the founder usually has ideas that cannot be implemented at all and there is a disconnect between vision, reality and production.

What can you do about it? Simple. Start lean continue to function lean and don't macro right away. Start small and thing about how you can make money today. Once you start to learn how to make money today you can learn to scale that process. Once you can scale the process you can start to think bigger and the problems mentioned above won't happen. On a side note, if you are the founder of a company. Make sure you do some grunt work at times. It shows that you care about the company.

Tomorrow: why starting an online school might be harder than you think.

Your degree doesn't matter (mostly)

Whenever you talk about education with people (especially educators) there is a mentality that a person will only be able to learn something in a classroom. It has to be officially taught by a mastered and 100% fully accredited. Well, if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, then yes, school should be this way.

However, this not only sucks the fun out of learning, it tells people that the only place you can learn is in a classroom. Surprisingly having a degree in one field and pursuing another is not exactly uncommon. After all philosophy and english majors have to do something after they graduate.

University is really supposed to teach you about how to think and not what to think. Most people make this mistake when they enter. It is really about improving your cognitive problem solving abilities. If you went to school to learn the bigger picture on how the universe operates then chances are you will be successful in life. If you went to school to get an A on that multiple choice test then chance are you might find a well paying job.

When you get out into the real world you start to find that people have very different degrees than what their job title is. You find a disproportionally large amount of philosophy majors, english majors and music majors who program. This is not only because programming is in demand. It is because you learn quite a bit of knowledge in those mentioned above degrees. In some ways a standard CS degree doesn't teach you some of the more important parts you would learn in a philosophy degree.

Most tech degrees just teach you the A-B route. This is all well and good but you first of all need to know why you are going to A-B and you also need to know how you can improve A-B. As cliche as it sounds most tech degrees are very short sighted. The biggest issue is when technology changes and what you have learned is no longer useful.

Lastly, if you are smart enough to pass your degree without cheating you have all of the tools to make in the real world. The only problem is you have to shed what assumptions you have by going through the system. Once you can rid yourself of "education goggles" you can make it if you want to but only IF you want to.

Don't use your degree as an excuse for lack of success. Even civil engineers have a hard time finding work. That same person can go start a company, learn to code, or just simply get a job doing something else.

Why developing by yourself is less fun but more profitable.

I mostly do all of the work myself when it comes to making apps. The main reason for this is that I personally love to save money. Even contracting out the simplest features can get real costly. Whenever I do outsource I still do most of the work and only outsource a very small amount of work.

This is the way I like to release apps and make money but most people don't do it this way. They make sure they work in a team and get venture capital. Im sure there are tons of studies that say teams are more successful than individuals. At the same time there probably are not studies that show the efficiency of teams versus individuals. If there were, Im sure you would see that individuals can be more efficient.

If you haven't checked out Derek's Sivers' blog at sivers.org, I highly suggest you do. Derek Sivers was a musician/entrepreneur who started CD Baby. His views are incredibly insightful. When Derek was a musician he made his money by diversifying his performances. Here is his pricing chart for his music services.

• 1000 for the 5-piece funk band
• 600 for a duet performance
• 450 for a solo performance 

Notice that he gets paid more for his solo performances. For 3 solo performances he would have to do almost 7 band performances. Here is the chart if he did one performance of each per week in 1 month or 4 weeks.

• 800 for the band
• 1200 for the duet
• 1800 for the solo performance

Clearly the solo performance was the most profitable. There is another element that needs to be taken into consideration. The solo performance would be easier to put together and way less expensive. All he would have to do is write some songs with his acoustic guitar and sing. The band experience is much more complex. Even the duet adds in another level of complexity that makes the performance much harder. 

Which one is the most fun? Working with people you like to produce something is always way more fun. At the same time it is worse individually. The band makes the most money in total but as you can see for far less work you can be more profitable

When you decided to make apps you have to decide what you want to do. Do you want to go it by yourself and make more money for less work or do you want to have fun in a bigger team? For me I choose more profitability. 

A short enlightened post

"Being wrong is your salvation. "

- John Bura