How We Raised $20M To Build The Google Analytics For Video Games
Hi, my name is Connor Ellison. I am CEO and founder of Pogr along with my two co-founders, Randolph Aarseth (CTO) & Juno (Head of Product).
POGR is a product we've designed to enable players to gamify for a lifetime instead of just a single match. To enable studios to make smarter data-driven decisions during their development cycles as well as become one of the many pillars of the Metaverse that will help gaming as a whole. We’ve achieved this by combining multiple concepts.
The first is making our software development kit (SDK) engine agnostic as well as drag and drop. This allows POGR to be integrated into any game regardless of that game's service platform, genre, or engine within 10 minutes. Directly pulling our data from the source of truth.
The secondary aspect we’ve currently implemented is our centralized profile system. This profile system, also agnostic, allows our users to connect every single gaming account they’re currently on and have a centralized place for their gaming history.
Utilizing the profile system and the SDK developers can now collect, parse, organize then visualize game & player data that allows developers, teams, brands, and all other interested third parties to understand players at the micro level so that they can provide better support and decision making on the macro level.
Our product was also designed to correct the issue of a gaming ecosystem that’s fragmented. Our product lays down the train tracks that will eventually be the foundation for a better gaming experience as a whole.
Our firm has only existed for about 2 years. We've built the product from the ground up with a small highly skilled team with a budget sitting around $125,000. Our firm is currently pre-revenue but we’ve just raised $2.25M at a $20M post valuation.
Understand what it takes to get your first customer, adapt to their feedback, and scale from there.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
This idea evolved over the years but started with my first gaming startup after college which opened my eyes to the powers of open API’s. I saw infinite possibilities with this new form of access and I was off to the races building. Fast forward to now and the space has kept evolving as I expected which made me confident to put it all on the line to create this. I honestly made this for myself because as a gamer - I am proud and I want a way to display my accomplishments online.
I feel confident as well to pursue this dream because I am a gamer at heart. My earliest memories were sitting on my dad's lap playing Legend of Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I never fit in when I grew up but I always made friends online and for most of my early life the internet was my preferred world.
I understand there are many others like me and I set out to build something we could all enjoy together… hopefully improving the space as a whole.
In my adult years, I also found the backdoor into working with FaZe clan and helping scale an esports influencer agency to over $8M gross in 2020. Seeing how this space worked at the highest level confirmed that what I was building was important.
For example; all talent signings were based around clout, content, or connections - there is no way to measure a player through the lens of statistics at the highest level. From my time in the music industry, I saw that all of their signs were through data, from acquired databases, ie; sodatone. When there is exponentially more data in gaming - I saw a huge opportunity and set out to build it.
When I started the company I had small savings from working extremely underpaid jobs (around $20,000). I won't get it into specifics but at multiple points, I was in debt (sometimes extreme) all going to this dream. Multiple times I felt the world caving in on me but I focused on the small light in front of me. This light was the belief in myself, my family, and friends providing encouragement + a team that saw the same vision as me. I am still not even remotely out of debt because I jumped off the cliff and grew wings on the way down. Everyday we get closer to the vision I see so clearly. I am SO excited for the gaming world to use and help us grow Pogr.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
The design process was led by the very talented Anders Bjarnle who thankfully believed in our vision. Anders and Juno have branded Pogr in such a unique way which is rare in today's space of asset flips and one size fits all design.
We’ve held off reaching out to other developers until our case study is finalized with our discovery client Last of Humanity. The core challenge we faced during this study was not the implementation of our software but instead showing the utility benefits of our product.
The reason being our product requires data for our clients to receive the visualized and verified benefits. So we decided to resolve this by building POGR in conjunction with the game tailoring the product to the needs of our client. This process allowed us to set up frameworks that we can apply to future clients.
The startup costs are mainly hosting and our employees outside of the founding team. We are extremely lean and have a low burn which has allowed us to accomplish so much with so little this quickly. Legal has just become an expense as we are raising such a large round and restructuring the business to be more investor friendly.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Launching the business was one of the greatest feelings ever because I had almost given up on pursuing entrepreneurship but I was lucky enough to meet one of my angel investors at an event. I mentioned it in passing and we spent a while deeply discussing my vision and the entire rest of the night I was hooked. The next morning I was introduced by fate to my two co-founders… the rest is history.
Our entire social branding was led by Matt Rusnak who understands growth on the internet that few others do. We focused on Instagram and Twitter, one of my favorite moments was acquiring the @pogr username.
We firstly financed the business with Randolph’s and my savings. We built the product to an early MVP and were able to secure 1 of 10 open spots for the 100k Forum Accelerator (we know now that we were a part of their last batch). Following the accelerator, we got an angel investment of 25k from Raphael to get us through our next raise of 2.25 million.
Anytime we needed money that the business didn’t have Randy and I stepped up and doubled down on our dream.
The biggest lesson I learned is that the journey is the destination in disguise. Learn to love the moments in between the celebrations.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Our go-to-market is a little unique as we are creating an entirely new market through video game data. The hurdle we focused on overcoming was building out a case study with our discovery client. This document allows us to show all interested customers the value of our service. So my advice is to understand what it takes to get your first customer and adapt to their feedback - scale from there.
Our scale and growth in sales are coming from our branding. My director of marketing, Matt Rusnak was able to build a large social presence for us across; Instagram, TikTok & Twitter - training the algorithm to feed us creators to collaborate with as well. I believe micro-influencers are the best ROI in the space currently.
Regarding PR, we are focusing on that September - November. The issue before was we were still validating our case study and creating a pipeline would have been counterintuitive. So my second piece of advice is to manage your timeline appropriately and only open the funnel when you can capitalize on the interest.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are currently pre-revenue and raised our seed round from Venture Rock to focus on customer acquisition. Our projections predict we will be profitable by the end of 2023 with a bonus of having a unique data moat that we will be able to begin monetizing strictly to benefit our developers/users
Our distribution starts with a SaaS b2b model where we onboard developers by integrating our SDK. This connects their studio (and games) to our database and allows for data to flow in an organized fashion. Our database visualizes that data and allows the consumer to then display stats/accomplishments on their profile. We transition into a b2c consumer approach at this point.
Our pipeline creates a new market that revolves around data that previously wasn’t accessible. The final step in our model is taking the game data for each player on a micro + macro level and working with teams, brands, or agencies to provide new opportunities to the community.
We run our business completely remote and our team is small (currently 5, but expanding to 9 by the end of 2022). As a CEO, I believe the best model for a successful startup is to hire people more talented than me and allow them to grow the business in ways I never could. We operate through MBO (management by objective) - weekly meetings are to align everyone on our vision but the rest of the week is spent accomplishing our shared north star.
The next 27 months will be spent focusing on developers in the US but we have started planting seeds internationally. Our lawyers have been identifying the idiosyncrasies of how data is allowed to be captured from each geographic region internationally. Once we feel comfortable we will expand. Expect Pogr overseas in early 2024.
Our major long-term goal is to be one of the foundational pillars of the metaverse.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
One of the hardest things to do early in a startup is fire someone who didn’t deliver what was expected. We were lucky to have captured most opportunities including raising our seed round in one of the worst markets in history. The one tip I can recommend is to be ready to adapt. As a founder/CEO, it is your job to be the most stable figure in your company. It sends ripples that affect your entire company.
Also by having complementary skills to your other co-founders - by being able to divide and conquer along with having everything being built in-house… you will have a smaller burn and a more efficient pace.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Our products development team is international as such we heavily relied on tools that facilitate collaborative product development. Below I’ve listed the tool, how it works in our organization, and a link to it.
Discord - Discord’s versatile features and mobile application allows our team to hold stand-ups, and internal meetings and share design brainstorms/ideas before creation or implementation in other tools.
Google Workspace - Google's suite of tools and services allows our team to collaborate on documentation. The additional benefit of company emails gives our outside communications more legitimacy when setting up meetings with potential investors or partners. Using google calendar allows our staff members to keep track of all important project dates and company events.
JIRA - We chose JIRA to manage all workloads due to the depth of the product's features. The ability to create timelines, sprints, and tickets as well as the amount of informational and management control offered is what made Jira our default option.
Confluence - We combined confluence with our JIRA so that product features have a source of truth when it comes to requirements, what user stories the feature is attempting to realize as well as being a quick reference for our agile protocols so that we can onboard new members easily.
Timezone.io - Our team has members around the globe as such we make sure all meetings are scheduled on company time. We use timezone.io so that our team has a quick reference to the company's time as well as the time for other team members so as not to interrupt them during sleeping hours.
Figma - Once we’ve had a deeper understanding of the feature we wish to implement. We use Figma to draft up the potential design as well as modify the user flow if the user experience benefits from the modification.
Lucidchart - We utilize Lucidchart to help us scope out the required services and flow of our product.
Github - Our development team uses GitHub for version control, CI/CD as well as additional product documentation (coding related).
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
How I Built This & books on Audible. I listen to a ton of videos on YouTube as well specific to the gaming space to keep up to date & learn its history.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Firstly just get started. You will never know what you need to do until you start doing it. That being said - make sure you start with someone else. Even if it's just a mentor or a friend keeping tabs. Add a sort of accountability to yourself.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are looking for a data scientist/data engineer that understands the gaming space. More information on inquiry [email protected].
Where can we go to learn more?
If you’re a game studio interested in using our product please contact us at Email
Developers and players visit our official site to sign up for our waitlist Website
To keep up to date on our company follow us on LinkedIn: LinkedIn
If you’re an investor interested in our company please visit our Crunchbase:Crunchbase
To stay current on the latest gaming news, pop culture and exclusive content follow our official socials: | Tik-Tok | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube |
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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