Grimrock

I am a small business owner, and I wanted to pass this info to the devs. In case you guys didn't know most new businesses go under in 5 years. This most often happens because creators of a business usually know very little about managing and growing a business. WHen someone creates a successful idea, usually that person is not a "manager", usually they are a tech person who went with an idea that succeeded. After initial success, this is the most crucial period for you, because it is at this point where your entire future can crash and burn, or succeed. Unless you quickly find new talent, streamline your business processes, and transition yourselves to executives, with a unified operating agreement between owners, you will find yourselves exhausted, overwhelmed, burnt out, and you highly risk crashing your business. In the past, you did everything yourselves, but with growth, you now have to transition from "workers" to "managers", from "developers" to "executives" and this is the transition that so often ruins a small business because the creators try to do everything themselves, and eventually cannot hold it all together.

I had a great idea. I am a tech person, not an executive. I do not have a degree in marketing, or an MBA, I am not a lawyer. I was just a tekkie that had an idea. I put it together, it took me 2 years to do it, and when I finally finished, I hoped for the best. Suddenly, business was booming. My idea worked, and I found myself with thousands of customers. This was my most critical period. If I tried to "stay small" and just do everything myself, i would have most definitely seen my business destroyed, or at best, I would have never been able to grow. I quickly found that it was impossible to run things like I used to. There was no way two people (I had a partner) could handle all the demand. I had to hire new talent, and I did. I bought books on marketing, brought in executive business consultants so that I could put in place business practices that were efficient and geared toward GROWTH. Without investing in the executive process and looking at my baby as a business, I would have lost it.

My advice to the devs is, never stop looking at growth. Always keep 'growth' in your vocabulary. But in order to grow, you have to become executives and managers, you can no longer just be 'developers'. You definitely have a chance to be a competitive gaming company with many titles in your future. I just hope you guys dont stop here, but push for growth. You "own" this genre of game right now, and with a leg up on everyone else, I sincerly hope you take the risk, and take the plunge on going full steam ahead and shoot for greatness, and dont set your sights on anything less. Some will want you to stay small and be a "local ma and pa" game shop, but no way. You have too much potential to set your eyes on tiny. Anyway, I loved the game, and am moving on, probably wont post here again, but I just wanted to give you my feedback and tips as someone who had success from an idea, and encourage you to quickly hire new talent geared towards growth. Yes, there is risk, but there is also great potential for reward if you are able to become executives and managers.

Moved to General Discussion.

Daniel.

To the OP:
This is only my opinion, and I do not speak for anyone here, but...

Your post comes off as an assumption that AH has no idea in what they are doing, and you continue that impression by offering advice on how they need to run their business, when in reality, these people are industry veterans in their own right, so unfortunately your advice could come off as a bit presumptuous.

I can see that you want to help them and that your intentions are just, (Which is noble ) but in the future you might want to get to know the people that you want to advise first.