Ep 27: Davis Ziedins
on partnership with Conor McGregor, operating $100 M ad budget, science of building successful apps, and recruiting global experts via Linkedin
Davis Ziedins is Co-founder and Business development lead at Beetroot Lab, a game development studio in Riga operating since 2014, whose biggest hit Dystopia is made in partnership with Conor McGregor and recently hit the 1 million downloads milestone.
In this super-high energy episode, we talk about the fundamentals of the game development business, building a very specialized skillset team in the Baltics, doing partnerships with global celebrities, keys to success in the saturated mobile gaming market, and the marketing of mobile games.
CLICK one of the links below to listen to the episode
The topics covered in this episode (with Timestamps)
🔈 [01:45] INTRODUCTION AND THE ORIGINS OF BEETROOT LAB
Mobile game mass development
Making the first million
Working with game publishers
🔈 [10:10] BUILDING GAME DEVELOPMENT TEAM
How realistic it is to build games from the Baltics
Scarcity of game development savvy talent
The natural personal appeal of gaming for talent
Getting top global experts to work with you
Why Georgia is an excellent place to build an outsourced IT team
🔈 [19:20] PARTNERING WITH A GLOBAL CELEBRITY, CONOR MCGREGOR
Getting Connor McGregor on the project
Structuring a deal with a celebrity
Giving ownership as a key for engagement
Latvian legal entity, not an obstacle
🔈 [30:50] SUCCEEDING ON THE HYPER-COMPETITIVE GAMING MARKET
Data-driven trial and error
Shipping first version asap to get user feedback
Buying users as an expensive experiment to measure fit and monetization
The appeal of mobile gaming for users
Monetization in gaming
The psychological aspect of gaming and monetization
Dealing with exploding user acquisition costs
Building a game where the best players can make their career
🔈 [53:20] MARKETING OF MOBILE GAMES
Economics of game monetization
Going back to the ice age in targeting iOS users
Creatives is the king - producing the right ones
The need for substantial working capital on demand
The working capital impact of app stores
Working with alternative app stores
🔈 [1:12:30] OUTRO AND THE ROAD AHEAD
Next steps for Dystopia
New games
New project in skill-based cash game industry
Geographic reach and China
To reach out to Davis use:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davisziedins/
Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/
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