Platogo Blog

Jakob and Florian are attending this year's Game Developers Conference and Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco and would be glad to meet up with developers who are interested in bringing their games on Facebook.

We will wear our legendary blue t-shirts so we'll be easy to spot
Feel free to drop us an email at hello AT platogo DOT com to arrange a meeting.

Last monday we had the chance to meet with the biggest & most important names in the online gaming business right now: Zynga, Mochi Media & HeyZap. We're great fans of all these companies so actually meeting them in person was exciting & awesome.

Mochi Media

Jameson Hsu & Justin Wong took some time off their busy schedule to welcome us in their cosy office. Their space is really nice - lots of cool little gadgets all around the place. Music was playing in the background which I never heard before (identified by Midomi to be the band Passion Pit). The song Little Secrets has grown to be among my very favorites - I'm listening to it on Spotify while I type these lines.

For well deserved breaks Mochi provides comfy couches placed in front of a huge TV with various consoles attached, also including a full rock band kit. Nice. I'm looking forward to their Flash Gaming Summit which is taking place on March 8th. Like the website says: The conference will bring together leaders in the Flash game space to share industry insights and strategies on successful game design, development and monetization.

Zynga

Next up was Zynga which is like the epicenter of social gaming at the moment. They are continuously growing, now employing about 800 people and still looking for more. Bret Terrill gave us a "quick" tour around the different offices. Quick is being put in quotes as their place is really huge! They even have an own Zen Room where employees can get acupunctures and massages. Great way to motivate their people - I know I'd enjoy a foot rub every now and then.

While wandering through their departments I think I caught a short glimpse of a top-secret project of theirs. However, after signing their NDA contract & everything, I sure won't break the news. I'm confident this will be another sure-fire hit though.

HeyZap

Jude Gomila, the co-founder of HeyZap, met up with us at Brainwash Cafe since they are just moving into their new office. He's a bright guy who thinks fast and talks just as fast. They have lots of ideas for the future of HeyZap and I can't wait to see where they're heading. Definitely an company to keep an eye (or two) on.

San Francisco has been an awesome experience. Prior to our trip we'd never thought that we'd have the chance to meet with so many interesting and well-known people. Think about it: these three companies are among the most relevant in the whole industry right now. And we were lucky to meet them all.

Seedcamp organized a week in the states to meet up with interesting people from all sorts of different companies. Being among the lucky Seedcamp winners we got to join the trip and, oh boy, what a ride it's been.

It started in New York where we stayed for a couple of days before eventually heading to San Francisco. The very first thing we did after arriving in NY was buying tickets for a comedy show with free drinks on the street. As it later turned out they were way overpriced and instead of getting free drinks we had to buy a minimum amount of 2 drinks each. Well, at least the comedians were funny.

The next surprise came when we entered our hotel room which more felt like a sauna. Apparently  the heating was broken and running at full speeds. The solution suggested by the hotel manager? Turning up the air conditioning to fight the heat.

Other than that New York treated us really well. We had the time to see some of NY's amazing sights: Central Park, Empire State Building, Brooklyn Brigde ...

Seedcamp New York

On Tuesday it started at Google Chelsea Market - a refurbished office building with old wooden floor elements, relaxed atmosphere and several coffee machines + candy dispenser in the cafeteria. After each team gave a 3min pitch, we had 30min mentoring sessions. It looks like the new concept of Platogo was well received in the USA.

At Brown Bag Lunch (event organized by Beta Works) at the Apple HQ in New York we ran into Charles Forman the founder of OMGPOP and we had a great and rather nerdy discussion about the future of casual / social gaming, the limitations of multiplayer games and more...

Day two started at Union Square Ventures with with Brad, Albert and Andrew talking about the difference between startups in the US (East Coast / West Coast) and Europe, values they are looking for in startups and answering questions.

After that we met Saul Klein's uncle Jonathan Klein the CEO of GettyImages, who founded the company 15 years ago. As the market leader they acquired 100+ companies within these years and still managed to establish values among their employees.

Our flight to S.F. was delayed but once we arrived with the rental car at our wonderful Motel at 3 in the morning, everything was fine ...

Seedcamp Silicon Valley & San Francisco

The next day a little boy's dream came true by entering the Google Plex for a really great event. We bumped into people like Pascal Finette, Catalyst at Mozilla talking about the future of the most used open source browser and other well connected people like Pietro Dova, ex-Googler and now business angle at XG Ventures who introduced us to Frederic Descamps. Frederic is the founder of a company called A Bit Lucky, working on next gen Facebook games - we met him on Saturday - he is a genius and perfectly connected in the San Francisco gaming scene.

We also took part at Startup2Startup, met Mike Arington from TechCrunch and had further mentoring sessions at First Round Capital. As for the whole trip - the advice was highly relevant for us and lots of great ideas popped up every time.

Values of Seedcamp

Once again, this trip really showed the values of Seedcamp - it is not just some money, it is the chance for a small company (from a small country) to visit and talk to people you would have never met without their help in such a short period of time. The great thing about these mentors is their advice and the access to their network of companies and startups  - and they always help you to connect.

After we watched Terminator Salvation the only salvation was to get out of the cinema and do something to forget what we saw before. So what to do at 11 pm in Vienna? Luckily Andi Gessl, a friend of ours, had his camera and a couple of lights with him. We climbed into the nearest playground, switched on the lights, used long exposure and got this nice photos. Thanks again to Andi for this awesome experience!

You can find all his experiments on his flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gessman

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It's summertime, and the living's easy.... All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go, I'm standing here outside Florian's door...

Yep, time to go camping! Florian and I are leaving the hubbub of urban Vienna to roam the Berlin badlands next week. With our brilliant team all raring to present Platogo to the world, we've been invited to present our baby at next week's Seedcamp in Berlin.

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During the rather successfull Flex Camp in Vienna we decided spontaneously that we have to attend Adobe MAX 2008 in Milan. We were invited by Adobe to join their Adobe MAX Bus from Hamburg to Milan and of course we had to accept the offer. To make it a trip to remember we decided to not hop on at an intermediate stop but instead start the ride from the very beginning - from Hamburg, located in the far north of Germany... accompany us on our journey!

Christoph (left) and Florian (right) at Adobe MAX 2008

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A couple of photos from the expert talk "Aus Spiel wird Ernst - Wachstumsbranche Games" about the growing game industry in Vienna.

Martin Sirlinger (talking), Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Florian Landerl,  Peter Vorlaufer and Markus Hajek

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