I needed some psychology tricks to get invested.
It was the demo day of an international incubator I was part of. After 6 months of mentorships and 24-hours caffeine fueled crunch, I was in a room with hundreds of investors and huge names of the gaming industry.
I was the fourth presenter to go and that gave me an insight I would’ve never got on a different scenario: No one cared about the presentations.
Investors looking at their phones, CEOs talking between each other.
On stage, a trembling voice talking about their amazing game. A game no-one cared about.
Third presentation over, my turn.
In my head, only one thing;
It’s showtime.
I started talking to the mic while walking to stage, saying things like “Well, well, well…”, “How’s everyone doing?”. And it was for two reasons:
- Test the mic, I needed to know how close to my mouth it had to be and how high the volume was.
- I wanted the audience to look for me, I wasn’t on stage but I was talking. It worked.
When I got to stage I got loud.
The audience didn’t want to pay attention to me, so I stole everyone’s attention by being noticeable.
My slides; to the point:
- Numbers: real metrics and a proven market opportunity. Only the reason why it will make money.
- Visuals: A short trailer heavy on gameplay. It wasn’t self-explanatory and that was the goal, I wanted to create doubt to attract investor’s attention to me. Every single slide, had one of our characters with the text.
And my words, strategic;
- Name-drops: Studios, backers, big market references, everything that drew attention.
- Money: How much are we making, how much are we spending and how much are we looking for.
- Forbidden words: No story, no conference awards, nothing that would make us look unexperienced. My focus was to make investors’ time worthwhile.
The result;
Soccer Legends got invested not only once, twice.
Jumped from university project to studio on a single pitch.
The learning: Investors will forget you and your game if you can’t make them drop their phones. Sometimes you need to perform.