It Only Takes One Customer to Start a Business
And 15,000 games industry layoffs means 14,999 people you can start something with.
Buy a domain. Make a site on Webflow. Create a legal entity with Clerkly. Add your team to GSuite. Store code in Git. Point customers to Discord. And go.
You’ve heard about “startups” and “founders” for years in the wider software space. But the time is now for games.
It took three years, four different co-founders, and five different product concepts before landing on Conduit.
I actually didn’t want to stay in games. Or even with games industry people. I’d just left Amazon and Twitch in 2020, was burned out, and wanted to try something different.
But I still loved the two big customers in the games industry - developers and players. Playing games is still what bonds my childhood friends together when our lives take us apart. And game developers are some of the smartest, honest, humble (sometimes to a fault) people I know.
If you start concepting something now, and choose people to work with that you already trust in an industry you love, you’ll go further and faster than we ever did.
If you’re a detail-oriented worrier, find a big picture happy-go-lucky (guess which I am hehe). If you can pour over numbers all day, find the creative feeler that can assess design instantly.
Games will more often iterate in the open with a minimum viable product (MVP) like a traditional software startup in the coming years. Gather feedback and tweak it as you go along. We’ll share examples of some these games in our next post.
We are by no means expert entrepreneurs. But it feels great to run, and run alongside people you already know and trust.
If anyone wants to talk through what it takes to start a company or gather a small team, you know where to find us. And if you don’t, here! kai@conduit.gg
It only takes one paying customer to start a business.
And I hope this economic downturn creates some of the most meaningful games, tools, and teams we’ve ever seen.
Kai
Co-Founder and CEO
Conduit