35 years of Startup experience in 20 minutes
This article is written by Amira Ibrahim, a Contributor Author at Startup Turkey.
Jeff Burton Co-Founded electronic Arts, Card Smith, and licence to Mail. He is currently the CEO of Woodside Greek. LLC, and working on a steathproject. Jeff recently served as the executive director at Sky Deck Berkeley. He was the third employee of Ataris international home computer Division, responsible for its business development throughout Europe and the Middle East.Jeff will explain to the Audience of Startup Turkey 2017, the best tips and tricks to succeed in the entrepreneurship world.
How Did Electronic Arts Begin?
They didn’t have a garage when they first founded the company, and all of the founders were already executives back then. They first met at the CEO’s house in an upscale neighborhood near Silicon Valley.
The founders had one thing in common which is all of them didn’t know coding, they were just marketing executives.Despite this fact they were able to raise $5 million only in 5 months.
Electronic Arts Founders promised investors that they will have 6 game titles by 6 months. They did keep their promise, and by the end of May,they had 7 products out so they beat their promise to investors.
Electronic Arts were one of the main reasons why people wanted to buy a home computer.
How they did it? They started with printed ads (can a computer make you cry?). After which they went all over the USA to find independent video gaming developers. They wanted to make people feel like it is possible to get emotionally involved with computers.
They all believed that they can create something better than anyone else and they wanted to look at the future.They didn’t ignore marketing as a lot of the technology company’s downgrade the marketing importance, marketing is extremely important.
Build a company culture:
It is extremely important to have a company culture and this is how Electronic Arts did it: All of the employees interviewed every applicant for every job. All these interviews will make the accepted applicant believe they got the most important in the world. Every employee that did interview an applicant will also feel that he is contributing to the company and that he is a very important person. They created what is called (NerfBattles) to release tension from employees. Friday beer and wine meeting where executives answer questions of employers and that made the company more transparent. Private screening for new movies to the employees(especially movies that have cultural aspects)
Revenue & Market Cap
Despite all the changes in the gaming industry and all the new technologies EA still in the business and the market CAP is around 20 Billion Dollars and revenues is about 5 billion dollars also they have more than 20000 employees.
Jeff Burton mentioned that after accelerators, startups need to d =o the following:
Leave your comfort zone.
Move to other markets