... or just play it safe

steveballmer — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:31:03 -0700

... or just play it safe with Msft!

Knowing your startup bet paid off: Priceless

Larry Borsato — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:35:37 -0700

Just how sure are you that your startup idea is a good one? Are you willing to risk everything on a single roll of the dice? Rob Balahura and his company, J2Play, were sure enough to risk everything they had to bring their idea to fruition.

Rob is the CEO of J2Play, a small company in Kitchener, Canada (Disclosure: I consult for J2Play). A few months ago Rob became curious about social gaming. It started when he saw applications on Facebook like Scrabulous and realized that people would enjoy a better way to combine games with social networking.

Motivated by the idea, he then surmised a way to leverage technology he already had -- a gaming platform -- into a social networking gaming hub. He believed that with his platform he could act as the base to extend the social gaming community to Facebook and beyond. His vision encompassed all major social networks like MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and Orkut, and even went beyond Web-based games to mobile and PC-based communities. Ideally, it would be a platform and hardware independent, ubiquitous, social gaming experience. The communities could be the same regardless of whether users were playing on Facebook, with a PC or on a phone.

But J2Play did not have much cash and Rob knew staking everything on this one idea might be a fatal gamble. One misstep at this point would possibly be the end of his company.

But Rob was sure of his idea and presented it to the core group of talented workers at J2Play, who agreed that it showed promise. Together, they decided the risk was worth it and shifted all of their efforts to building this new social gaming environment. The key feature would be providing game developers a way to add social networks to their existing games in less than five minutes. It would have to be simple and easy to use with existing networks. If it worked, developers would then add more functionality through J2Play tools for matching users or monetization across multiple social networks.

The team worked feverishly around the clock, sometimes sacrificing pay, and enduring through the times when the company couldn't even afford to buy coffee -- and software developers without coffee are not a pretty sight.

They minimized operational costs by using Amazon EC2 to provide a flexible server pool, anticipating the need to deal with sudden growth. They worked with developers to demonstrate the ease of using their system. Astonishingly they were able to build a new Flash toolkit overnight. Then they zealously added everything a developer could need, including all kinds of tools to allow users to interact with their friends and other game players -- regardless of where they were playing the game.

Meanwhile Rob tirelessly pitched the concept to everyone he could -- VCs, social networks, game developers, and to anyone who would listen at gaming conferences.

Today, the hard work, sacrifice, and dedication paid off.

J2Play heaved a great sigh of relief when Facebook announced that their social gaming platform was selected as one of the winners of the first fbFund competition. After being selected, J2Play announced Hold'em Poker for BlackBerry and RoboCafe as well as Bricktopia! for the PC. These games would showcase the cross-platform tools they had worked so hard to develop.

Finally everyone can take a well deserved breather, revel in their vindicated risk, then come back again tomorrow to build on their success. This time, with enough money for coffee.

Larry Borsato has been a software developer, marketer, consultant, public speaker, and entrepreneur, among other things. For more of his unpredictable, yet often entertaining thoughts you can read his blog at larryborsato.com.

The Industry Standard - Knowing your startup bet paid off: Priceless - Comments

... or just play it safe

Knowing your startup bet paid off: Priceless