When in 2017 two business partners saw an opportunity to offer consumers a catalog of mobile games via a subscription model, GameMine was born. GameMine currently offers customers up to 1000 games that all come in their full version, with no pesky ads nor in-app purchases. Further, GameMine offers games for download as well as streaming, allowing users to circumvent the app stores all-together.
How did GameMine first get started? What was the inspiration behind the company?
Our founders at GameMine have a long history of distributing digital content worldwide. However, within the last ten years, the mobile gaming market has grown exponentially. With this latest venture, the founders decided to focus solely on mobile gaming but using the subscription model, which has seen mass adoption in recent years. The subscription model provides customers with the maximum experience so that they can consume much more content. It provides access to a very large catalog of mobile games at one convenient subscription price. There are also many benefits that consumers get with their subscription. They have access to new games regularly, they can stream games over the internet without having to download apps. They also receive games in their full version, whereby other gaming companies require users to purchase in-app features, and therefore most users will only experience a fraction of the game.
How does GameMine generate revenue?
GameMine relies on the subscription model to generate revenue. GameMine offers its player base access to a very large catalog of premium mobile games for a regularly scheduled fee.
How long did it take for your firm to become profitable?
As a subscription-based business we spend money to advertise to and acquire new users. During the early part of a customer’s lifetime we will expect to be unprofitable until the consumer has stayed with our service long enough to recoup those losses. Therefore, we need to be highly calculated in assessing the risks of spending too much to acquire new users through advertising.
When you first started out did you ever doubt that this would work for you? If so, how did you handle it?
We believe any business decision you make comes with a slight risk. We need to be very detailed in calculating each time we expand our business into new markets. We do what we can to mitigate the risk and to give ourselves the best chance to succeed. This includes constantly growing our catalog of games with top titles from premium developers, to offer our customers new and fresh games that keep them in our service. Also, in order to succeed, we are constantly applying best practices learned along the way over the past two years.
How did you find your first customer?
As a digital business, GameMine relies very heavily on digital advertising for new customer acquisition. We partner with the most major online advertising brands in the world which include Google, Facebook, App Nexus, and many others. Through these channels we are able to find qualified customers leads and to communicate our marketing messages to them.
What is one marketing strategy other than referrals that you use to generate new business?
GameMine acquires all of our new business customers through advertising on Google, App Nexus, Facebook and many others. It allows us to showcase the entertainment value of our content that we bring to our consumers. We partner with the largest and most well-known brands in terms of the content and games we deliver. Online advertising really allows us to bring those brands to life. We seek to show consumers just how valuable and just how rich the GameMine experience is.
What is the toughest decision you have had to make in the past few months?
The toughest decision we have to make is whether we are going to end an advertising campaign early. GameMine is a startup with limited resources, yet we have high ambitions for growth. Sometimes it means coming up with an adverting idea that may eventually fail. We may take the time and effort to create and execute the idea only to find that we are coming up short of our goals. Ultimately, if we realize will not be successful then we will end that particular campaign. These decisions are never easy, but we acknowledge failure, we learn from it and apply what we’ve learned to future opportunities as we assess other new growth opportunities.
What do you think makes you successful?
I believe that what makes GameMine successful is that we have a knowledgeable team of experts in their fields. We have a fantastic understanding of gaming content, online billing, digital marketing, and technology. We combine those experiences to form a highly competent team that is able to strongly compete in our field. Also, some of us have worked together in the past and that helps bridge communication more easily. We have achieved a lot with such a small team, and we are excited to do more.
What has been your most satisfying moment since opening GameMine?
The most satisfying moments in business is participating in growth. It has been a joy watching this company grow from a one market and four employee operation into a multi-market thirty-employee operation. We have shared and celebrated in the company’s achievements along the way.
What is a recent development that you have made for your business?
Content is king and we have recently signed new contracts with major game developers to bolster our catalog and continue to offer our customers an amazing experience.
Also, as we grow, we have to bring on top new talent to facilitate our growth. We have successfully built up very strong teams in Marketing, Technology, and others which have contributed greatly to our success.
What does the future hold for you and your firm? What are you most excited about?
The future of GameMine is very bright. We have grown very quickly since our inception. We think we are just scratching the surface of opportunities available to us. We are successful in our active markets and the longer we are successful there, the stronger of a case it builds for us to expand more further into global markets. We are currently developing plans to do so.
What books have inspired you that you would recommend?
Daniel Pink’s Drive, it is a book about what motivates people. Also, the autobiography Winning by Jack Welch and the success that he had transforming G.E. as its CEO. I also enjoy books by Malcolm Gladwell such as Outliers and The Tipping Point.