Sramana: What are the demographics of the people who play your games? Kenny Rosenblatt: Our largest demographic is women 35 and older who live in the United States. Sramana: There are some women-focused ad networks like Glam Media. Have you experienced those networks? Kenny Rosenblatt: We have talked with Glam and others, but the deal
Sramana: Are you applying any other type of monetization model, such as advertising? Kenny Rosenblatt: We recognized that 97% of the users would only play free, so we do put advertisements in front of those users so we receive some compensation. Sramana: What kind of strategies do you use for advertising? Kenny Rosenblatt: We focus
Sramana: What was the result of making a strategic shift to develop gaming applications following a B2B strategy? Kenny Rosenblatt: We saw explosive growth. We had four people and now have over 80.
Sramana: By this time you were a full year into bootstrapping the company, you had already had a complete development cycle failure, and now you have to give away the only game you have been able to bring to market because people don’t want to pay for it. How did you survive? Kenny Rosenblatt: We
Sramana: How long did it take you to get the first game out the door? Kenny Rosenblatt: I took us six months, and it was a disaster of an experience. We had never worked with offshore development companies before, and we had never designed a game before. I knew we were in trouble when our
Sramana: What is the genesis of Arkadium? Kenny Rosenblatt: In 2000 a woman joined On2 to run the music version of the system. Her name was Jessica Rovello. I saw her once and fell in love with her. We started dating, and she was an entrepreneur as well. She had created the Blair Witch Project
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Kenny Rosenblatt is the co-founder and CEO of Arkadium, a casual games developing company with more than 300 titles in its portfolio. Prior to co-founding Arkadium, Rosenblatt worked for On2 Technologies managing their databases, and with Systems and Computer Technology Corporation as a consultant. He co-founded
Sramana Mitra: What have you done with the venture money you raised? Andy Chou: We still have $22 million of venture money that we raised sitting in the bank. We are cash flow positive and do not anticipate having to go back and raise another round. We now have 200 employees, and we have 5