Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 7)

Sramana: Who do you view as your competition? Sebastian Funke: A product called Shaker debuted this year, and they are focused on helping people meet other people. That is exactly what we do and what we have been doing for the past two years. We are much farther along than they are. We see the possibility

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Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 6)

Sramana: You now have a solid revenue stream and a good user base. Where do you go from here? Sebastian Funke: We don’t see Smeet as a single game. We see it as a social interaction platform. You can enter it through our website or through our application. It is a cloud of different rooms

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Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 5)

Sramana: What are the most common gifts people tend to give each other? Sebastian Funke: They give rings, necklaces, furniture for virtual houses, and a lot of other items. We have a separate catalogue for gifts. People cannot buy them for their own use.

Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 4)

Sramana: Do you track specific key performance indicators within the virtual worlds or just those indicators related to new users? Sebastian Funke: Prior to this year we did not look at key performance indicators inside of our product because we did not have the capability to do so. There was not a clear user funnel.

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Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 3)

Sramana: What is the Smeet virtual world like? Sebastian Funke: It is a browser-based virtual world where you can dress your avatar, chat with other people, and have private rooms which you can decorate with virtual items. Virtual items are purchased with virtual currency, and you buy virtual currency with real money that you buy

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Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 2)

Sramana: How long did it take you to realize that what you had set out to do was not going to happen? Sebastian Funke: Way too long. We spent a lot of time trying to optimize the product by adding features and more capabilities. We never really looked at what the users wanted. We never

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Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Sebastian Funke is the CEO and co-founder of Smeet, a free browser-based 3-D social chat game. He co-founded Smeet in 2006 directly out of college. Sebastian was born in East Germany and moved to Berlin when he was nine. Today Smeet is based in Berlin with

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How To Build A Profitable Gaming Company: Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium (Part 7)

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

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