Hey everybody, Scheol on the forums. I have been a fan of Titan Network for a long time and was notified on the forums to bring some of this info over here. I've been investigating outside sources for funding options for the studio to go independent or fund them groundbreaking a new studio. I don't want to provide false hope, I'm looking into it and asking questions to insiders as to what options are available and what the market looks like right now for this type of venture. Let me paste the posts from the forums here so all of the info is in one place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheol View Post
"If that's what they're looking to do, and that does make sense to try and branch out as a new studio, I'm meeting up with someone tomorrow who's a funds manager for a large venture capital firm and I'll get it in his ear. At the very least I can pick his brain on what the market looks like from the inside for that kind of venture in this market."
"Just got home now. We had a long talk and he said the venture capital market right now has been contracting, but after telling him about the situation with as many details as I have (which isn't a lot), he did say that investors either private or institutional should show signs of interest based on the fact that a lot of the infrastructure could potentially be maintained and a marketable product with a black track record acquired. He's going to try and get me a list of a few people and firms he knows of in the NorCal area but no promises. At the very least, some positive words from a big financial insider is good."
The person I know is looking into potential contacts in the Northern California region to contact. It may be a few days before I hear back from him, but I should hear something. It's a shot, but nothing is obviously certain. There are a lot of things going on in the market right now but he did say that if that were his industry and he was out there, he would at the very least want to hear the proposal and see some hard numbers. From a guy like this, that's a good thing.
My question is this: What's going on with any if at all coordination? Has anybody started a proposed plan? Do we know if anyone from Paragon Studios is also trying to work anything like this? If we're going to try and help them, we all need to be on the same page and know what we're going to be asking for from both NCSoft and investors. And I apologize if all of these questions are currently answered in other threads both here or somewhere else, I try and read as much as I can but my schedule doesn't allow me to read everything.
Several big questions are going to be physical infrastructure, servers, billing and accounts payable/receivable, admin, etc. One idea to sway investor interest to help the numbers is to potentially lease/contract support through NCSoft and hire them as a contractor to continue those operations and pay them to handle those aspects until this proposed new venture is established enough to take on those responsibilities outright. I've worked with companies before to setup those types of agreements. It both reduces initial startup capital requirements, and it provides a new revenue stream for NCSoft.
Just ideas.