Machra VR Adventures mission and vision statement

The mission statement for my business Machra VR Adventures is as follows: "Machra VR Adventures is dedicated to redefining and reinvigorating the tabletop role playing experience through virtual reality to bring players closer together". Our vision is to be the number one platform for online tabletop role playing. This accurately states what my business will strive to accomplish with our product and services. Online tabletop role playing typically is held over a video chat service such as Skype or Google Hangouts. This is problematic in the fact that players only see a flat image of other players and the person running the game, which drastically changes the dynamic of play. Players may have a harder time discussing strategies as they have to talk one at a time and side conversations are nearly impossible. Video chat services are reliably unreliable as well, causing dropouts, stutters, and audio/visual glitches that can destroy the immersion and pacing of an intense session. Our goal with our app Pen and Paper VR is to create a virtual environment which has the same feel as a real table, with the added benefit of increased atmosphere through 3D room environment models (the surrounding room), dramatic lighting, player costumes, and customization for in game avatars, dice, and playing environments (the playing board). These are mostly things that could not be accomplished in a normal tabletop setting without a lot of effort, and can be done relatively easily using virtual reality. As virtual reality technology becomes more and more ubiquitous, experiences like these will become common as a standard way to interact with a game, movie, play, etc. As the technology advances, it will be possible for players to use their hands and facial expressions during sessions to get their point across. At this point, there will be practically no difference between tabletop role playing in real life and in virtual reality. We hope that this will add to the experience enough that our platform will become the premiere way for players to experience tabletop role playing.

John Dimmer talk

John Dimmer's talk was the most informational and expansive presentation yet. He first discussed his business experience, starting by running free range media and continuing to today where he owns several businesses and is an active entrepreneur. He talked mostly about funding after that, discussing how, why, when, and from where you should get your funding when opening a new business. He had 2 main goals for this: maximize the price paid for the business and maximize the percentage of retained ownership. These two goals should lead your decisions made around selling equity, as it can be squandered quite easily. The first step to funding is to raise money yourself or use money you already own. This is because investors will be more likely to have interest in a business run by someone who has skin in the game. This funding would be debt, grants, contests, and selling equity if needed. When raising funds, John said it is important to only raise the amount that is required to run your business until the next 'raise' where you can raise more money. Raising less causes your business to fail while raising more means that you are selling too much equity or going too far into debt. John emphasized that, when selling equity, one must be careful to never fall under 50% ownership. This is because you are no longer considered the primary owner and can have decisions made under your feet by shareholder, or end up with a paltry amount of gain at exit. Equity also changes in value over time, so it should be strategically sold to ensure maximum retained ownership. If equity is sold during raises that occur after company milestones (finishing a beta, launching a product, etc.) which is when equity value increases considerably. Not only will this gather more money, it will make sure you keep more money in the end. Equity can be even more valuable than a current salary, John advised sometimes taking a lower salary to retain more equity.

Machra VR Adventures pricing plan

Machra VR Adventure's first product will be Pen & Paper VR, a free application for Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, and Google Cardboard. It will be a platform for tabletop RPGs to be played with anyone anywhere, with participants sitting around a table in virtual reality. To monetize the app, micro-transactions will be utilized. Virtual dice will be a staple in any game played in the app, so there will be a system of owning and purchasing them individually. Just like real life tabletop gaming, players will certainly be interested in buying cool looking dice. Virtual dice will have a variety of colors and designs. Players can buy 2 individual dice for $1, a set (7 dice) for $2.75 containing one of each kind of die with matching designs, and random bags of 10 for $4; 20 for $7.50; 50 for $17; 100 for $30. In addition, players can buy miniatures to represent their character more closely in game. These will vary in price, simple ones being as low as $1.99 to more intricate ones as high as $9.99. There will be a custom miniature builder that allows players or game masters to create a customized miniature for $4.99. For game masters, there will be pre-built adventures that come with environment models to place miniatures on, miniatures for plot characters and enemies, a story line, music and room setting, and plenty of writing for the game master to set the stage for the players. These adventures will range in price depending on their length, from $10 for a 10-15 hour module to $60 for a fully featured 200+ hour adventure. I'm basing these prices off of how I view the product. $60 is the price of a brand new fully featured game, so it isn't unreasonable for a campaign which will include many 3D models, animations, music tracks, and writing.

Brian Forth talk

Brian talk was focused mainly on his business, Sitecrafting, and how and why his business is the way it is. He was clear that Sitecrafting was started in part as a backlash against many other businesses' decisions on how to treat employees. After being laid off, he felt that a company should focus more on its employees and ensure that they have a secure job that is comfortable. One of the biggest ways that he accomplished this was to be clear about his company's values. If you, the leader of the company, cannot communicate a unifying idea of what your company stands for to your employees, they will not work to their full potential. In addition, these values should be kept in mind during the hiring process to ensure that people coming into the workplace have similar goals to the company. Brian's business is focused on employee experience, so someone looking to gather experience and climb up in their field may not be the best hire. The other side to Sitecrafting that Brian mentioned was the product that they produce. Custom websites require a closer relationship with the client, and also require the client to understand the goals of the company. Brian mentioned that one of the first things that they ask any client about is what their goal is for a project. If their plan is not an intricate, customized website (which it may not be) then Sitecrafting is not the best choice for them. Essentially, for a successful and unified business, company goals must be established any communicated to people working with or inside the business.

Erik Hanburg talk

Listening to Erik's talk was very informative. It's clear that he has 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur from the way he talks about it. The thing that he talked about that stuck to me the most was practicing shipping. He mentioned the book he wrote in 8th grade, emphasizing that doing something like this gives you a more holistic view of what it means to take on a large project. He also showed how authoring some books paid off for him in the long term, giving him a bit of security. I know that if I want to achieve my life goals, I'm going to have to practice shipping with my own work. I need to create games to become a game designer and I need to write more D&D content if I want to become a games writer. If I was able to, like Erik said, break time for money eventually by generating income with these projects, it would be great. I'm not focused on that though, just knowing what it is like to take a coding or writing project to completion would give me more insight on future projects. I liked Erik's story about the theater he started. It showed that just knowing how to run a business isn't always enough and how living the life of an entrepreneur is unpredictable. It must be heartbreaking to put so much work into a theater and only be able to run 6 shows.  I enjoyed listening to Erik, and I thought that his presentation was full of useful information.

3 Business Ideas

Starting a business is a challenging prospect. If I were to start a business, I would need to have a certain amount of personal investment in the product or service I would be providing. Thankfully for this class, I have a very large interest in cutting edge technology, so I'd like to start some kind of tech business.

The first business idea I have is a virtual reality arcade. Virtual reality as it exists now is difficult to get your hands on. It either requires a powerful computer or a modern games console that represents a large upfront personal investment before any virtual reality equipment is purchased. Additionally, for a compelling experience, a large area to move around in is required, something that many people do not have readily available. My virtual reality arcade would allow anyone interested in trying VR in a large enough space.

My next business concept is a ramen vending machine. I know that this technology is common in Japan, but I have yet to see something like this in America aside from traditional ones that serve packaged snacks and coffee. This ramen 'bar' would allow customers to customize their order by adding things like eggs, soy sauce, sriracha sauce, hoisen sauce, and generally pick from various recipes. The machine could pair with a smartphone app that saves favorite recipes and shows the location of other vending machines. I would place these machines in food courts in malls or any kind of cafeteria at a hospital or airport. In concept, they would be inexpensive because they do not require a server. The only people I would need to employ would be in repair and manufacturing.

My final business idea is a tabletop RPG content website. I would assemble a group of writers and testers to create content for tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, Numenera, Pathfinder, and so on. I would sell this content in an online store where it would be purchasable by PDF, or eventually print. Selling this content as PDFs would be inexpensive, the only issue I can see is piracy potentially undercutting my profits.

What I want to learn about entrepreneurship

As a computer science major, I've always been interested in computer software development. I have a love for video games that I'd like to make into a career, but I realize that this could be quite a difficult task given the competition I'm up against. I would be happy as a programmer for a large project, being involved in game development in any way is a huge goal for me, but I really want to create something in which me and the team I'm working with all have a large influence over the end product. Becoming an independent game developer is probably my biggest and most daunting goal.

I'm in no way rushing into it. I've seen too many burgeoning independent game projects that are poorly managed and end up disappointing the audience that decided to back them on Kickstarter or Indegogo or whatever. I know I lack the skills to manage these types of projects, which makes this entrepreneurship course worth more than just the credits to me. If I'm ever going to achieve my goal, I'll have to learn the realities of business and how it relates to software development in a way I could apply to my own projects. Putting indie development to the side, I'm sure that knowing how businesses are started will help me understand the forces at play in a game development career. This knowledge will be useful when I am dealing with managers and directors that have to think about the business side of a game project more than the artistic side.

I have little knowledge of how businesses are started and maintained, but I've got to start somewhere if I really want to achieve my goals in life.