Iterating Fun - Simon Newstead

Think it’s hard finding engineers?

Try finding a for a startup that makes mobile games for women.  

Your wishlist might look something like this… 

• Someone who has deep games experience, but there are so few gaming companies that have done high quality mobile games for that audience.
• Someone who has a fashion industry background and a keen sense of trends and style - yet the worlds of fashion and gaming are proverbial ships in the night.
• Someone with a global perspective - knows the US audience yet is tuned in with innovation out of Asia (where our development team is based)
• Someone who can understand the vision for our brand (our ambition for that honestly scares me sometimes), and drive forward in unchartered waters 
• Someone who loves startup life - rewards and risks

Needle in the haystack enough?

After a couple months searching, we interviewed several talented artists, but few with the other elements.  Great people for building out the team but not the lead creative role.

Always “so close, yet so far”.

Yet in the end we managed to find someone who brought all the pieces together.  

Fashion design, deep love of games (everything from Star Wars Galaxies to Mall World). A third culture kid (fellow Eurasian!) who draws inspiration from the US, Europe and Asia.

The funny thing was, she turned out to be one of our original fans.  On our web 3d world Frenzoo.com, she created a popular vfashion boutique under the Sheeana avatar name. She knew our project from the start, and kept up we pivoted from web to mobile. 

We ultimately found the candidate with the best experience and passion for our project was one of our players.

Learning: occasionally the best talent is right in front of you, if you only look

Have you had success hiring one of your players?  or