David Perry - Part Two

That's a great question. We have a relationship with EEDAR who tracks all the sales information. We have a server set-up that connects theirs to ours, and whenever you put all your information in we ping their servers to work out the sales potential of what you just submitted.

So if you write that you're going to sell a million copies, we can say: "Historically, 235,000." So the investors are informed - and we just try to keep it real as much as we can, and as time goes on we'll do that more and more.

But at the end of the day we give the investors a chance to reach out to attorneys - because they don't know who the best game attorneys are, but we have a list - and to consultants. My advice would be that if you're about to part with any substantial amount of money in this industry, get a design review done with a professional, and get an attorney to write your contracts.

Hopefully, our goal is to try to keep it real, so that people do deals they don't regret later - on either side.

It's a real challenge. For a lot of teams, what I see is that they know three ways of getting money. They know someone who knows someone, and they try to get the meeting but they don't get it, and they call somebody else who has a friend who's wealthy but they're not really interested... and they have one more idea.

Generally they don't have the reach to be able to consider more options, and I like the idea - I'm so idealistic, it's scary - I believe there's a way to make it so that this can be improved. So if you have a game and you put it on our service and it's getting some heat and interest, we'll go out of our way to get it in front of everyone.

We'll be careful about that, so we're not going to do it with everybody, but we'll do it with the ones that are really getting momentum, so we make sure it really gets considered by everyone. Hopefully we'll end up with a bunch of success stories, with somebody who before would have only had those three options, but now are considered by 600 access points that could fund it. Then people will get it.

I want to be clear - you can't sell rubbish, that'll never work. You have to put together a good pitch, make a good trailer. As I always say, the people who raise money are the ones that don't need it - meaning that the idea is so good and there's so little risk...

The perfect analogy is, you're the investor. Imagine somebody was coming to you with this idea - would you fund it? It's amazing how many people aren't so sure.

My biggest problem is... I've spent over USD 1 million now personally on GameInvestors. I'm breaking the cardinal rule, which is: Never fund anything with your own money.

That's my problem - I keep getting interested in something, thinking it won't be much, and then I start spending money. I hire a team, that team starts eating cash, then I keep changing my mind on things I'd like to see done. Because there's nobody between me and the money I just keep changing stuff. Each time there are always costs, but when it's your own money you tinker around a little bit.

I actually don't think it's a very good thing - it's not smart. But then, on the other hand, I've only got myself to blame, right? That's why I kicked off so many things, because I can, and I don't have to ask for permission.

If I was to go off and pitch every one, I wouldn't start so many things.