Thinking Through Your Startup Idea

The Player Support Newsletter - 9 MAR 2025

Introduction: Serendipity in An Old Friend

---

I am attracted to characters. While it’s true we all have our quirks, many of my closest friends, and even my wife could be mistaken for beings from another dimension. One of my best friends, with whom I did a few startups with in my early 30s, is hugely responsible for my latest endeavor. He could be described as an extreme person with a massively high risk tolerance. We met in college after he almost died in automobile crash where the car was practically split in two.

In the summer of 2023, during our regular monthly call, he convinced me to quit my job and go back into the startup world to do my own thing. I had zero plans at that time to pursue something like this, but he pushed the conversation and by the end of our time I had the partial skeleton of an idea. The tipping point for me was when he said that he would give me money right there and then to quit my job. I turned down the money, but what he gave me was much more valuable - the push I needed.

After leaving my day job, and shutting down my consulting practice, I started the hard work of deconstruction, analysis, and building.

---

Step 1: Deconstruction

---

I wrapped up the previous chapter of my life with a private retreat that I held for support colleagues in the video game industry. One of the inevitable conversations was about the challenge working with vendors. When I sat down to think hard about whether or not I should do this business, I had to understand at a deep level what was going on in the industry. In particular, I wanted to know why, despite all my efforts to convince my BPO friends and share with them specific details about how to improve things that the games industry gives them a C- grade. 70 percent. 7 out of 10 - just