EP 595: nDreams is #1 VR Application Creator, 250,000 Sold, $6M in Funding with CEO Patrick O'Luanaigh

Nathan interviews Patrick O'Luanaigh. He started as a programmer and designer at Codemasters 20 years ago, working on micro machines V3. Prior to founding nDreams, in 2006, he was a creative director at Eidos where he was responsible for the design and gameplay of all the titles there including the well-known Tomb Raider Legend and Hitman Blood Money. nDreams is now 50 people strong and pivoted to solely focusing on virtual reality 3 years ago. nDreams has launched 6 VR titles to date.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Chimp Paradox
• What CEO do you follow? –  Elon Musk and Brendan Iribe
• Favorite online tool? — Box
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Life is too short to play it safe, you gotta take your risk. It’s so much more exciting even though it is scary, you just gotta do it. Be brave!”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:18 – Nathan introduces Patrick to the show
• 02:07 – The greatest challenge of VR (virtual reality) at the moment is the limited number of hardware available
• 02:16 – “We are still figuring out how to make the very best games in the experience of VR”
• 02:36 – nDreams’ game that has generated the most income is Perfect Beach
• 03:02 – nDreams’ key metric is the number of units sold
• 03:18 – nDreams has sold 250K units
• 03:49 – nDreams has 50 people in the team
• • 03:56 – Ideas come from anyone in the studio
  • 04:05 – They work with the best idea and do an estimate
  • 04:25 – There’s a lot of things to learn in VR
  • 04:30 – nDreams focuses on gameplay
• 04:49 – Perfect can be purchased on Google Play Store or your VR digital store
• • 05:16 – Mobile version currently costs $2.99
  • 05:20 – The high-end version costs around $7.99
• 05:40 – nDreams has earned 75K from Perfect
• 05:50 – The challenge of PlayStation VR is the price
• 06:06 – Patrick has not heard of other competitors who have sold as much VR as they have
• 06:44 – It’s hard to tell the total potential basis for the VR space
• 07:00 – Patrick started the company 10 years ago
• 07:36 – nDreams was bootstrapped but they raised capital for VR
• 08:06 – nDreams has raised around $6M
• 08:14 – Patrick started the business even before the start of the VR market
• 08:41 – 2016 top line revenue
• 09:30 – Patrick can predict which games will do well even when they’re still early in the market
• 09:43 – nDreams is trying out different games and genres
• 09:53 – “We’re in the stage of learning what works well”
• 10:08 – In nDreams’ released games, SkyDIEving is the only one that’s for free
• 10:48 – Perfect Beach was from an experiment
• 11:08 – Gunner’s expenses
• 11:45 – nDreams is launching more games this year
• 12:30 – Patrick shares where most people are buying their games
• 13:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Being in a space that is new can be challenging because of the limited data and resources.
• You learn in every process you take .
• Life is too short to play it safe—be brave and take those risks!

Resources Mentioned:

• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
• Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible.
• Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books.
• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives