Shawn Yeager + Co.

My Talk at Gamercamp Lv3

Shawn Yeager — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:48:12 +0000

I had the pleasure of delivering a talk to a great group of independent game designers and developers at this year’s Gamercamp. The subject of my talk was building a business on a passion for indie games.

My slides are not a free-standing slideument, so they’re offered primarily for those that attended the talk. The full audio and screencast will be available on the Gamercamp site in the new year.

Better Beat the Odds: Make games you love and stop eating KD every night

View more presentations from Shawn Yeager

Want the deal? Push for it.

Shawn Yeager — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:23:29 +0000

No deal is the only deal you can do. No potential partner is the only one that fits. When negotiating a partnership, patience is key, but too much can be a bad thing. It wastes time and resources. Each deal you keep chasing represents an opportunity cost measured by those you aren’t. If the other party doesn’t share your sense of eagerness, if not urgency, it’s time to move on.

What’s the fix to assuring an appropriate sense of urgency and preventing lingering deals from sapping your business development resources? Set a target, and be accountable to it. If business development and partnerships are only icing on the cake, then what’s another six, twelve or eighteen months of waiting around?

It’s also important to be clear about the outcomes you expect with your potential partner. If partnerships are an integral part of your growth strategy, and not just an afterthought, you’ll know what outcomes you’re working toward, and should share these with potential partners. This sets the right tone for negotiations, communicating that you aren’t working toward a “nice to have,” but instead are working your plan. If not them, then someone else.

This isn’t, however, a suggestion that business development should be a rapid-fire process or that hands can or should be forced. But it is a call to be clear on desired outcomes and be committed to achieving them on a timeline.

And if conditions simply aren’t right for doing the deal, then what? Sometimes it’s OK to press pause on a negotiation. Put the deal on the back burner for when conditions are ripe or when the other party will be ready to commit to the process.

Who Owns Your Future?

Shawn Yeager — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:07:20 +0000

It’s increasingly difficult to produce examples of software or services companies that will escape a shift to — or at least a major embrace of — cloud computing. With this shift comes new business models, new channels, new products and services; in short, change and lots of it. How you navigate this change will define the future of your business.

Who owns the strategy? Who owns the P&L? Who wakes up every morning thinking about how to tackle the tough problems and transform your business?

Who’s motivated, financially and otherwise, to truly care?

It’s not enough to take these issues on as a management team. This diffuses accountability and effectiveness.

So, who owns your future? If your answer is anything but a single name of a senior executive, then the answer is no one.