⚡ How an unlikely sketch transformed a failing games company into a global phenomenon

Morning Innovators ⚡ This week (in less than 5 minutes!) we’ll explore…

🥳 The best funding opportunities, events and jobs in the start-up world
📰 The biggest news stories in the start-up world
🐦 How an unlikely sketch transformed a failing games company into a global phenomenon
🍝 How Pasta playlists got this one company in front of millions of people for free
👀 Our favourite start-up to keep an eye on this week
📢 A tool that helps you simplify social media marketing

✨ Last weeks most clicked link was this opportunity with pitch league to get feedback on your pitch deck, and the chance to win a $20k investment.

Happy hustling,
Rich & Gary

P.S. For those of you who were lucky enough to get tickets for our first start-up social on the 21st March, we’re really looking forward to seeing you there! It’s going to be a lot of fun.

🎤 Events/Opportunities

🎥 Applications for the Media Cymru Seed Fund 2024 are open! Creative freelancers and businesses in Wales are invited to apply for up to £10,000 to Research and Develop ideas for new products, services and experiences in the media sector.

🌽 Are you doing something exciting in the world of FoodTech? Bluestein Ventures who invests at pre-seed to Series A, targeting consumer-facing technology across the food supply chain like health and wellness, proprietary food tech, commerce and digital technology, have just raised $45m for their third fund.

💸 Z Fellows is a one-week fast-tracked opportunity, targeted at technical founders, to help you get ready to accelerate your business and raise money. The programme involved mentorship, to get mentors, office hours, networking, and if you decide to take it, a $10k investment.

🤑 Y Combinator are currently accepting applications for their Summer 24 cohort. If you don’t already know, this is one of the most prestigious accelerator programmes in the world, and has helped propel companies like Dropbox to superstardom.

💼 Job opportunities

📸 Junior Product Designer, BeReal
🌳 Junior Product Designer, Vaayu
📱 Sales Executive, Populate Social

📷 UK-based Instagram challenger, Lapse, is bidding to take on the photo sharing giant with it’s filter free platform thanks to a £24m Series A. UKTN

🚗 Live in California and want a free car? Toyota are essentially paying people to take the Hydrogen-fuelled Mirai. The timing couldn’t be worse though, as Shell recently announced it was closing its 7 hydrogen refuelling stations in California, which equates to 10% of the states stations. TechCrunch

🖼️ Toronto-based AI image generator Ideogram is raising $80m from investors. Not bad for a company less than 2 years old! Bloomberg

📧 Sticking with the AI theme, Glean, the AI-powered work assistant has just raised $200m valuing the company at $2.2bn. Pymnts.com

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🐦 From Sketch to Sensation: The Unlikely Ascent of Angry Birds

In the frostbitten landscape of Espoo, Finland, a small gaming company named Rovio was waging a silent battle for survival. The early days of Rovio were fraught with the kind of tension and uncertainty that could either forge diamonds or shatter dreams. With a series of 51 games that failed to make a significant impact, Rovio was on the precipice of collapse, its resources dwindling and morale at an all-time low (no surprise there after 51 failures). The company was packed with raw talent and unbridled passion, but success remained elusive.

So what changed? Jaakko Iisalo, a game designer at Rovio, was in the throes of creativity, searching for the next big idea. Amidst his routine of drafting concepts, Iisalo sketched a peculiar image that would alter the course of Rovio's destiny. It was a group of birds, but these were no ordinary birds. They were round, comically angry, and conspicuously devoid of wings and legs. This image, devoid of context or purpose, inexplicably resonated with the Rovio team. It was the spark in the dark, the first flicker of what would become a global phenomenon.

The genesis of Angry Birds was less about a eureka moment and more about a gradual realisation of potential. The team, inspired by the popularity of physics-based games like Crush the Castle, envisioned a game where players would catapult these irate avians at structures. The goal was simple yet compelling: destroy the structures and vanquish the green pigs who had stolen the birds' eggs. This narrative was a stroke of serendipity, inspired by the swine flu epidemic dominating the news at the time. It was quirky, timely, and had just the right amount of absurdity to stand out.

Building the first version of Angry Birds was an exercise in creativity under constraints. Rovio was financially beleaguered, making every decision, every line of code, and every pixel crucial. The development process was iterative and intense, with the team burning the midnight oil to refine the game mechanics, perfect the bird's trajectories, and ensure the destruction of the structures was as satisfying as possible. The game's physics engine, pivotal to the gameplay, was fine-tuned to balance challenge and fun, ensuring players would experience the thrill of victory and the agony of a near miss.

Promotion and user acquisition in the pre-launch phase were grassroots efforts, fuelled by creativity rather than a hefty marketing budget. Rovio leaned into the emerging power of social media, teasing the game's concept art and gameplay mechanics to stir interest and anticipation. The team also leveraged gaming forums and word of mouth, banking on the game's unique premise and engaging gameplay to generate buzz.

Angry Birds was launched quietly in December 2009, with little fanfare and modest expectations. The initial reception was lukewarm, with downloads trickling in at a pace that was hardly revolutionary. However, the game's fortunes took a dramatic turn when it was featured on the UK App Store in February 2010. This exposure was the wind beneath Angry Birds' wings, propelling it to the top of the charts and capturing the collective imagination of a global audience.

The viral spread of Angry Birds was a phenomenon, a testament to the game's universal appeal and addictively simple gameplay. The game transcended age, culture, and gaming proficiency, becoming a staple on smartphones around the world. As the downloads skyrocketed, Rovio capitalised on the momentum, releasing updates, new levels, and themed versions of the game to keep the user base engaged and growing.

The growth of Angry Birds was meteoric, a tale of perseverance, innovation, and a little bit of luck. From the brink of failure, Rovio emerged victorious, propelled by a flock of angry birds on a mission. The game's success is a mosaic of strategic promotions, word-of-mouth advocacy, and an unyielding belief in the potential of a simple idea. It's a narrative that underscores the unpredictable nature of success in the digital age, where the next big thing might just be a sketch away.

Most people think that once a business has given the customer the product or service, there is nothing more for the business to do. Well, Barilla have shown everyone why that is completely false.

Barilla have recently racked up millions of views across every social media platform you can imagine with their Pasta cooking playlists. It’s not enough for Barilla to just supply their customers with Pasta, they also want their customers to have the best experience possible with the product by cooking it to perfection.

So, what did Barilla do? They went on Spotify and created a playlist for each type of their Pasta, and have made each playlist the same duration as the cooking time for each Pasta type - to the very second!

This genius as it makes the customers feel extra cared for, it makes sure they get the best out of the product (Making them more likely to shout great things about it), but also creates a social media storm that ends up getting Barilla in front of millions of people!

What product aftercare can you do to make your customers feel extra loved?

Each week we’re featuring one start-up we love. We’d love this to come from community recommendations, so if you know a start-up doing something awesome who deserves a shout-out, please reply to this email. 

💓 CardioSignal offers a revolutionary approach to heart disease detection, utilising a smartphone-based software that acts as a medical device. This technology allows for 1-minute heart health checks anywhere, anytime, leveraging gyrocardiography to detect atrial fibrillation signs. Designed for self-monitoring, care providers, and clinical use, CardioSignal is CE marked, evidencing its compliance with EU safety and health standards. The app is supported by over a decade of research and is available in multiple European countries and India, aiming to facilitate early diagnosis and treatment of heart conditions.

Each week we highlight our favourite tools - either something we’ve been using in our businesses, or tools that our innovator community have recommended.

This week, we’re sharing Predis.ai - an AI-powered tool designed to simplify social media marketing by generating and sharing content in your brand's voice. It offers a complete suite for social media needs, including branded content, video generation, creative generation, publishing, analysis, and copy generation. The platform also supports team collaboration, customisable designs, and integrates with your workflow through APIs. It's aimed at entrepreneurs, marketers, and content creators, promising to enhance their social media presence by making content creation more efficient and aligned with brand guidelines.

Next week we’ll be looking at how the language app that everyone seems to use, got started. We’ll dive into how the idea came about, how they got their first users, and ultimately how they managed to grow to a multi-billion-dollar success story. As usual we’ll also be highlighting our favourite start-up of the week, funding opportunities, and plenty of awesome tips, tricks and tools.

P.S. Connect with us on LinkedIn…