We launched Megamod one year ago, and below is a summary of project development from the very beginning. We'd like to share with you the most significant milestones from our first year to give you insight into our progress.
We are wrapping up our round in a few weeks, and there's still a chance to come aboard and co-invest. Contact alexkostarev@megamod.io to discuss your interest with us.
At first, our idea was that by providing creators with a genuinely simple game creation tool, many creators would be inclined to work with it. Additionally, we were confident that if creators could earn even a small income from creating games, they would stay with us for the long run.
So, the first hypothesis was that our tool enables the production of quality content and is convenient for creators, with a unit price not exceeding $10.
In the initial months after the Megamod tool's launch, we attempted to attract creators through streamers. We broadcasted the process of creating worlds, and trained streamers to work with Megamod. Unfortunately, this approach didn't work out; we acquired only about 10 creators at a cost of over $3 per acquisition. While those who joined became true Megamod enthusiasts, this approach couldn't scale. However, we managed to validate the hypothesis that our tool works, and its MVP is well-received by creators. Of course, we see numerous directions for improvement, but even the current level of the tool can attract and retain creators.
The second hypothesis was that we could create a network of creators and scale it that way. This would allow us to obtain an unlimited amount of content at a price not exceeding $7.
We decided to approach the creator network as a form of recruitment, launching several partnership programs with schools teaching game design and posting job advertisements for creators on job search websites. Starting from August 2023, the number of creators who came on board and stayed with us increased. By November 2023, we had 100+ creators, located in the CIS region, who were working for Megamod on a daily basis. And 1,785 creators have joined us by transitioning from onboarding to becoming a part of the team.
The third hypothesis was that we can scale the network of creators in other regions, and our scaling method works.
In December 2023, we began scaling in Southeast Asia, starting with the Philippines. In just 5 months, we managed to establish a creator network of the same size as in the CIS. We confirmed that the creator network is scalable and are planning to expand further into India and LATAM. At this point, we also confirmed the hypothesis that we can create an unlimited amount of content priced at $6 per unit.
Hypothesis Four: Quality of our content for the audience.
Throughout the process, we have been concerned with both content creation and distribution. One concern is if our content is of sufficient quality for our intended audience. Over the year, we managed to conduct several series of experiments, some of which indirectly confirmed our assumptions.
For example, with our MegaGames and MegaChill sub-products, we managed to build a core audience of 200 players who play our games almost daily. But the real breakthrough came with the release on the gaming portal CrazyGames, where within 2 weeks, we gained an audience of 180k players, consistent gaming traffic, and a rating of 8.7 (based on 13,000 reviews).
We consider this a serious validation of the quality of our content and plan to develop our game builds on this portal. This will allow us to test many features before adding them to our application, leveraging high-quality gaming traffic.
Our further plan broadly consists of the following stages:
Develop a mobile application, confirming high retention in the app through social mechanics and additional retention features.
Develop and validate a sustainable monetization model.