Video games have broken the barrier on imagination. By playing them, gamers can become adventurers, detectives, boxers, athletes and even coaches. This scratches the itch for many, both young and old, but for many players it is not enough. Which is why Míster aims to become a model in the new generation of games, known as fantasy league, to allow the user to feel like a real sports coach in a real league.
Míster is by Catalan startup 3 Match Games, cofounded by Marc Cercós –ideologue with Pau Garcia-Milà of EyeOs- Miguel Ángel Ruiz and Michael Guimet. It is a game that, after 10 months on the market, has attracted more than 100,000 users. The objective is for it to become first choice among football fans and with this dream in mind they are taking part in the second edition of Menorca Millennials to find investors.
Playing in real life
The original idea comes from the United States, specifically from Cercós's time spent in San Francisco: "The concept of a fantasy league was all the rage there three years ago, and still is. They are games in which the user makes teams to play against friends and other players to win prizes and cash money." However, the main thing about the model is that one does not win or lose according to what happens in a virtual match, but according to the position in the ranking and winning prizes depends on how the team does in real life.
In the US, the industry for these new video games is valued at more than 3.6 billion dollars, but in Europe they have still to explode on the scene and Míster wants to take advantage of this. "When I returned to Barcelona, I saw that my friends were playing something similar but very basic and without money involved that was based on the Spanish football league," recalls Cercós. The mechanic was the same, and the game had been well-received, which led the entrepreneur to switch his attention to this model.
The idea began to take form at the end of 2014. "The first thing was to find my first partner, in Miguel Ángel, who is from Seville," says Cercós, "he had the website Comuniazo.com, based on a football game from the 1990s, which attracted a lot of traffic and I proposed us going ahead together with the project." The website had a community of almost a million monthly gamers and that represented the bulk of users they wanted to interest in the new game that the Catalan had in mind. Moreover, Ruiz brought with him a background in programming that he didn't have.
Growing on paltry resources
Today, Míster is a game without either prizes or money rewards because it is still in its growth phase and bringing new users on board. That's why, when asked about turnover, the cofounder talks of a figure that is "small, but enough to maintain a minimum structure."
So far it has grown according to the bootstrapping model – starting a business on small resources or minimal capital – in order to see how far it can go without outside help. "We tried to find investment at the beginning, but we saw that the there was still not enough interest in the product and that, with it only being the first few months, it was better to focus the resources on growing and monetising it ourselves," says Cercós, who does not hesitate to add that in that time they have managed to pay the team's salaries and invest in marketing.
Now, with the participation in Menorca Millennials, they want to boost its growth and take advantage of the summer and the start of the new season to double in size: "The valuation of our company is optimal and we believe that it is a good opportunity to find investors." And if the response is negative once again? "We will continue down the bootstrapping road to see how far we can grow on our own," he answers confidently.
They are so convinced about the quality of their product that they have no fear of the competition. Not from Comunio, the original German game that inspired the Comuniazo.com website, nor from the new video games that appeared at the same time as Míster. "Unlike them, we want to end up awarding prizes and money to players like they do in the United States. And, what's more, we are smaller than they are but have the best valuations from users," adds Cercós, who repeats that his is a "quality product and better than the others."
The virtue of startups
This Catalan entrepreneur has built a professional career based always on the experience of creating new businesses as startups. He was the cofounder of eyeOS and Archy, he worked for or contributed to Wuaki.tv, Fever and Bily, and now has come up with 3 Match Games.
For him, the fact of having always been part of young teams has provided him with the necessary baggage he can apply to his projects today: "When you are in a startup, you get to know all parts of the business, you touch on all areas and you develop skills for facing any sort of challenge." It is all knowledge and experience he is putting into practice with the creation of Míster and that allows him to face obstacles with another attitude. "You have seen so many problems that you can solve anything that arises. There are lots of things that have been overcome that I learnt from early on and from the mistakes made," he adds.
However, opting for newly created companies also brings with it risk, something he knows and accepts: "I am a person who needs to feel very motivated in what I do. I cannot be in a company that does not fill me with passion and that does not offer me enough. I am basically a product designer, even though I do other things. I enjoy designing products and bringing them to maturity, and that only lasts a few years. Once this phase is over, I prefer to move on and do something new."