If you want to start a games company in 2012, the hottest sector is mobile games, and the hottest place to be is San Francisco.

That's the thinking behind YetiZen, the San Francisco-based incubator and business accelerator, which has announced that applications are open for its next three month program, starting in March 2012.

To find out about what this entails we caught up with co-founder and CEO Sana Choudary (pictured left with co-founder and CCO Japheth Dillman: photo credit: Dean Takahashi).

Pocket Gamer: There are plenty of incubator and accelerator programs available. What makes YetiZen different?

Sana Choudary: YetiZen is the only games-focused accelerator program in existence. Other programs are primarily oriented towards consumer web start ups. Many reject game-related start ups on principle while some tend to take a minor number game start ups every year but their programs are not equipped to truly accelerate game start ups in their businesses.

In contrast, the YetiZen accelerator program is focused on helping game studios, platforms and tools build and strengthen their business models, marketing strategies, and market position while simultaneously connecting them with our network of seed partners, angels and VCs. These companies are also given access to incredible partnership deals to accelerate their user acquisition and distribution.

Why is San Francisco the ideal location?

San Francisco is the hub of all things gaming, particularly social and mobile games. You only need to look as far as our San Francisco Game Developers Workshop, the monthly mixer and workshop series YetiZen has been running for the last several years for evidence of this. Each year our events touch 5,000 developers.

The ecosystem of gaming entrepreneurs, game designers, investors and others that we have in San Francisco is unparalleled by anything else in the rest of the world. At YetiZen we are harnessing the cream of the crop of this ecosystem into an intense three month program, as well as further developing it to create more successful gaming entrepreneurs

What sort of help do you offer teams and how long does each program last?

The accelerator is built upon four major pillars. The first is a rigorous and intense three month educational program run by 150+ successful veterans and entrepreneurs from the game industry whom we call mentors.

The program consists of one to three workshops daily with mentors who provide actionable advice on marketing, distribution, monetisation, pitching, development, analytics, funding, and exit strategies. In addition, start ups are given the opportunity to meet with a subset of our mentors outside of workshops in office hour settings for strategy sessions and one-on-one advice and conversation.

The second is a robust set of partnership deals actively negotiated by YetiZen. These range from publishing opportunities, to seed funding, to user distribution and acquisition, to legal support, and much more. These negotiated partnership services are either substantially discounted or free. Access to partnerships continues for the life of the company, even after the formal three month program is over.

Third, connecting with a vast array of investors ranging from angels (both institutional groups and individuals) and VCs as well as press. For this purpose we have three key events every round 1) An investor day where YetiZen companies pitch to about 25 investors 2) A private YetiZen Board of Advisors dinner, comprised of top industry VC investors and 3) Public Demo Day - open to the entire Silicon Valley investor, acquirer community and top journalists from the game space.

And finally, YetiZen actively seeks exit partnerships for accelerator companies. Some of these M&A partners are the typical players in the game industry. Other exit partners come from outside of games but are interested in games for their technology, their distribution, or their IP (often a combination of those three).

YetiZen will help the companies find a successful exit after the program when the companies have reached various success metrics, which are discussed and determined during the mentorship program.

What sort of start ups/tech areas are you looking for and how early stage should they be?

YetiZen focuses on four types of game industry businesses: game studios, game platforms, game publishers, and game tools.

In general, applicants have a prototype, first playable, or first release already completed prior to applying to YetiZen. We still like to meet start ups who are at an earlier stage and hear about their product vision. If we like what we hear we will provide a conditional acceptance based on completion of product and give them coaching and access to partnership deals prior to the beginning of the program to jumpstart their acceleration.

How hands on are the mentors and what's the schedule in terms of how the accelerator works day-to-day?

With over 150 mentors involved in the YetiZen program, start ups receive a multitude of opportunities to receive mentorship.

The program consists of one to three workshops daily with mentors who provide actionable advice on marketing, distribution, monetisation, pitching, development, analytics, funding, and exit strategies.

In addition, start ups are given the opportunity to meet with a subset of our mentors outside of workshops in office hour settings for strategy sessions and one-on-one advice and conversation.

What do you hope to have created/nurture during each program, and how do you handle the post-accelerator phase?

To answer I need to tell you a little about what we have seen among game start ups over the last several years. We have seen brilliant game entrepreneurs stuck in a run to release successful titles against more and more heavily funded and larger competitors, something inherently not scalable and more difficult over time as platforms matured.

To survive, these start ups often had to do work for hire to buy themselves time. A likely exit scenario was accepting low balled talent acquisition offers or getting a job with a larger company, both of which were not proportionate rewards for the blood, sweat, and tears put in building the start up.

We love entrepreneurs with innovative phenomenal product visions, and believe that the right type of business boost early on in the life of a company will allow more of them to create companies of consequence, and ultimately get large successful exits that are more fitting to the time and effort put in by avoiding common early mistakes and carefully planning the trajectory towards exit.

The network and relationships needed to do this effectively often take years in the making, something many young entrepreneurs do not have. We have put in this time and effort (between the two of us, we have over 20 years of experience in business and games), and have created the YetiZen accelerator program to provide structured education, partnership deals, and investment to help the most promising entrepreneurs win.

After the accelerator program, once the start up has reached growth and success metrics we have jointly decided, we actively pursue merger and exit opportunities. Our equity model aligns our incentives with the entrepreneurs and we only win when they do - at a successful exit.

Is there any limitation in terms of non-US companies applying?

There is no limitation to non-US companies applying. We have already had a British/Argentinean company with a Greek founder and an Italian company go through our accelerator program.

Currently we have applicants from Russia, France, Belgium and the Middle East. We encourage non-US companies to apply. But applicants should keep in mind that we expect at minimum a portion of the founding team to be present in San Francisco during the three month acceleration round.

What's YetiZen's business model in terms?

We take an equity stake in the company. The entrepreneur pays us nothing. YetiZen does not take a piece of the funding the companies receive.

The entire benefits of the program are included with the equity share between the start up and YetiZen. The equity share ranges from 3-11 percent, depending on the number of risk and growth areas we work on with the start up, the average being 7-8 percent.

Thanks to Sana for her time.

If you're interested in the next accelerator program, you can find out more details here.