Interview

Speaker Spotlight: Pollen VC's Martin Macmillan on building solid financial models for mobile games

Meet the mobile gaming financial experts at Pocket Gamer Connects London, February 14-15

Speaker Spotlight: Pollen VC's Martin Macmillan on building solid financial models for mobile games

We are gearing up for Europe’s leading B2B conference for the global mobile games industry, Pocket Gamer Connects London, and we could not be more excited to share with you the fantastic speakers gracing us with their knowledge and expertise at PG Connects!

You can view the entire speaker line-up so far here to get a full scope of the talent that will be speaking this February. To give you a glimpse of what you can expect, we are spotlighting some of the most highly anticipated speakers to showcase the incredible talent and top-tier businesses that will be sharing their insights with us.

We spoke with founder and CEO of Pollen VC, Martin Macmillan. Pollen VC provides credit lines to growing gaming studios to help them scale with paid UA. Since launching in 2014, Pollen has worked with hundreds of studios to provide a capital-efficient way to grow without relying purely on venture capital, and provided a free suite of online tools to model ROAS, LTV, and Cash Flow available on our website.

Join us at PG Connects London on February 14-15 to hear Macmillan present a deep dive into building a financial model for studios planning to scale their games and optimise all available channels to fuel their growth.

PocketGamer.biz: What do you enjoy most about working in the mobile games industry?

Martin Macmillan: The tenacity of founders. It seems that few people ever leave the industry, they just constantly plug away until they achieve success. New business models and technology innovations just provide another opportunity to double down and keep trying.

What leaders/pioneers in games do you find inspiring?

I enjoy the content put out by Joakim Achren and his EliteGameDevelopers podcast. He has a refreshing honesty and openness to share which is invaluable to growing studios and aspiring gaming entrepreneurs. He also gives great investor insights to founders, now he is an investor with Play Ventures.

What was your first mobile phone?

A Motorola 5200 flip phone. I was a student at St Andrews University and so desperate for a mobile phone that I bought one without checking if any cell towers had been built in the area. They hadn’t!

If you could give other mobile games companies one piece of advice, what would it be?

Hire a CFO earlier. For some reason in mobile gaming, an experienced CFO is seen as a later stage hire. We talk with studios that make >$10M per year where the founders are still running the day-to-day finances. The value of a good CFO who also understands UA metrics can be enormous to an earlier stage studio looking to scale.

Can people get in touch with you at the event? What sort of people would you like to connect with?

Founders and UA managers who want to better understand the finance behind the games. There is always a focus on UA and monetization at gaming events, but all too often the financials are not an area of focus. Having better financial literacy can mean the difference between success and failure, which is why we invest a lot of time as a company into building tools and content to help founder better understand the topic.

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Don’t miss out on the opportunity to meet with Martin Macmillan and other industry leaders at Europe’s #1 B2B games industry conference on February 14-15. Make sure you secure your spot today and save up to $230 with our Mid Term ticket offer before prices rise at the close of Tuesday January 25.


Editor

Former editor of PocketGamer.biz, Khai can also be found on Vice, Star Trek, and in numerous scientific journals and publications.