Desining from Day One: Artists as Founders: Multiverse (S20) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020

TL;DR

Multiverse (YC W20) builds next-gen tabletop RPGs blending D&D and Roblox. The founding team of two MIT engineers and a world-class artist argues that artists possess entrepreneurial skills comparable to tech founders (audience-building, business acumen, low-cost high-impact content creation) and should be brought on as co-founders, not just contractors.

Key insights

• Games as entertainment products require a strong point of view and foundational decisions made without immediate testing, unlike typical tech products; artists bring the necessary intuition and instin
• Artists running social media, Patreon, Kickstarter, or Twitch channels are effectively entrepreneurs: they manage businesses, build audiences, and generate recurring revenue with small teams.
• Hiring from AAA studios (e.g., Riot, Blizzard) is less valuable than recruiting scrappy independent artists who have built their own audiences from scratch, mirroring startup growth.