EGD 3: Scratching the creative itch with designing and building a company, capturing the spirit of the company values, and how the games company is li

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Today I’m talking with Derk de Geus, the co-founder of Paladin Studios. Derk has been building his games company for close to fifteen years, and has many insights to share with us.

• Derk shares the survival story of his company around the financial crisis in 2008
• Derk’s background was very non-entrepreneurial, he stumbled upon it after he found how interesting it was to do money from his creative work
• Derk’s personal goal was to create the best working environment for the people at the company
• Designing a company is very creative work, and it was satisfying, “scratching the creative itch”
• Founder’s patterns of behavior will become tangible for the people in the company
• Vision matters in entrepreneurship, know what you want, and the real goal shouldn’t be money
• Running a games company is like being the captain of a pirate ship
• In the early days, the founders should be concerned about cashflow – make sure there is money coming in
• If you are a co-development games company or in the service business, brining on investors doesn’t really make sense
• Co-development has a revenue share component, so it’s not fully work-for-hire

Content mentioned:

• Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius