

Show HN:  Our startup Construct 2, how far we've come and lessons learnt so far - TomGullen

We did a "Show HN post" 6 months back of our startup and we're very excited to show everyone how far we've come as well as the lessons we've learnt so far!  It's been a roller-coaster so far and we think there's lot more of the same to come!  We did apply for Ycombinator funding but got turned down :( But may re-apply soon :)<p>For those that don't know, our startup is called Scirra and we make Construct 2 which is an HTML5 game engine (http://www.scirra.com).  Our engine allows anyone to make HTML5 games without knowing any programming.<p>It's only me and my brother working on this and we're based in London.  This is our first startup, since we last posted we've:<p>- Fully documented the engine http://www.scirra.com/manual/1/construct-2<p>- Added a fully documented Javascript SDK to help attract programmers to use our engine 
http://www.scirra.com/manual/15/sdk<p>- Added particle effects: http://www.scirra.com/labs/particles2/<p>- Added Box2D physics: http://www.scirra.com/arcade/addicting-example-games/36/html5-physics-rolling-platformer<p>- Added Gamepad support<p>- Export options for Appmobi and Phonegap<p>- Added webfont support<p>- Added publish to Chrome store<p>- Launched a 'Youtube style' HTML5 arcade (complete with game stats which is quite a popular feature!)  Project Blaze Zero is the most popular game on there so far: http://www.scirra.com/arcade/addicting-shooter-games/349/project-blaze-zero<p>- Received angel investment<p>- Grown to serving 100k uniques/200k visits/1.1m page views a month compares to 25k uniques/50k visits/340k page views in July (and still increasing fast)<p>- Served nearly 100k downloads of Construct 2<p>- Got our first print review in .NET magazine (current issue, check it out!  Page 26)<p>Lessons we've learnt so far are:<p>- Documentation is predictably boring to write, but incredibly important (like super important)<p>- Working from home can suck, normal sleep patterns are difficult to maintain<p>- It's hard to get on TechCrunch and probably not worth the bother<p>- Blogging is important, and most startups/companies do it wrong.  Writing about things people want to read is important (but a lot of startups just seem to use it as a news feed)<p>- Blogging can lead to unexpected and valuable connections<p>- Good web design/development is iterative.  You can't nail it on the head in one go (we've gone through about 3 designs, 1: http://web.archive.org/web/20110703070339/http://www.scirra.com/ 2:http://web.archive.org/web/20110716015112/http://www.scirra.com/ and 3:http://www.scirra.com)<p>- Customers love it when you email them back in under 10 minutes<p>- Engaging with people who comment about things you write/your product on social networks is important<p>- It's hard to get Twitter followers (we're still figuring out how to run our Twitter really)<p>- Akismet is amazing<p>- If people dispute you on Paypal you should resign yourself to the fact you can't win<p>- Engaging small audiences most people avoid can be valuable: http://www.hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=2148782<p>- Working out custom advertising deals with small websites is the best way to go<p>- Having a supportive community is an amazing motivator<p>- Accounting isn't fun and we'd rather just pay someone else to do it for us<p>- It's super fun and totally worth it :) (generally!)<p>We've got so much planned as well, but just hardly enough time to do it all!
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petercooper
Congratulations! Y Combinator missed out on a good thing here but you are
strongly positioned for another run at it, I'd say. With the recent Game
Closure funding, HTML5 gaming is proving to be an _incredibly_ hot space.

 _It's only me and my brother working on this and we're based in London._

As you may (or may not!) know, I run HTML5 Weekly and a few other newsletters
and have mentioned Scirra's work from time to time. And.. I obviously didn't
do my research till the other day when I discovered how (with respect) "small"
you are. Your company's image and all of the projects you do make you guys
look about 10x bigger than you are - so well done on that.

 _It's hard to get Twitter followers (we're still figuring out how to run our
Twitter really)_

You have to make hard, long term decisions when it comes to Twitter. From what
I see, you're mostly focused on responding to people (good), mentioning your
own blog posts and releases, and then retweeting occasional HTML5 gamdev
related stuff.

What you're missing is the "secret sauce" it takes to become a thought leader
(hate the term or not, it means something ;-)). Retweets are, sadly, a _bad_
way to build an audience, whereas tweets of your own work well.

The trick, then, is to rig up something like Buffer and load it up every few
days with tweets relating to ideas and technologies you want to push (Guy
Kawasaki is a total master at this, BTW.) Become known as THE account to
follow in the HTML5 game development space, perhaps.

 _Accounting isn't fun and we'd rather just pay someone else to do it for us_

Right, but you really have to be careful here, especially being in the UK and
primarily, I'm assuming, selling to the US. It introduces a number of
complexities, especially when you get into VAT, and you either need a super
clued up accountant or to keep your own careful eye on what's happening.
Perhaps in 20 years most accountants and tax men will know the Internet well
;-)

 _If people dispute you on Paypal you should resign yourself to the fact you
can't win_

Unless you're sending out physical product, having a no quibble refund
policy/guarantee will make you a lot more $ than it loses you. In my
experience, at least.

 _Got our first print review in .NET magazine_

Did you actively pursue that or did they find you?

~~~
TomGullen
Hey Peter!

Thanks for reading that huge ugly block of text, HN isn't the best way to post
lists like that :)

That's cool you run HTML5 weekly, I just subscribed! And it's great that
someone like you has already heard of us. If you ever want to ask more
questions about us or what we do please feel free to drop me an email at any
time (tom at our website domain dot com).

Interesting to know we look bigger to you than we are!

Twitter is important to us, already with our meagre presence it's one of our
top referrers so we definitely need to pay it more attention. I'll have a dig
through Guy Kawasaki's account and see if I can learn anything.

With accounting we made sure we got a good chartered one from a trustworthy
referral. I generally read up a fair amount of detail for everything so I get
a general picture of what's going on, including VAT. I was ambitious at first,
buying a thick textbook on it and doing some exercises but it wasn't long
before I realised my attention and time was being diverted away from the more
important things. Ignoring any money they save you because they are more
skilled, the time they save in my opinion is worth every penny even if you're
cash strapped. Also the risk of making a mistake sounds like it could be an
expensive one from what I read.

With .NET it stemmed from a blog post I wrote about issues using MP3 in HTML5.
Here's the original post (note that following blog posts correct a couple of
errors in regards to Flash): [http://www.scirra.com/blog/64/why-you-shouldnt-
use-mp3-in-yo...](http://www.scirra.com/blog/64/why-you-shouldnt-use-mp3-in-
your-html5-games)

I then noticed that .NET did a small snippet on their website about that
article: [http://www.netmagazine.com/news/startup-argues-dont-use-
mp3-...](http://www.netmagazine.com/news/startup-argues-dont-use-mp3-audio-
html5-games-111657)

So I saw this as an opportunity to contact them by email and tell them about
our startup. Didn't hear anything back but then a couple of months later a
reporter got in touch with us saying the editorial team sent him an email
mentioning us as a possible product to review. (Ashley also has a 3 page
article coming out regarding HTML5 audio in the next issue as well which we
are excited about!)

This is one of the unexpected connections I mentioned in the original post
that stem from popular blog posts.

Thanks again for your comments really appreciate it! We're incredibly excited
about HTML5 and think our timing is pretty good to position ourselves nicely.

------
windsurfer
What made you decide to make an offline tool? Do you find it's easier for
people to use and collaborate with? Do your customers use source control?

Do people actually purchase your "business"-class license? Have people made
over $5000 USD in revenue using your tool?

~~~
TomGullen
Hi! Thanks for the questions.

Ashley decided to go for a Windows offline tool as this is his second engine.
The first was Construct Classic (open source). When embarking on Construct 2
he felt it was better to stick with the skills he knew best. Also we weren't
sure a year or so ago if the web could handle a complex app like a game
engine. Construct 2 has hundreds of thousands of lines of code in it and there
aren't many web apps of that complexity in the wild and we couldn't find any
at that time that offered the responsiveness we enjoy in a Windows native app.

People do purchase business licenses yes, it's required for registered
businesses and individuals who make over $5k USD. I don't know if many users
have made over $5k, (but some individuals have purchased our business
license). I suspect not as it's still quite early for HTML5 and we haven't yet
added as much monetisation opportunities as we plan to.

~~~
windsurfer
Interesting, thanks for the response!

------
ddorian43
What database are you using for the game analytics and what structure?

~~~
TomGullen
Are you referring to the stats for each game in our arcade?

If so, the database is SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. We store every single
play of the game in a fully normalised format. The space requirements for this
even with hundreds of thousands/millions of records is very small.

Each games chart data surprisingly takes a very short amount of time to output
even if we are talking 40k+ records. However the various counters we have are
quite slow to work out. Therefore all the stats are cached and they update for
each game every couple of hours or so.

It's important we cache this, one of our most popular games:
[http://www.scirra.com/arcade/addicting-shooter-
games/349/pro...](http://www.scirra.com/arcade/addicting-shooter-
games/349/project-blaze-zero)

Had 25k plays in 24 hours which would have ground the server to a halt at that
time had we not cached the stats.

As it currently stands the server doesn't really ever break a sweat (we did
upgrade server as well) so we're happy how things are for now!

