Nathan interviews Patrick O'Luanaigh. He started as a programmer and designer at Codemasters 20 years ago, working on micro machines V3. Prior to founding nDreams, in 2006, he was a creative director at Eidos where he was responsible for the design and gameplay of all the titles there including the well-known Tomb Raider Legend and Hitman Blood Money. nDreams is now 50 people strong and pivoted to solely focusing on virtual reality 3 years ago. nDreams has launched 6 VR titles to date.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Chimp Paradox
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Brendan Iribe
Favorite online tool? — Box
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Life is too short to play it safe, you gotta take your risk. It’s so much more exciting even though it is scary, you just gotta do it. Be brave!”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:18 – Nathan introduces Patrick to the show
02:07 – The greatest challenge of VR (virtual reality) at the moment is the limited number of hardware available
02:16 – “We are still figuring out how to make the very best games in the experience of VR”
02:36 – nDreams’ game that has generated the most income is Perfect Beach
03:02 – nDreams’ key metric is the number of units sold
03:18 – nDreams has sold 250K units
03:49 – nDreams has 50 people in the team
- 03:56 – Ideas come from anyone in the studio
- 04:05 – They work with the best idea and do an estimate
- 04:25 – There’s a lot of things to learn in VR
- 04:30 – nDreams focuses on gameplay
04:49 – Perfect can be purchased on Google Play Store or your VR digital store
- 05:16 – Mobile version currently costs $2.99
- 05:20 – The high-end version costs around $7.99
05:40 – nDreams has earned 75K from Perfect
05:50 – The challenge of PlayStation VR is the price
06:06 – Patrick has not heard of other competitors who have sold as much VR as they have
06:44 – It’s hard to tell the total potential basis for the VR space
07:00 – Patrick started the company 10 years ago
07:36 – nDreams was bootstrapped but they raised capital for VR
08:06 – nDreams has raised around $6M
08:14 – Patrick started the business even before the start of the VR market
08:41 – 2016 top line revenue
09:30 – Patrick can predict which games will do well even when they’re still early in the market
09:43 – nDreams is trying out different games and genres
09:53 – “We’re in the stage of learning what works well”
10:08 – In nDreams’ released games, SkyDIEving is the only one that’s for free
10:48 – Perfect Beach was from an experiment
11:08 – Gunner’s expenses
11:45 – nDreams is launching more games this year
12:30 – Patrick shares where most people are buying their games
13:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Being in a space that is new can be challenging because of the limited data and resources.
You learn in every process you take .
Life is too short to play it safe—be brave and take those risks!

Resources Mentioned:

Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible.
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

EP 595: nDreams is #1 VR Application Creator, 250,000 Sold, $6M in Funding with CEO Patrick O'Luanaigh

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