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Can Creativity be Produced with Lots of Money??!!

By Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal on 33 Comments / 1166 views

This morning I had the most spectacular of meetings with two partners of a VC firm.

They are one of the world’s biggest funds and have financed some BIG Internet Companies.

I hail their scope and size.

In my case, when we started talking about Games2win and what my partner and I see it becoming:

– I talked extensively about how we see the future of Content as APPS.

– I believe that APPS now have their own identity, their own mortality, their own community (if they get popular) and also their own business model.

Examples – the business of an app like Angry Birds is very unique from the business of say, a Talking Tom (Angry Birds does Toys, Movies, etc. beyond just paid downloads)

Credit – Angry Birds

– Our vision, I explained, was to create a new social platform FOR APPS called appucino – whose implementation, I also demonstrated in this game.

THE VC had a very very interesting and different view point.

The more experienced person said, “Alok, why aren’t you building the ANGRY BIRDS of India? There are 65k new smartphones being added in India everyday and people are increasingly playing APPS”.

“Why not FOCUS on India, build a few kick ass games that do really well and make them MEGA BRANDS?”

That question stumped me!

I mean, Sholay or Ramayan or Hum Log were one-off cases of luck, timing and of course creativity that came magically together. Could this be replicated BY MONEY?

Credit – Sholay

– I argued with the VC that there are 1 million APPS in the world now (Android + iOs put together), but the games we can remember are  Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, Fruit Ninja, Talking Tom, and…????

4-10 games have become HITS in a population of 1 million games??

– My second argument was based on what I have been reading and experiencing – that unlike BIG CONSOLE games that took 2-3 years to make and probably 20-50 million dollars to fund, the small, snacky, mobile game formats take a few days to create and cost virtually nothing to make (if you are indeed building these games in small garages like a hobby developer).

Hence lots of good to great games are flooding the system.

If the VELOCITY OF CREATIVITY IS SO HIGH – there is little scope of REPEAT Angry Birds appearing!

– Look at the consumers’ mindsets today.

My daughters keep downloading, playing and FORGETTING apps as if it’s a fashion to do so!

They are so USED to great quality all the time (the top games on iTunes change often), they don’t have ANY BRAND LOYALTY left.

So, with disloyal consumers, how will a great Creative Brand get built?

And even if it does, it will be 1 more ANGRY BIRDS of the next 1 million apps to come into the system. That’s not a business, that’s LUCK! 

– I also asked him why would an one off wonder be valued? I mean, check out the most valuable LISTED Games companies in the world – Shanda, Nexon, Zynga, etc. etc. – these are all PLATFORM plays that have lots of GREAT GAMES on their platforms that are monetized across zillions of users.

These companies are very valuable for their audience, their network, their cross border promotional triggers etc. – not for an ONE HIT GAME.

But the VC had 2 clear points of views:

– Platforms are competitive and may not be sustainable for long periods of time.

– Companies like Disney create GREAT BRANDS and that will be long term value.

They want to find the next DISNEY OF INDIAN GAMES. NOT THE NEXT ZYNGA OF INDIA.

Well, my meeting ended obviously without any chance of raising money from them, but it did make me question many things and hence this post and a question to end:

Will 100 million Dollars in funding without strings attached, be able to create another SHOLAY, another ANGRY BIRDS?

My gut tells me NO – but would love to hear your thoughts!!!

***** 

Special thanks to Asha for editing!!

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33 Comments

  1. I think u hilariously missed the point!

    the IDEA was amazing – money made it happen.

    I ask – when the money is amazing – can ideas happen?

  2. Look at ADAG – thrown lots of money at B’Wood.

    Look at TV18 and the Films Business – what happened?

    Check out all the money that gets drained in B’wood – where do you see the hits?

    Was Kolaveri born from Money?

    Can u OWN Leonardo Da Vinci?

  3. yeah. but i’m told ‘you haven’t built a sholay. an angry birds’. build one for us! here – take 10 million us$

  4. So with all your creativity and 10 million us $, why cant you build the next angry bird?

    If money is a problem, clearly you can negotiate with the vc.

    If the problem is your heart doesnt want to do it, you wont do it.

    Given you’re a genius in creativity and have all the money you need at your disposal.. the willingness to pursue it is the only hindrance. 

  5. i have a firm belief that once the goal of your company is defined by a revolutionary thought/process/idea then money simply becomes a means to put it into action. it acts as a magnifying glass, wherein you can reach out more. experiment more. hire better talent & build a better product/service. 

    creative always will remain the heart of any company. if you don’t have creative (and by that i mean an idea/belief in a revolutionary new way of doing things, NOT JUST dudes in shorts smoking up all day& talking arbit ideas) people at the helm, you don’t have soul. and money cannot fill this gap. you can do things bigger with money, but you most certainly won’t be able to do it better. 

    case in point: spaghetti westerns which million prefer as compared to hollywood blockbusters with over inflated budgets. or minecraft, hundreds of indie games on the xbox & PS3 as opposed to mega-budget games on the same platforms. 

    to conclude: ideas needs money needs ideas. 

  6. My belief … platforms are difficult to sustain for long periods with the ever changing economics in the mobile world….unless driven very well. Also, any amount of funding can’t create a good idea. But even a decent idea that is well funded can create the next big thing.

  7. I completely agree with Alok sir….. 

    Firstly Money does not guarantee success , its a myth … Ambani’s funding reliance retail from their pockets for 3 consecutive years … what happened did it beat future group… nope … its running in losses….

    Yes can another angry bird or sholay be made… yes … i think youngsters of tomorrow are way more talented , i think alok sir will agree… but money is only going to the deciding factor NO WAYS!!!…..

    ANGRY BIRDS – well Alok sir ,,, i think its already quite indian ” my reply to that VC u met today … its a gulel concept , only the stone got replaced by a bird and apples on the tree by planks …. its Indian in a rodinhood way according to me.. :p…..

    “if every thing is perfect in an idea or an enterprise , say concept scalability potential , implementation skills etc etc and money is only restricting it to hit the market … damn rite money helps…. but if you are looking at covering all these loop holes by plumbing in tons n tons of more money ….. suggestion : STOP , you are never getting that money back”….

  8. I agree with Kinnari’s view.
    Though money will definitely not result in an idea but it takes away the worry of worrying about your survival in the short term and focus all your top resources on the big picture.

  9. Ok,  my first post here, I couldnt resist writing on this..

    I see this as a flow chart diagram for cause effect relationship or an equation of ‘money’, ‘creativity’ and ‘success’

    In order to achieve the success, I assume, one needs Money and Creativity (innovation/ breakthrough idea call it whatever)

    We establish –

    Success = X + Money + creativity.. (‘X’ as in X factor: maybe luck, maybe something else, basically a variable beyond human control)

    The debate here is – whether “creativity” is a function of “money”?

    My answer is – NO.

    Analyse this – Creativity / breakthrough innovation / idea is what we make out of a simple thought. One has to invest hope to make it a breakthrough idea that can use money to result in success…with a positive X.

    So I establish – Money is a vehicle for creativity to give favorable results.

    As far as examples mentioned in the original post – Sholay was a perfect example this equation giving positive results.

    I have seen many films which were made out of brilliant ideas, but failed at box office…all of us have examples of such ventures. Maybe the idea was not done justice to….by a negative X or by lack of vehicle (Money).

    For investors – one can not give a successful idea, but surely you can make it BIG if you have the vision. Don’t treat ideas / projects like raw material of a factory, treat them as new born babies of a family.

    PS: I have zero background or understanding of VCs, Funding, Entrepreneurship or even Gaming, but felt like expressing my pov.

     

  10. I agree with Alok completely.

    Money is sometimes a necessary but never a sufficient condition for “creativity”.

    Cheers

  11. I feel lots of MONEY Can be Made by CREATIVITY……

    Should FOCUS on CREATIVITY…..

  12. wah wah wah

  13. nice!

  14. I think a lot of people missed the point Alok is trying to make, when i read the comments.

    No one can predict a hit. Hit driven businesses like films and music, and even VC’s make all their money from a single hit, while they fail (in revenue terms) in ten others. 

    Even Rovio, the makers of angry birds, made about 40 odd games before they struck gold with Angry Birds.

    I wonder how easy life will be if you can create hits with with tons of money. It’s an amusing thought. But it dosen’t happen as often we will like to think it does. 

    Just look at Bollywood. Anyone remembers what happened with Ra One?

  15. :-))))))))))))))))))) tq my friend

  16. I think you are still missing the point. 

  17. Can Creativity be Produced with Lots of Money??!!

    (thats just cut paste to avoid retype)

    ANS- NO

    BUT, IT can be ‘PURCHASED’ lets take eg of SHOLAY, if I want to REPEAT success of Sholay…I dont need to find another great SCRIPT.

    But I need to find ANOTHER -Salim-Javed. it may take 1 year or 5 or 10 and I will need to find 5(five) likes of them

    and keep searching for them till my CO. continues to Survive & my VC has patients.

  18. Suvajyoti- I saw RA.oNE yest on *gold …for 15 min just to learn ‘why it is horrible’ its important in the business of CREATIVE to learn that

    Sharukh did every possible thing spent 150 crore BUT getting a good SCREEN WRITER…. from HOLLYWOOD…Who knows the Business.

    Sharukh had lots of calculations behid RAONE

    1.to proove his point that he also can be a great SHero …not only Rajnikant ( his calculation was just b’coz he’s superstar he can encash it)

    2. he has 200+ people to feed and keep engaged-his production house-REDCHILLI

    3. Lots of interfearance in DIRECTION(obviously bcoz he TOO is creative, he is a Producer /superstar and so on.

    Now he wants to MAHABHARAT   ‘LIKE’   ‘AVATAR’ & LORDS OF THE RINGS!

    and I wont be hesitant to say here that

    this ‘LIKE’  is a Dangerous thing….it will be yet another RAONE

  19. jYOTI a good  read

    innovate the PIXAR WAY

    by Bill Capodagli and Lynn jackson

  20. Kinnari – I disagree.

    Platform are very difficult to get off the ground, but easier to sustain it. It’s easier because communities get built around the platform. Once the community is built – then it’s the community which fuels (and not just sustains) the platform.

    Imagine, if there are 100s of 1000s of developers using Appucino to power their games – won’t Appucino more than just sustain? 

    The challenge really is – how do you get those initial bunch who put their faith onto your platform! 

  21. I guess the basic fact remains that neither creativity makes money, nor money gets your creativity.

    The missing piece of this puzzle is PASSION – without which nothing succeeds, just nothing. Not to say that passion alone can fire a rocket to the moon though!

    If Alok is passionate about building the platform and making it successful, creativity flows, money would flock and ultimately will be successful. 

    However, same equation (passion+creativity+money) is not valid with building an “Angry bird of India”. Here are the reasons:

    – First and foremost, there can never be anything called “Angry bird of India” – various reasons, but then this VC speak (some-top-company of India) is something that I have never understood anyway. India is no different from rest of the world when it comes to games (or for that many other things).

    – Second, however passionate I am about my THE game (I am sure one is passionate about every product the one makes!), its the consumer who must get love it and get passionate about it

    – Games is not just about art but also about a lot of science (Thanks Vishal Gondal for explaining this!) – and it gets perfected over a period of time – but at the end of it all, it’s a lot like a movie, very difficult to predict WHETHER,WHY and WHEN it’d be hit.

    So if one has to get a hugely hit game out of India (for the world!) – then the equation has to be PASSION+CREATIVITY+MONEY + a huge dose of LUCK!

  22. My view point was with respect to technology, a platform needs to innovative itself at a very fast pace so as not to be redundant.

    Our view point is also correct when we talk of platform’s adaptability….getting people to use it. One will always have an edge if the platform is really good & not otherwise.

    Between the two, i weigh the technology aspect heavier. As technologically scaling the platform is like painting a picture….ones gotta be “technologically creative”. V/s the adaptability issue which all the platforms face when they come to market..its more a business issue.

  23. I Agree Kinnari – Technology sustainability demands high degree of continuous innovation. But if you have built a committed set of early adopters, then they start feeding innovation to a great degree

  24. I’d like to hear more about “Platforms are competitive and may not be sustainable for long periods of time”.  From my understanding a Platform negates the competition.  Brand loyalty is fickle and it largely depends on the product category.  For entertainment if the movie is shit.  It is shit whether produced by Disney or Warner Bros.  Likewise for games.  Those who play Angry Birds, or WoW have some expectations of the producers but ultimately every new product has to compete with every other product.  Platform plays on the other hand do achieve some amount of lock in that is not easy to break.  FB vs Google+ is the most striking example that comes to mind.

    And yeah, money cannot produce another Sholay.  Hmmm.  But it did produce Spice Girls.  The totally manufactured girl group and other similar clones.  I guess if you know the psychological pressure points of society you can craft a package that will grab it by the balls.  So yeah with 100 crores I can produce a Sholay killer.  10 crore on social psychography and the subliminal messaging in entertainment research, 40 crore on the movie, 50 crore on marketing.  No way to loose.  Won’t be Sholay but we’ll have yanked all the emo chains with the audience and milked them for 180 minutes.  They won’t come back to see it again ever but they’ll go away murmuring – Good show.

  25. I think Money can not create Ideas… 

    Necessity creates Idea, And to give life to that idea one need Passion and Hunger, There are many examples where Money did not played a big role.

    – Steve Jobs did not had money but his passion and hunger for creative ..brought him money.

    – Dhirubhai Ambani did not had money, but had Idea, passion and hunger to create an business empire.

    – Sachin Tendulkar did not had money, but had passion and huger to Play cricket for India.

    Even if we try to  put all the money to create next Dhirubhai or Sachin, its not possible

    Same with Gaming/Films, Angry Bird/Sholay no one can create it again, even the creator of Angry Bird and Sholay could not create another hit game/film

  26. One thing about Sholay – it was a huge megastarrer, and Sippy had taken big risks like shooting in Ramnagar (dacoit scenes were largely done in Rajasthan), getting a newbie for Gabbar (a role Danny had refused), releasing during the emergency (they had to change the ending). The interesting thing was that for two weeks the movie didn’t make any money. Then it became a super-hit. Some of it was luck also. But much of it was money – it was one of the biggest spends of the time. Many of the big-spend movies make a lot of money just because they spent so much (and distributors are willing to take the risk on their territories)

    I don’t agree that you can’t get another angry birds today. Every first person shooter game was so good I thought it couldn’t be beaten, and lo and behold there was another one. Id simply rocks; though the first set of games were simpler to create, they spent enormous amounts of money on the production, technology and planning of subsequent games that they effectively had a moat that prevented others from stealing their show, and they still make lots of money.

    If you have a lot of money now, you can build both the platform (for internal use) and create many games. Game success has a serious element of luck involved, so the more you can create, the better; of course, you have to find that many good people (whom even a lot of money can’t find, honestly) and that is a different challenge altogether. Once you have a solid game success, you can build on top of it.

    Having said that, the idea is to marry money with inspiration/perspiration. If you don’t have the latter, you are better off building a service company that does coolie work for Goldman Sachs and adding seven line disclaimers to your emails and doing FYI to random junta. That is a good use of that money. But if you do have a great idea, or know what you are doing, money can be a hindrance, especially in larger production formats in games.

    Still, the biggest example of what didn’t work despite truckloads of money behind it: boo.com. Others are pets.com, the concept of LTCM (if anyone is financially inclined, this is a hedge fund with truckloads of money that brought the world to the edge of the abyss), indya.com and so on. So in general, throwing money doesn’t work very well in many cases. Some would argue that hunger inspires greatness, so too much money in the kitty may also be a bad thing 🙂

  27. Kanchan: I was going to post my thoughts when I saw your post – some of my thoughts are on the same lines.

    Alok: Maybe the question can be reframed to be looked at differently. The VC was of the perspective that in terms of opportunity space, while communities are great there is a great (larger?) bang for buck in building sexy gaming brands. It is a space that has a super potential to be exploited by a player willing to do so.

    Now, whether you decide to take it up should ideally depend upon your traction/ connect/ resonance with the idea. Every individual (as well as an organization) has a specific DNA fabric and there are plays that drive us more than others leading and hence these are the plays we can be better than the others. Apple and Dell have different DNAs which make them passionate and stronger at different plays (think Google and social apps).

    I think what you are stating in your argument is that gaming brands is a bigger odds bet where one is hoping for a bigger black swan effect as compared to a community play (where according to you there are more controllables like execution etc.). What he is suggesting is a creative play so the odds are similar to getting the next harry potter or sholay etc and not a function of having more bucks in the bank.

    So may be the debate is a bit like asking should I attempt to write the next blockbuster book or should I put together an online publishing play. A big part of the answer is also what do I get more excited about. If I feel driven by writing, I wouldnt mind trying out a few scripts before giving up. If I felt that given my network etc. the online publishing play is better, I would do that. There are no right answers here!

    p.’s And of course, when I say *driven* in the above argument, I am loosely also including ones strengths (network, PR, design, marketing etc.)

    – Srini

  28. I think, things like Angry Birds, Sholay are realized only after the fact. People sitting on the judging desks would never have anticipated what Angry Birds would become or Sholay would become or Kolaveri would become. Infact, all three would have been derided by them.

    So, investing in Angry Birds after it happens would be like investing hoping for a repeat performance or investing on residual or cross promotional or branding advantages it lends to subsequent games and not on the original hit.

    Is it even possible to put money on creative hits when you cant know if they’ll be hits until after they are hits?

    I think the answer lies in whether making hits is predictable or unpredictable phenomenon. If predictable, for sure money can deliver loads of hits. But till now, it has proven to be unpredictable.

    What say?

  29. Am just picking a few lines from Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to invenstors . “Most great people care primarily about building and being a part of great things, but they also want to make money. Through the process of building a team — and also building a developer community, advertising market and investor base — I’ve developed a deep appreciation for how building a strong company with a strong economic engine and strong growth can be the best way to align many people to solve important problems.

    Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better service”

    Creative use money you can solve a lot of problems and even statistically ;1000 (inspired)people making 10,000 games in one company are more likely to hit the next  angry birds than 10 people making 100 games in another company. 

    Alok :Take the money:-)

  30. Dear Alok, 

    I think I can connect the current topic with a program hosted on UTV Bloomberg by the name of ‘The PITCH’ where you were a part of initial short listing team along with 2 other members. (I liked that program too much and followed many episodes). The winner was Shreyas Srinivas. His idea was to build many comic characters / heroes for Indian market. And he said that while doing this if he is able to build 2-3 superheroes then he will have a super brand organization. 

    I feel what your VCs were saying was somewhat similar to this. If we have so much confidence in Shreyas’s idea that he is able to win ‘The PITCH’, then obviously whatever VCs were saying cannot be fully disagreed. 

    What do you say?

  31. Yup. Unfortunately Shreyas could not execute in real life.

  32. But this is a long term strategy…..probably it will take Shreyas or any other person some time to click…..altho i agree that much will depend upon luck too. 

  33. unfortunately, he chose to go the PRINT route 🙁

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