Mark Flood - eSports Industry As A Game Changer And Assuming Extreme Accountability As Entrepreneur - 009

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• Mark's companies and Social Media Links:
  • Origin.GG - Company website
  • Origin.GG YouTube Channel - You can follow his VLOG here and follow what he is doing
  • LinkedIn @Cashflo, which is his gaming handle
  • Twitter - @Thumbtalkin, this was also the twitter handle of one of his first mobile apps he developed a while ago
  • Instagram - @Cashflo, which is his gaming handle
• Mark can be contacted through:
  • His Social Media accounts - Contact him any time. Mark is happy to answer any questions
  • Email: [email protected]
• Electronics Arts owns FIFA and the Madden franchise
• Activision Blizzard owns some of the massive games like Overwatch, HeartStone, Heroes of the Storm, Destiny.
• Twitch.TV - a very popular live game streaming service
• Gary Vaynerchuk

The interview:

Mark Flood is Founder and CTO of Origin.GG, a new eSports platform that takes the pain out of the hands of eSports organizations and -teams. Taking care of all technical and functional things building and running these businesses, so that they can focus on their core activities like practicing and competitions.

Origin.GG provides the platform as a SAAS model, offers Consulting, Software tools, and is a marketplace. Mark would like this to become the eSports version of Salesforce.

Before Origin.GG, Mark owned Gamerwall, a tournaments hosting platform, that he sold after two years. Mark is a Brand Strategist and Software Developer. He loves the early stages of product fit to market and working in an extreme agile mode to adapt his offer to client needs.

Jane met Mark on Twitter. Mark is an absolute fan of Twitter. He filters through the negativity, and he says that out of 1000 people he interacts with, he will meet one person he continues to have good (business) relations with. Twitter is also the medium that is used a lot in the gaming industry.

Mark has always been an entrepreneur. He always found something to do to earn money, like doing business as a child, watering his neighbours' plants or selling t-shirts in High School. He got his entrepreneurial spirit partly from his father, a real-estate agent. That in itself is entrepreneurial, because you do not have a set salary.

Mark moved towards extreme accountability early on, in whatever he does. He believes that “every human being needs to own its destiny!” “You cannot control your situation, but you can control how you handle it.”

He loves owning his own thing, working on his own dreams. A piece of his soul is taken away when working for somebody else, he feels.

He has been involved as an active business participant in the competitive gaming scene for about two years now, with his former company, Gamerwall, an event hosting platform. He was drawn to the eSports Industry. He loved gaming as a child. His brother used to beat him at gaming, but it has always been a fantastic creative outlet. He was also always interested in internet technology startup. Then he noticed how this could intersect and from his passion and hobby, he could make a business.

eSports is competitive gaming. It is not yet as big as traditional sports, but very fast growing and trending in the right direction. Mark thinks eSports itself is more indicative of things that are more than competitive gaming. Many games are involved in eSports, but only a few have large enough competitive scenes to justify large prize pools.

Team games like Dota 2, League of legends, Overwatch are some of the top tier games where the prize money is very high and where you find the elite players who can live from competitive gaming. Behind these, you have 10-15 competitive games with much lower prize pools. However, eSports is all about professionalism and prize pools.

The current growth of eSports is due to the fact that more people start watching the games as audience and become fans of teams. That’s why the industry is becoming so massive. Mark explains, a huge audience means lots of sponsors and media rights, just like traditional sports. 10-15 years ago, the only revenue source came from people buying and playing the game.

eSports demographics are young people between 18-24 yrs, and relatively high income earners. It’s a fantastic demographic. Whether you are in eSports or not, anyone would like to target this demographic, and hence the enormous business around it. And for that reason, Marks loves this space especially, because he sees a lot of value in this demographic.

In 2017, the total audience audience for eSports reached 194 million people and this is expected to reach 303 million people by 2020.

When it comes to revenue, in 2017, $696 million was earned, including media rights, advertising, game publisher fees, tickets, and merchandising. This was already up 41% compared to 2016. It is expected that the revenue for eSports will reach around $1.5 billion by 2020. Extremely fast growing industry!

eSports audiences are currently mostly in Asia Pacific-51%, then Europe-18%, followed by North America- 13%, and the rest spread over the rest of the world. Mark’s sees opportunities for Origin.GG in South America, because of the fact that eSports has not yet come off the ground in that region. He is currently building his foundation and proving value, but he believes Origin.GG is ready to start scaling up in the next 6 weeks to 2 months. So by spring time he might be trying to focus on markets like South America, as well.

Big gaming companies to consider are Electronics Arts that owns FIFA and the Madden franchise, and a company that is more involved in the eSports field specifically, Activision Blizzard that owns some of the massive games, like Overwatch, HeartStone, Heroes of the Storm, and Destiny.

Origin.GG offers a platform that is a crossover between Shopify and Linkedin, as an entry point. To help eSports teams create their web platform, with an easy and beautiful design, and get them started. He also wants players to use the platform as a gaming CV, compared to Linkedin. Individual players sign up, and links with teams are made. Through his platform, it should be easy to link players with teams and vice versa.

Being a hub to help teams succeed with all services and products they require as they get more successful. Really be a place where teams come to start their eSports business and overtime help them grow and actually become involved in many aspects of their business. He has set his goal high: have 5 teams acquired for 5 million dollars or more, as a minimum. However, he is setting a challenge for himself to have 50 teams even, meaning 250 million dollars of acquisitions of teams that Origin.GG will have helped grow and made successful. Big goals, but he sees so many options to make that happen.

He embraces a very agile work method. Discovering along the way what to focus on, since this space is so new, and then immediately pushing resources towards what is needed at the time required. Scrapping what it not working immediately, taking decisions even when something is unclear, but making sure no time is wasted building something no-one needs. With Mark's business, wasting time is not an option!

His short term goal is to get revenue and sustain power, while keeping his eye on his long term goals and his vision as a big infrastructure hub with a multitude of services.

When starting a business, he believes in focusing on making his product known by connecting directly to his audience. He doesn’t believe in advertisements in this stage. You need to connect personally with your potential clients. Going out there, reaching out 1-on-1. Paying for advertising is only the next step. So he uses social media, like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Direct outreach is the most effective way to market materials.

When asked how he deals with failure, Mark loves how Gary Vaynerchuk brings the message, saying: “Who cares!” It is better to move forward and use that failure as a lesson. And you cannot dwell on people who respond negatively to that.

About five or six years ago, F1 came to Austin, Texas and Mark - seeing the event as an opportunity to make money - he decided to throw a high-end party. Without any cash in hand, he used credit cards for the $40,000 expense of the event. When the party started, he did not realize that the building where the party took place was not up to the fire codes. The police came and they said: “you are not allowed to have more than 25 people in the facility.” He had to stop everything, and he found himself in a $40,000,- debt in a matter of 30 minutes.

That taught him some big lessons. Mark believes even the smallest details matter when it comes to big money, especially. But even more, you cannot let anything take you down. You will find a way out and succeed again with the right mindset.

To become a professional gamer, you should focus on one game and put your heart into it. Practise, practise, practise to get to the top. Because only then you will be able to be a true professional, be on good teams and make a good living. It is no different from a person who aims to become professional at playing football.

About 50% of gamers as a whole are female but professionally, the top tier players are males. However, many woman make money from streaming services. That is a whole market in itself. When you look at twitch.tv, female gamers are very successful there.

You will love Mark's vibrant character!

ENJOY THE INTERVIEW!