Q&A: Petricore's CEO talks founding a business in college
Worcester-based Petricore Games founder and CEO Ryan Canuel
Worcester video game developer Petricore Inc. celebrated its five-year anniversary in May. Among the company's accomplishments were raising nearly $2 million from investors and making products for a number of name brands, including "The Ellen Degeneres Show," Framingham manufacturer Bose and Yale University, just to name a few. But what might set the company apart to an even greater extent is it started during the founding team's senior year at Becker College in Worcester. Co-founder and CEO Ryan Canuel talked with WBJ about all the company has accomplished, what it's like starting a company while still in school and what the team plans to work on next.
Petricore started as its founding team members were graduating college, a time when many of your peers were probably perusing job boards for entry-level positions. What was it like making the decision to take the reins and jump into business on your own, and how did you know it was the right choice?
An advisor/mentor of mine had asked me what my plans were and where I wanted to be. I told him one day I'd love to start my own game studio, but I realized it would take many years to get there following a traditional approach. His advice was: "Why do you need to wait? Why not try and do it now?" This was right before the break in my senior year, and I had honestly never thought of trying to start a company right out of college. It sounded insane. He had a great point, though, and I went on to echo it to the team when trying to rope them in over the break.
If we tried to start Petricore and we gave it at least one year's effort, then two things could happen. One - we fail, and go on to find normal jobs, but with a significant amount of experience and the ability to say we at least tried. Or two - we succeed and have our own game studio. Either option has its upsides, and we had so little to lose at this point in our lives it was a convincing enough argument to get everyone to give it a shot. Five years later, four out of six of the founding team remains at the company. I've heard both sides - that what we did was wonderful, but also that it was a bad idea and we've missed out on experience of working within a larger company structure and learning from that first. Overall, I still feel strongly it was the right choice.
Have your visions for Petricore changed over time?
We've had the same vision from the start as we do today: self-funding the studio through client work and working on our games in the downtime between those projects. It was a simple vision, but a sustainable and practical one. That's why we haven't needed to change much. The client work we take on has changed over time, and so have the games we develop; but that balance has always remained the same. Our main goal is to increase the amount of money our own games/projects bring in to reduce our reliance on client work.
What projects and accomplishments are you most proud of?
So for me I'm most proud of two things: The first being the company in general and reaching this point. We celebrated five years as a company in May, which was huge, but we were able to reach this goal while creating a company and a culture I'm proud of. If we reached five years as a business churning out employees every few months and is a miserable place to work, it just would not be worth it to me. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to always be improving and making Petricore a better place to work with and work at. I'm proud every time a client tells me about how wonderful a team member was to work with, and I'm proud every time an employee tells me they're happy being here.
I'm incredibly proud of the first game we developed as a company, Mind the Arrow. We built the game over a span of about four months, and upon its release it was featured on the front pages of both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Apple shared the game's trailer on the App Store's Facebook and Twitter pages, and the website TechRadar listed it as one of the "Best iPhone games on the planet." This was all huge, but the biggest surprise for me came months after we released it. I was looking up the trailer on Youtube to share with someone and instead found numerous videos of people around the world had made playing it. The most-watched was of a father and son in Russia playing it and having fun together. Having been a part of creating something bringing joy to people around the world, people who you would otherwise never come in contact with, evokes a tremendous feeling of pride.
What's planning like for a young company? Do you have long-term growth goals, or do you set short-term benchmarks?
One of my favorite quotes is from President Eisenhower, who said, "Plans are worthless, but planning is essential." In today's world, especially with a technology company, we find ourselves constantly changing course and rethinking our goals/benchmarks. Our overall goal of self-funding the studio via our own developed projects continues to drive our decisions, but how we get there shifts frequently. We started out developing mobile games, and after releasing three of them, we quickly realized it just wasn't working for us financially and needed to change course. We're now working on our game DogFight, which we just announced in May. It's for PC and consoles and is a jump from what we typically do. We're always looking at upcoming technology and how we can jump on it early. We've developed a lot of augmented reality projects for clients, which is a new technology, and we're very interested in how it will continue to develop in games.
Are there any new changes or upcoming developments/projects you're especially excited about?
This question couldn't have come on a better day. Yes, there is! We just signed the agreement today to partner with another game studio to help develop a remastered version of one of their hit games. I can't say anything more about it until the official announcement, but it's a company I've been wanting to work with for a while now and the opportunity to partner with them on a game will be huge for us. We'll still be working on DogFight and trying to raise funding for that project. Lastly, we have some client projects we've been working on coming out this year, and it will be great to see people start playing them. We've been keeping quite busy this year so far, and it's been an incredibly exciting time for us as a company.
This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ Staff Writer Monica Busch.
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