Get The Memo: Issue 6
Tatum Games
Company Overview
Tatum Games is a passionate and innovative tech company that is currently spearheading solutions to many of the pain points in the mobile ecosystem, such as analytics and advertising. Specifically, they are addressing issues with targeted user acquisition and faster monetization for developers on smartphones.
The analytic services available in the market today favors big companies, who can afford expensive data analysts and scientists. It takes time for new or smaller apps to scale to a level where big data makes sense. In the meantime, they are bleeding users and must spend a small fortune on new user acquisition.
CEO Leonard Tatum has over a decade of programming and software development experience, with several additional years of developing mobile applications. His app portfolio includes apps from companies such as NBCU, Vimeo, Age of Learning (ABCMouse.com), Genentech, Tesla, Disney, NASA, Transdev, Fox and more.
Leonard Tatum manages day-to-day operations and develops the necessary software and technology.
Jordan Lindsey has over a decade of system engineering and software implementation.
Kevin Lim spent most of his career in Tokyo in the recruiting industry as an operations and sales manager. In his spare time, he is the organizer of TOKYO SANDBOX, an indie game show in Tokyo that supports the local indie gaming scene and aspiring high school game developers.
As a testament to the world’s increased connectivity, all the founders live in different parts of the world and use technology to maintain communication and coordination.
Market, Model & Inflection Point
The spend on mobile advertising alone in the US is over $100bn, and double that worldwide. We hope that the change brought about by MIKROS is so fundamental that it transforms all mobile commerce forever.
Leonard feels the market and processing power of smart devices has reached a critical point, accounting for over half of all e-commerce globally. While e-commerce is based on PC browser technologies, Tatum Games thinks it is a good time to rethink commerce around mobile devices. Just like how digital payments using smartphones is to cash payments.
Their product, MIKROS, is a SaaS product that enrolls developers in an information sharing ecosystem that helps identify better insights about user behavior. Including user spending habits. MIKROS gives developers persistent visibility over every user, and the control of how to monetize them. This service has two paid subscription tiers to choose from, Startup ($30/mo) and Enterprise ($300/mo). There is also a FREE plan too.
Their mobile-to-mobile (M2M) technology will change how data is perceived. Mobile devices adoption globally is expected to overtake desktop and browser-based technology this year. It is high time for mobile centric commerce (m-commerce).
At the moment, Tatum Games’ main client base are game developers. MIKROS is built upon mobile-to-mobile (M2M) technology that has wide applications beyond mobile gaming, but the team wants to focus on this vertical before expanding. As active indie game developers themselves, they have an extensive network of game developers that they can quickly access.
Understanding their users and audience is important for developers and advertisers. It helps them in making the right decisions in a timely manner and keeping up with trends. In the last few years, we have seen leaps in mobile technology and processing power. Younger users are also consuming content at an astonishing rate. It makes it more urgent not to only have the right data, but also the analysis of this data that can be acted upon quickly by developers and advertisers.
Tatum Games is a consumer of our their own product, so the amount of KPIs they have access to is vast and more in-depth than competitor analytic services. Tracking growth is an evaluation of data related to user acquisition, conversions, retention and more. By using MIKROS, customer acquisition cost is cheaper because the service is designed to help you identify metrics for measuring growth and determining attributes that contribute to profitability.
Competition
Our main competitors are mobile analytic services such as FireBase, Amplitude & Mixpanel. These are great services. However, our value proposition to developers is so fundamentally different that comparing MIKROS to them is akin to comparing apples to oranges.
We view m-commerce as a single problem to be solved, and services such as analytics, advertising, digital wallets, payments, etc as value added services. The most fundamental issue for all businesses is the quality of the data of their users, and anticipating their needs based on this data. The current model of aggregation does not serve mobile developers as well as it should.
How would you deploy capital if you would hit your next milestone?
To be more responsive, Tatum Games would need more engineering and service support as they plan to launch more value-added services to the basic subscription model of MIKROS. The basic premise of giving developers control over their user base is to allow an open and fair market, where developers are the ultimate beneficiary of their work.
Tatum Games is a bootstrapped outfit and are looking for investors who can help them scale quickly. They have so far been able to finish their product as well as onboard a large number of developers in a very short time frame and will be able to do so for a while. They need more hands on the deck to help develop cool functionalities and customer support to ensure that our developer clients stay within our ecosystem.
What is the legacy you as a Founder want to leave?
I want to change culture and the face of how you interact. Never once did I have a black peer, above or below. Representation means a tremendous amount to me, so I want to use this as an opportunity to encourage more people into tech. I want to create a better opportunity for those who don’t have one, and get rid of the exclusive interview questions
