PocketGamer.biz: What is CFO Resources and who is it aimed at?

Martin Macmillan: We created CFO Resources as an online resource for game developers to better understand their finances and improve their overall financial literacy.

It’s a collection of calculators and content that is aimed at growing studios to help them with some of the financial aspects of planning and growing their business.

As a company, we believe firmly in transparency and providing tools and education to help them make informed financial decisions as they seek to fund and grow the gaming companies.

Why did you create this?

Having been a trusted financing partner to mobile game developers since 2014, we came to recognise that all too often, the finances in mobile game companies are overlooked until a much later stage in their lifecycle when a finance lead or CFO is hired.

Our intention was to create a set of tools and resources that were accessible to everyone that would help them in two key areas - user acquisition modelling and comparing different financing methods.

We want to help identify if developers are leaving money on the table by not properly understanding their UA metrics. Also, when it comes to comparing different financial products, to ensure that they can make a like with like comparison.

The way pricing is quoted by some lenders is designed to hide the true cost of funding. We help developers arrive at the right conclusion by ensuring they are armed with all the facts first.

How does it help me as a developer?

Whether small or large, developers rely on the tools on CFO Resources. For early-stage companies who do not have BI/data science teams, we provide the modelling environment to help them make sense of early metrics, for example in soft launch.

As companies grow, founders, UA managers and CFOs find the tools invaluable as a sounding board to validate their own models or plan UA scenarios around new launches for example

What are the main features?

Right now we have four main calculators and one downloadable template

• 1) User acquisition planning - calculating ROAS, LTV and modelling out cashflow based on high-level metrics that can be input by the founders or UA team.
• 2) Hypercasual velocity calculator - showing the financial impact of ad network payment terms for hypercasual developers based on variable ROAS scenarios.
• 3) AR comparison calculator - breaks down a fixed fee factoring model back to a simple interest rate and shows the variation across the app stores and ad networks.
• 4) Revenue-based loan calculator - breaks down the cost of revenue-based loans to a simple interest rate, modelled out by configurable growth scenarios
• 5) User acquisition template - A simple model for those starting out with paid UA to help them track and model their key metrics

What's coming next?

Our team is working on a whole host of new content including additional calculators, templates and also instructional video content helping bring some of the concepts to life.

We are always receptive to hearing from developers if there are particular problems they are grappling to resolve, we may be able to use our team’s financial expertise to create new tools that address some of these questions.

Where can I find it?

To check out Pollen VC's CFO Resources, visit our website.

The tools are free to use for everyone, and we don’t ask you to connect up any of your data sources in order to get value from them.

Feedback from the developer community is always helpful as we strive to make this a trusted and valued resource for the mobile gaming ecosystem.