Events
IAGA SUMMIT New York 2017
Kent Young, CEO Spin Games
Kent Young has been involved in the gaming industry his entire career, with 30 years in the business to date. Kent started in the operations side, cleaning ashtrays in the gaming clubs of Sydney, Australia.
He worked in operations for five years before heading to university, which led Kent to finding employment with Aristocrat Technologies, immersing him into the manufacturing side of the business.
Leveraging the experiences gained in the corporate side of the gaming industry taught Kent a lot about the basics and the fundamentals of the industry. He learned about gaming technology, content and compliance, which has helped him to navigate the waters when creating not just one startup, but two.
After 11 years with Aristocrat, Kent created the third-party content development company True Blue Gaming, a third-party games developer focused on content supply, as opposed to pure technology. Kent and Scott Olive, one of the best games designers in the world, both left Aristocrat to start True Blue, creating games for Atronic, IGT and Stargames etc.
Following two successful years, the business was sold to Aruze Gaming, for whom Kent became General Manager of Aruze Americas for a several of years before starting Spin Games. Kent Young has been the CEO of Spin Games for four years.
G3 talks to serial startup entrepreneur, Kent Young, about the unique regulatory issues faced by startup technology companies in the gaming industry ahead of his IAGA Summit discussion. Given the growing intersection of technology and gaming, there are unique issues a tech startup company faces with regards to gaming licensing, especially when dealing with venture capital investors, angel investors and employees, in regards to licensing and compliance, and implementing an appropriate compliance programme for such startups
Kent, you’ve now helmed two startup tech businesses in the gaming sector; what were the big changes and what did you learn in the process?
Tings have changed a great deal since starting True Blue Gaming back in 2007. Ten we were focused on content delivery rather than technology, because at the time there were lots of restriction on third-parties working with manufacturers, which meant we were concentrating on delivering assets-only, not delving into the technology side.
When we started Spin Games, the landscape had changed significantly. Although we began under the same model, creating third-party content, regulatory changes meant we were allowed to focus on the technology too, while the other big change was the fact that iGaming had become regulated in North
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America. Tis new market segment presented an opportunity for a small nimble company. So although when we first started we were developing just content; developing maths, sounds, assets, graphics etc., about a year-in, we were developing iGaming technologies and a remote gaming server (RGS) specific to New Jersey. Tere were a lot of macro- elements that had changed the marketplace that led to a different business model in terms of our focus.
Generally speaking, I’d say that I learned a lot from my first experience creating a start-up, which I used the second time around. A lot of the fundamentals are the same in terms of raising money, putting the right team together, areas of focus and generating revenue. Without question - doing it for a second time you get a lot of leverage from the experiences learned the first time around.
Just what does it take to launch a startup technology company?
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