Hello friends,

Greetings from Utrecht!

I've been following GDC from the sidelines, feeling a weird combination of fomo, frustration and anxiety. Fomo because so many of my favorite people are going, and I haven't seen them in years. Frustration because some part of me still gets a little angry when I see people acting like COVID is over—even if I completely understand that some people just have to be there, and that most are taking the necessary precautions.* And anxiety, because I'll have to resolve how I feel about big group events before I visit Gamescom and Reboot later this year.

I'm sure I'll figure it out in time.

In the mean time, I've been having a blast wandering through the unforgiving world of Elden Ring, cheesing absolutely everything the game will let me. Sadly, being a dad leaves very little time to git gud, but that's not going to stop me from enjoying this game.

Instead of an essay I have something a bit different to share today. I've mentioned a couple of times that I was working on a small digital product, and I can now proudly share my Better Book Notes for Busy Game Professionals before it goes live on Thursday! Also, to offer a little something extra to all of you who have been following along as I stumble my way through writing in public, there's a promo code below for you to get €2 off.

*What does not help, is hearing that some people went out to the event EVEN AFTER they tested positive 😡

Today at a glance:

• New product: Better Book Notes for Busy Game Professionals
• How to speak
• Gamefund pitch deck template
• Cap table model

​Better Book Notes for Busy Game Professionals

After years of reading books and forgetting most of their contents, last year I started taking copious notes of the non-fiction books I was reading. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I’ve collected notes from a little over 20 books since then, all of them either directly or indirectly related to doing business in the videogames industry. I use them almost every day for my writing, for business decisions, and for thinking through various problems in my life.

And I figured, why not compile those notes into something that other people can use as well? The result is Better Book Notes for Busy Game Professionals: The best parts of the best books, tailored to running and growing a business in the videogames industry.

In brief, € 6 (and a bit of VAT if you're from the EU) gets you lifetime access to a growing collection of book notes, all of which have been

1. Selected for their high value contents, and many of which come recommended by some of the best managers both inside and outside of the games industry
2. Read and annotated from the perspective of someone (me 🙋‍♂️) looking to extract insights and tools for running and growing a business in the videogames industry
3. Painstakingly formatted and interlinked to allow you to track ideas and concepts across books and people

If this sounds interesting to you, please head over to the product page, and use this code if you want to take the plunge: BWB

​Better Book Notes for Busy Game Professionals​

The Best Bits

​How to Speak: This is a great lecture on public speaking, which was shared on Twitter by @productnerd. I love how Winston brings back public speaking to the absolute essentials, and I guarantee you’ll learn something new when you watch this.

​Gamefund Pitch Deck: MGRV's Ilya Emereev recently shared what he called a "perfect funding pitch deck". This is that template, and it’s a pretty robust one. Ten slides that will tell investors pretty much everything they want to hear to make a decision on your company. As a bonus, you can read Joakim Achren’s slide-by-slide review of the deck here.

​Cap Table Modeling: Speaking of Joakim, this week he re-shared his cap table modeling template. For any of you who are considering getting investors on board, this will surely come in handy, even if it’s only as a reference point.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn

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