ProjectMQ

A long time ago (approximately 1992), in a NES far far away....

Our story actually starts a few years earlier, back in 1992. That year, our parents got us Super Mario Bros. 3 for Christmas. We were six, and became captivated by the technology of video games.

Super Mario Bros. 3 inspired a pure fascination of video games and technology in us. The high school Magnet School Program required that our parents purchase TI-83+ graphic calculators for each of them, for use in their 9th grade Trigonometry class.

We loved video games, and wanted to make our own (again).

Both of us quickly learned that these machines could play video games, and we began coding our first game on them. Unfortunately, our Trigonometry teacher erased the game we were building, because we were playing games in her class, instead of listening to her.

Fast-forward 10 years, and we both have undergraduate degrees from Georgia Southern University (Marcus' in Information Technology, Malcolm's in Computer Science). Because we both still loved games, we thought we'd take a stab at building a new game: a puzzle experience with RPG mechanics. You can see an early design of the game below.

ProjectMQ (Pre-Pivot) Launches Indie Game Search Engine

As we continued designing our puzzle game, we began market research to identify the size of our target audience. To our surprise and disappointment, we learned that game discovery had been terribly broken for decades. As of 2013, while nearly 75% of (PC) indie games were created by independent game developers, indie games only represented 2% of the revenue in the global video game industry.

To solve that problem, we began building a multimedia search engine exclusively for indie games. Our theory was that if we could digitize word of mouth marketing, and curate a global catalog of the world's best indie games, we could create a one stop shop for gamers to quickly/easily find the best games for their preferred genre and platform of choice.

ProjectMQ Wins Lupe Fiasco's 2016 National Startup Contest!

Three years into our journey, and had finally begun to hit our stride. While we did have Avik available as a contract designer for our UI, the two of us were leading the consistent growth of ProjectMQ. Outside of their full-time jobs, Malcolm handled everything technical like coding ProjectMQ's site, and Marcus handled everything business-related like building ProjectMQ's community.

Despite all of the international growth they were building in the brand and the app, they weren't able to secure any angel investments from America. As a result, they pivoted their focus in the investment community to startup accelerators and pitch competitions.

Between 2016 and 2018, they had managed to graduate from 4 different startup accelerators, and secure $21,500 in grants from various pitch competitions. One of those, was an national competition, where ProjectMQ placed as a top 5 winner of Lupe Fiasco startup contest, out of 750 applicants nationwide.

ProjectMQ Expands from Digital Brand into Live Events

In 2017, we began expanding our support for indie devs from virtual to IRL (in real life), by launching our "Indie Game Arcade". This was a free program they started in the local Savannah (Georgia) community, where they showcased amazing indie games from around the world, for to help parents and their children understand that there were more to video games that just guns and violence.

Later that Summer, ProjectMQ was invited to produce their Indie Game Arcade again, when DreamHack hosted it's inaugural annual event at the Georgia World Congress center. Marcus also got his first speaking opportunity in the gaming industry at that event on the panel "Adventures in Indie Game Development".

Paypal's Picks ProjectMQ as Top Digital Service of 2018!

By 2018, since they had only secured $5K in accredited investment plus the $21,500 in startup grants from pitch competitions, money was starting to get tight. In that 5 year period as a bootstrapped startup, we had invested over $300K in R&D and operational expenses, via the salaries from our full-time jobs. Know that both of us had our own families to take care of, we couldn't continue the same level of financial support for ProjectMQ that we'd done in the past. We were very close to shutting down the company.

Luckily, PayPal came to the rescue. Marcus was still regularly checking the internet for grant opportunities from startup competitions, and discovered one from PayPal. In 2018, PayPal selected ProjectMQ out of 20,000+ applicants nationwide, as the top digital service of their 2018 business contest. The prize included $10K in cash, and a redesign of our website's landing page, both of which we desperately needed.

ProjectMQ Co-Produces iHeartMEDIA's 1st Esports Event!

Later that Fall, we were also blessed with an awesome opportunity to co-produce iHeartMEDIA's first esports event. After 5 years of hard work, this finally became the first time that our business generated revenue from something other than startup competitions. Following the success of the DreamHack event in 2017, this esports event generated $12K for us. The following year, we generated another $8K from esports events, highlighting a promising path forward for ProjectMQ.

Time to Pivot: ProjectMQ Shifts Focus to Esports

While we were able to scale ProjectMQ to users in 40 counties, and curate a catalog of nearly 100 amazing indie games from around the world, the search engine platform never generated any money for us. Hindsight is always 20/20, and it's clear to us now that ProjectMQ failed because we had the wrong business model and user acquisition strategy. We originally intended for our multimedia search engine to have a subscription model like Spotify, and we also wanted to launch as an invite-only community like Facebook did.

Though, we now understand that ProjectMQ should have been a free/open media platform like Youtube, where we monetized from advertising, and we should have focused on growing the largest user base possible. Instead, we built a closed ecosystem designed to charge indie devs and gamers, two demographics who couldn't pay us. As a result, our combined subscription and invite-only strategies were conflicting and counterproductive.

Meanwhile, we generated $20K from esports between 2018 and 2019, which represented nearly 75% of our revenue over that two-year period. Learning from our mistakes with the search engine business, we've evolved ProjectMQ into an experiential marketing agency. Our new business now provides paid consulting to help colleges and other non-endemic businesses learn about the gaming/esports industry. Then, we recommend products and services to the business, that helps them use video games to achieve their business goals.

Our pivot from B2C to B2B2C allows us to get paid upfront for consulting, and then paid long-term for additional consulting plus product/subscription sales. Also, instead of competing in the saturated markets of varsity/pro esports and endemic brands, we're tackling the greenfield opportunities with intramural esports and non-endemic brands. And focusing on family-friendly games lets ProjectMQ leverage its previous network.

ProjectMQ Teaches Game Development to At-Risk Youth

Today, only 2% of professional in the global gaming industry are Black, and only 2.2% of Black men in the US work in STEAM-related professions. Our goal is to grow ProjectMQ into a massively successful business and brand for gamers around the world. We're also driven by a strong desire to use video games to inspire the next generation of innovators to pursue lucrative STEAM careers. "Do well by doing good" - Benjamin Franklin