sussex learning curves community interest company
David's story The Fat Fish team has developed over 100 mobile apps in the last
ten years, including the Tiny Sports franchise, which has had over four million
downloads. How did you get started in the gaming industry? Initially via my
degree and coming up with website ideas to try and make money. Just before we
graduated in 2004, two classmates and I decided we wanted to set up a software
business, Bright AI. We had some ideas for products and reached out to our
network to find people that were looking to outsource software development
projects. We won our first project a month later. Bright AI started mobile
application development in 2005, producing branded football content such as
wallpapers, games and animations. We developed and published the smash hit
utility app My Secret Folder in 2011, generating over £1million in revenue and
reaching the top five paid charts in the UK and US. This allowed us to develop
more of our own intellectual property. We set up mobile development studio Fat
Fish Digital in 2013, of which I am founder and managing director. What's been
the biggest challenge in your career so far and how did you overcome it? There
have been two big challenges in my career to date: 1. Picking up the business
skills required, such as planning, cash flow and managing staff. The technical
skills we picked up on our degree were second to none, but we had to learn
everything else from scratch. 2. Moving away from production to management. My
experience and passion lay in working on projects, so being able to delegate to
others and focus on the business strategy and management was difficult. What's
the most surprising thing you've encountered in your industry? Probably the
biggest learning curve was learning how to run a business. In the early days of
the app store it was very much like the Wild West, with people trying different
tactics to get an upper hand. I would say we saw some surprising things there!
