How to organize your studio and build your team

What the talk is about

Michael Haberl talks about how to organize a studio and build a team. He suggests starting with a personal plan: understand what you want as a person, then write a business plan covering mission, management, market knowledge, strategy, products, risks and KPIs. An owner acting as investor and as manager are different roles with different interests. The core of the talk is the team: he presents a simple model of four people types (analyst, socializer, creative thinker, doer) and suggests that sometimes it works better to find the person first and then shape the position around them. He shares a mistake where a strong communicator was made product manager of a free-to-play game, and the project had to be cancelled. He closes with a four-step method for solving any problem: define it, list solutions, weigh pros and cons, decide. Useful for founders and leads of small studios.