Before anyone builds a deck, one question needs an answer: are you selling a share of your company, or financing one game? That fork decides who you pitch and how, and it is never a small fix, because the two deals attract different investors, reward different stories and demand structurally different pitches. But it is only the first fork on a bigger map. This chapter walks the equity path, the project path and the publisher route people mistake for a third kind of investor, then opens out to every other way to fund a studio, from your own savings to grants, angels, crowdfunding and the customer who pays you before any investor will.
The decision no slide can fix
Most pitch problems are slide problems. A weak title here, a buried team slide there, all fixable in an afternoon. This one is different. When a team builds a deck full of gameplay depth, marketing plans and development roadmaps, then presents it to equity investors, no amount of polish saves it. The audience is shopping for something the deck never mentions: a company that scales.
Decide between equity and project funding before a single slide exists. That decision sets the shape of the whole story, not the content of single slides. Equity investors buy a share of your company and need to believe the company grows. Project investors finance one game and need to believe the game sells. Different bets, made by different people, for different reasons. A pitch built to serve both serves neither.
And this is not a beginner mistake. It is the most common structural error in our coaching data, and it catches experienced teams as often as first-timers.
The equity deal: selling a stake in your company
An equity investor buys a percentage of your company. Not your game, your company: every title you ship, every tool you build, every hire you make. That one fact explains everything else about the equity pitch.
Because they own a piece of everything, they need a story about everything. A scaling story: how one good game becomes a studio that produces value again and again. An unfair advantage: the thing you have that a competitor with more money cannot simply copy. And a way out: equity investors earn their return when the company is sold or goes public, on a horizon of roughly ten years.
That last point deserves more honesty than it usually gets. A VC deal is, at its core, an agreement to sell your company later. Funds owe their own backers a return, and dividends almost never deliver it, so funds push toward a full exit. If you never want to sell, venture capital is probably the wrong instrument. Better fits exist: customer-funded growth where possible, angel money, or capital from people who know and trust you.
"If you sign a VC deal today, that means you are selling your company tomorrow."
The project deal: funding one game
A project investor finances one title and recoups from that game's revenue, typically starting in year three or four. Once they have their money back plus profit, the relationship can simply end. The IP stays with you. No exit required, no pressure to become a billion-dollar company, no ten-year marriage.
The pitch changes accordingly. A project investor judges the game, not the company: its unique features, its audience, its place in the market, and a marketing plan you will execute yourself. Bring a demo or a prototype if you possibly can. Project investors want their hands on the thing they are buying into.
Project money buys a share of one game's revenue; equity money buys a share of everything you will ever build. That difference also explains what happens to studios with big series plans. Think of restaurants: nobody funds location number two of a restaurant that has not proven location number one. With a single unproven title, investors want a share of the whole company. Ship several titles that made money first. Around the fifth, funding the next one as a standalone project becomes a normal conversation.
Every investor is really asking two things: how much, and how fast
Behind the polite questions, a project or near-launch investor is running two sums. How much money comes back, and how much more than they put in? And in what time? Founders obsess over the first and underrate the second, but the second often decides the deal.
Money back early beats the same money back late almost every time, because a return in hand can go straight back to work. Seven thousand next quarter is worth more than seven thousand in three years, and every investor knows it in their bones. That is why a near-complete game is such an easy sell: the biggest risks are already behind it, and the pitch is not "trust me, we will build it" but "it is built, we just have to get it over the line." A finished thing that only needs a push is de-risked, and de-risked is what fast really means.
Equity investors ask a slower version of the same two questions, how big the eventual exit and how soon, but for a project deal the payback clock is the whole conversation.
Two pitches, two shopping lists
The handout every training participant receives carries a comparison worth pinning above your desk. Build the deck for the money you actually want, then hold every slide against the matching column. If your slides keep answering the wrong column, you are pitching the wrong investor, no matter how polished the slides are.
What each investor needs to see
| The equity investor | The project investor |
|---|---|
| Your studio's vision and the strength and experience of your team | A detailed project plan and budget |
| The market opportunity you are addressing | A believable revenue forecast for this specific game |
| Your business model in detail: revenue streams and the path to profitability | A clear marketing and distribution strategy that you will execute |
| Command of your main business drivers | A clear plan for how they recoup their investment and profit, usually via revenue share |
| Financial projections that show growth and a high return | A gameplay demo or prototype they can experience hands-on |
The third path: publisher deals
A publisher brings more than money: marketing, distribution, often development funding, and opinions. In exchange, the publisher takes a revenue cut until their investment is recouped, then a reduced share after that. They are more involved than any investor, from design feedback to release schedules, and their whole focus is the one game whose revenue they share. Your studio succeeding beyond that game is nice for you; their profit is capped by their share of that title.
That makes the publisher pitch and the investor pitch structurally different documents, not two flavors of one deck. The investor pitch sells a company or a revenue plan. The publisher pitch sells one game in full depth: gameplay, audience, comparable titles, production quality. Confusing the two is the most common structural mistake we see, and knowing your investor shows why.
One more difference defines the negotiation. In a traditional publishing deal, the publisher usually takes control of distribution and marketing, and sometimes a piece of the IP. A project investor takes neither. If keeping your IP and your marketing control matters, that is the exact line between a project deal and a publishing deal.
There is a blunter way to picture a publisher: a supermarket buying produce. They want your game at the lowest price and the highest resale margin, they recoup their marketing spend first (and sometimes charge it generously), and they have no real stake in your studio becoming big. That is not villainy, it is their model, and an investor runs the opposite model, winning only if you win large. Knowing that changes how you should negotiate. Keep your options open and run several publishers in parallel, so their offers compete with each other instead of you competing for one. A single publisher at the table sets the price. Three publishers who know about each other discover it.
Equity, project and publisher are three doors, not the whole building
Zoom out from those three doors and the full map has a dozen sources of money, each asking for something different in return. You do not need to memorize the list. You need to know what each one costs you, in cash, in ownership, or in control, before you knock. The price is never only the percentage; sometimes it is your independence, your timeline, or your relationships.
The money map: a dozen ways to fund a studio
| Source | What it costs you | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Self-funding | Your own savings, at your own risk | The first steps, when the sums are small and you want full control |
| Friends, fools and family (FFF) | Usually little equity, but real relationships if it goes wrong | The very first outside money, from people betting on you, not a spreadsheet |
| Grants (public and private) | Paperwork, reporting and strings, rarely equity | Proving a slice of the game without selling a share. Rules vary wildly by country and region |
| Accelerators | A small equity slice, for a fixed few months | Early, when you need a network and know-how as much as cash |
| Business angels | Equity, plus an experienced voice at the table | Early rounds, often from founders who exited and now back others |
| Family offices | Equity, and a longer courtship | Private wealth with its own focus. Ticket sizes and stages differ hugely, so research each one |
| Venture capital (VC) | Equity, plus an obligation to sell one day | A company built to scale big, aiming at an outsized outcome |
| Corporate VC (CVC) | Equity, plus strategic entanglement with the parent | When the corporate's reach or technology helps more than plain money does |
| Strategic partners | Some independence, sometimes a piece of IP | Another company whose distribution or platform you need. Rarely your first customer |
| Crowdfunding | No equity, but a promise you have to deliver | A game people will pre-buy. You presell it and keep building |
| Crowd financing | Equity spread across many small backers | A crowd that believes, ideally pooled into one line on your cap table |
| Bootstrapping | Growth speed, but none of your ownership | Whenever your own revenue can carry the next step. The most honest money there is |
One caution on accelerators. A real accelerator gives you money, a network and knowledge in exchange for that small equity slice, usually over three to six months. An outfit that takes your equity and hands you no money is a service provider wearing a nicer name. Know which one is sitting across from you before you sign.
Studios have money lanes a generic startup list walks right past
The map above fits any startup. Games have their own routes on top of it, and a generic funding list misses most of them. The specific names shift over time, so learn them as durable categories rather than a directory:
- Publisher funding: a publisher pays for the build in exchange for a revenue cut and usually distribution. It is a path of its own, covered above, and also, plainly, a way to finance development.
- Platform funds: the companies that run the stores and consoles seed games for their platforms, sometimes with cash, sometimes with tools, visibility or hardware.
- Games-focused VCs and angel syndicates: investors who back only games and game tech. They speak your language and need less convincing that the market is real.
- Gaming accelerators: fixed-term programs built for studios, trading a small slice for money, mentorship and a cohort of other game founders.
- Regional games funding and grants: many countries and regions fund game development directly through cultural or economic programs, often as grants or soft loans tied to where you are based.
- Revenue-share project funders: financiers who back a single title and recoup from its revenue, the project deal run as a dedicated business.
The named lists move too fast to freeze into a chapter. Funds open and close, programs change their terms, regional schemes come and go. We keep a maintained set of links on the resources page and refresh it on a schedule. Learn the categories here, get the current names there.
Choose your path: the decision flow
No one can make this call for you, but a few honest questions get most teams there in ten minutes. Answer them before you open PowerPoint, and answer them out loud with your co-founders in the room.
The decision flow
- Do you ever want to sell the company? If the honest answer is never, think twice about venture capital. Its business model requires your exit.
- Are you building a portfolio studio or one great game? A portfolio is an equity story. A single title is a project deal.
- Do you have marketing in-house? Project investors expect you to execute the marketing plan yourself. If you cannot, a publisher's services may be worth their share.
- Does the IP need to stay fully yours? Project funding leaves it with you. An equity investor co-owns it through the company.
- How long can you wait? Equity plays out over roughly ten years. Project deals typically pay back from year three or four.
- Can any of the other sources on the map carry you first, so you raise later, smaller, or not at all?
Once the path is set, a few deeper mechanics are worth understanding before you ever negotiate: how project money actually gets paid back, how a grant can fund your way to a stronger raise, how your own customers can carry you further than you think, and why who pays you decides how hard your revenue will be to earn. Those sit just below. When the path and the money are both chosen, the next question is who exactly sits across the table, and that is knowing your investor. To hear how each path sounds out loud, the 30-second pitch builds both with you, worked examples included.