I have already made the mistakes you are about to make.

Almost any good team can build a prototype. Very few can turn one into something that ships.

Everyone helps at the start. Jams, incubators and accelerators crowd the first three months. Publishers arrive at the end, once there is something finished enough to evaluate. The twelve to twenty-four months in between is where teams actually die, and where nobody is selling help.

0 · Capital4–8 weeks

Grants, a publisher advance, soft loans, or preparing an equity round. Most teams start here.

1 · Concept2–4 months

A prototype becomes a project. What the game is in one sentence, and what evidence would settle it.

2 · Ship6–18 months

The long middle. Scope made visible before it makes itself, a date the team can defend, cuts surfaced while cutting is still cheap.

3 · Launch1–2 months

Store presence, beta sequencing, day-one operations, patch readiness before it is needed.

The wedge is the long middle. Phase 2 is the part nobody else sells into, and the part that decides whether a game exists.

Live operations after launch is GameCraft’s, sold separately. The engagement has an end. Advice shaped to extend a contract is worth less than advice that is not.

Three sizes, three currencies. Cash, revenue share and equity are alternatives, not additions. Published, never negotiated.

Revenue share is always defined on net receipts to the company — what the team actually banks, after any publisher share. Never on store-level revenue.

Equity work is preparation only, charged as a flat fee, never as a percentage of a round. Placement is a licensed activity in Sweden, and since 1 March 2026 conducting it without authorization is a criminal offense.

• Not capital. FirstPlayable helps find money. It does not provide it.
• Not a publisher. No rights, no distribution, no claim on the game.
• Not a co-founder seat. No board seat by default, no veto.
• Not management. Nothing is taken out of the founders' hands.

What a team buys is foresight, from someone who has already been there. The founders decide.

Teams of three to twelve. Pre-revenue, often unfunded, usually first-time founders who recently left a large studio. Proud, short of money, allergic to being managed, and they have never raised.

It is a bad fit for a team that wants someone to run the company, for a studio large enough to have solved delivery already, and for anyone looking for an investor rather than an advisor.

A team that has already launched and is struggling in live operations wants GameCraft instead. That is a different problem, and a different engagement.