Applications are always daunting and it’s hard to know what funders are looking for. This blog post is designed to walk you through what Weird Ghosts is looking for in an application to help demystify our process.
What do we look for in an application?
The following questions are what we consider when we look at an application:
Impact Goals:
- How aligned are the team’s impact goals with our own?
- Are these impact goals tangible?
- Is the team set up to create a healthy and sustainable culture?
- How aligned are their projects and 5 year plan with our mandate?
- Does the team match our definition of having predominantly underrepresented founders?
Community:
- Does this team feel like a safe and valuable match for our community?
- Are they looking for and invested in community?
- Do the team’s values align with Weird Ghosts’?
- Do we enjoy collaborating with them?
Support:
- What support does the team need? Is this something we are able to offer?
- Are they open to (and excited about) mentorship, feedback, and community support?
- Do they have time available for mentorship and regular check-ins?
Market Potential:
- Do the team’s projects look interesting and exciting?
- What is the market potential of their primary project? How many copies do they expect to sell? (More applicable to larger investments.)
General:
- What is the team’s track record?
- Are there any red flags?
- Does the team demonstrate good judgement?
What happens after I apply?
If your application seems at first glance like a good fit for Weird Ghosts, you’ll receive an email from us in a couple weeks setting up an initial call. This isn’t a formal pitch call, just a chance for us to meet the team and get a sense of your dreams and goals.
Based on this conversation and whether the studio still seems like a good match, we’ll follow up by scheduling a pitch call. We usually invite some advisors and Gamma Space members to the pitch to help ask questions. During this call, your studio will give a 15-30 minute presentation of your studio. We’ll send you questions before the meeting for you to think about and address. The rest of the call will be reserved for questions and a conversation about your studio.
For the Baby Ghost program, the pitch is the final step before we make a decision. For investees, we have a few more stages, including due diligence, market and production analysis, and negotiations. At any step in this process, we may decide not to move forward. We try to keep the entire process from application to decision within 2 months, but sometimes this goes longer with our larger investments.
I followed all these steps and still didn’t receive funding
Weird Ghosts is still a pretty small fund so we’re not always able to make deals, even with teams we think are doing great things. We try to give plenty of feedback if we do need to reject an application so that teams have an idea of what to work with in the future. We are also open to talking to studios about our feedback if that is helpful.
But remember, we are just one organisation and what we think isn’t going to apply to every funder. Take our advice alongside the advice of other mentors and always do what works best for your team.
Read about other teams’ experiences applying to Weird Ghosts
Caldera Interactive wrote a generous blog post about their experience applying to Weird Ghosts. Although they didn’t receive funding, they had a very strong application and pitch deck and we recommend their blog post to anyone who is interested in applying to Weird Ghosts and wondering what it’s like. You can read it online here.
Our investee Rocket Adrift also has some great blog posts on seeking funding and pitching their game which we recommend checking out.
If you have any questions about applying to Weird Ghosts, please get in touch with us!