Wataro.com is a European-wide project and the brainchild of the Belgian start-up World of Gaming. It was initiated by two young entrepreneurs, Matthieu Ullens and Quentin Janssens, both ‘schooled’ by eBay where they met after gaining experience in strategic consulting and learning the ins-and-outs of Internet.
The Belgian creation Wataro.com proposes some twenty games geared to relaxation and entertainment: Solitaire, Blocks (similar to Tetris), Break the Bricks, Diamonds etc. In every match, you play for fun with other human players with a minimum entry fee (between 40 centimes and 10 euros) that you put in the pot. At the end of the game, the winnings go to the top player who can cash them in if he chooses.
Wataro.com targets quality games and authentic interaction between the players – they can communicate with each other, launch challenges and display their best scores on Facebook. Wataro.com has already attracted a community of several thousand on-line game-lovers all over Europe.
Launching a project like Wataro is a real challenge, even with the solid experience that Matthieu and Quentin accumulated at eBay and at Bain and BCG respectively. This consulting experience has given the team what it takes to navigate the first steps of entrepreneurship and to develop the capacity needed to identify a high-potential project, create a presentation for investors and sell the project correctly. They also have a network of professional contacts that helped them raise the funds to launch World of Gaming.
Still, when Matthieu and Quentin talk about the greatest challenges for them on launching Wataro, three things were clearly at the top of list:
1) Their personal and professional networks
Undoubtedly the importance of knowing the right people, having good introductions and caring for personal and professional relations is underestimated. And this holds at all levels — for investors, shareholders, employees, co-founders, suppliers, clients. Nor should professional networks be forgotten, whether specialized (for example industry related networks) or general. Each of them need special attention, since their potential issues are different, and each of them can significantly contribute to the success of a project.
2) Do things “full blown”, but stay flexible
At the beginning, we thought that we should test things gradually and then apply the results more systematically if the project was successful. For our type of project, we were totally wrong: it was much better to make radical changes and then closely monitor what happened, while being prepared to make very rapid adaptations. The impact on the business is more positive, since it is often harder to see the effect of a decision if changes are made too progressively.
3) Love surprises and change
Surprises and changes are an integral part of entrepreneurship. When comparing the schedule planned for a typical day with what we actually did at the end of that same day, we often see that more than half of the activities we carried out were not expected. These surprises can be good or bad, minor or major, but in any case, you need to like change, to move quickly and to be ready to discover the unknown.
Some amusing facts about Wataro games:
1) Women are better players than men
In a comparison of men and women, the scale tips to the ladies. Men may boast of a better general level of culture by getting higher scores than the women in the first few games. But that doesn’t last, because women assimilate the subtleties of the game more quickly. Consequently, by the twentieth game, women have turned the average around, confirming the generally accepted idea that they have better memories than their partners.
2) Belgians are the best players when it comes to European geography.
Belgians are the ones who know their international geography best, with an average score of 530 and 81% of correct answers on the world capital quiz. They have a significant advantage over our European neighbours – for example, Germans get only 68% correct answers on the same test.
3) People generally recognize symbols of the United States … but much less so for China.
The monument players recognize best is the Statue of Liberty in New York, which gets 98% of good replies … On the other hand, the general public doesn’t seem to know the Great Wall of China as well – 56% confused it with … the Grand Canyon. That’s quite a paradox in these days of globalization, when China is emerging as a world power.
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