Hi - funding for hardware is certainly difficult, but there are quite a few investors who do it, and it is easier than it was even six months ago.
If I were you, I probably wouldn't determine whether or not I wanted to focus on the company based on the perceived ease/difficulty of raising money, but on whether or not I thought I were solving a big problem with big potential. I don't know enough about the market you are describing. If you 100% fixed it, how much money would you save esports sponsors?
The largest cheating scandal (that happened about a year ago), had $250k up for grabs[1]. With that said, the exact number is difficult to quantify, as if the cheater is successful, then no one is the wiser.
Got it. You might need to think about the size of the market that you're targeting. When I think about what makes a company or product interesting as a startup, I try to think about markets that will expand over time because of what the company does - and not what the market looks like today.
That means that a market doesn't have to be large now, but it has to have the possibility of growing to be something significant. Do you think that solving this problem is going to be worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in ten years?
I think so. With amazon buying Twitch for 1B a few years ago, I think the competitive gaming industry (which Twitch primarily caters to) is well into it's rising phase.
A major gaming peripheral company reached out to me about Game:ref (they wanted to make sure the anti-cheat hardware is compatible with their mice) and a major game developer also reached out (asking about how the hardware would theoretically integrate with their games). Unfortunately, apart from courtesy calls, however, I haven't been able to really get to the next level.
Totally. Come up wit hthe marketing of "Powered by Game:Ref! -- Know your wins are legit!" type of thing to get them to sell and thereby secure more sponsors for the events as they know they wont be wasting money to cheating
If I were you, I probably wouldn't determine whether or not I wanted to focus on the company based on the perceived ease/difficulty of raising money, but on whether or not I thought I were solving a big problem with big potential. I don't know enough about the market you are describing. If you 100% fixed it, how much money would you save esports sponsors?