Ella Romanos
Arcanix
| Since 2008 Ella Romanos has been helping build and manage games teams, She has a deep understanding of the resources, processes and commercial considerations through being directly responsible for releasing over 50 games. She has worked closely with both investors and development teams on the funding process as well as consulting on production, fundraising and company strategy particularly supporting teams running live service games. |
Ella Romanos is speaking at the following session/s
Tech Raises Money Better Than Games. Here’s Why
Games studios are creative powerhouses. But when it comes to raising investment, we consistently get it wrong - and we tend to get it wrong in the same ways.
Ella Romanos has spent 19 years in the games industry working as a developer, as a consultant advising studios on funding strategy, and most recently as a founder raising pre-seed for her own VC-backed startup. That last role was the one that finally showed her how badly the industry misunderstands what investors actually need.
This talk is an honest post-mortem on the assumptions games studios bring to the funding conversation - and why those assumptions cost us deals, credibility, and time. Ella will cover the mistakes she made herself, the patterns she observed in others, and the shift in mindset that changed how she pitches, plans, and thinks about proof.
Key topics include: why games studios confuse creativity with investment readiness; the vanity metrics trap and what investors actually want to see; the difference between proving a concept and proving demand; why the games industry thinks it's unique (it isn't); and what tech startups do differently that we should steal.
This is not a talk about how to write a pitch deck. It is a talk about why most of us are asking the wrong questions before we ever get to one.
Session Takeaway
1. Investors do not fund ideas, passion, or creative potential - they fund proof of demand. Understanding what proof means in your specific context is the work that needs to happen before you approach a single investor.
2. Most games studios are pitching the wrong thing. The game is not the investment case. The commercial model, customer validation, and evidence of repeatable demand are the investment case.
3. The games industry has far more to learn from the wider tech startup world than it typically acknowledges - especially on customer validation and building proof before scale.
4. Vanity metrics (wishlists, social follows, demo downloads) are not investor evidence. Knowing the difference between activity and traction will save you months of unproductive fundraising conversations.
5. You do not need to be far along to be investment ready - but you do need to be honest about where you are and what you have actually proven. Investors reward clarity and credibility over ambition alone.
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