About Quickload
The Goal
The overall purpose of Quickload is to make its gaming startups really take off. The aim of the 6-month program is to help them get in their best shape possible and be prepared for it.
We focus to create an atmosphere of intensity, focus, clarity and honesty. Everyone around the founders – us, the other founders in the batch, the alumni, the speakers and the investors – wants to help our startups succeed. In this atmosphere, it’s hard not to get highly motivated. We need that kind of motivation because it is what one needs to do something as difficult as starting his own game company.
We aim to have our alumni to describe the time spent at Quickload as the most insightful and productive period of their life.
Funding
Living Expenses Grant
Quickload currently provide a grant. The amount changes each batch, but we strive to provide enough money to cover living expenses in the city of Turin for 6 months for at least 2 founders.
Acceleration
Quickload is an acceleration program, so we expect you to work most of the time on your product/game. That is why the activities we organize are all optional, except for the first 2 weeks of acceleration. You can expect a few hours of activities per week.
Intro Bootcamp
During the first month of Quickload, we host a 2-week series of tactical talks from Quickload partners and mentors. Topics range from “How to publish your game on Steam” and “How to do good game production”. We pack these talks into the first weeks of the batch on purpose, so founders can spend the rest of the batch focused on building their company and product.
Quickload Office Hours
Much of what takes place at Quickload happens during office hours. Quickload partners host group office hours every two weeks and one-on-one office hours as often as founders want. What startups talk about at office hours depends on the stage of the company and where they are in the Quickload cycle.
Office Hours with Domain Experts
This particular kind of event is group or one-on-one office hours with a domain expert guest. The goal is to provide direct feedback and guidance on selected topic regarding soft skills, pitching, public relationships, production, etc…
Weekly Talks
Once a week, we invite an eminent person from the gaming industry world to speak. Most speakers are successful gaming startup founders. Talks are strictly off the record to encourage candor, because the inside story of most startups is more colorful than the one presented later to the public.
Game Launches
Once a startup has something built that’s ready to launch (a game, a product), we help founders figure out how to present it to gamers and the press. Depending on the kind of product they make, we prepare founders for launches on the main distribution platforms (like Steam), other main communities and press. and for their first press pitches and interviews.
Deals
Each startup gets exclusive access to discounts or free products and can get free credits for cloud hosting and other services.
Investor Day
On Investor Day, the latest Quickload batch founders present their companies to an audience of specially selected investors, publishers, press and institutional guests. We are striving to create a one-in-a-life event where a large percentage of the top gaming startup investors and publishers have their attention focused on the same thing.
In the weeks following Investor Day, we keep in touch with our startups as they are in the trenches of their fundraising negotiations, and help them decipher the real messages in investors’ and publishers’ deliberately ambiguous responses. We often talk to the investors ourselves, to find out what they’re really thinking about a particular startup.
Pre-matching
To ensure the success of the Investor Day event, we will do a pre-matching round where selected investors will have the chance to review Quickload startups before Investor Day and schedule a meeting with them in the afternoon. This means we make sure there is an actual interest on both sides of these meetings before scheduling them, without wasting anyone’s time.
Community
Today the Quickload alumni community is still small, but we aim to make it one of the best in the world. The main source of its power will come from the strong commitment to helping one another. A culture of helpfulness will always be an important part of Quickload, and founders will always know that if they ever come across a challenge they need help with, they not only have the partners at their disposal, but also their peers.
Quickload Discord Community
Our Discord group is the main way of communication for anything that is happening at Quickload. There you will be able to meet all of the Alumni and your batch founders. The goal is to make it become a vibrant community of supporting founders where to share knowledge and feedback on anything.
Quickload Startup Directory
We host a list of any startup that went through our program on our website to have an easy way to provide visibility to our startups.
Alumni Demo Day
Active Quickload alumni founders get an early look at the Quickload companies in each batch at Alumni Demo Day. The event aims to become a de-facto alumni reunion. This event will likely be organized some time prior to the Investor Day, to help current batch founders to refine their pitch in a more friendly and peer-to-peer environment.