“The programme helped us translate creative vision into investor language,” explains George Caton-Coult of Pop Paper City
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“There are so many immersive digital projects and experiences that aren’t being made simply because the tools producers need aren’t there,” reasons John Rose-Adams of the issues impacting the immersive digital studio sector. “Despite having strong creative ideas, there isn’t always an easy way of expressing what you want to express so having an out-of-the-box solution creatives can subscribe to, pick up and use is amazingly useful,” he adds. “That tool would solve so many of their problems.”
It’s a topic he knows a lot about. As a long-time creative producer driving innovation in immersive technologies and as part of digital storytelling house Megaverse, John has helped bring film and theatre creators’ imaginations to life by blending live performance with state-of-the-art game engine tech. Now, with co-founder John Ingle and their new venture – a software-as-a-service product called MegaStage – their team aims to take things even further by putting that power directly in the hands of creators.
“The technologies in this space are brilliant on their own but they’re designed for specific purposes, whether it’s motion capture, game engines or broadcast technologies,” he tells us, detailing the various ways in which creators can use these digital tools. “Up until now, there was no way of creating full productions quickly and cheaply. Every project required people essentially making things from scratch and we thought that was very wasteful.”
“Our product will be one of the first tools to help people seamlessly make work”
Cue MegaStage, a start-up dedicated to giving creators the power to develop immersive projects quickly and easily, in-house. “We’re making software tools that sit over real-time game engines like Unreal Engine and speak to it in a way that creatives can make sense of,” he says, explaining how the tool incorporates many different industry-specific needs like live-performance virtual cameras and show controls. “Whether it’s theatre, TV, games production or streaming, our product will be one of the first tools to help people seamlessly make work for virtual spaces.”
The company’s expertise has positioned them on the cusp of a new creative wave. Being first on the scene is key, which is why they’re eager to ensure MegaStage is quick to market. It’s one of the reasons why John and the team applied for Creative Enterprise: Investment Readiness.
“I’ve got a background in research and development, innovation and tech but the investment landscape is complicated,” admits John, “but it’s also learnable. A lot of the Investment Readiness programme’s focus is on understanding the investment landscape and really honing in on what it is you’re trying to sell. Both areas have been incredibly invaluable because we realised very quickly that we were fairly green to both of those things.”
While MegaStage’s potential is game-changing for creators working within their industry, the scheme has encouraged John to adopt new ways of speaking about the product the company is built around. “We really enjoy discussing all the incredible things you can make with technology but a lot of investors don’t actually care only about that. Instead, they’re more focused on whether it’s a good idea that will make them a return, and makes sense for investment,” he says. “Through the programme, we’ve developed our revenue model and how that translates into the various stages of investment and scaling that we need. It’s been a really fascinating and fun challenge.”
“We have a strong product roadmap and clearer idea of our launch and road to market”
In turn, this introspective work has helped make MegaStage more robust in terms of its future viability. As John points out, this type of forward thinking focus can often fall by the wayside with companies forced to juggle multiple creative projects.
“It’s a great programme for guiding creative companies through this process because they sometimes have a bit of an ambivalence to business,” he suggests. Its mentor-led support offers valuable, unvarnished advice that assists with this resilience building process: “They’re prepared to say ‘that’s not good enough. It needs more work,’” says John of his experiences on the scheme. “It’s great to have mentors who can bridge that gap.”
Overall, this process of learning and refining has transformed MegaStage into something that can withstand the unpredictability of a new and emerging digital market. In doing so, it’s helped make their start up a more appealing proposition to potential investors. “We now have a strong product roadmap and a much clearer idea of our launch and our road to market,” smiles John. “All of this stuff was so important for a business that has scale ambitions and now all of those building blocks are in place. That’s what we’ve taken away from the programme.”