By Since SparkToro’s founding in 2018, I’ve been been passionately loud about our unique funding model (becase it’s a really good idea.) The model focuses on chill work, sustainability over growth-at-any-cost, and offers investors and founders a lower-risk way to benefit from long-term, profitable operation. Several companies and funds have used our structure to raise money since, including accelerator program TinySeed and culinary hardware maker Seattle Ultrasonics.
Today, I’m excited to announce that Snackbar Studio, of which I’m one of five cofounders and the CEO, has raised $2.15M from 38 angel investors to make its first indie video game, tentatively titled: The Snackbar at the End of the World.
In order to make this funding structure accessible to what I hope will be many future founders, we worked with Kelly Lawton-Abbott and our superb attorneys from SSM Legal to open source the C-Corp documents. We believe others (not just in the indie gaming field, but beyond) may find our unique methodology a better fit than VC, publisher, or bootstrapping.
Above: The Snackbar founders on a team retreat near Orvieto | Below: Early prototype for the game’s Umbrian wilds biome
I’m sharing here on SparkToro because this company originated the model, because this domain will get greater visibility (*shakes fist at Google’s “site score”*), and because Snackbar doesn’t yet have its own blog.
This a doozy of a post, but honestly, it’s a lot of fun and worth a read. If you want to skip around, here’s what you’ll find within:
- Snackbar’s Funding Model
- Our Investor Pitch Deck
- Open-Source Incorporation and Funding Docs
- How We Became Game Studio Founders
- A Sneak Peek at The Snackbar at the End of the World
- FAQs about the game
- What Does This Mean for Rand at SparkToro?
NOTE: This post has been generously edited by my cofounder and wife, Geraldine DeRuiter. You’ll see her comments, mostly in italics and parentheses (except this one, which was totally written by Rand; you should buy copies of her new book for everyone on your holiday list).
How the Funding Model Works
Snackbar Studio, like SparkToro, starts with a single, priced funding round (we didn’t use a SAFE; shares were issued immediately for a variety of reasons, including to start the clock on QSBS). The focus is to:
- Raise from individual investors (anyone making $200K+/year or with $1M in total assets outside the value of their primary residence) not venture firms, publishers, or government funds.
- Provide enough money so that, if the first game is even moderately successful, the studio can continue to operate profitably for the long run (without needing to raise money again).
- Give the founders the option to repay investors their initial sum at any time, after which, everyone can benefit from profit sharing (i.e. dividend distributions)
- Keep incentives aligned. Founder salaries are capped at a fixed amount until investors are repaid – which means we all want to work towards that goal. (In the case of me and Geraldine that fixed salary amount is … uh, zero dollars. Sorry, honey.) (Note from Geraldine: wait what?)
- Optimize taxes (more on those differences here)
- Give founders the freedom to control their business’ destiny, while making sure investors are fairly rewarded in the event of success (and protected in the event of a not-success). Neither Snackbar Studio nor SparkToro have a board of directors and neither gives veto power to investors in a transaction. However, both give priority to investors’ funds being returned to them in the event of M&A, and provide protections against dilution or share class shenanigans. (That’s right, people! We’ve seen The Social Network!)
The pitch deck (below) and full set of documents (further below) provide more details on this structure for those curious.
Heather and Will Critchlow (two of Snackbar’s investors) with Rand, Geraldine, and their kids, in Rome, 2022
One thing I’ll say about both SparkToro and Snackbar— it doesn’t matter how tightly these documents are written if you don’t have trust. Shady operators will find ways to muck up even the most perfectly designed legal docs (e.g. the tragic story of Disco Elysium). That’s why we work so hard to earn the trust of our investors, and why we worked equally hard to make sure we pitched high-quality people who want only the best for the company, team, and product.
Geraldine and I know every one of Snackbar’s 38 investors personally. Many of them are close friends and colleagues (one is a sworn enemy, but he’s got no follow-through). We trust them to have our best interests at heart, just as they’ve trusted us to not do something bonkers and irresponsible with their money (besides make a video game featuring sentient garlic).
Our Pitch to Investors (feel free to steal/copy our pitch deck)
Here’s the bad news: almost all of our investors came from our personal networks. We didn’t pitch publishers or games investors on LinkedIn (well, actually there was one, but he turned it down. HE WILL RUE THAT DAY! Or maybe he won’t, honestly, who’s to say what people will or won’t rue?). Without a network of folks who know, like, and trust you, and who also happen to have lots and lots of cash, raising money is extremely difficult. (And look, there’s a lot we want to say here about who is able to get funded and who isn’t.)
But if you’ve been successful in the games field, are privileged enough to have a network of accredited investors (i.e net worth >$1M or earnings of $200K+), and are looking for alternatives to the traditional publisher-funded model (which we won’t disparage in detail, but cue Alfred Hitchcock music), this methodology might be a perfect choice.
Our pitch deck, with financials removed, is below:
The most challenging part was building a playable, provably-fun demo version of the game with enough polish to sell investors on the concept. You can see the trailer for investors on slide 3 of the presentation above.
Far more work (4 people, full time for 9 months) went into Snackbar’s pre-funding development than SparkToro’s audience research platform which, prior to funding, was just ~3 months of me and Casey brainstorming ideas and doing market research (not gonna lie: being west coast white guys in tech is playing on easy mode). For those who know my professional backstory, it’s understandable that the hurdle for funding was quite a bit higher for a video game studio (the most frequent reply we got was, “You’re doing what now?”) vs. a marketing SaaS business (most common response: FryeTakeMyMoney.gif).
Snackbar’s Open Source Incorporation and Funding Documents
The team from SSM has assembled all 12 documents that founders starting and funding a C-Corp using Snackbar Studio’s/SparkToro’s structure might need. You can find them in this open access folder.
We still strongly recommend you hire an attorney to help with the process, but the existence of these document templates should save you and your team a lot of time and money.
BTW – the firm we used, SSM Legal, went above and beyond for us. For a firm with their reputation and experience they’re a bargain, and incredibly patient while still keeping on top of every detail. I can’t recommend them enough and am happy to make a direct intro to anyone interested; just drop me a line – [email protected].
How Did We Become Game Studio Founders?
Surprisingly enough, I’m not a big gamer. And while I’ve run plenty of software teams, my professional experience before Snackbar was exclusively in B2B. But during the dark Seattle winter of 2020/21, with Covid running rampant and vaccines not yet in sight, Geraldine and I played a lot of games. In particular: Hades, Undermine, Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Disco Elysium, Bastion, Röki, The Last Campfire, Children of Morta, Moonlighter, and dozens of others. (We also spend a lot of time on the couch feeling the existential dread of lockdown under a regime of incompetent narcissists.)
Undoubtedly my favorite game of the last decade: Disco Elysium
When I’m obsessed with something, I get a little monomaniacal. In this case, I began studying games like any other software product, because that’s what they are—analyzing what worked, why, how, and what made a game great vs. merely good (it’s hard to turn entrepreneur brain off). I fell down a research rabbit hole, obsessively reading and watching everything I could find about the process and business of small-budget video games.
Rand’s Covid hobbies: researching video games and cooking (e.g. above pappardelle with ragù alla bolognese—don’t worry, I promise that in-game the dish will be made with the traditional tagliatelle)
One particularly dark day that winter, I decided that after SparkToro, my next company would be an indie game studio. When I told Geraldine, she shook her head.
“Don’t wait. If it’s something you really want to do… just do it now.”
Friends, get yourself a romantic partner who supports you this way; it’s the absolute best part of my life. (OH MY GOD, YOU ARE SUCH A DORK AND I LOVE YOU. – Geraldine)
My first step was to buy a few hours of consulting from Nicolas Kraj, who ran the GD-Keys game community. Over the next few months, Nicolas gave me a reality-check on the challenges of the game world (spoiler: it’s brutal!), but also a superb set of recommendations and next steps. Initially, the plan was to keep the costs very low and do a first game as a side project.
But then, my first startup (that I’d left years before) was sold. And overnight, the budget for the game went way up.
I won’t get into the long story of false starts between 2021-2023 save to say: after some very light cajoling, Geraldine formally offered to be my cofounder in the business and the game’s lead writer, all for the hefty salary of nothing. We learned a tremendous amount about what not to do when trying to make a game. Also we may have spent a painful ~$500K of our own savings in the process (Geraldine: “we did what?”).
In the summer of 2023, our friends Christine Ryu (the UX designer who made SparkToro’s original app) and Gabe Brown (cofounder of gaming startup Big Box VR, which sold to Meta) took us out and convinced us that formally building a company and team of our own was the way to go. Side note: they’re now Snackbar Studio investors 🤗
Rand, Geraldine, Christine, and Gabe in Seattle, standing for some reason in a parking lot?
My first step was recruiting Nicolas. He’d been an advisor to the game for the past two years, and had become a friend as well. Nico’s a legendary game designer, and led the teams on incredibly successful titles: Assassin’s Creed Origins, The Crew, Ghost Recon Frontline, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and most recently Space Marine 2 (which has already sold over 4.5 million copies!). Convincing him to give up a career filled with major studio success was an undertaking, but eventually, I broke him 🤗
Rand and Nico at Sacro Bosco, relaxing inside an ancient stone tub
My advice: invite your potential cofounders to a few days of gallivanting around Italian towns, eating incredible meals together, drinking phenomenal wine (well, Nico’s French, so of course he thinks Italian wines are inferior to those of his homeland 🙄), and regularly returning to the topics of how to make a killer game, unbound by big studio constraints.
This process was also effective on our lead developer, Miriam Cabrera Galván, one of the most talented young engineers I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. We knew Miriam first as a subcontractor, and found her style, work ethic, and productivity a flawless match for the team we wanted to build. She’s worked on numerous indie games, and has web development and game design experience, too. But, most importantly, Miriam’s a joy to work with—much like SparkToro’s CTO, Casey, she’s holistically-minded about engineering and pushes back when something isn’t necessary, while happily taking on work we all believe can make a positive impact (even when it’s a huge undertaking). She also cusses a storm in three-languages. So much so that even Geraldine is scandalized.
Miriam and Geraldine make progress on narrative structures for the game
With Miriam, Nicolas, and Geraldine aboard, we had design, development, multilingual cursing, and writing covered. The last piece, the right art director, proved to be the most challenging. None of us had a perfect person in our existing networks, so we had to recruit. Over the course of 7 expensive months, we interviewed and ran (paid) art tests with 24 candidates. Turns out, it’s really hard to capture a magical version of 1960s Italy using a 30-degree camera angle and 2D art.
After months without success, in January of 2024, we found Francesco Mazza. He’d done cartoons and illustrations for numerous TV shows with the BBC and Netflix before undertaking a game project of his own: River Tails. The game had struggled at launch (after playing it, I believe in large part due to being rushed at the end of production for budget reasons, and having lackluster marketing, and not because it’s not super fun – because it is), but Francesco’s artwork shines.
Geraldine and Francesco in front of Lecce’s Pasticceria Franchini
One of my favorite things Francesco does is pull each element of every scene from real places in Italy. In the Castelluccio di Norcia biome, pictured below, he made sure the wildflowers, hills, hay bales, fences, shrines, and landscape were precisely modeled on the real-life region.
We want to be confident that if, after playing Snackbar, you visit these parts of Italy, you’ll be able to instantly recognize and recall your in-game experiences with them. Similarly, if you’ve been to these iconic (but less well-touristed) bits of the country and play Snackbar, you’ll feel like you’re back in those magnificent landscapes. Francesco’s immense talent, affinity for his homeland, and passion for the game world shines through in every monster he designs, every recipe he illustrates, and every character he and Geraldine imagine.
Our crew is assembled! Time for the heist! Uhhh, I mean, time to create a playable demo, investor trailer, and pitch deck. That process was just under 6 months, from early February to mid-July. In late March, the team met up outside Orvieto, Umbria, for a week of work at an AirBnB. We visited a handful of locations for potential inclusion in the game, including Civita di Bagnoregio, on the Lazio/Umbria border, known somewhat sadly as The City that Will Die.
Civita di Bagnoregio (above) is tragically doomed due to the erosion of the plateau it rests upon
Given our game’s setting (more on that below), Civita was a perfect backdrop for the feeling of a town lingering on the edge of extinction. And it wasn’t alone; Sacro Bosco, the “Park of Monsters,” became an instant addition to one of the regions in the game’s wilderness. It feels like magical beasts already roam the grounds.
The Snackbar team lounges on the grass of Sacro Bosco while Francesco sketches the gate
You’ll see elements of both these locations in the game, and might even catch glimpses of them in the short videos below.
A Sneak Peek of The Snackbar at The End of the World
Remember how I said I got monomaniacal? Well, during my investigations into the indie video game market, I found that some genres and tag combinations consistently outperformed what a statistical model suggested would be “average” for game sales performance. Two of those in particular were: cooking and action roguelike.
When we started the game in 2021, there were no examples of other indie games that fit into that overlap, but in 2023, a game called Dave the Diver released to massive critical and sales success. It made me even more confident that the genre overlap was a perfect match for the market of gamers we intend to target (ages 30-60, nostalgic for the type of single-player games they grew up playing), and for our team’s passions, interests, and skillsets.
Snackbar started, of course, in Italy.
Christine outside a Snackbar we stumbled across in Napoli in 2022
We’d been visiting Geraldine’s family there, and as I sought a setting for the game that could inspire nostalgia and wonder (but didn’t violate existing IP), the idea of an alternate-history version of 1960s Italy made perfect sense.
In The Snackbar at the End of the World, the player takes the role of Diana, a young chef who reluctantly inherits her family’s restaurant after her Zia’s incarceration. Each day she must forage in the dangerous, magical wilds around the town, collect ingredients, then return to the restaurant to prepare meals and make lire.
The setting is technically the 1980s (20 years after a magical anomaly separated her hilltop town from the rest of the world), but the aesthetics, clothing, architecture, and technology are all from the 1960s – because that’s when the world essentially stopped.
Our lead writer, Geraldine DeRuiter, has put together a captivating story, a delightful cast of characters, and a tone that’s both not-so-subtly antifascist and impeccably comedic. If you’ve read her James-Beard-award-winning blog or her books (All Over the Place and the new bestseller, If You Can’t Take the Heat), and enjoyed it, you’ll love Snackbar’s dialogue. It will be mostly in English, but if we do our jobs right, you’ll accidentally learn a good bit of conversational Italian (at least enough to get by in a restaurant) 😉
Geraldine details the plot structure of The Snackbar at the End of the World to her cofounders
Since this world is both historical and magical, it requires elements of both the nostalgically familiar and the inventively wondrous. Thankfully, Geraldine’s imagination and Francesco’s artistry are more than up to the task. The world of Snackbar’s magic means that ingredients you need for the restaurant don’t just wait for you in the soil; they run from you, they hide underground, they attack, they’re on fire, they’re dropped by monsters or revealed only when you patiently sneak around them.
The video below, taken during early playtesting sessions, will give you a sense of what we call “contested foraging.”
Just as the wilds of Snackbar’s world represent real places in the Italian wilderness, so too does your restaurant’s town. In fact, L’Ultima Citta (“The Last City”) is built from elements of real Italian towns and villages. Every lamp post, shrine, building, corridor, staircase, doorway, and statue is taken from a real place. The architecture is broadly Umbrian (from towns like Orvieto, Pitigliano, Civita di Bagnoregio, Assisi, Perugia, Norcia, and Montefalco), but includes details from many other regions as well (Lombardia, Lazio, Campania, Le Marche, and Puglia).
You can watch (and listen) to Francesco showing one of the sections of town to the team below.
Snackbar Game FAQs
When does the game launch?
We’re targeting the second half of 2026 for early access on Steam. It’s possible this will slip one or two quarters depending on the rate of progress.
What platforms will be available?
We’re building Snackbar in Unity, and plan to release first on Steam for PC, and then on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and possibly Playstation. Steam for Mac is also in the conversation, but has some frustrating hurdles to jump through.
Are you hiring or seeking contractors?
In the immediate term, no. But sometime next year, we’ll likely have job postings up for an artist/animator and a senior Unity developer. Longer term, we’ll be contracting for sound FX and music, language localization, and QA.
Are you seeking a publisher?
Probably not, but I’ve had a few conversations with publishers and am not completely closed off to the idea. Thanks to our unique investment structure, we don’t need publisher funding, and we’re most likely to self-publish given that our biggest strength is marketing (something that game devs often rely on publishers to do).
Does your game use AI?
Nope. Not even a little.
Where/when will you share announcements?
For the next year, we’re unlikely to have much of anything to say publicly beyond what’s in this post. That’s because, after studying games marketing the last few years, we’ve found that marketing a game that’s more than a year from launch has diminishing (and sometimes negative) returns. Turns out, folks lose interest after a year, and have trouble recalling your game or why they were interested. Thus, you likely won’t see much from us until late 2025/early 2026. At that time, SnackbarStudio.com will be the place to go, and we’ll likely do lots of social media sharing via Geraldine’s Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram and my Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, as well.
Any way folks can help?
The biggest request I’ve got is introductions to other folks in the video game world, especially those who’ve built and launched games of their own (successfully or unsuccessfully). I’ve talked to more than two dozen indie game developers, CEOs, and founders in the last few years and in every conversation I learn a tremendous amount about what to do and not to do. If you know folks who fit this bill and would be up for a chat, please drop me a line: [email protected].
Miriam, Nico, Rand, Geraldine, and Francesco in Pitigliano
To our investors, and to everyone who’s supported this project the last 4 years, grazie per tutto. It’s meant the world to have so many of you believe in us, this company and our first game. We promise to make you proud. Or at least get a return on your money. Hopefully both.
To anyone looking to build a company (in games or otherwise), I hope that the documents, process, and structure we’ve open-sourced here can help ease your journey. Go out there and shake up the status quo, terrify the old guard, and force them to behave better.
And to all who are excited to see where Snackbar goes, please join the email list on SnackbarStudio.com and encourage any friends who might like what we’re doing to follow suit. Snackbar’s early access release on Steam is still 2+ years away, so we haven’t started any serious marketing and won’t until it’s <12 months from release. But, we’d love your support along the way.
What does this mean for Rand’s role at SparkToro?
Very little. (Geraldine: rude. This is a full time job for the rest of us.)
For the last 4 years, I’ve been quietly working on Snackbar as a second company. Thanks to our focus on work quality > raw hours, it has fit comfortably into my professional life and neither Geraldine nor Casey has wanted to strangle me. And, in all honesty, there’s very little I can do to help Snackbar be successful beyond a couple of hours reviewing the team’s efforts each week and A/B testing potential game dialogue with Geraldine. When it comes time to market the game, SparkToro itself will be hugely helpful (I’ve already used it to identify key influencers, YouTube channels, and review sites), and I expect to put in considerably more time.
As Casey told me when I started this adventure, “I think it’ll be good for you. I can’t really handle all the requests full-time Rand has.”
Oh, and Amanda insisted that we give her a voice-acting role. I think she’s gonna make a great Italian nonna. Or maybe a magical, talking Bavarian raccoon (yes, we really have those; they live in the husk of an abandoned Autogrill, it all makes sense).