Exclusive Q&A with Erling Magnus Solheim CEO at Playpulse
Let’s begin with something about yourself. Our readers love to learn more about top entrepreneurs. Tell us about yourself.
Playpulse is the third company I’ve co-founded. The first was Douchebags (douchebags.com), a very successful branded consumer goods company. After 5 years I left for New York to start a new company with a former classmate there, Cesura. After 6 months I had an accident, breaking my back on a jump while downhill cycling, so I had to leave the company and go back to scratch. Then 6 months later I met Kristoffer, who was doing a PhD on what became Playpulse.
You founded Playpulse in 2017 with the aim of facilitating high intensity exercising through computer gaming. How did you hit this idea? We would love to hear the story of Playpulse’s origins.
Kristoffer and Stian, co-founders of the company, wrote a master’s thesis 5 years ago in computer science at NTNU (Norways leading tech university), which was the very early beginnings. Then Kristoffer did a PhD because the results were that good. Early 2017 I came onboard, and we started the company summer 2017.
How was people’s initial reaction towards Playpulse? In which age group that you have the most number of users? Share with us some details of your customer base.
We see an incredibly large potential for Playpulse, from kids to adults, depending on the setting. Until now we have tested with customers ranging from fitness studios, schools, hospitals, youth clubs, co-working spaces, to activity parks for kids in China.
The most engaged users are unsurprisingly the younger audience from 8 years and up.
Generally we see a lot of enthusiasm, then some testing to understand how it works, and then people typically pick it up and become better and better. The sense of mastery is incredibly important, and we’ve seen a lot of younger players that beam up after playing, who typically hasn’t had any positive experience with physical activities before.
How do you go about developing the games? Do you go for third party games or do you build games from scratch by your own? What are the primary focus areas of choosing/developing the games that catalyse exercising?
We have built three games ourselves from scratch and will continue with this for a while. When we have built out the platform, we will open for third party developers. There are several critical components of how to design a game to create both an awesome gaming experience and a cool exercise experience, and some of this is the core of Kristoffer’s PhD. In short, making sure the game is more fun when played on the bike than on a computer.
Which are the most sought-after games in your portfolio? Tell us about those crowd favourites.
PedalTanks is the deepest and most played game. It’s a capture the flag, third person multiplayer shooter. It is extremely skill-based and competitive. You unlock new tanks and abilities with XP that you accumulate while playing.
How is Playpulse doing as a business model? What revenue streams that your forecast and what are the outcomes of the last 2-3 years?
We are preparing for the first mass production batch to ship by Q4. We have pre-orders from very different customer segments like schools and municipalities to companies and fitness studios. We see strong interest from the fitness studio industry, so we’re focusing there at the moment. Typically we ship 4 bikes for a local multi-player experience, although it is also possible to play across locations.
Looking back over the last 2-3 years, what you have unlearnt and re-learnt, if any?
We’ve learned tremendously about the end-user in the different use cases, how to design the product both physically and digitally, and a lot about the different customer segments.
Finally, what is the experience of launching a gaming product from Norway? How different is it from launching computers games from, for example, the USA, the UK or Japan? Would love to hear your candid views on this.
Frankly, I haven’t launched a game from anywhere else so it’s hard to say. We’ve launched in China as well and experienced some differences when it comes to the tech roll-out and language of course, but the core game experience is the same. Gaming is a global phenomenon in 2020 so I don’t think the game itself needs be very different, it’s mostly about distribution and strategic aspects.…
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