Four game companies from the Game Incubator visit Silicon Valley

The four startups that traveled to San Francisco were Guru Games, Lone Hero Studios, Mostly Harmless Games and Stenkross Studios, all based at Lindholmen. They were accompanied by Per Holmén Dahlin, business coach at Gothia Innovation, the company that runs the Game Incubator.

Game Incubator director of operations Per-Arne Lundberg was in San Francisco to welcome the Swedish delegation. Lundberg is one of two senior recipients of a scholarship from Vinnova to participate in the one-year fellowship program in Silicon Valley.

HECTIC DAYS
The game companies’ trip began with a visit to Nordic Innovation House where they met David Lee, one of Google’s first 200 employees.
“David established Google’s business in Asia. He started an accelerator in Korea, and today he is a partner at 451 Venture. He has an incredible background and professional network,” said Per-Arne Lundberg.
The next stop was D.school, a design school that combines all of the innovative people in a giant crucible for innovation according to the Design Thinking concept.
 “The game companies had an hour-long crash course on D.school. It was incredibly inspiring, when it came to the space, design, methods and people,” Lundberg explained.
And there were even more visits.
The game companies met representatives from the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit organization founded in 1968 that has developed completely innovative methods and tools for futures studies, Microsoft Hololens and HTC Vive. The companies’ games were played through during their HTC Vive visit, and they received valuable feedback on next steps for games, companies, financing and the environment. 
A pitch event was organized for the companies to receive valuable feedback on their games before attending VRX 2016.
“The panel members were Tipatat Chennavasin of the Venture Reality Fund, Greg Castle of Anorak Ventures, Amitt Mahajan of Presence Capital, and last but not least Timo Lehes of Beringer Finance. The panel was guided and moderated by VR icon Toni Parisi. Our startups took the stage one after another, and they did extremely well. They made some excellent contacts, but above all they got feedback on games and VR,” Lundberg concluded. 

THE GAME INCUBATOR IN BRIEF
The Game Incubator has been located in Skövde since 2004, and at Lindholmen Science Park since 2014. It is run by the company Gothia Innovation AB. The primary funders of Gothia Innovation’s activities and projects are Region Västra Götaland, Skövde municipality, the Skaraborg municipal federation and VINNOVA