Beierschmitt still loving life in California
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is another is a series of articles providing updates on start-ups previously profiled on teknovation.biz.)
We caught-up via email recently with Aron Beierschmitt, the former student at the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus who was building his own company – Foundation Games – while still an undergraduate.
We first profiled Beierschmitt in early April 2012, and we have continued to follow him from those days in Knoxville as a student. The last article we posted was about his 2012 participation in the YetiZen Accelerator Program in San Francisco. It is the only games-focused accelerator in existence.
It had been more than a year since the last post, so we were glad to get an update from the always smiling and exuberant East Tennessean. Here’s what he told us.
Where are you literally right now? “Living and working out of Santa Clara, CA which is in the Bay Area. “
What is your primary focus? “I continue to run day-to-day operations at Foundation Games as the CEO.”
What’s the status of the various games that Foundation has produced? “They’ve been doing well. We continue to sell copies of Lumi, which was Apple Game of the Week. In addition, we launched Battle Heroes: Clash of Empires early in December on Android and Amazon platforms. We are running the live ops support on the game and continue to grow the community. My hope is to get 50,000 Daily Active Users on this game. As the game is published by Animoca (who’s been funded by Intel Capital), we are very excited by its future.”
What are the “outposts” where Foundation has developers based? “We still have Sydney and Manila. In the past year, I added another base in Karachi, Pakistan.”
What’s on the horizon? “Our upcoming title is Moonsters. It’s nearly complete now, and we are looking for a publisher. EA (Electronic Arts) and Nickelodeon are on the short list. I’m anxious to get something closed in early January with a launch before February 1.”
If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently? “I think I would have tried to get a Co-Founder rather than try and go it alone. After riding the roller coaster for four years by myself, I can see the direct benefits of “sharing the ride” with someone else.”
