Spotted this from Techcrunch. Financial Times run a story about a French entrepreneur. It’s an excellent article which has valuable information for any entrepreneur – whether you are making games or not.

Look what Le Meur has to say about competition:

“I tell business school students you should respect your competitors. I always meet them, and if I’d criticised France Telecom, I would never have sold them the company.”

Here are his ten rules for success.

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognize a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

I really recommend reading the full article – it contains more valuable advice.