In honor of Global Entrepreneurship Week, meet Tammi Chen, one of the founders of TATA Games Studio. Combining their passion for creativity, they’ve built a business that not only focuses on game development but also offers unique art-related products. Tammi shares their entrepreneurial journey, the challenges they’ve overcome, and how LEAP Junction has supported their growth. Whether you’re a Fanshawe student or an aspiring entrepreneur, their story is sure to inspire!
Introduction: My name is Tammi and I'm the founder of Tata Indie Games Studio. My studio is producing indie game. So basically, we are game studio but we also do arts.
Can you tell us how your business started and what inspired you?
My friend and I we have this plan to do a business like for very long time, but we don't really get an opportunity until the last year, we knew about the LEAP Junction program. We thought that could be a good, like an opportunity for us to start it for real. What inspires us, we both love arts and games, so we just want to do things we love.
How has your business changed since you first began?
My art studio, actually a game studio. Our first goal is making video game but making a video game is actually a very long process. Before we can publish the game is, it's kind of like a little bit hard for us to make a living so we thought maybe we can start to sell like our work-related products to support us for making the game. Our main focus switch from making the game to making our related products, it's just more easy for us like to support us for making the game.
What are your goals or plans for growing your business?
For the short term, because we just start our products like this year, we're planning to connect with some local retail stores including stores at the campus and to sell more our stuff and we also want to work more hard on our online store. For the longer plan we still want to make video games, so we are planning to publish our first game demo next year.
How do you stay motivated when facing challenges in your business?
The two main points like for uh most important ones if I think about like I'm almost broke, I think about the money that will be one big motivation. And another is like, because both me and my partner were artist when we think about like people love our artworks that's also another big motivation.
Can you share how your time at Fanshawe influenced a key decision in your business?
I studied video game design. Before I came to Fanshawe, I already had the idea, I want to start like my own indie game studio at that time so like learning all the game stuff, gave me some academic backups.
How did Leap Junction help you with your business journey, and what resources were most useful?
The LEAP Junction definitely help a lot, like we start from zero. We have nothing before we take in the LEAPin. LEAPin teach us how to start a business from zero, like doing all the website stuff including the tax, the business models stuff, like all the things you need to start a business on your own, we learn that from LEAP Junction. And we also know a lot of new friends, other LEAPers, they gave us some valuable suggestions. Of course, Dave and Nick they also helped a lot.
What special opportunities or partnerships did you gain through Leap Junction?
Like the most valuable stuff as other suggestions from all the other advisors, I think one most important thing is they help us try this pop up stuff at campus so we can try to test, our target customer, what they like ,and what should we do, what kind of art products we should make. For the selling stuff, I think that's the most valuable.
What qualities do you think that students should develop now to succeed as entrepreneurs?
For one thing, you should have patience, starting a business is a long process is not the easy way or is not the easy path. You need to stay patient also stay be confident about yourself. If you love something, just do it.
What advice would you give to Fanshawe students and alumni interested in starting their own business?
Do whatever you want, do whatever you love when you are still young, you have all the time, you can try. Making at first four things you love is I think is one of the most important and happiness to think in your life.
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