5 Steps To An Awesome Executive Summary
We’ve finally decided to post our Executive Summary to share with other founders as we’ve always had compliments and great feedback from it.
Some folks wonder how best to use executive summaries.. basically you’ll give it to people who will be doing intros for you. That way, they can forward something that piques the interest of the potential investor without giving away the whole pitch. You don’t want your deck to do your pitch for you, you want to do the pitch.
Here are the following guidelines I followed to create ours:
- Keep it to one page if possible, it’s a summary, not a pitch.
- If you have no eye for design, hire one or get a designer friend to help out.
- If you have metrics, put the good stuff front and center. Feel free to use vanity metrics for big impact but make sure you also have engagement metrics.
- Leave enough room for your Team section. Use pictures and previous startups/accomplishments.
- Include awesome visuals. Sure you can’t use zombies for every startup but give it some personality. Use bold infographics or charts.
Here’s our Executive Summary:
Trust me, you want to work here
PHP DEVELOPER
Want to have ownership, influence and meaning in your work? Join the Massive Damage team where you can actually make a difference and work on games that are being played by tens of thousands of players every day. We’re looking for a full-time developer to help us build websites, dashboards, game platforms, API services and analytics.
You:
- know PHP so well that curl_exec(), stream_socket_client(), and aggregate_properties_by_regexp(), turn you on
- know SQL / MySQL and can create queries, tables, joins and indices while rubbing your stomach and tapping your head… on one foot… with your eyes closed.
- are so test driven that you will write Unit Tests for your interview with us
- know what git clone/pull/push/checkout/branch/merge/stash mean
- don’t think of cumulus, stratus and nimbus when you hear about “The Cloud” – you know your way around AWS EC2, S3 and RDS or better yet, Rightscale
- love mobile games, console games, PC games, board games, game design, game mechanics and generally anything that has to do with gaming
- crank through your task list every day and even though there are never enough hours in a day to finish them, you stay until they’re all done anyway
- know how to work hard / play hard
We:
- have an all-star team in a great office – an entire house to ourselves with a full kitchen, backyard and deck, right in the heart of downtown Toronto
- stock our kitchen with breakfast and snacks, have PS3, Xbox360, bean bag chairs and a foosball table
- will kick your ass in foosball, Left 4 Dead 2 and Catan
- also know how to work hard / play hard
Massive Damage, Inc. is an award-winning startup developing revolutionary mobile social games. We launched ‘Please Stay Calm’ in September 2011, a ground-breaking location based, zombie themed, social MMO RPG for the iOS platform. We were also selected for the CIX Top 20 Companies for 2011 and chosen by the C100.
Please include a cover letter explaining why you think we need you at Massive Damage. Tell us about your experiences and passion. Also tell us your favourite games, what makes them great and what you think would make them even better.
This position is located in Toronto, Canada. Must be eligible to work in Canada.
Send an email to jobs at massdmg.com
Location-based gaming gets people excited!
We’re super excited about our funding and the upcoming Oct. 13th US App Store launch of Please Stay Calm. And it looks like it’s not just us..
Here’s a brief list of some the awesome press coverage we’ve gotten for our funding announcement:
GigaOm — Location-based gaming lands $325K funding round for Massive Damage
Financial Post — Angels give $325K to zombie-killing gaming startup Massive Damage
TechVibes — Toronto’s Massive Damage closes $325K angel round
NextMontreal — Massive Damage Closes $325K Angel Round for their real world location-based gaming platform
PocketGamer — Massive Damage raises $325,000 to fund location-based zombie fest Please Stay Calm
Many thanks to our awesome investors including Real Ventures, Harth Labs, Grassfed Capital and Apricot Capital to name a few.
Help! Which Please Stay Calm app icon design is better?
We’re trying to decide which app icon would be better. Here’s two cool icons our artist whipped together. We stuck Tiny Wings in there as an example of a great icon to compare with.
Which one do you think would drive more clicks and downloads? *Updated Zombie icon again (3 variants)*
Please answer in comments or tweet us your choice at http://twitter.com/massive_damage.
Thanks for the help!
72 Hours Later.. 3 days of numbers from Canadian launch [infographic]
It’s been a crazy few days since we launched our one-of-a-kind location based zombie MMO, Please Stay Calm , in the Canadian App Store.
Since few apps have published country specific numbers like Canada for example, we thought these numbers might be interesting. Needless to say we’re thrilled to get off on such a great start and we can’t wait til we launch in the US in October and globally shortly after that!
Here’s a quick look at some of the numbers we saw during those first few days:
Please Stay Calm Avatar Photo Contest Winners Sketched!
Congratulations to our two contest winners Phil and Lauren!
Here are their winning Please Stay Calm avatar photos:
And here’s the preliminary sketch from our brilliant artist (click to expand!). Sorry Phil, we had to switch out the mannequin leg for an axe as we couldn’t draw it without it looking like a human leg so we went with a known in-game weapon. 
Watch this space for more contests coming up!
New Player Login Issue Workaround Fix
Anyone having problems w/ email and password screen on Please Stay Calm… we’re really sorry, it was just our really crappy description.
If this is your first time playing the game and you’re trying to login without any luck, what’s actually happening is that the username you picked is already in use so you should tap GO BACK and try a different username.
Zombies of Silicon Valley
**UPDATE: our random draw winner is Alain Wong **
To celebrate our Canadian launch tomorrow, it’s time for another t-shirt contest!
All you have to do is name each of the Silicon Valley zombies above (click on it for a bigger version). Here’s a tiny hint: it’s a mix of investors and tech media.
Post your answer with names for zombies from left to right.
All people who guessed correctly in the comments section (or on Twitter & Facebook) will be entered into a draw for an awesome Please Stay Calm t-shirt and an awesome bonus in-game weapon.
Here’s a link to the wallpaper version.
We’ll have the draw on Friday after the craziness of our Canadian launch tomorrow.
Have fun and good luck!
Want to be an avatar in Please Stay Calm?
Hey folks, we want to add some more avatars to our game so here’s a quick and easy contest:
- Post a link to a cool photo of you in action in the comments here or mention us on Twitter @pleasestaycalm
- Important, this is for Player Character Avatars, not zombies
- We’ll judge completely subjectively based on pose, choice of weapon and your overall badassness
- We’re looking for people who look different than the current avatars and again, our judging will be totally subjective
The winner will get to be an avatar in Please Stay Calm and we’ll send you a t-shirt
Good luck!
Sneak Peek: Fancy new UI for our game
We’re really excited about the new look for our game.. the new UI is much cleaner and allows us to showcase our awesome artwork.
