Leonard Tatum is CEO and Founder of the startup company, Tatum Games. Tatum Games is a passionate and innovative tech company that is currently spearheading solutions to many of the pain points in the mobile ecosystem, such as analytics and advertising. Specially the organization addresses issues with targeted user acquisition for developers on smartphones.
Their product, MIKROS, is a SaaS product that enrolls developers in an information sharing ecosystem that helps identify better insights about user behaviors, including user spending habits.
Leonard is an avid gamer and wants to see game studios succeed. As fans of mobile games and entertainment, Tatum Games is dedicated to helping game developers everywhere prosper.
What is Tatum Games All About?
Tatum Games is a passionate and innovative tech company that is currently spearheading solutions to many of the pain points in the mobile ecosystem, such as analytics and advertising. Specifically, this organization is addressing issues with targeted user acquisition for developers on smartphones.
Tatum Games’ product, MIKROS, is a SaaS product that enrolls developers in an information sharing ecosystem that helps identify better insights about user behaviors, including user spending habits.
Tell Us a Little Bit About Your Background and How You Started Your Company?
I have over two decades of programming and software development experience. The evolution of Tatum Games began several years back when I started the organization with the intent of fulfilling my childhood dream of creating entertaining game products. Over time my focus shifted to inter-app communication solutions and data privacy procedures. My goal was to create the next evolutionary phase in analytics and advertising services.
I developed M2M (mobile-to-mobile) technology, an interface layer connection to a backend server that builds machine learning pipelines and uses artificial intelligence to turn massive datasets into identifiable patterns, algorithms, and statistical models. M2M also forms inter-app communication bridges between multiple mobile apps.
The result of this groundbreaking technology is MIKROS; an analytics and advertising service that can produce entirely new KPIs and unearth high-value insights and predictions. With respect to advertisers, they can now be certain that their ads are being shown to verified spenders.
What Would You Say Are the Top 3 Skills Needed to Be a Successful Entrepreneur, And Why?
The top 3 skills that are needed to be a successful entrepreneur are planning, partnerships and allies, and faith.
- Have a solid Plan A, and for good measure also come up with a Plan B and Plan C. As an entrepreneur, you will fail often. You must be able to pivot. Lineup your plans so that you can adjust accordingly and ensure that you won’t be left feeling as though you have no other options but to quit.
- Build your team and find allies. It is absolutely crucial to find partners who hold their own weight. Avoid partners who only participate in your successes but are not willing to trudge through the mud during your failures and hard times. You need partners that are willing to make the same sacrifices as you. Also, connecting with like-minded individuals will help you to keep pushing forward and inspire you to continue pursuing your dreams.
- You must embrace the faith that everything you are doing today is forward movement. Continue pressing and one day is going to be your day.
What Are Your Plans for The Future and How Do You Plan to Grow Your Company?
We have an extensive roadmap. Today, we are currently focused on analytics but will also extend to advertising and other game services. Everything is related to better privacy for users while collecting data, improving how data is collected, providing more advanced insights, improving user targeting, and lowering the costs of targeted users. All of this ultimately assists game developers with understanding their users and providing better gaming experiences.
How Do You Separate Yourself from Your Competitors?
MIKROS is the next evolution in data analysis, big data, and deep data. Here are some features unique to MIKROS that competitor analytic services are unable to do.
- Show your users’ spending history and habits. You can see which users are Whales, Freeloaders or other.
- Show your users’ reputation history. You will know which users are hackers, cheats and/or trolls. For the first time, game developers can take a proactive approach to handling troublesome players.
- Allow you to compare your KPIs to your competitors! You can see how well your app is performing compared to other apps similar to yours and receive actionable feedback on how to improve your product.
Tell Us a Little Bit About Your Marketing Process, What Has Been the Most Successful Form of Marketing for You?
High level, we try not to be salesmen. We approach marketing akin to making connections and spreading awareness about our business, technology, and product. Marketing is tricky, and trends change often. But befriending others remains the same. We have genuine connections with all our clients and are invested in their product’s performance.
Low level, we use two strategies, Content and Advertising. Content strategy uses information and education as marketing. Advertising strategy are paid placements.
Examples of Content strategy would be blogs, podcasts, video, webinars, and infographics. Some examples of Advertising strategy would be PPC, paid social media advertising, and contests.
What Have Been Your Biggest Challenges and How Did You Overcome Them?
Access to capital has been the biggest challenge. Not only access but also learning how funding works and what investors are looking for. This was a huge learning curve for me. Fortunately, we welcomed Co-Founder, Kevin Lim, to our team whom understood the ins and outs of investing better than me. He and other mentors have been gracious enough to fill in my knowledge gaps.
What’s a Productivity Tip You Swear By?
Remind yourself of the bigger picture you are working for. For me, it is family and those less fortunate. I take no days off, because I know that there are people who are depending on my success.
What Helps You Stay Driven and Motivated to Keep Going in Your Business?
I stay motivated due to my genuine drive to help others. I am following through with my mission statement. A mission statement summarizes your goals and values. Through technology, Tatum Games is helping game studios create better products, lower their costs, and bring entertainment to their audiences. This is a huge part of why Tatum Games organization exists.
What is Your Favorite Quote?
“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.”
– Jim Rohn
How Do You Personally Overcome Fear?
My life’s trials and tribulations have instilled a lot of courage in me. I’ve lived a rough life and learned many lessons along the way. I believe this is why I don’t have any fears. I am blessed no matter what and knowing this allows me to live life carefree.
How Can Readers Get In Touch With You?
I’m always willing and ready to connect! You can reach me several ways. You can do email, leonard.tatum@tatumgames.com. I am available on social media, connect with me via Twitter as @drxeno02 or Linkedin by typing my name, Leonard Tatum.
If you are a game developer, I hang out 24/7 in the MIKROS Slack community. Pop in, say hi and let me hear about your game project!
Founder Interview: David Ciccarelli – How to Overcome Fear & The Definition of Success
