BLOCK71 Entrepreneurs Feature — Rock Nano Global
We met with Chong Lai Ang, the founder and CEO of Singapore-based game development startup, Rock Nano Global. This year, Rock Nano Global is releasing their PS4 version of “ArmaGallant : Decks of Destiny” in the US and Europe. We got the chance to ask him 5 questions about his exciting entrepreneurial journey.
1. Three words that describe your startup journey.
“Rock-solid”, “Die-hard” and “Samurai-Spirit”.
2. As a founder, what are the biggest lessons you have learnt so far?
Karma is a bitch, every dog has its day — you reap what you sow for the time and season to come for harvest.
Trust your sixth sense when dealing with people, as most of the time, you are right about crooks, as well as the team mates who you will come to love as a family — exactly what we are now, a closely knitted one as seen in our photo.
Take care of the weakest team mates as a leader, but be a bad boss to a bunch of good leaders in your own team who can cover the founder’s weakness.
3. If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Get ready to pump in 14–16 hours of work per day, over months, over years, and do not be bitter even when you have to bootstrap to afford to eat prata or drink tea once every meal a day, losing close friends, drifting apart from loved ones…get ready to accept it all, even if nothing happens as you are doing what you love as there is no short cut (or I simply refuse to take the easy way out as I am a sucker for taking the most painful less travel route).
4. How do you create the best team?
Get the like-minded team mates with integrity, intelligence and the interest in the same company visions and execute the missions with humility and hardwork.
Build the culture around the great people, and bloody sweaty tearful work will become fun, laughter and joy — and by people, we include our fans who we listen attentively to, and our investors who are like family to our team mates.
Run a lateral flat hierarchy open office honest concept to deliver real quality value to our customers while maintaining no office politics, and zero toxic team mate — as the best team is small, tight and nimble which is why we are tapping on the strengths of startup and not subjected to the weaknesses of an SME or MNC — make full use of this time before the next evolution of best team before the next phrase.
5. If you could only play one game for the rest of your life which game would it be?
I am suppose to say our own game “ArmaGallant : Decks of Destiny”
…but I would say “Football” is my the game, both in real life and virtual game FiFA, and I hope one day I get to do a game which combine realtime big data machine learning technology into a FiFA online game running A.I., which I am working on the technology now at the moment – which will be a kick-ass world first-ever genre of an unseen new-age game.
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