You are insane 😱
Should you pursue building a company based on one paying customer?
Maybe that’s actually how Games for the Planet started.
When our idea for a game—one that plants real trees by donating profits from ads and in-app purchases—was out in the world to test, we captured a small audience on social media and asked them to try the game. Suddenly, we noticed something surprising: some players, despite the game being crappy, kept coming back to plant tree after tree.
How did they do it, and how did we know? 🤓
In the game, we offer the option to watch ads to level up. A small counter at the top shows when you’ve seen enough ads to plant a tree. By analyzing the #data of individual players, we discovered some were watching 30–60 ads in one evening!
They ignored the game entirely, chilling with Netflix, their phone in hand, just clicking the play button, waiting 20–30 seconds, and repeating the process.
Over the last year, we have seen about 1000 #people download the #game with only a few really trying it, but some going like crazy. 🤯
This revealed the secret sauce: Build an actual game that’s enjoyable—one that makes people come back for more than just watching ads.
Those 10 seedlings in this planting pot grew into small trees. Maybe, when they’re fully grown, this idea will have grown just as big and the few committed players grow into a big community changing the mobile gaming market.
Now, real talk—be honest:
Do you, or have you, ever played a game on your #phone, and would you feel better if the income didn’t go to somewhere random but to a positive cause?
