Helping you scale, get investment ready and sell

Fixing the model

We’ve supported over 100 games businesses, seeing first hand numerous studios which don’t have the right support, often when they need it most. We’re here to help fix that.

We provide tailored advice across commercial, strategic finance and legal matters at every significant moment of your business' journey.

What we do

Marmalade’s commercial contracts and IP licensing agreements

Mediatonic’s exit to Epic Games

Funcraft’s Strategic Plan -scaling UA to $2M per month

Case Studies

  • We enjoy being involved as early as possible in your journey. We can help from day one with all corporate matters including…

  • We have extensive in-house experience and pride ourselves on our responsiveness. Think of us as your lawyer and financial professional on Slack, there when you need us for anything legal, financial or commercial.

  • In order to maximise your value, there will be various material commercial relationships along the way. We use our extensive experience to get you the best terms both commercially and legally, whether that be publisher, IP licensing or other deals.

  • We help define your strategy, translating your vision into a robust financial plan, whether that be for a fundraise, exit or other purpose. We forensically use your underlying game and financial data to substantiate your plans, often presenting fresh perspectives as to what drives your business and the future direction of travel

  • As we work together, we'll ensure that you're ready for your next level of investment to wow your future investors: you're operationally set up to scale, we pre-empt due diligence red flags and make your business as investable as possible, you have best in class systems and processes to smash future investors' expectations.

  • Whether it be for the Board, investors or Management Team, we like to deep dive into your data to create visual and insightful reporting for the business, focused on driving operational improvements.

  • Selling your company is stressful, it's when you need someone most who's been there before. We'll help you navigate the process and fight your corner. We've seen the buy side tactics first hand and will be there to ensure you maximise your value.

We're your partner, not consultant

We’re unique - we've been there and done it, we've held C level positions at the most exciting games companies in the world so we have first hand experience how the best do it.

We're passionate - we only work with fast growing, entrepreneurial games businesses, it's our passion. We want to hear your story.

We're flexible - we tailor our approach to ensure our work and motivations are aligned with your priorities.

Meet the Team

All of our team have deep experience being on the inside of the fastest growing games companies in the world.

Each of us combine over a decade of expertise in commercial, financial and/or legal fields with a passion for the games industry.

  • Partner

    Steve has held various CFO and senior Finance positions, all within high growth, entrepreneurial businesses, leading them on their journey through to exit. This includes Fall Guys creator, Mediatonic (EBITDA growth from $4M to $70M in two years through to sale to Epic Games) and Ember, growing the team from 20 to 100 people in three years before selling to Silicon Valley PE firm, HGGC. Prior to founding Lvl Up, Steve was a Director at Epic Games, sitting within their Strategic Finance Team.

    Steve is our CEO and heads up our Strategic Finance offering.

  • Partner

    Felix is a lawyer who has extensive experience of advising fast growing businesses from incorporation through to exit. He holds a deep passion for the games industry and has held a number of senior roles within some of the most exciting companies in the industry. He was general counsel at Mediatonic (Fall Guys developer) and Outright Games (family console games publisher) and held Senior Counsel positions at Epic Games and Miniclip (mobile games publisher). Felix’s rich in-house experience as a senior lawyer for developers and publishers means he is able to advise on a broad spectrum of legal issues facing games businesses whether they be commercial, IP, corporate, licensing or other areas.

    Felix heads up our Legal offering

Testimonials

  • "Nothing short of transformational for the studios they have helped. They have been especially valuable when it comes to deciphering the complexity of free-to-play KPIs. They are also able to dig deeper into the organisation and decision making to help studio leadership better understand assumptions, actions and forecasts on future updates and product releases. "

    Chris Lee - investor in the likes of Hutch, Space Ape, Hello Games and many more.

  • "Felix to request text"

    Li Ma - Director of Tencent and Vice Chair of UKIE

  • "Highly adept in both operational components of gaming including; measuring game performance, player health, and game economy to the corporate finance and legal components. It was a real pleasure, even sitting on the opposite side of the table"

    Dara Leung - Former Head of M&A, Epic Games

Investments

We are creating an exclusive portfolio of complementary games studios, individually selected to help best collectively drive value between them.

Whilst solely focused on games, we back strong founder led businesses with a mix of offerings across the section, including content producers, publishers and platforms.

Typically investing between $25K and $100K at the pre-seed and seed stage, we only invest in opportunities where we are excited by the potential, and believe we can have a meaningful impact on the business.

Our opportunities are sourced across our network. Unfortunately we aren’t able to respond to direct unsolicited approaches.