Happy holidays to everyone! this blog is dedicated to reflecting on what we are doing and accomplishing in 2022. I (Boy Dozan) will write this blog personally and try to appreciate what we have been doing for this 6 months since Mankibo was established in July this year. So this blog will be more personal, and maybe give you insight into how Mankibo was founded, what I learned, and how much our progress has so far.
Flashback Stories
This is the second company I ever build. When I leave my previous company Joyseed after 7 years of building it early this year. I’m not really planning to start the business again. Actually, at that time I bit lost with myself and try to look what my purpose in this world. After taking a sabbatical break for 2 months, I started to apply to some companies and do interviews. After 3-4 months passed there were no actual offers for me at that time. At that time I realized I am overconfident with my previous achievement (Forbes 30 under 30) and felt so small. Then at that time, I was reading a book “No Rules Rules” by Reed Hasting, regarding talent density, and realized I’m not that superstar.
One day, there was a delivery courier bringing some hampers package to my house, this courier is a deaf-mute, he made a mistake by giving the wrong postcard. Later after 3 hours, that courier is back and tries to fix his mistake. I was just touched by how tirelessly he took responsibility and wondered how many mistakes he did in one day.
Back to the book I read, if every company tried to hire a superstar, it’s kind of difficult for a person like this courier to get hired. Then I have a new mission to build an inclusive company for people who don’t have a chance (including me). I believe if this company have great teamwork, even if we are not superstar maybe we are not gonna be the best company, but at least still be a good company and win one or two matches. Then I started Mankibo in July 2022.
Grateful
Since the beginning, we want to become a profitable company from day 1. With trust from our several partners and clients fortunately we can achieve that, survive and grow a little bit from we started. Currently, Mankibo is having 3 full-time employees, including me, Prayogo, and Shika. Prayogo is our game programmer and Shika is our artist.
In our company, we have tradition or culture to share our life stories. Shika was born deaf, and Prayogo was born 6 months premature, up until 2 years Prayogo was able to turn his body around by himself, and still can’t walk at 3. But are they giving up? no, they fight! Rejected from normal school at first but become one of the best at that school. How grateful I am to listen to their stories and work with them, I learned a lot about appreciating life and learned a lot about becoming a true fighter. They are the real fighters.
The second happiness in these 6 months, is while we are hiring artists there’s one candidate saying thank you to us because we are building inclusive companies because she’s deaf and she feels warmth by reading our company website. Right now, she’s join become one of our artists. I feel so happy at that moment, just because read that kind words! That’s how grateful I am to able having a chance to build Mankibo.
I know there’s a chance our company might not survive next year, a chance that we are failed, and our company needs to close down. But at least for now, we will try our best moving forward. I really believe in our team spirit and capability.
Journey and Milestones Mankibo
For these 6 months, we are working on:
- Killed Titan Breaker prototype after several iterations
- Killed Mix-Up prototype after several iterations
- Develop several HTML-5 Games for client
- Helping 4 companies to build their product, from UI/UX, Game Design, and Lead Product Development
- Hiring new artist
- Publish some asset stores in Unity Asset Store
What next
While we are happy to help clients to solve their problems, we also working on a new Prototype “Monster Collection” game, and hopefully can release the demo by next year. Also, we hope we can grow to 5-6 mankis next year and be able to bring more impact.
Looking forward to 2023! Let’s go Manki!