Game On!

It's difficult enough starting a business without the added complication of starting one abroad with partners who are not English. But this is exactly what Lynn Robson did when she left the UK and started her gaming and music business in Japan. Read her intriguing story....

Like many people who spent years studying, Lynn Robson wanted to travel. At the age of 25, after completing her MBA, she bought a one year round the world ticket intending to travel and to find a business idea.

'The reality was that I spent almost a year lecturing in Hong Kong, a week-end in Taiwan, and then stayed for 7 years in Tokyo, only my 3rd stop on the ticket' explained Lynn.

It was while she was at a club in Tokyo that she met her future business partners. They had realised that if they put their skills together: gaming, music and business, they could create a small niche international business that was sufficiently quirky to exist.

'Our main aim has always been to bring the two cultures - Japan and the UK closer together, and to act as a springboard for game developers, musicians, artists etc to collaborate. When this came to fruition, we got very excited!' Lynn recalls.

Frognation Limited was created and the company has worked on several animation projects with one of the Directors of the Animatrix (the anime released in conjunction with the Matrix).

For Lynn one of the biggest concern in starting the business was that she had never been involved in any game development, but nevertheless she managed to get into that kind of work. 'We knew from the beginning that the most important thing in business is finding the right people to contract into projects - if you can do that, then you can achieve anything!' Lynn also had to face cultural differences but surmised that people tend to love or hate Japan - and if you make it past 5 years, and learn the language, you can learn to split your psyche and your values, and apply them differently depending on whether you're with westerners, or Japanese.

Lynn, who is Managing Director of the UK side and Executive Director of the Japan side, ploughed £6,000 of her own money into starting the business using the money from her savings. Her plans is to bring some cool Japanese products into the western market, as she is constantly asked for this service, which has been a dream for some time now and requires a lot of financial investment at present to initiate - one day though she says assuredly

For more information about Frognation Ltd, visit: www.frognation.com