Startup Venture · My Concept
A Unity browser game that teaches Spanish by letting you run your own café. It started as my idea. I rallied a team around it and led financials and operations to turn the concept into an investable business.
El Tigre Café was my brainchild. I was frustrated that learning a language felt like memorizing flashcards instead of actually living in it, and I kept circling one thought: what if you learned Spanish by running a café, talking to customers, and handling whatever the day threw at you? I shaped that spark into a real concept, rallied a six-person team around it, and took ownership of proving it could stand up as a business.
Language learning is often formal, repetitive, and bad at preparing you for real situations. El Tigre Café flips that: you play as the owner of a café, serving customers and learning Spanish through real-world interactions. It pairs structured grammar with scenario-based vocabulary, all wrapped in a game that is actually fun to play.
I assembled a six-person team across development, design, 3D art, and operations to bring El Tigre Café to life, and made sure the business side held up as well as the gameplay did.
On a six-person team, I owned financials and operations. My job was to prove El Tigre Café could be a real company, not just a cool concept, and to package that case for investors.
Built the pro forma around a Steam launch, monthly sales, ad revenue, taxes, and platform fees, landing on roughly $403K end-of-year-one cash.
Modeled growth to about $900K gross revenue and $400K net income, with robustness checks and contingency plans if adoption ran light.
Shaped the plan of action: build interest, set the monetization model, scale to schools, launch an iOS app, then expand to airlines and beyond.
Framed a clear raise: $100K for 20% equity, mapped to R&D, marketing, operations, team growth, and infrastructure.
I mapped a staged roadmap: spark consumer interest, lock in the distribution and monetization model, scale into schools, launch an iOS app, then expand to airlines and more schools. The investor ask was sized to match, $100K for 20% equity, allocated across R&D, marketing, operations, team growth, and infrastructure.
Existing tools over-index on vocabulary, teach little grammar, and rarely make learning genuinely engaging. El Tigre Café's wedge is fun: real grammar and real scenarios delivered inside a game people actually want to keep playing.
El Tigre Café is where I got to be the business brain behind a creative product: sizing the market, building the model, and turning a charming game into a credible pitch. It is the side of product I love just as much as design, making sure a good idea can actually stand on its own as a business.