Former Ladysmith resident and KANO/APPS (K/A) co-founder Tim Teh has earned himself a reputation as a mover and shaker in the province’s burgeoning technology industry.
Teh was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce Business Awards April 23.
While Teh himself was named as the recipient of the award, he prefers to “look at it as more of a team win” as a means of sharing credit for the company’s success with his fellow K/A co-founders and staff.
Teh founded K/A with friends Eric Haight and Eric Alpini in October 2008, he said, and over the last five years, the company has grown to become a reputable developer of social networking games headquartered in downtown Victoria and staffed by 20 full-time in-house employees; a substantial achievement for a “bootstrap” company.
“Which basically means we’re self-funded,” Teh clarified. “We were profitable in year one, and we continue to be profitable.”
Teh met Haight and Alpini — both engineering students — while he was studying computer science at the University of Victoria. After graduation, they went their separate ways to “do the industry thing,” Teh said, collaborating from time to time on various side projects including a pre-K/A game they were subcontracted to produce for Facebook.
When opportunity knocked in the form of a novel apps platform introduced by Facebook in early 2008, the trio quit their jobs to spend six months writing code from home. Edmond Teh, a graphic designer and Tim’s youngest brother, was brought in to design the aesthetics and user interface for the project.
They rolled out Viking Clan in fall 2008, Teh said, and the game was an instant success.
“In the first month, we grew to a quarter of a million users.”
Building on the success of Viking Clan, K/A developed three additional social networking games in rapid succession. Pirate Clan, Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra and Zombie Slayer were added to the studio’s stable over the next few years.
The company’s “first four games are currently still rated in the top strategy games on Facebook,” Teh said, and their newest game, Kingdom of Thrones, “was recently featured by Facebook.”
Tapping into the marketplace created by Facebook’s billion-plus users offered K/A unparalleled exposure for its products and Teh said they’ve now “had millions of users play our games worldwide.”
K/A shares its games on a “free-to-play” model, Teh explained, and the majority of users play the games for free. Revenues are generated through “micro transactions” conducted by players seeking additional points, “vanity items” or weapons for their game characters. Zombie Slayer fans, for example, can purchase “zombie armour,” vehicles or zombie-catching weapons for “a couple of dollars” apiece.
As it stands, “the majority of our revenue comes from free-to-play games, Teh added.
Victoria’s reputation as a city of “newlyweds and nearly-deads” has overshadowed the rise of the capital’s booming technology sector, Teh said.
“People don’t understand that there’s a huge tech community here,” Teh added. “Tech has by far surpassed tourism as the number-one industry in Victoria. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry.”
Statistics provided by VIATeC — the Victoria Advanced Technology Council — confirmed Teh’s assertions: the 800 technology companies that now call Greater Victoria home employ some 13,000 workers and generate close to $2 billion a year in revenues.
Tech industry advocates have rebranded the Capital Region District as “Tectoria,” and for good reason.
Most social gaming companies are based in the San Francisco Bay area and Silicone Valley, Teh said, but in recent years, Microsoft, GameHouse, KIXEYE and Zynga have all opened up game development studios in Victoria.
To fuel the creativity that drives growth and innovation at K/A, they’ve incorporated “beer Fridays,” bowling nights, paintball excursions and “hack days” into their workplace culture. Hack days, Teh explained, are special events held once every quarter where employees are granted free reign to “unplug” from their assigned projects and focus instead on projects they’ve dreamed up but have yet to explore. In teams of two to four, employees will create features for games and even entirely new games.
“In the gaming industry, it’s really important to push the limits of what we can do,” Teh said. “And some of the projects that have come out of hack days have gone into full production.”
Nurturing that creative spark has paid off for the company.
“We continue to be self-funded and profitable and growing,” Teh said. “We’ve just finished negotiations to bring on another employee, and we’re looking for engineers all the time.”
Teh’s ties to his hometown remain strong to this day. He graduated from Ladysmith Secondary School in 1997, he said, and he returned home to spend two years working as a software consultant following his graduation from UVic.
His parents still live in Ladysmith — Tim’s father, Kim, teaches taekwondo at the Outreach Martial Arts School on Bayview Avenue — and he visits home often, he said.
For more information on Teh and K/A, visit www.kanoapps.com.
