Five questions with Monte Singman, Vice President of BD at iDreamSky

About Monte Singman

Monte has over 30 years in game business and extensive experience in bridging eastern and western gaming markets. He is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in building companies that focus on content and technology, especially in the mobile and online game industry. Alongside his current role as VP of business development at iDreamSky, he is a visiting professor at Shanghai Theater Academy.

Monte is the founder of International Game Developer Association (IGDA) Shanghai Chapter, of Radiance Digital Entertainment, and of Zona, Inc. His prior experience includes: Head of Productions and International Business Development at Shanda Network, Head of Studios at Infogrames, Executive Producer at Accolade, Technical Director/Senior Producer of Capcom USA and Senior Software Engineer at Electronic Arts.

Five questions with Monte

Q1: What’s one habit that keeps you focused and productive?

First I have to assign a purpose to my goal—it does not need to be logical, it just needs to provide a meaning to my endeavors. Then I try my best to make the process of getting to that goal fun, so instead of suffering all the way to the end zone, I would enjoy and play all the way (you won’t even notice that you have surpassed your original goal).

Q2: What’s one piece of advice for entrepreneurs in your industry?

Don’t build products for yourself, build the products for the target demographic. This sounds trivial, but you will be surprised how many people do this. They hypnotize themselves into believing what they want is what their audience wants, and they look for evidence to back up their view point—the typical confirmation bias.

Q3: What’s one of the most important lessons you learned from your career?

Tenacity pays off. The story of the turtle and the hare reminds me that I can’t change my gifts, but I certainly have control of my attitude, I can work hard and not assume that I have superior understanding of the market and my customers. I can work hard like the turtle and take one step at a time towards my goals.

Q4: What’s something you’ve changed your mind about in your career?

I am usually pessimistic towards hype. Things like VR, AR, blockchain, Cloud and AI—these jargons get tossed around like miracle solutions in tech fields. I later realized although these innovations are hyped up and will maybe be the next bubbles, there are some merits in these technical innovations. I am personally interested in the field of cloud gaming with the coming of 5G, but I don’t think it will be mainstream in 1–3 years. I think in 5 years the telecommunication and GPU cloud will catch up and virtualize all gaming hardware.

Q5: What’s one trait that you would like to see in people you work with?

I value honesty. While real talents are hard to come by, I think that people are rarely honest with themselves and the others what they can or can not do. In general, honest people are more reliable and can command respect and trust from people they work with.

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Originally published at https://mobileonlyx.com on April 20, 2020.