How Mobile Game Startups Excel in the Market

This interpretive grounded theory study explains how the early-stage mobile game startups excel in the market after releasing their apps. The data was collected by interviewing 20 startups in an accelerator operated by a platform owner. Our model shows that the startups follow an experimentation approach that allows for discovery of areas of improvement as well new potential markets. They monitor the performance of their games in order to better understand how to excel in the market. Accordingly, they continuously improve their games and expand to new markets to meet their success objectives despite the possible restraints imposed on them by the platform owner and available analytics tools. Our study enriches the existing literature on mobile app development by startups, their success, and how the platform owner through the accelerator can affect the startups in succeeding.