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In this Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A, 302 Interactiveis a company that provides an “all-in-one solution” for augmented reality mobile applications, game development, virtual reality and immersive experiences. In addition to providing games, 302 Interactive develops experiences for projects such as assistive technology devices for the visually impaired, training simulators for the US Marine Corps and VR escape rooms.
Image courtesy of 302 Interactive, Kyle Morrand.
What was your day job (or other source of income) when you started your side hustle?
When 302 started to grow as a side hustle, I was still a student at the University of Central Florida and working as a software developer for a government contractor in Orlando, Florida.
Your first job after graduating from college Kinetic Q I worked on a project for their internal research and development program, experimenting with virtual and augmented reality hardware for the Navy, and after my time there I went to work for another government contractor, working on instructional design solutions for various maintenance and operator training programs.
Although the subject matter of these jobs wasn’t something I was personally interested in, I learned a lot about the proper application of R&D experiments to the real world. Additionally, the stability these jobs provided while initially shaping what would become 302 Interactive was invaluable in giving me room for healthy creative thinking when I returned home and worked nights and weekends on contract projects under 302 LLC.
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When did you start your side hustle and what inspired you to start one?
I started the studio while in college as a side project to work on between classes. I’ve loved video games since I was a kid, and when I moved into my college apartment, Room 302, I had two roommates who shared the same hobby, and between the three of us we spent a lot of time and money buying, collecting, and playing retro games frequently.
I was originally Indie Games: Moviesis a film about “the trials and tribulations of creativity,” and it was an eye-opener to see so many talented creators with highly valuable skills essentially living as starving artists trying to bring their passion projects to life.
In 2013, I started thinking about how to build a business that would allow digital creators to be creative without sacrificing a healthy living and working environment. After several iterations, I decided to start a game studio that could help other game studios through collaboration and resource sharing. This idea has since evolved into the business we currently run, with the core objective of creative stability remaining at the heart of our overall company values and culture.
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What was the first step you took to start your side hustle?
I was studying Computer Engineering at UCF when I wanted to start 302. I started learning about game development from library books, but quickly decided I needed to change my major to UCF’s Game Design program and learn the craft of game design from the inside out. This was my first big step in connecting with many of the people I still work with today.
Soon after, I bought my first Virtual Reality Developer Kit and this was the beginning of my journey as a technologist. I started toying around with different ideas in VR and presented my projects at local developer meetups, which is how I got my first contract project. This idea of trying out a new technology, showcasing its capabilities, and naturally attracting people who needed help doing the same became our core marketing strategy for the first 5 years of growth. We didn’t use any advertising and very little social media, instead relying heavily on networking at events and word-of-mouth referrals of our projects.
Another important factor that helped us get started in the first few years was investing in a creative team culture. We spent a lot of time together as a team. From design sessions in my apartment to local game jams and even traveling to California for a game developer conference, we spent a lot of time enjoying the process of working together in the early days. This paid off when we started hiring our first employees, because joining team members were always most attracted to our culture, and new members easily jumped into the project with positive energy.
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What was the biggest challenge you faced in starting your side hustle and how did you overcome it?
Two challenges we frequently faced were continually finding contract work while simultaneously trying to build our own creative projects.
Initially, we were a local development company working primarily with regional startups and small businesses seeking support for R&D projects. These projects were niche and infrequent, making it a very challenging way to maintain a revenue stream. To solve this problem, we started to focus on marketing efforts by attending events like Augmented World Expo, Game Developers Conference, etc. to build our brand and relationships on a national scale. Continuing this investment year after year helped us build a strong community of clients and vendor partners, which ultimately gave us consistent access to new project work.
On the other side of the business, we struggled to balance our ambitions of generating a stable revenue stream from contract work with our own creative projects like producing our own games and building marketable XR products. After struggling to achieve both simultaneously for the first few years, it’s only recently that we’ve been able to allocate our team’s time and resources more stably to effectively manage client projects while also designing and building our own new creative projects in-house.
While this is still a growth area for us, we have several new opportunities ahead of us that we believe will help make our creative ambitions more fruitful.
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How long did it take you to start earning a steady income each month? How much did you make from your side hustle?
For the first three years after launching 302 as a game studio, we had very little revenue. Most of our activity at that time was focused on class projects, promoting ourselves at local networking events, and building relationships throughout the community.
In my fourth year (2017), I started doing contract work and building small projects for local companies who wanted to leverage game design and XR technology for their business. By the end of 2017, I was sustaining at least two contract projects at the same time, which was bringing in around $5,000-10,000 in monthly revenue. This trend continued into 2018, averaging $10,000 per month and achieving a total annual revenue of $130,000.
When did you start your business full time and how does your growth and revenue look now?
In the spring of 2018, we signed a contract with Steamroller Technologies to work on a project for Universal Creative. This contract gave 302 Interactive a stable revenue forecast, allowing me to quit my day job and work full time for the company. That year, we made $130,000 in revenue from just a few contract projects. Over the next three years, we steadily grew our projects and increased our contract rate while improving our processes and team talent.
By 2021, he was averaging $30,000 per month, and in 2022, thanks to bigger projects, his revenue doubled to an average of $70,000 per month. This trend continued in 2023, with total revenue for the year reaching $1.9 million.
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What do you enjoy most about running this business?
Honestly, what I enjoy most is how this business reflects my own life, ambitions and creativity. Having grown up in a very digital lifestyle – video games, apps and social media – I’ve had time to reflect on the impact digital technology has had on my own life and society, especially when it comes to mental health. Through our company’s initiative to “transform everyday life into playful experiences”, I am spending my days re-imagining my relationship with technology, designing a more playful lifestyle and ultimately eradicating some of the symptoms of depression and anxiety that seem so normal in modern life.
Another bonus is that throughout this journey, we get to work with our friends on fun and meaningful projects that express our collective creativity as employees and industry partners.
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What advice do you have for people who want to start a successful side hustle or their own business?
Start slowly and carefully.
Over the years, I’ve had friends who got excited about a trend they saw online and started a business quickly, only to burn out quickly. They had all the motivation, skills, and access to resources they needed to be successful, but they found that rushing through sound business practices and chasing trends often resulted in superficial results.
Instead, start a side hustle with more conscious intention. Take the time to write out the culture you want your business to embody and the values, people, and resources you need to foster that culture. Then apply your culture and skills to helping your first customer who has a problem that you clearly can solve. Once you’ve effectively solved someone’s problem, that first customer becomes an invaluable marketing story that naturally draws in more customers. It creates a snowball effect of maintaining your culture, sharing your story, and helping more people through your business.
This approach takes time, but I feel patience pays off. It allows you to build deeper relationships with your customers and team, and creates a community around you that believes in your goodwill efforts and is rooting for your continued growth and success.