Alumni Portrait Marvin Killing

PlaytestCloud – from a student idea to a successful company in the video games industry

While still studying at HPI, Marvin Killing began developing a startup idea in the field of video games together with his fellow student, Christian Reß. By the time he completed his Master’s degree in IT-Systems Engineering in 2013–2014, the two had already attracted their first customers. This success encouraged them to found PlaytestCloud GmbH – an entrepreneurial journey that continues to this day.

Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI): Can you please describe your job and your professional responsibilities?

Marvin Killing: I am the co-founder and co-CEO of PlaytestCloud – "startup" in quotation marks, since we have now been around for over ten years. Today, our team consists of 44 employees. With our online platform, we help video game developers worldwide create successful games. Most of our customers are in the USA. In the early years of the company, my co-founder Christian Reß (also a HPI alumnus) and I did almost everything ourselves – from programming to acquiring clients to assembling office furniture. 

Today, my daily work focuses on leading product development, finance, and HR within the company. Fortunately, we have hired competent employees who know much more about these areas than I do.

HPI: Which aspects of your work do you enjoy the most?

Marvin: I greatly appreciate that I have looked forward to each workweek since the company’s founding. I enjoy the autonomy and variety of my work. As the CEO of a small company, I am involved in many different areas, which makes the job diverse and exciting.

HPI: How did your studies at HPI prepare you for your professional career?

Marvin: Before my studies at HPI, I never thought I could become an entrepreneur. HPI showed me what is possible through courses such as Business Administration, IT Entrepreneurship, and Human-Computer Interaction. In many classes, we were expected to independently and quickly familiarize ourselves with new technologies – a skill that still comes easily to me today. When we unexpectedly won HPI’s Business Plan Competition in 2012, it became clear: we would just give the startup a try.

HPI: Was there a particularly challenging moment in your career, and how did you handle it?

Marvin: At the very beginning of our founding journey, we made the typical software developer mistake and focused far too much on product development: "If we build it, they will come." After 10 months, we had a working product but only one customer – and that customer only used it because it was free. It was very frustrating not to make real progress. 

We then decided to try the complete opposite: we focused on talking to potential customers and signed contracts even though many features didn’t exist yet. We then developed these features under intense pressure, sometimes customizing them so that they were initially usable only by that one customer. It turned out to be the right approach: our satisfied first customers then recommended us to others.

HPI: Who or what inspires you in your daily life or has inspired you in your career?

Marvin: The first person who comes to mind in the games industry is John Carmack, the developer of DOOM and co-founder of id Software. He managed to build a company that has had a lasting impact on the gaming industry through hard work, technical genius, and a lot of fun. What inspires me most is that he never stopped learning – from rocket science to virtual reality, and now his current work in AI.

Thank you for the interview.