GameFlow

When you speak to anyone about running a business you can guarantee that 'cashflow' will be mentioned at some point. It's basically keeping track of when money comes into the company and when it goes out. You might have a brilliant idea that will guarantee a 300% return on investment, but it you have to pay out the investment up front, and you get the return over a year you might run out of money in the meantime - hence keeping an eye on your cashflow.

I'll need another measure too: Gameflow(tm). I've just coined the phrase - it means keeping your games pipeline full. The games pipeline consists of receiving submissions from designers, playtesting the submissions to weed out the inferior and improve the others, publicising the game, doing the artwork for the game, sending the game to the manufacturer, receiving finished stock from the manufacturer and then selling the stock to shops, distributors and gamers.

You need to keep the pipeline full, ensuring that you have enough games in progress that you don't end up with nothing to work on or sell.

Receiving enough quality submissions for the first stage will be hard to start off with, people with good game designs will approach the big boys (Fantasy Flight, Rio Grande Games, etc.), and most people have never heard of Reiver Games, so won't consider sending games to me. I need to put some effort into publicity to ensure that people know I exist, and consider me as a publisher for their games. I've started recently with this thread on BoardGameGeek, it has led to eleven submissions so far. Not all of them will be the sort of thing I'm interested in, but it's a start...