My firstminute | Riccardo Zacconi, King

This holiday period, with the extra downtime away from work, we’ll spend more time playing games than ever! 

So what exactly is the recipe for creating a successful game? 

King co-founder, Riccardo Zacconi discussed the secret recipe behind the success of Candy Crush and how to create stickiness in games (pun intended). 

We also delved into Riccardo's depth of experience in running King during a major financial downturn and explored how he now enjoys helping and backing founders in this episode from April 2020.

Riccardo Zacconi's biography:

Riccardo was a co-founder of King and continues to serve as company Chairman, having served as CEO from 2003 until 2019.

Riccardo grew up in Italy, worked in management consulting at LEK and BCG before transitioning into tech at the start of the dotcom boom. In 1999, Riccardo joined Swedish online startup Spray to build its business in Germany. After the sale of Spray to Lycos Europe he moved to the UK as an Entrepreneur in Residence for Benchmark Capital. In 2002 Riccardo joined uk online dating startup uDate as VP of European sales and marketing. After the sale of uDate to IAC/Match.com, Riccardo co-founded King in March 2003 and was its CEO from the start, overseeing the company's rapid growth in the global mobile gaming sector to over 500 million monthly players, the company's IPO on NYSE and its $6bn sale to Activision Blizzard in 2016.

In December 2016 Riccardo was knighted by the Italian President with the title of Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia. Riccardo is also the founder of the PTEN Research Foundation for rare genetic diseases.

Transcript

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First minute capital is a $100 million seed fund,

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proudly backed by a number of tech fund LP,

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including 30 unicorn farmers.

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Part of our DNA is to take wisdom lessons learned from one generation

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of successful entrepreneurs

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and share those lessons and pieces

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of advice to the next generation of successful founders.

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And that's really what this webinar series is all about.

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My first minute is a fun opportunity to informally speak to

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some of the world's top founders on the first minutes of their career,

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how they see the world and genuine leadership advice.

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My name is Ivana.

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I'm an investor first in the capital,

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and today I'm speaking to Ricardo's account.

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You were born in Rome.

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Your father was a dentist.

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Your mom was a Hungarian refugee.

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Actually fled to Rome, I read.

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And then I was really excited to see that we share some similarities

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in our background and that you studied economics.

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So we share that degree and then you actually went to be

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a consultant with Elek and BCG in Germany as well.

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So some hope for me.

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Then your life became a lot more glamorous than mine,

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but maybe starting at young Ricardo.

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How would you describe a young Ricardo when you just finished your degree?

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What expectations did you have from life?

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Where did you think you would end up?

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Yeah, sure.

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I studied not only my mom, she went to Rome to study actually arts.

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So she was a she's going to go to Munich.

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But regarding my my background, yeah.

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So I made my ambitions when when I finished university,

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I studied because I

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always wanted to become an entrepreneur, but I had no idea what to do.

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And so I always tried in first in my studies

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and then later when I chose the first job, which was to go into consulting

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since I had no clue what to do, is to leave the doors as open as possible.

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That's why I studied economy, which basically goes down any doors.

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Then I studied in order and went into consulting, still didn't know what to do.

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So it left me doors open and allowed me to look into different things.

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And it's only until 1999 when the Internet boom actually started.

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It was actually in 98 that I jumped ship

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and I went into a startup.

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And in so in 1999, you actually so you went to the Web Portal Spray,

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which was an online portal similar to Yahoo!

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And I think that was a ridiculous growth curve.

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So you you grew from 80 to 22, 800 people in a year

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to then essentially crash in the dot com bubble.

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And so when I read about this, I was just curious.

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Did that discourage you from wanting to start something again,

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that sort of incredible scaling and then essentially

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falling a little bit flat?

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No, I think it was exactly the opposite.

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I think that I think that when many people who joined

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the Internet boom coming from, you know, highly paid jobs

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like investment banking or consulting, then decided to go back.

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I thought it was crazy because we learned so much

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and I did the most expensive MBA.

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You can do.

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And then not to continuing

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but you have learned and to go back I think it was was for me

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and basically a closed door because I definitely want to continue.

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And and so I was looking for opportunities.

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And then while I was looking

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and I came up with different ideas, then I received a call from Benchmark

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in the UK and they said, Look, why don't you come over

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and who would like to sponsor you as an entrepreneur in residence?

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And that's why I moved from Germany to London.

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But for me, it was clear that I was not going back

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after you get the the freedom and the huge opportunities and were there.

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And basically the sky's the limit.

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You don't go back and look into the box.

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Yeah.

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And I guess as a consultant, you're very, very much aware of your clients.

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And once you're an entrepreneur, you much more free to do what you choose.

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And you then went, as you said,

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to be a beekeeper or an ER with Benchmark.

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And rather than actually then starting something,

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you went to join an online dating sites.

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Could you date what got you excited about that?

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I basically when I

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joined Benchmark before joining Benchmark, I took some time off

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and I collected a list of different ideas, about 50 ideas when I came in.

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And one of these ideas was online dating.

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We developed when I was in spray,

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one of the first dating sites in Europe and it became very big.

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Then later and we after we sold the company, became a lot like us

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and we didn't have any more money for marketing,

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but it went through the roof, but we didn't ask for money.

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It was free service.

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And only after I left I saw that there were dating services

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like match.com in the US that are doing really well. So

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I busy this was I get it.

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I pushed more but then we looked into several ways to enter this market

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and one of these ways was to invest in an existing company called

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Due Date, which was only active in the US and in the UK.

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Remember that the European market then was completely free.

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Was it was there was nothing, nothing in terms of pay dating.

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And so one of the ways to enter the market was to invest in New Date

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and then to roll out their models into the continental continental Europe.

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So this was the plan and benchmark made an investment offer.

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They refused the offer from Benchmark because the company was profitable

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and instead made me an offer to come on board and build out the market.

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So it was not just an offer as an employee, it was an offer basically to

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build something

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on the back of of their product and to build a leader, a global leader.

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But unfortunately,

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after three months after I joined the the the the founder members got an offer

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to sell the company, unfortunately or maybe fortunately, because I didn't.

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Mean he made a fair bit of money. Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Well, no,

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I didn't make as much as I was hoping for because he was very early and during that

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there was a vesting period.

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But I made I made I made a bid and that bit allowed me

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to start to start the start. KING

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Which

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which we started busy with my former colleagues from spray and

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and with Tobi, who I worked with at at a few days.

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So I think it's funny because you started and.

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King with five other co-founders, so it was a huge co-founding team

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and I think the only other very successful company

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that I can think of that had six co-founders is PayPal.

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There might be others, but only one I could think of

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maybe a little bit more about how that came about.

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And also whether you would choose to pick that larger

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Cofounding team again today, or is it mostly a headache?

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Look, if I knew how to program, if I knew how to design a product,

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if I knew all these things, then I wouldn't need any founders co-founders.

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But since I don't, I'm really good.

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I think at speaking with people and and I think that the and I

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we were never greedy.

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So for us, it was not about making each of us the most.

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It was about being successful together.

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And we started all with equal, equal shareholdings.

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And over time, as we took more risk and, you know, different

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people had different amounts they were willing to invest or could invest.

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And then we had different holdings, but we always maintained an equal partnership.

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And I think this has been very important.

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And those different shareholdings then also helped you resolve

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disagreements, or was it because everyone had their own

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domain, essentially where they were making the decisions?

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And that's how you didn't really have any disagreements.

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What happened when when you disagreed on something?

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I think that I can

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count maybe on one hand, the times where we disagreed, we usually agreed

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mainly because of trust, because we had different areas of responsibilities.

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I'm not going to tell. Thomas was a CTO and large was.

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If you were to do on the tech side, I'm going to tell Sebastian on what

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to do on the design side, etc.

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But there are some times where we had strategic disagreements

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in what area, where, what way to go, and there we never leveraged.

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I have more shares than you, but we had an open discussion

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and when we still couldn't resolve these agreements, we went to the board.

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And the board, as in any any company, is the resolving

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instance or the solving authority.

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And so we presented our our views, different views,

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and then the board took a decision in one way or another.

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Of course, we were also part of the board,

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but we had also independent board members and also our investors.

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And I think that the one time where we had a disagreement,

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actually, I won the board, the board's decision

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and we went our way, but they actually turned out to be the wrong way. So

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you'll never know.

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It's yeah.

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I think a decision is more important sometimes in thinking than

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thinking or decision.

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But the most important thing for us

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it was to be together and strong and to stick together.

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Yeah.

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And you strike me as someone who will be able to recognize

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when they did take a wrong decision and not have the pride

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to sort of glance over it.

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I guess you guys started out with, I think, six months of runway, 6

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to 8 months of runway when you started.

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KING And it was largely your personal savings.

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You then ended up having your first near-death moment

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on Christmas Eve of 2003.

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There's the episode with the broken fax machine.

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I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about how that came about.

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Yeah.

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So we had several actually near-death moments

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in the course of King, and that was the very first one

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because we put in actually all of our savings.

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I put in all my savings, I sold anything I had.

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I had the car before I sold the car, I had the everything.

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I went to stay in the in the flat of a very good friend of mine

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for about two and a half years in his in his guestroom.

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And all my properties were in there.

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So it was really bare bone.

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And then we had money and we were trying to raise money, but it was very difficult.

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2003 was a nuclear year in terms of funding.

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And and one of our emails, one of our investors

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that was the founder of few days he did give

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said that he would invest in us but in an interesting structure

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we trustees were to decide so we took much much longer.

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And so it was the day before Christmas.

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And I had the flight in the same the same evening to go to go back home.

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And and the fax with the with a signature from

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the trustee is still going to come every time we send fax machines

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and and suddenly, suddenly the signature was coming through.

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I was literally on the floor.

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And so had the signature came through, I said the fax came through on the fax

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machine, broke in the middle of the of transmission.

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So we were in panic and so we had to find a new fax machine.

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And that's where I learned that.

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I know it doesn't matter how, how,

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how well or how badly funded you are, you never save on hardware.

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So on.

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Hardware, thank God for email.

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And we got the fax.

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And tell me that there is in fact a lot.

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Anyway, you started asking developing browser based games

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and maybe take the audience

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through really how your vision for King changed over the years.

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Because obviously Candy Crush, which King is most famous for, came

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much, much later.

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So what was the vision at the outset?

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We started with the

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model which was offering competitive games on the web,

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and the games were really freemium

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because you could play against other people for free.

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But then there was a model

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where if you were to compete with others, also for a small

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well entry fee, you could also win a prize.

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And if you were the best, if you're the winner in the competition,

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that was basically one of the first actually real freemium models,

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which was purely digital.

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So there was no download

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and everything went really well.

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We became number one in our space on the web,

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becoming the largest partner of large portals like Yahoo!

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For example, until Facebook started growing really fast.

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So Facebook was opened up for partners in 2007, but it's not until 2009

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that really took off in games with Zynga and Farmville.

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And I forget busy in the space of less than a year, Yahoo,

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which was our largest partner, lost 45% of their traffic in games

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and we were the number one in games on their on their, on their property.

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So it was, it felt as if someone had taken the floor under, under, under our feet.

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And it was a very, very difficult time.

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And that's where we had. Yeah. And you said.

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We were doing things.

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You said I think

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you said publicly that Facebook almost entirely crushed your company.

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So maybe that was a near-death moment.

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Number two, and that's

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where you essentially also had to do quite a big pivot.

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Correct.

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So maybe I think that's a very relevant moment to sort of look back on now,

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because a lot of companies and a lot of founders on the call

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are also considering whether in this environment

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they will have to or or it's clever for them to pivot.

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So I'm really curious what sort of mental shifts

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were required within King at the time to bring about

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that really important but really drastic pivot as Facebook came about?

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Yeah, basically sometimes

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you're forced to take decisions, otherwise you wouldn't do in the same way.

00:14:07:26 - 00:14:10:00
And this is one of this one of these moments.

00:14:10:00 - 00:14:12:21
And fundamentally, Facebook was growing incredibly fast.

00:14:12:21 - 00:14:17:03
We were, of course, experimenting on Facebook on the side side bets.

00:14:17:16 - 00:14:18:28
But that is different.

00:14:18:28 - 00:14:19:23
If you go side bet

00:14:19:23 - 00:14:23:19
or if everything is basically dependent, your life or death depend on it.

00:14:24:06 - 00:14:28:11
And so suddenly with this big increase in traffic on Facebook,

00:14:28:21 - 00:14:30:19
we had to change the way how we were doing things.

00:14:30:19 - 00:14:32:01
So we had to divide our team.

00:14:32:01 - 00:14:36:01
We were about ten people by the time in the in two parts, 50%

00:14:36:01 - 00:14:39:00
of the company continued working on the existing product on the web.

00:14:39:28 - 00:14:44:00
And the other 50% of the company was divided in five smaller teams

00:14:44:08 - 00:14:47:00
experimenting on how do we take our games to Facebook.

00:14:47:11 - 00:14:50:09
Facebook did not allow us to take our original model to Facebook,

00:14:50:15 - 00:14:52:25
so we had to completely change how we were doing things.

00:14:53:11 - 00:14:55:26
And and that's where we started thinking.

00:14:55:26 - 00:14:57:24
Instead of offering a whole website of games,

00:14:57:24 - 00:14:59:26
we started taking one game after the other

00:14:59:26 - 00:15:02:12
and tried to make it sort of a very shallow game.

00:15:02:12 - 00:15:06:11
You would compete against others in too busy of many,

00:15:06:11 - 00:15:07:21
many levels of the same game.

00:15:07:21 - 00:15:11:18
And this was the precursor of Candy Crush and one of these games

00:15:11:18 - 00:15:15:14
succeeded after more or less a year and a half of experimentation.

00:15:15:23 - 00:15:18:09
And that year and a half was very, very tough.

00:15:18:27 - 00:15:19:28
So we lost people.

00:15:19:28 - 00:15:21:14
We had we lost some investors,

00:15:21:14 - 00:15:26:09
and we had some very hard discussions also in the board.

00:15:26:09 - 00:15:33:16
So I can only say that, you know, any any change often is if you do it

00:15:33:27 - 00:15:37:04
and if you do it, if you do it properly and if you do it well

00:15:37:04 - 00:15:40:04
and if you're lucky, also this in time also has big opportunities.

00:15:40:04 - 00:15:44:01
In our case, we would have never done it in this way if we had not been forced

00:15:44:01 - 00:15:47:02
to do it in such a an aggressive way.

00:15:48:05 - 00:15:49:19
We might not have launched Candy Crush.

00:15:49:19 - 00:15:52:08
We might not have launched a mobile.

00:15:52:25 - 00:15:55:08
Listening to you like this, it sounds you know,

00:15:55:19 - 00:15:59:07
people might think that you burn a load of cash in this time.

00:16:00:01 - 00:16:05:02
But actually, I think you took in some investment in 2005 with index and Apex.

00:16:05:12 - 00:16:08:10
And and you told me you

00:16:08:19 - 00:16:12:09
essentially never touched the money.

00:16:12:09 - 00:16:15:15
That's really unheard of, I think, in today's

00:16:15:22 - 00:16:18:18
or yesterday's bull market.

00:16:18:26 - 00:16:19:12
Maybe.

00:16:19:12 - 00:16:22:27
Help us understand how you're thinking about profitability

00:16:23:26 - 00:16:26:15
versus growth and how you can have that.

00:16:27:28 - 00:16:31:24
Look, I, I you know, for me, freedom is the most important thing.

00:16:31:24 - 00:16:36:28
And also not being dependent on specific events is, is key.

00:16:37:10 - 00:16:40:00
And if someone asks me, talk about what is the most important event

00:16:40:00 - 00:16:44:23
in the history of, you know, 17 plus years of being I've been doing?

00:16:44:23 - 00:16:47:19
KING It's not the moment where we launched Candy Crush.

00:16:47:19 - 00:16:50:29
For me, the most important moment is January of 2005

00:16:51:07 - 00:16:54:07
when we became profitable, and we've been profitable since then.

00:16:55:09 - 00:17:00:23
So I think that profitability allows you degrees of freedom.

00:17:00:23 - 00:17:03:22
You don't have to do what potential investors want.

00:17:03:22 - 00:17:08:07
They want to hear you are if you know, if something happens to you

00:17:09:01 - 00:17:12:01
and you cannot raise the next round, you're not dependent on it

00:17:12:01 - 00:17:13:13
because you're profitable.

00:17:13:13 - 00:17:16:23
And for example, one of the things we discovered in this year and a half,

00:17:16:23 - 00:17:20:28
which was really tough when we when Facebook was growing, is we had built

00:17:21:03 - 00:17:24:00
our traffic was going down, new users had vanished,

00:17:24:24 - 00:17:29:12
but we had a socket of very loyal players and this stuck with us.

00:17:29:22 - 00:17:32:20
So and those players kept us profitable during this entire time,

00:17:33:02 - 00:17:34:23
whereas we had we had to be very conservative,

00:17:34:23 - 00:17:37:04
would be very careful how we spend the money.

00:17:37:04 - 00:17:39:18
And then later on when we launched Candy Crush

00:17:40:12 - 00:17:43:18
in the Q1 of 2013,

00:17:43:18 - 00:17:47:08
we launched Candy Crush in November 2012 in Q1 13.

00:17:47:08 - 00:17:51:12
So a few months later, we found we spent $100 million in marketing

00:17:51:19 - 00:17:55:24
and $200 million in Q3 and $10 million in Q4, almost the same amount.

00:17:56:08 - 00:17:58:09
And we actually didn't raise a penny.

00:17:58:09 - 00:18:03:14
So the company became profitable with $1.5 million of investment in the beginning

00:18:03:27 - 00:18:07:17
in the beginning of 2004.

00:18:08:01 - 00:18:09:17
And with our money also.

00:18:09:17 - 00:18:13:00
And then we raise additional money from index and from and from Apex.

00:18:13:00 - 00:18:14:15
But we didn't touch that money.

00:18:14:15 - 00:18:18:27
You only touch the ones to buy back some shares.

00:18:18:27 - 00:18:23:04
That's pretty fascinating and I think very rare in today's world.

00:18:23:22 - 00:18:26:06
But I guess back then

00:18:26:15 - 00:18:29:08
it really wasn't an option

00:18:29:08 - 00:18:32:03
to just continue to raise money if you weren't getting profitability.

00:18:32:29 - 00:18:35:20
My advice and also, you know, we we invest with sweet capital.

00:18:35:20 - 00:18:37:05
We invest in several companies.

00:18:37:05 - 00:18:41:07
And I also always challenge founders to think about, you know,

00:18:41:08 - 00:18:42:06
the next fundraising.

00:18:42:06 - 00:18:44:10
And this money is only going to take you to the next fundraising.

00:18:44:10 - 00:18:46:17
The next one is because maybe there is no next fundraising.

00:18:46:18 - 00:18:49:29
So for example, now was a very difficult moment in the market in general,

00:18:50:17 - 00:18:53:15
where fundraising is more, is more, is tougher than it was

00:18:53:15 - 00:18:56:16
before, before COVID, you know, you never know.

00:18:56:16 - 00:18:58:25
And so I think that, you know, if the moment is right,

00:18:59:22 - 00:19:01:06
you might not need the next fundraising.

00:19:01:06 - 00:19:03:01
I think it's a good way to saying, hey, let's

00:19:03:01 - 00:19:05:04
what do we need to become profitable?

00:19:05:04 - 00:19:06:09
And then to prove the model.

00:19:06:09 - 00:19:08:24
And then from there you can scale it.

00:19:08:24 - 00:19:10:24
Maybe looking towards sort of.

00:19:11:08 - 00:19:13:27
So you launched Candy Crush on Mobile.

00:19:13:27 - 00:19:17:07
You saw incredibly explosive growth.

00:19:17:07 - 00:19:21:22
You went to IPO mid 2013 on the New York Stock Exchange

00:19:22:25 - 00:19:23:15
and the

00:19:23:15 - 00:19:26:22
IPO probably wasn't quite the success you'd hoped for.

00:19:26:22 - 00:19:30:18
Um, I actually pulled some of the headlines, which I thought were funny

00:19:30:18 - 00:19:32:20
because everyone made a pun on Candy Crush.

00:19:33:18 - 00:19:36:17
So some of the headlines were like Sour Candy

00:19:37:01 - 00:19:39:05
King dot com IPO does not crush it.

00:19:39:28 - 00:19:40:23
Candy Blast.

00:19:40:23 - 00:19:42:27
I found one which I thought was incredibly funny.

00:19:44:06 - 00:19:47:21
What in hindsight was the issue

00:19:47:21 - 00:19:50:14
because it saved, I think, about half a billion of your market cap.

00:19:50:26 - 00:19:53:03
Do you think that was timing?

00:19:53:15 - 00:19:57:16
Would you have done it the same way again today?

00:19:57:16 - 00:19:57:28
You know,

00:19:57:28 - 00:20:01:17
I think there's the phone is definitely one of these pictures in my life.

00:20:01:21 - 00:20:05:19
KING When we were all with all the founders, we were sitting

00:20:05:19 - 00:20:09:07
on the balcony and we pressed the button, so basically called the bell

00:20:09:14 - 00:20:11:17
and so red button, by the way. So that was the fun part.

00:20:11:29 - 00:20:15:14
And we went down in the in the arena and I bought the first the first,

00:20:15:14 - 00:20:16:18
the first share

00:20:16:18 - 00:20:20:24
and then and then trading kicked off and then suddenly the shares went dropped.

00:20:20:24 - 00:20:21:25
So now

00:20:23:03 - 00:20:25:00
a little bit of a strange experience, not the best experience

00:20:25:00 - 00:20:28:02
for my point of view, but I think there was a lot of negative

00:20:29:02 - 00:20:32:20
a lot of people saying this is going to be a one hit

00:20:32:20 - 00:20:36:05
wonder Candy Crush is going to fall off the cliff after that.

00:20:36:18 - 00:20:38:29
And of course, it didn't help that

00:20:39:11 - 00:20:42:00
we happened in Q1 14

00:20:42:00 - 00:20:46:18
and we missed our first quarter in Q2 in Q2 14.

00:20:46:24 - 00:20:49:02
But you know, if

00:20:49:08 - 00:20:53:06
if if I look at what happened now after many after a few years,

00:20:53:16 - 00:20:57:02
actually, Candy Crush proved to be a very, very strong game

00:20:57:02 - 00:20:59:02
and then incredibly resilient.

00:20:59:02 - 00:21:03:08
All the all the estimates and the and the negative views of the time

00:21:03:08 - 00:21:06:06
are completely dispelled after after many years.

00:21:07:18 - 00:21:08:28
Yeah.

00:21:08:28 - 00:21:12:17
If you thinking from an investing perspective because obviously we saw

00:21:12:29 - 00:21:15:03
we've got lots of investors on the call as well.

00:21:16:24 - 00:21:19:14
What would you say to someone who says, you know,

00:21:19:15 - 00:21:23:14
I don't invest in games because it's totally driven and it's

00:21:23:14 - 00:21:26:28
basically like if you hit something can be a one hit wonder.

00:21:26:28 - 00:21:33:10
As you say, but you may also end up with tons and tons of games that simply fail.

00:21:33:10 - 00:21:35:21
And there's no formula to getting a game

00:21:36:17 - 00:21:38:22
right.

00:21:38:22 - 00:21:41:08
I think that, you know, it depends from your approach.

00:21:41:08 - 00:21:43:24
If you launch games which are more or less proven,

00:21:44:08 - 00:21:47:21
then you can already foresee how the game is going to perform more or less.

00:21:47:21 - 00:21:50:24
But then you can you can also foresee that the game is never going to be

00:21:50:24 - 00:21:54:20
a number one hit, because to become number one, you have to really innovate.

00:21:55:06 - 00:21:58:08
And if you innovate, you really only know the day when you launch.

00:21:58:08 - 00:21:59:12
You can already know before.

00:21:59:12 - 00:22:01:24
You have different stages, of course, where you can optimize.

00:22:02:20 - 00:22:05:20
But often, you know, we develop many, many games which never saw the

00:22:05:20 - 00:22:06:12
light of the day

00:22:07:13 - 00:22:09:25
and and we spent a few years on them.

00:22:09:25 - 00:22:10:26
And then they never win.

00:22:10:26 - 00:22:11:29
They never launched

00:22:11:29 - 00:22:14:06
because when we launched them, they were not good enough

00:22:14:06 - 00:22:16:26
in terms of retention for us, in terms of monetization.

00:22:16:26 - 00:22:17:19
Second.

00:22:18:07 - 00:22:19:22
So I think

00:22:20:28 - 00:22:23:03
it's not an easy area

00:22:23:03 - 00:22:26:05
to as a startup to compete in,

00:22:26:05 - 00:22:28:06
but if you succeed,

00:22:28:06 - 00:22:31:03
then the rewards are big because you know, they

00:22:31:22 - 00:22:35:08
you can scale the game with with profitable economics.

00:22:35:08 - 00:22:37:15
If the game if the game is is innovative

00:22:39:06 - 00:22:42:15
and another kid earning, I think is if you have if you have a brand

00:22:42:21 - 00:22:47:06
and it performs really well, then you can keep the game up there for

00:22:47:13 - 00:22:51:23
for a very long time, if not forever, by continuously

00:22:51:28 - 00:22:54:25
releasing new content by refreshing the content of the game.

00:22:54:25 - 00:22:55:18
So I think that

00:22:56:24 - 00:22:57:06
we are in

00:22:57:06 - 00:23:01:03
a situation now or in a market with so many millions of apps on the

00:23:01:03 - 00:23:04:25
on the, in the store that brands are more important than ever.

00:23:04:25 - 00:23:09:14
And then going to to, you know, to a movie store or movie a movie and

00:23:10:17 - 00:23:10:25
a movie.

00:23:10:25 - 00:23:13:22
And then you need to decide what movie am I going to see tonight?

00:23:14:07 - 00:23:17:24
And there's so much choice that at the end you end up basically

00:23:17:24 - 00:23:21:15
going to the same brands that you used or that you watched in the past

00:23:21:28 - 00:23:24:22
because because you know already what you get there and you like it.

00:23:25:03 - 00:23:28:22
And instead of releasing newer movies or instead of releasing your games,

00:23:28:22 - 00:23:31:26
we do the same thing in continuously releasing fresh content.

00:23:31:26 - 00:23:33:12
You can't the new levels,

00:23:33:12 - 00:23:37:09
new features, time or time, limited content on a regular basis.

00:23:37:17 - 00:23:41:02
And that's how we keep up the attention and and the user end user ship.

00:23:43:03 - 00:23:44:05
And I mean, Candy Crush has

00:23:44:05 - 00:23:49:13
been in the top ten games in the App Store pretty much since it launched on mobile.

00:23:49:20 - 00:23:52:21
And what makes it so great?

00:23:52:21 - 00:23:54:20
Why do we love it so much?

00:23:54:20 - 00:23:57:04
What formula behind it?

00:23:57:04 - 00:23:59:10
I think that there

00:24:00:22 - 00:24:02:17
there are a few things on one side.

00:24:02:17 - 00:24:06:17
It's the mechanism of play is a very well known mechanism of play.

00:24:06:17 - 00:24:08:28
It's a match three. So we did not invent the match three.

00:24:08:28 - 00:24:12:12
But we innovated in the way how you play a match three

00:24:12:21 - 00:24:17:19
with new modalities of play with many, many levels where you would play

00:24:17:19 - 00:24:19:27
also with others, as you know, as you have seen from Candy Crush,

00:24:19:27 - 00:24:23:12
all of this, basically, it was new at the time we also innovated in the business model

00:24:24:10 - 00:24:27:26
where we busy making freemium, really taking it to 

00:24:27:26 - 00:24:31:28
to a level where it's actually fun also to play.

00:24:33:20 - 00:24:36:21
So I think it's and at the same time it is also really key but

00:24:36:21 - 00:24:40:20
I think this goes beyond games is to have something that is actually simple.

00:24:40:29 - 00:24:44:02
If you make something too difficult, too complicated, then you restrict

00:24:44:17 - 00:24:47:02
the usership, the potential target group.

00:24:47:25 - 00:24:50:18
Of course, if you make it too simple, then it becomes boring.

00:24:50:18 - 00:24:53:04
So it's it's having is very

00:24:54:15 - 00:24:56:19
it's a path it's a very delicate path

00:24:56:26 - 00:25:00:14
to make it simple but but not too easy.

00:25:00:14 - 00:25:01:08
Not too difficult.

00:25:01:08 - 00:25:02:14
And balancing that

00:25:02:14 - 00:25:05:12
and there's a kind of a graph, a kind of a curve where sometimes

00:25:05:12 - 00:25:06:17
you make it easier at the beginning

00:25:06:17 - 00:25:08:18
and it becomes more difficult, then it becomes easy again.

00:25:08:18 - 00:25:09:06
Etc.

00:25:10:27 - 00:25:13:10
And how intentional were you in

00:25:13:10 - 00:25:16:17
going after women as a demographic?

00:25:16:17 - 00:25:19:29
Because I think it was one of the first mobile games that really

00:25:20:21 - 00:25:23:20
skewed pretty heavily towards towards women.

00:25:23:20 - 00:25:25:11
So was that an intentional move?

00:25:27:01 - 00:25:29:13
Yes, it was a very intentional.

00:25:29:13 - 00:25:33:23
The games we developed before and on before we launched on mobile games,

00:25:33:24 - 00:25:39:04
we developed on the web and the games is called casual games and those are,

00:25:39:04 - 00:25:43:13
for example, match three, those are hidden object games, etc., word games.

00:25:44:01 - 00:25:47:05
Those games are particularly attractive

00:25:47:12 - 00:25:50:10
to a segment of 60 to 70% of players

00:25:50:19 - 00:25:53:12
are female, usually 18 plus 20 plus.

00:25:54:15 - 00:25:58:03
So we knew very well that that would be the our user base.

00:25:58:03 - 00:26:01:08
So it's not the young guy who goes into plays a fighting game.

00:26:02:22 - 00:26:04:23
You had another big moment

00:26:05:13 - 00:26:08:20
after your IPO, so you went about three years of the public company

00:26:09:16 - 00:26:11:24
and then you actually got an acquisition

00:26:11:24 - 00:26:13:29
offer from Activision Blizzard

00:26:15:04 - 00:26:18:23
and that ended up being one of the largest transactions in the gaming space.

00:26:18:23 - 00:26:22:19
So for acquisition of $5.9 billion

00:26:24:00 - 00:26:25:28
and the way I understood it

00:26:25:28 - 00:26:31:07
is that you essentially became the mobile games division.

00:26:31:12 - 00:26:34:23
Tell us a little bit about what it was like when that offer

00:26:35:00 - 00:26:39:03
crystallized and came about.

00:26:39:03 - 00:26:43:01
Well, we had a long discussion in the board whether we want to take it

00:26:43:01 - 00:26:44:03
or not.

00:26:44:03 - 00:26:48:01
And and ultimately, we decided to take the offer.

00:26:48:01 - 00:26:51:05
And there were the considerations were primarily two.

00:26:51:17 - 00:26:54:10
One was, of course, financial and financial considerations.

00:26:54:10 - 00:26:59:08
So it was a premium on the on the on the day time value on the stock exchange.

00:27:00:02 - 00:27:04:11
But secondly, the other consideration was also the fit with, with Activision.

00:27:04:25 - 00:27:08:09
And and we were thinking primarily of the team do we fit in the culture,

00:27:08:10 - 00:27:11:07
do we fit as overall strategically?

00:27:11:13 - 00:27:14:25
And we thought actually fit was, was actually a perfect fit both in terms

00:27:14:25 - 00:27:19:05
of mobile versus console and PC, but also in terms of category of games.

00:27:19:05 - 00:27:20:07
So we would cover

00:27:20:07 - 00:27:24:09
the basically the casual games focusing on, I mean, the female audience

00:27:24:10 - 00:27:28:01
versus Activision having games primarily focused on the younger male audience.

00:27:28:19 - 00:27:31:03
And and I think it proved it proved correct.

00:27:31:19 - 00:27:34:12
And we're not the mobile division of of Activision,

00:27:34:12 - 00:27:38:01
meaning Activision to develop their own, their own mobile games.

00:27:38:23 - 00:27:42:22
But I think, of course, from a mobile point of view, we have the largest user base.

00:27:43:27 - 00:27:44:06
Yeah.

00:27:44:06 - 00:27:47:05
And you drove drove a lot of their revenues

00:27:48:05 - 00:27:50:21
and through big changes

00:27:51:07 - 00:27:56:05
and profits, more importantly through those big changes.

00:27:56:05 - 00:27:59:14
What I'm really curious about is how do you keep

00:28:00:09 - 00:28:03:24
the best people motivated to work on the same product

00:28:03:24 - 00:28:08:22
or the same franchise, at least for almost, almost a decade?

00:28:08:22 - 00:28:12:17
And how do you manage to retain your top talent throughout that?

00:28:12:17 - 00:28:16:04
Is that by being an amazing CEO and building

00:28:16:07 - 00:28:20:04
great culture and what we you know,

00:28:20:04 - 00:28:23:24
what what were your tricks and being able to retain such amazing talent?

00:28:24:28 - 00:28:27:23
Yeah, I think there are several

00:28:27:23 - 00:28:31:19
bits or parts to this answer or to answer this question.

00:28:31:19 - 00:28:33:04
The first one is

00:28:34:14 - 00:28:36:04
the generic approach I have is,

00:28:36:04 - 00:28:38:27
first of all, is I think I'm pretty good at finding good people.

00:28:39:09 - 00:28:42:13
But then I think the reason why I look for good people

00:28:42:13 - 00:28:44:12
is because I think that they're better than I am.

00:28:44:12 - 00:28:46:08
And so I give them the job,

00:28:47:10 - 00:28:47:16
which

00:28:47:16 - 00:28:50:22
basically means, you know, you know better than I do how to do it.

00:28:50:23 - 00:28:53:20
You do it and you how to do your job.

00:28:53:20 - 00:28:55:25
So I'm not a micromanager.

00:28:55:25 - 00:28:57:04
And so I give them a response.

00:28:57:04 - 00:29:02:01
I give people responsibility, and I expect them to to develop the plan

00:29:02:01 - 00:29:05:02
on how to actually succeed in a specific, specific task.

00:29:05:12 - 00:29:08:10
And, of course, you know, we discuss it and challenge them.

00:29:08:28 - 00:29:11:12
But primarily, you know, if you get good people on board,

00:29:11:12 - 00:29:12:20
don't tell them then what they should do.

00:29:12:20 - 00:29:14:01
But let them do it

00:29:14:18 - 00:29:16:13
as the first bit. Well.

00:29:16:13 - 00:29:18:25
This means what happens when they make a mistake.

00:29:19:26 - 00:29:24:23
So I was about to say this means also letting them do mistakes sometimes.

00:29:24:23 - 00:29:26:29
You know, I have a disagreement with them.

00:29:26:29 - 00:29:30:07
And and I think in that case, I think this might stick.

00:29:30:27 - 00:29:32:00
Sometimes I'm proven wrong.

00:29:32:00 - 00:29:34:18
Sometimes and proven right, but I let them do that.

00:29:35:02 - 00:29:37:10
Otherwise, you know,

00:29:38:11 - 00:29:39:16
it's fundamentally

00:29:39:16 - 00:29:43:27
important to to do things and also to make mistakes, to understand

00:29:43:27 - 00:29:46:10
what is right and what is wrong, how many times I've been proven wrong,

00:29:47:21 - 00:29:48:26
sometimes proven also right.

00:29:48:26 - 00:29:52:10
But, you know, it's it's not important to be right or wrong.

00:29:52:10 - 00:29:57:12
Important is to be fast in adapting to what is right or not to do or stop doing

00:29:57:12 - 00:29:58:13
what is wrong.

00:29:58:13 - 00:29:59:07
So that's the first thing.

00:29:59:07 - 00:30:01:06
The second thing is, how do you keep people actually,

00:30:01:06 - 00:30:03:26
how do you keep people during difficult times?

00:30:03:26 - 00:30:07:07
So in those in that year and a half, of course, people were telling me, hey,

00:30:07:08 - 00:30:09:18
we need to be on Facebook. I know Instagram, Facebook.

00:30:10:05 - 00:30:13:26
You know, one thing is to be the other one is okay, but how do we get people?

00:30:14:13 - 00:30:20:10
So I think that you can choose in this in this moment to say,

00:30:20:10 - 00:30:24:13
you know, to be an optimist and to be a no no, to promise

00:30:25:13 - 00:30:27:25
to make a beautiful promise.

00:30:27:25 - 00:30:29:13
But people are not stupid.

00:30:29:13 - 00:30:31:28
So and I always thought that people who work for me

00:30:31:28 - 00:30:34:29
and we spend a lot of time finding the best, actually smart.

00:30:34:29 - 00:30:36:07
They're really smart.

00:30:36:07 - 00:30:40:22
So we need to bring them inside and help be part of the solution

00:30:40:22 - 00:30:43:20
and not telling them everything is beautiful and don't worry.

00:30:44:04 - 00:30:47:17
And so when we had these issues where we were not on Facebook

00:30:47:17 - 00:30:49:25
and people were also getting offers from other companies,

00:30:50:03 - 00:30:51:27
I always said, look, I had a beautiful picture.

00:30:51:27 - 00:30:55:06
I did a presentation once where where the character called Madelon,

00:30:56:07 - 00:31:00:27
and you see this character on the beach, and then you had an umbrella

00:31:00:27 - 00:31:04:11
and sipping a cocktail on the beach under the sun.

00:31:04:20 - 00:31:06:11
But then if you zoomed out, you would see that

00:31:06:11 - 00:31:09:00
the beach was actually an hourglass and the sand was flowing down.

00:31:09:09 - 00:31:11:14
And so I said, Look, this is where we are now.

00:31:11:14 - 00:31:13:20
We're still profitable and we have a loyal customer base.

00:31:14:14 - 00:31:18:03
But if we do not solve, if we do not manage to get to Facebook,

00:31:18:09 - 00:31:20:23
it's only a matter of time that we would be gone.

00:31:20:23 - 00:31:23:06
And so this is basically very early on. This was the image.

00:31:23:15 - 00:31:25:26
And from there we said, okay, how are we going to do that?

00:31:25:26 - 00:31:28:08
We're thinking right now we are dividing the company in two parts.

00:31:28:08 - 00:31:29:17
I'm sorry for the 50%.

00:31:29:17 - 00:31:32:15
Thank you so much for helping us to continue the business

00:31:32:21 - 00:31:34:05
and staying profitable

00:31:34:05 - 00:31:37:14
that you are allowing us to take the experiment in these other five areas.

00:31:37:28 - 00:31:41:10
And, you know, it's less it was less fun to continue working in the

00:31:41:10 - 00:31:42:02
existing business.

00:31:42:02 - 00:31:45:22
But the reason why they were continuing instead of working on the more fancy

00:31:45:22 - 00:31:49:15
projects on Facebook was because they were helping the rest of the company

00:31:49:22 - 00:31:52:15
and the rest of the company was taking these different bets.

00:31:53:13 - 00:31:56:24
And and so I think transparency is very, very important.

00:31:56:24 - 00:31:59:29
And also, you know, treating people as adults,

00:32:00:24 - 00:32:04:02
that's the second greatest and second part of your answer to your question.

00:32:04:18 - 00:32:08:19
And the third party is, you know, sometimes you can't hold people.

00:32:08:19 - 00:32:10:13
You know, sometimes they people coming to me.

00:32:10:13 - 00:32:14:03
And, you know, I was going into a meeting knowing that he had resigned.

00:32:14:06 - 00:32:15:24
He or she had resigned.

00:32:15:24 - 00:32:17:29
And my task was to keep the person.

00:32:17:29 - 00:32:20:28
And when I went in the meeting, I said, okay, you know, what are you doing?

00:32:20:28 - 00:32:21:25
What? You know, what?

00:32:21:25 - 00:32:23:29
Where are you going or what kind of things are like?

00:32:24:08 - 00:32:27:28
And he called me, for example, I want to start my own company is a great

00:32:28:27 - 00:32:29:13
goal.

00:32:29:16 - 00:32:30:11
Just do it.

00:32:30:11 - 00:32:33:01
So I always try, first of all, to put on the head

00:32:33:18 - 00:32:37:17
of of of the person who works for me and try to understand

00:32:37:17 - 00:32:39:26
what makes sense for them

00:32:39:26 - 00:32:41:13
rather than what makes sense for the company,

00:32:41:13 - 00:32:43:27
rather than trying to convince the person to stay in the company.

00:32:43:27 - 00:32:46:13
If it didn't make sense, I would tell them, Look, I think it's a great offer.

00:32:46:13 - 00:32:49:07
You know, go have fun and I hope that they stay in touch.

00:32:49:19 - 00:32:52:00
And many times people,

00:32:52:00 - 00:32:54:13
you know, some things went well, some others went away when they went well.

00:32:54:13 - 00:32:55:20
I'm super happy for them.

00:32:55:20 - 00:32:57:21
When it goes less well, then you know the door.

00:32:57:21 - 00:32:59:10
So where always we come back?

00:32:59:10 - 00:33:03:24
Yeah, the door was always open. Then

00:33:05:09 - 00:33:07:18
maybe turning briefly,

00:33:08:03 - 00:33:11:03
spending a little bit of time on what you did since you

00:33:11:29 - 00:33:14:27
stepped out of your CEO CEO role at King,

00:33:14:27 - 00:33:20:24
which was mid 2019 and maybe come back an emotional level.

00:33:20:24 - 00:33:24:06
What was it like after, I think almost 17 years

00:33:24:06 - 00:33:29:11
giving up your CEO's seat and what was your baby

00:33:29:11 - 00:33:34:28
and really and what you grew to such amazing scale?

00:33:34:28 - 00:33:37:08
I never look back. I always look forward.

00:33:37:08 - 00:33:41:08
But I think that, you know, I met amazing I worked with amazing people.

00:33:41:08 - 00:33:43:07
It was an it was always a joy.

00:33:43:07 - 00:33:46:09
I never forget the always once a year big event called

00:33:46:09 - 00:33:49:09
Info Market, where 2000 people people come together.

00:33:49:09 - 00:33:51:25
And I, you know, I used to be opening the present, etc.

00:33:51:25 - 00:33:56:07
it's as it's a it's a great feeling when I see so many people and amazing people.

00:33:56:22 - 00:33:59:17
So of course, you know, it's it's a bit sad

00:33:59:19 - 00:34:02:15
to not to be not to do that anymore,

00:34:02:22 - 00:34:06:25
but it has not been a, you know, suddenly I give the kids bye bye.

00:34:07:04 - 00:34:11:11
It's been a process over time where I've been handing over my my

00:34:11:11 - 00:34:15:04
my role and my cost over a period of time, which was a longer period of time.

00:34:15:04 - 00:34:18:27
And so it has never been an abrupt and abrupt

00:34:20:05 - 00:34:22:22
leaving basically.

00:34:22:22 - 00:34:24:20
And, you know, I always look forward.

00:34:24:20 - 00:34:30:07
I am busier than ever, actually, even though in this time we did that with

00:34:30:07 - 00:34:36:02
my co-founder is a a venture a venture venture venture capital company.

00:34:36:02 - 00:34:38:27
It's actually an angel fund, more or less, but it's only our money.

00:34:38:27 - 00:34:41:05
So we didn't raise any money from outside.

00:34:41:05 - 00:34:44:15
And and we, we invest early on in the things

00:34:44:15 - 00:34:47:23
we think we understand, focus on business and consumer mobile,

00:34:48:10 - 00:34:51:03
and that we try to help others basically with what we have learned

00:34:52:14 - 00:34:55:01
and then and that and that's.

00:34:55:01 - 00:34:57:02
Gone three capital which I think

00:34:57:02 - 00:35:01:02
we've got lots of your founders on the call as well.

00:35:01:02 - 00:35:05:19
So we're mixing first minute and sweet capital for down the course so quickly.

00:35:05:19 - 00:35:07:04
Lots of listening. Yes.

00:35:07:04 - 00:35:11:02
I mean, we have people and Christian on the call and Pippa and they're amazing.

00:35:11:02 - 00:35:14:08
I've got one more question then.

00:35:14:08 - 00:35:17:18
I've got a super short quickfire round and then I'd love to

00:35:18:23 - 00:35:21:28
sort of live a little bit of time for Q&A where

00:35:21:28 - 00:35:27:08
people can simply message their questions and we'll unmute them and we'll finish.

00:35:27:27 - 00:35:31:22
I think I tend to tend to six, if that's okay with you.

00:35:32:28 - 00:35:36:11
And one thing I did before the interview was basically go and talk

00:35:36:11 - 00:35:39:26
to some people who have either worked with you as an advisor,

00:35:40:20 - 00:35:42:09
you've been a mentor to them.

00:35:42:09 - 00:35:44:17
I went to speak to one of your co-founders

00:35:45:10 - 00:35:49:19
and just to hear what they say about you and going to read it out.

00:35:50:10 - 00:35:54:23
One of them said, energetic, inspiring, insightful,

00:35:55:01 - 00:35:59:25
and someone else said energetic as well, actually generous, positive.

00:35:59:25 - 00:36:02:16
And someone said he's a timeless Italian gentleman,

00:36:02:27 - 00:36:05:24
born with unshakable resilience and integrity.

00:36:06:04 - 00:36:09:13
And as a mentor, he's supported beyond limits.

00:36:09:13 - 00:36:13:24
As a friend, he's the most fun and energetic, especially on the dance floor.

00:36:14:01 - 00:36:16:07
And as a human being, he's very generous.

00:36:16:28 - 00:36:20:20
So here's my question How are you so likable?

00:36:21:18 - 00:36:25:21
And what's the secret sauce in just getting everyone to like you?

00:36:25:21 - 00:36:27:09
Because I don't think I'm a single person.

00:36:27:09 - 00:36:29:15
You had the bad word to say about you.

00:36:29:15 - 00:36:34:14
You must have interviewed my friends.

00:36:34:14 - 00:36:37:10
It's just. I was just curious, like, do you ever get stressed?

00:36:37:10 - 00:36:39:09
Do you ever get angry?

00:36:39:09 - 00:36:41:18
Or is this just your composure that

00:36:42:15 - 00:36:47:10
that's always positive?

00:36:47:10 - 00:36:48:19
I think that, you know, either you

00:36:48:19 - 00:36:51:16
they say that if you get angry, you do two to efforts.

00:36:51:16 - 00:36:54:10
One is to get angry. The second is to be is to distress.

00:36:54:10 - 00:36:55:05
After you go to angry.

00:36:55:05 - 00:36:57:12
So I don't think there is a point in getting angry.

00:36:58:08 - 00:37:00:21
There are very it takes a lot before I get angry.

00:37:01:00 - 00:37:05:11
I get angry only if I see that people do not put the effort.

00:37:05:11 - 00:37:08:15
And they also they don't they don't think they don't think it through.

00:37:08:28 - 00:37:11:20
So I really want I spectrum from people

00:37:11:20 - 00:37:14:01
really to people my work at least or

00:37:14:20 - 00:37:17:04
to actually to think things through but

00:37:17:04 - 00:37:19:21
also more importantly to make an effort really to put their best.

00:37:20:15 - 00:37:23:29
And if I think if I see people actually they don't care, then then that's where

00:37:24:22 - 00:37:25:18
I usually get angry.

00:37:25:18 - 00:37:27:19
But I it takes a long time. I don't get angry.

00:37:28:09 - 00:37:35:26
I think there is a point.

00:37:35:26 - 00:37:41:15
And now the time for Q&A.

00:37:41:15 - 00:37:43:20
We're going to open the floor to questions.

00:37:43:25 - 00:37:47:23
I have one from actually one of our founders, Jill,

00:37:48:10 - 00:37:50:11
founder of, Robin Games in L.A.

00:37:50:21 - 00:37:54:02
and Robin Games is a mobile gaming studio also for women

00:37:54:17 - 00:37:57:00
same demographic of Candy Crush and

00:37:57:10 - 00:38:01:17
and I think, Jill, you should be unmuted.

00:38:02:23 - 00:38:04:14
Hi. Can you hear me?

00:38:04:14 - 00:38:05:29
Yes, very well.

00:38:05:29 - 00:38:08:09
Perfect. Hi, Ricardo.

00:38:08:09 - 00:38:09:10
I just been great.

00:38:09:10 - 00:38:14:16
My question is, the US landscape is crowded

00:38:14:17 - 00:38:17:23
in mobile games, especially in casual today.

00:38:17:23 - 00:38:20:18
And what would your advice be for a new studio

00:38:20:26 - 00:38:24:15
releasing their first game?

00:38:26:06 - 00:38:28:18
My advice is to create

00:38:28:18 - 00:38:32:02
something that is better than one is out there

00:38:32:03 - 00:38:35:06
busy, be innovative,

00:38:35:06 - 00:38:39:22
and to really study the mechanics which are proven in games

00:38:39:22 - 00:38:44:13
that are successful and decompose the mechanics that are successful.

00:38:44:26 - 00:38:46:26
So do not innovate everything.

00:38:47:00 - 00:38:49:16
So try to take the bits and pieces that actually do work,

00:38:49:24 - 00:38:53:29
but make the core game the core, the core game, the game mechanics

00:38:53:29 - 00:38:55:14
basically different from what is out there.

00:38:55:14 - 00:38:58:04
Otherwise, it's very difficult to succeed in this market

00:38:58:17 - 00:39:02:18
because if you know, if a product is new and is great, marketing is cheap.

00:39:02:18 - 00:39:06:23
If the product is already non, marketing is very expensive, especially now.

00:39:07:16 - 00:39:10:08
But now there's an opportunity because of COVID, because actually

00:39:10:14 - 00:39:12:21
advertising is cheaper than what it was before.

00:39:13:08 - 00:39:14:21
Next up, we've got.

00:39:16:00 - 00:39:19:01
So do you know Nina well, founder of Parkour.

00:39:19:16 - 00:39:24:16
You've been a super valuable advisor to her and to all of those of you

00:39:24:16 - 00:39:27:19
who don't know, it's an edutainment business

00:39:27:19 - 00:39:29:25
based out of Nairobi in Kenya.

00:39:30:20 - 00:39:32:17
In all fantastically, I think you're incredible.

00:39:32:17 - 00:39:34:16
Incredible music

00:39:34:22 - 00:39:35:26
is amazing.

00:39:36:09 - 00:39:37:14
How, Lulu.

00:39:38:07 - 00:39:39:13
Nice to hear you.

00:39:39:13 - 00:39:41:09
Nice to hear you, too.

00:39:41:09 - 00:39:44:24
You mentioned some of the brilliant way,

00:39:45:11 - 00:39:47:24
innovative in your approach

00:39:47:24 - 00:39:51:21
to making Candy Crush from business model to game design.

00:39:51:21 - 00:39:55:26
I was wondering what were some innovative things you tried in marketing?

00:39:56:09 - 00:39:57:24
In in marketing?

00:39:57:24 - 00:39:58:16
Well,

00:40:00:06 - 00:40:02:13
okay, I think

00:40:02:13 - 00:40:05:15
basically how we started was pure digital marketing.

00:40:06:27 - 00:40:08:27
First on on Facebook

00:40:08:27 - 00:40:11:29
where we could segment extremely well the user groups.

00:40:12:10 - 00:40:16:01
And then at some point we said, I think that, you know, because the cost

00:40:16:04 - 00:40:20:19
of marketing on Facebook was going up and then we experimented with TV

00:40:21:03 - 00:40:25:00
and we did TV in in specific locations where we had never done

00:40:25:07 - 00:40:28:15
advertising before, you know, just to isolate those metrics.

00:40:28:26 - 00:40:32:10
And then we saw that actually, especially when you couple TV

00:40:32:10 - 00:40:35:10
with with digital can perform really, really well.

00:40:35:10 - 00:40:37:09
And when digital digital became very expensive,

00:40:37:09 - 00:40:41:07
it was actually cheaper to buy TV than than buying digital.

00:40:41:07 - 00:40:42:25
So we couple then TV and digital.

00:40:42:25 - 00:40:46:14
So whatever we did actually we every we everything we did, we did it in a way that

00:40:46:14 - 00:40:47:04
we could measure it.

00:40:48:20 - 00:40:49:18
I think I did.

00:40:49:18 - 00:40:52:08
But if I if I may give you an advice, I think there's is a message

00:40:52:08 - 00:40:54:07
which is not just your games.

00:40:54:07 - 00:40:56:29
I think the reason why we could scale Candy Crush so fast

00:40:57:02 - 00:41:01:04
spending so much money is because we know exactly how much we could spend.

00:41:01:15 - 00:41:05:19
And so we said that first understanding, analyzing what is the value of a customer

00:41:05:29 - 00:41:10:13
over one week, over one month, over two months, the customer lifetime value

00:41:10:22 - 00:41:13:19
not only of the single customer and also of how many customers

00:41:13:19 - 00:41:16:02
this customer would actually provide us virally.

00:41:16:11 - 00:41:19:29
So we knew that every user at the time was providing either three other to users

00:41:21:23 - 00:41:26:05
and then knowing exactly when we when we buy what kind of customer

00:41:26:08 - 00:41:30:02
we buy, the quality of that customer versus another platform and

00:41:30:03 - 00:41:31:16
and how much does it cost us.

00:41:31:16 - 00:41:34:17
So we know that, for example, if you buy a user

00:41:34:17 - 00:41:37:28
with segmentation on Facebook is going to be worth more,

00:41:37:28 - 00:41:42:01
but it's also going to cost us more than a user who we, we buy and or,

00:41:42:08 - 00:41:46:08
you know, in in a different we are different type of advertising.

00:41:46:20 - 00:41:49:17
So it's difficult to give you a price there is no one price.

00:41:49:17 - 00:41:52:12
There are millions or hundreds of thousands of prices depending on

00:41:52:12 - 00:41:57:01
the country you buy on the platform, you buy on the time of the year, etc., etc..

00:41:58:03 - 00:41:59:09
And so when you optimize

00:41:59:09 - 00:42:04:22
all of these, then you can do marketing very profitable.

00:42:04:22 - 00:42:08:23
So get good people on the on the marketing side to understand the numbers behind

00:42:08:24 - 00:42:10:22
and get a lot of experimentation.

00:42:10:22 - 00:42:14:29
But the last one we've got from Vineet Katori,

00:42:15:06 - 00:42:20:15
who is the founder of capital in New York, which is a tech focused hedge fund.

00:42:20:24 - 00:42:25:03
I would love to know if there are fears in the gaming industry.

00:42:25:15 - 00:42:30:15
These are individuals or companies that you get really impressed by

00:42:30:19 - 00:42:34:08
and impressed by terms of product innovation

00:42:34:20 - 00:42:37:09
strategy around the world.

00:42:37:22 - 00:42:40:00
And if so, what is it about what they're doing,

00:42:40:00 - 00:42:43:23
that kind?

00:42:43:23 - 00:42:48:11
So I think maybe just to repeat the question, it was a little bit

00:42:48:27 - 00:42:50:28
of struggle here for me, but I think you said

00:42:51:08 - 00:42:54:23
what are the peers in the gaming world that you've been impressed by,

00:42:54:27 - 00:42:57:26
either from a product perspective or how they've executed?

00:42:58:17 - 00:42:59:12
Is that right beneath

00:43:02:25 - 00:43:03:01
that?

00:43:03:01 - 00:43:05:16
Well, I mean, you know, I think that

00:43:05:16 - 00:43:09:22
yeah, I think that the the difficult thing is to stay at the top

00:43:10:27 - 00:43:11:29
in my in my eyes.

00:43:11:29 - 00:43:13:29
And I think that if you say a top

00:43:13:29 - 00:43:16:22
is because you're doing many things right, because you take many risks,

00:43:17:18 - 00:43:22:08
because you put a lot of effort in in experimentation,

00:43:22:08 - 00:43:24:18
not only with new games, but also in the existing games.

00:43:24:18 - 00:43:26:12
And there are a few companies we tried to top.

00:43:26:12 - 00:43:27:28
We are the top

00:43:28:07 - 00:43:30:07
Ilkka, you know, from Supercell, they've done

00:43:30:07 - 00:43:33:00
an incredible job that the guys that play risks are doing an incredible job.

00:43:33:08 - 00:43:37:04
So those are a few of the companies that I think have been doing really well.

00:43:37:04 - 00:43:40:26
Then there are startups, but as I said, I think it's now a more difficult

00:43:41:12 - 00:43:45:06
market than what it used to be when even if you want in a few years ago.

00:43:46:24 - 00:43:47:13
But you know,

00:43:47:13 - 00:43:51:29
I learned one thing that it's an era where as any other area where

00:43:52:11 - 00:43:56:03
if you innovate, you can always you can always get through

00:43:56:03 - 00:43:59:04
and and succeed, especially if you have a budget.

00:43:59:04 - 00:44:02:25
But you need to innovate.

00:44:02:25 - 00:44:04:21
Which isn't always easy.

00:44:04:25 - 00:44:07:05
Thank you so, so much, Riccardo.

00:44:07:05 - 00:44:08:29
You've been super generous with your time.

00:44:08:29 - 00:44:12:01
We've run over a little, so apologies for that.

00:44:12:09 - 00:44:15:10
But I think it's been fascinating and really such a privilege

00:44:16:01 - 00:44:19:29
to get to interview you like this.