We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
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Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#2Very interesting. Your byline on Medium says "I have a games site called Kongregate". Are you still involved with the company? Is Emily still involved? If so what led you leave and her to stay? What got you to leave EA to start Kongregate?
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#3Very interesting. Your byline on Medium says "I have a games site called Kongregate". Are you still involved with the company? Is Emily still involved? If so what led you leave and her to stay? What got you to leave EA to start Kongregate?
Whoops, I'm not there anymore. Emily is still CEO. The focus has shifted from being a web games platform to a mobile games publisher. I'm much more of a platform person so it made sense to transition it. She's doing a great job - they've published a lot of great games and are helping indies succeed in the age of of "games as a service."
Before I was at EA, I started a game studio in the CD-ROM era. We published an RTS-puzzle hybrid game through Activision, which was a critical success but a commercial failure. Because of the distribution and funding model then, Activision owned the copyright. That meant that we couldn't make a sequel to correct the things we'd screwed up the first time around.
When we started Kongregate in 2006, internet distribution was there, but it was very hard to make money. There were no smartphones and Steam only distributed Valve games.
The goal of Kongregate was to fix that. We contributed to the change, though smartphones, Steam, and digital distribution on consoles were the big drivers of course.
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#4Very interesting. Your byline on Medium says "I have a games site called Kongregate". Are you still involved with the company? Is Emily still involved? If so what led you leave and her to stay? What got you to leave EA to start Kongregate?
Whoops, I'm not there anymore. Emily is still CEO. The focus has shifted from being a web games platform to a mobile games publisher. I'm much more of a platform person so it made sense to transition it. She's doing a great job - they've published a lot of great games and are helping indies succeed in the age of of "games as a service." Before I was at EA, I started a game studio in the CD-ROM era. We published an RT…
Is there a blog post on Kongregate's founding? Kongregate was my childhood and I've often wondered about the history. Much thanks for this post too.
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoops, I'm not there anymore. Emily is still CEO. The focus has shifted from being a web games platform to a mobile games publisher. I'm much more of a platform person so it made sense to transition it. She's doing a great job - they've published a lot of great games and are helping indies succeed in the age of of "games as a service." Before I was at EA, I started a game studio in the CD-ROM era. We published an RT…
Is there a blog post on Kongregate's founding? Kongregate was my childhood and I've often wondered about the history. Much thanks for this post too.
Unfortunately no.
Edit: Emily gave a talk on it at the IGDA Summit, but unfortunately it's only available to members.
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#6These titles are interesting.
I have, myself, like pretty much everyone on this planet, never built a billion dollar company.
As much fun as it might be to be that rich, it's never seemed to be more realistic to think that than to think about being an astronaut. So the interest to me is the metanarrative that's formed that says, yes, this is something achievable.
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#7These titles are interesting. I have, myself, like pretty much everyone on this planet, never built a billion dollar company. As much fun as it might be to be that rich, it's never seemed to be more realistic to think that than to think about being an astronaut. So the interest to me is the metanarrative that's formed that says, yes, this is something achievable .
I came here also hating the article title and thinking "most people or small businesses don't build a billion dollar company FWIW" but it's well written and worth a read.
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#8I believe the solution is to be informed.
Most of the problems I read about here in HN from founders come from information asymmetry: VCs have much more experience in negotiating. Still, I can't pity the founders, as it's always the employees in startups that get the worst deal. I was working only 1 year at a startup in my life as an employee, and I got burned out after 1 year. Working at a big company is so much easier, as it has the network effect already.
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#9These titles are interesting. I have, myself, like pretty much everyone on this planet, never built a billion dollar company. As much fun as it might be to be that rich, it's never seemed to be more realistic to think that than to think about being an astronaut. So the interest to me is the metanarrative that's formed that says, yes, this is something achievable .
It’s more realistic than becoming an astronaut, but not by much.
TechCrunch says there were 23 billion dollar exits in the first eight months of 2018. Call it 35 per year.
That’s about as likely as being on a Superbowl-winning football team.
Young people often neglect realistic opportunities for success to chase unrealistic dreams. As do entrepreneurs.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/18/global-unicorn-exits-hit-m...
Re: We Also Failed to Build a Billion Dollar Company
#10Fondly remembering the time “wasted” on Kongregate.....