We just launched our social casino game, Hit It Rich, on Facebook. Please take a look and let me know what you think.
Author: Lloyd Melnick
I am GM of Chumba at VGW, where I lead the Chumba Casino team. Previously, I was Director of StarsPlay, the social gaming vertical for the Stars Group. I was also Sr Dir at Zynga's social casino (including Hit It Rich! slots, Zynga Poker and our mobile games), where I led VIP CRM efforts and arranged licensing deals. I have been a central part of the senior management team (CCO, GM and CGO) at three exits (Merscom/Playdom, Playdom/Disney and Spooky Cool/Zynga) worth over $700 million.
Do not forget the role of luck in your success
Earlier this week, I wrote about the wonderful feeling that comes from achieving an exit (e.g., a sale, IPO) for your company. The thing that you should keep in mind, whether you are a serial entrepreneur or a Super Bowl-winning quarterback, is the role of luck. I recently came across Michael Lewis’s commencement address at Princeton in 2012 about the role of luck in his success (Lewis, whose books include Moneyball and The Big Short, is one of my favorite authors).
Lewis recounted the story of how he wrote his first book. As an unemployed liberal arts grad student, he went to a dinner and sat next to the wife of an executive at Salomon Brothers (a major investment bank at the time), who ended up convincing her husband to hire Lewis. He was given a job at Salomon that he was not at all trained for and it showed him how dysfunctional the financial sector was. He took this information and quit his job and wrote his first book, Liar’s Poker. It sold a million copies.
Lewis admits that this success was not because he was a born writer; he calls that idea “absurd.” He then goes out to point out the luck that led to his success:
Even I could see there was another, truer narrative, with luck as its theme. What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to that Salomon Brothers lady? Of landing inside the best Wall Street firm from which to write the story of an age? Of landing in the seat with the best view of the business? Of having parents who didn’t disinherit me but instead sighed and said “do it if you must?” Of having had that sense of must kindled inside me by a professor of art history at Princeton? Of having been let into Princeton in the first place?”
Continue reading “Do not forget the role of luck in your success”
The thrill of the deal
A few weeks ago I gave some suggestions on how to build a company for exit, but today I wanted to write a more personal entry about the emotions tied to being part of an exit. My post today is not meant to apply to everyone; as I wrote previously some will find creating a long-term profitable business very satisfying. But for me—and many of you that I know—there is no better feeling in business than the day you are part of big M&A transaction.
It is like winning the World Cup or Super Bowl or NCAA Championship (though obviously I have never been part of any of these): A combination of pure joy, relief, camaraderie and satisfaction. Continue reading “The thrill of the deal”
How to use your expertise to gain influence
One of the most frustrating issues I have seen in larger game companies, and larger companies, overall is that some people with great expertise are limited to influencing only a small part of the company even though then can be much more valuable. An article in the Harvard Business Review, How Experts Gain Influence, does a great job of showing competencies functional leaders can develop to have greater impact throughout your game company. Examples of functional specialists can be everything from the head of the analytics or user acquisition team to the lead designer. Often, their expertise is only consulted narrowly on issues directly tied to their department. Even if your company does not yet understand the complete value you bring, there are techniques to help you help them.
Four competencies to increase your impact
Continue reading “How to use your expertise to gain influence”
The secret of creating a hit game
It all comes down to one word: simplicity. This sounds very easy but creating a simple game experience is one of the most difficult elements of game design. In the social and mobile space, the games that are most appealing to the mass market are those that are very straightforward, simple experience. You can understand the game and start playing in the time it takes to get a latte at Starbucks (and often for less money). If you think of the games that have defined casual and social gaming, including Bejeweled, Farmville, Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, they are all easy to begin playing and simple to understand. Yet how many thousands of companies have unsuccessfully tried to quickly follow these successes with disappointing results?
Have fun fast
The key factor is that the player should be able to start playing and having fun immediately. They should not have to memorize an intricate system or go through a long tutorial. No long manuals, no Google searches, no emailing friends for instructions should be needed, or even considered, by the player. First, the player needs to be exposed immediately to the core game loop, that is the underlying mechanic the makes the game fun and keeps the player coming back. The quicker the player gets engaged with the core game loop, and not distracted by other features, the better. This engagement is seldom achieved through a tutorial, a convoluted story or mini-games. Design your game so the player can start playing quickly and understand what they are doing and their goals without it being explained to them. Continue reading “The secret of creating a hit game”
Why it is better to be a loved than feared leader
A recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Is it Better to be Loved or Feared, reaffirmed what I consider the best way to lead. The article discusses the age old question, probably first contemplated by Machiavelli: “Are leaders better if they are more ‘lovable’ or ‘fearsome’?” These are generally mutually exclusive approaches to leadership, so trying to be both will be less effective than taking one approach and doing it well. However, the research cited in the article suggests the best way to lead is with warmth and trust.
Why put trust first
Although it is important to demonstrate competence (and be competent), you need to build a foundation of trust so that your team or company not only outwardly does what you say but also actually adopts—in a sincere and lasting way—your values, culture and organizational mission. The article points out that workplaces or teams lacking trust often have a culture of every employee for themselves; where they are more vigilant about protecting their interests than working towards the good of the company.
If warmth and trust are put above fear and proving your own competence, your team is more likely to make a positive judgment towards you and follow your instructions. Behavioral economists have shown that judgments of trustworthiness generally lead to much higher economic gains. Continue reading “Why it is better to be a loved than feared leader”
How to build a company you can sell
After being part of three big exits (total value over $600 million) in three years, I am frequently asked, “What must an entrepreneur do to successfully build and sell a company?” I have one piece of advice I give—not necessarily what you would hear from an uber-VC—that I think is the key to creating and selling a business. It comes down to building a company another company needs.
Think about your customer
Just as it is crucial to understand the consumer need when creating a product, you must also understand why your company would be attractive as an acquisition target. In a competitive marketplace, you need unique selling points to gain market share. As I have previously written, your best chance of success is pursuing a blue ocean strategy; rather than competing with everyone else (in a red ocean) you create a unique offering. In other words, rather than create another hamburger store, sell fast food hot dogs and sausages. The same can be said for building a business that will have an exit. Continue reading “How to build a company you can sell”
The importance of on-boarding
As important it is to recruit the best talent to your company, you also want to leverage that talent by having as strong an on-boarding process as your recruiting process. Last year, I wrote about how central good recruiting is to creating a successful game company. An article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Reinventing Employee Onboarding, provides great advice on how to make your new hires more engaged, more connected with their colleagues and, most importantly, likely to stay.
The weakness of traditional on-boarding
Typically, on-boarding is focused on indoctrinating new employees into the organizational culture. The article explains that HR often believes to build and retain talent it is important to get employees to understand and commit to the companies’ values starting the first day. In their research, the articles authors found several weaknesses in this approach: Continue reading “The importance of on-boarding”
Turning your customers into your venture capital
Raising capital to finance growth for game and tech companies is one of the important responsibilities a leader will havem=, and to do it successfully you must realize it is not just about getting money in the bank. My post last week about Hasbro’s acquisition of Backflip Studios highlighted how smart cash management enabled the Backflip management team to capitalize on the opportunity with Hasbro (and make out quite well for themselves) largely because they did not receive significant investment. Had they taken a large investment at a high valuation, they most likely would not of been able to work with Hasbro. A recent Harvard Business Review article, Use Customer Cash to Finance Your Start-Up by John Mullins highlights the success many tech companies are having building a business through their customers’—not investors’—cash.
The Airbnb story
Airbnb is a great example of a company relying on customer cash to finance growth, allowing it to reach a point at which it was valued at over $1 billion when it did raise venture capital. Continue reading “Turning your customers into your venture capital”
Six lies about entrepreneurs
A recent Forbes article, Six Whopping Lies Told About Entrepreneurs … Sometimes By Entrepreneurs Themselves, created quite a stir online. It listed six myths about entrepreneurs that are worth repeating because these misperceptions dissuade some who from starting businesses and create a false sense of confidence in others.
The six lies
- They are the smartest and most high achieving people in the room. The data shows this is not the case, as most the top achieving entrepreneurs were not considered the smartest growing up (though I am sure their parents thought so). The article quotes one very successful entrepreneur as saying, “If I had a 4.0 at graduation, it stood for the number of parties I went to the night before rather than my GPA.” Entrepreneurs don’t typically try to please other people; rather, they find something that deeply fascinates them and then hyper-focus on that particular opportunity. Hence, the high dropout rates. Just looking back, none of my friends and classmates in high school and college who were considered “smartest” have achieved anything entrepreneurial. Continue reading “Six lies about entrepreneurs”
The Business of Social Games and Casino 