Jun 26, 2023 · 1h 52m · news
Akin Babayigit: How Tripledot Studios Became #1 Fastest-Growing Company in Europe | E1030 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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In this deep-dive interview, Tripledot Studios co-founder Akin Babayigit sits down with host Harry Stebbings to demystify the mobile gaming industry and challenge conventional startup dogmas. Drawing from his journey through Skype, Facebook, and Tripledot, Akin provides highly practical advice on execution, hiring, operational stoicism, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 15.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 3.1 Harry pushing back 3.2
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:40:46 Calling out 'value-add VC' claims
Akin forcefully criticizes venture capital firms claiming to add operational value, stating that exceptional founders giggle at these claims and that helicoptering VCs often destroy value by eating up founder time.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 49:59 Harry pushing back on early PR and brand buildingHarry directly refuses Akin's framing that early-stage startups should ignore PR and brand, arguing forcefully that brand and culture—like hiring diversity—cannot simply be layered on later.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:22:43 Pachinko revenue exceeding Japanese auto industryAkin educates Harry on the massive hidden scale of the gaming market by dropping the statistic that Japanese Pachinko parlors alone generate more annual revenue than the entire Japanese automobile industry.
Harry holds his own ▶ 59:22 Harry challenging candidate quality and generational work ethicHarry draws on his extensive interviewing and operator network to push back on candidate evaluation, passionately arguing that young candidates often lack hunger and work ethic despite top dollar packages.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Immense Scale of Gaming | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Akin opens with immense warmth and praise for Harry, describing their personal friendship and professional investment relationship. Harry keeps the tone conversational, asking for Akin's personal snapshot from Turkey to Wisconsin, Yale, and McKinsey. | |
| Why the McKinsey Way Didn't Fit | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Akin reflects on his distaste for McKinsey's rigid intellectual culture and his subsequent time at Skype. Harry shares his own struggle with coming off too cold when demanding raw metrics, and Akin advises him on how warmth and lack of ego soften directness. | |
| The Psychology of Zynga's Farmville | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Akin describes discovering game design psychology in Farmville and joining Facebook under Julien. Harry contributes context on Facebook's IPO stock drop from $38 to $19 while Akin highlights Zuckerberg's composure during the mobile shift. | |
| Zuckerberg's Calmness During Facebook's Mobile Pivot | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry shares an evolution in his investment thesis regarding young versus mature founders, noting that older founders are far less volatile. Akin agrees and explains the technical breakthrough behind Facebook's mobile app ads. | |
| Why Mature Founders Handle Volatility Better | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Akin explains his transition through King and escaping corporate bureaucracy to co-found Tripledot. He rejects the common startup myth that successful founders must be monsters or assholes, praising his co-founder Lior's integrity. | |
| Partnering with Lior to Escape Bureaucracy | 3 | 6 | 5 | 3 | Harry raises the startup dogma that founders must be passionate about their specific domain. Akin forcefully rejects this as bullshit, arguing that a passion for winning and execution matters far more than domain interest. | |
| Why it is Acceptable to Build for Money | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | Akin defends building a business for financial gain, while Harry candidly shares hitting $1M at age 21 and feeling empty without real relationships. They also challenge the notion that startups must solve a novel world problem. | |
| Slowing Down on Curves: The Playrix Story | 5 | 5 | 4 | 3 | Akin pushes back on reckless speed in startups, using Playrix to illustrate why slowing down on curves is critical. Harry cites Spotify's CPO on how details define the product and probes on evaluating founder quality without long history. | |
| Designing a Healthy Schedule to Avoid Burnout | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | Akin debunks the narrative that building a startup forces your life to suck, contrasting hard meaningful work at Tripledot with underutilized misery at Facebook. He details his strict evening family routine. | |
| Unlocking the Freedom to Say No | 5 | 4 | 2 | 5 | Harry directly challenges the cliche that running a startup never gets easier, noting the tangible comforts of scale. Akin agrees, explaining that financial freedom changes problem nature from high-frequency worries to freedom of choice. | |
| Why Total Focus Can Block Great Pivots | 6 | 5 | 4 | 6 | Akin challenges single-minded focus advice by describing how spinning out Luna Labs created massive value. Harry presses him on whether side projects create fundamental misalignments between founders and original investors. | |
| PR and Brand Distractions vs. Core Product Work | 6 | 4 | 5 | 7 | Akin argues early startups should ignore PR and brand building to focus strictly on product execution. Harry forcefully pushes back, arguing brand and PR—like workplace culture and hiring diversity—must be built intentionally early. | |
| Why Mission and Vision Statements are Usually Bullshit | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | Akin critiques fluffy corporate mission statements, illustrating his point with a story about WeWork's lofty mission announcement occurring right as toilets overflowed. Harry shares 20VC's grounded mission statement in response. | |
| Hiring Insecure Overachievers Who are Hungry to Learn | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 | Akin argues domain expertise is easy to teach compared to innate hunger and insecurity. Harry vents forcefully about the current generation's work ethic and asks how Akin screens for genuine hunger in interviews. | |
| Rigorous Case Studies and the Danger of Pedigree Hires | 6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Akin explains Tripledot's rigorous case study testing to avoid pedigree hires who rely on past company playbooks. Harry points out that prior operating experience decays faster than ever due to AI and remote work dynamics. | |
| Valuations as Dangerous Heuristics Driven by FOMO | 5 | 6 | 5 | 4 | Akin breaks down why startup valuations are dangerous vanity heuristics driven by market FOMO, explaining preference stack traps during market downturns. Harry probes European versus American employee attitudes toward equity versus cash. | |
| Misaligned Incentives and Believing in the Story | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | Harry asks a provocative question on whether Europe is 'a bit fucked' economically and regulatory-wise. Akin defends European quality of life and compares cultural identity dynamics in the US, UK, and continental Europe. | |
| Balancing Lifestyle, Taxes, and Opportunities in Europe vs. US | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry probes whether tax hikes might drive Akin to leave the UK for tax havens like Lisbon or Italy. Akin explains why his family's settled British life and his children's well-being far outweigh tax optimization. | |
| Debunking the 'Hits-Driven' Nature of Gaming and Investment Misses | 5 | 6 | 5 | 4 | Akin rejects the claim that mobile gaming is a random 'hit-driven' business, explaining that it is fundamentally analytical and live-ops-driven. Harry asks if Akin ever fears being an overly knowledgeable 'idiot expert' investor. | |
| Misconceptions of the Gaming Market: Size, Ad-Tech, and Revenue Multiples | 5 | 7 | 4 | 4 | Akin details major market size underestimations in gaming, pointing out Japanese Pachinko revenue alone exceeds the Japanese auto industry. He also critiques low revenue multiples applied to sticky gaming cohorts compared to SaaS. | |
| How AI is Transforming Creation, Operation, and Investing in Gaming | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Akin explains how AI tools at Tripledot compress 3D modeling work from days to minutes. Harry raises the common VC concern regarding AI startups being thin wrappers lacking proprietary data, which Akin refutes. | |
| Quick Fire: Life-Changing Book, Fatherhood, and Personal Fears | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | During quick fire, Akin discusses how Alan Carr's book helped him quit smoking overnight and cured his OCD. He opens up about his fear of failing as a father after being raised by his grandparents following his father's departure. | |
| Quick Fire: Hiring for Hunger, Grit, and Early Entrepreneurial Hustles | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Akin emphasizes hiring people who ask forgiveness rather than permission. Harry and Akin bond over early childhood hustles, with Harry trading Nokia phones on eBay at 11 and Akin selling history homework in Turkey. | |
| Quick Fire: Overcoming Loss, Misconceptions of VC 'Value-Add', and Founder-VC Alignment | 6 | 7 | 7 | 5 | Akin delivers a sharp critique of VC 'value-add' claims, arguing that top founders giggle at these claims and that VCs often destroy value by distracting management. Harry defends his hands-off style and outlines fund-size exit misalignments. |
Statements from this episode (52)
Babayigit: Gaming is larger than the movie and film industries combined
“There's a lot of things you'd listen to around saying, like, gaming is bigger than movies and films combined, right? That's a very real thing.”
Babayigit: Most people who enter management consulting lack career direction
“Just like what most people don't, you know, most people that do consulting don't know what they want to do with their life.”
Babayigit: I absolutely hated my two years working at McKinsey
“Spent two years at McKinsey. I absolutely hated it.”
Babayigit: McKinsey is an intellectually rigid, formulaic environment
“It was a very rigid environment intellectually. There was a way to do things, and if you didn't do things that way, you would fail, right?”
Babayigit: Harvard Business School's value comes from peers, not academics
“HBS is around 900 kids every year, and it was transformative for me, not because of the things I've learned, because I didn't learn much, but I did learn by talking to people what they are, you know, what they do, who they are, what gets them motivated”
Babayigit: Skype Could Have Dominated Far More Than It Did
“And it was dominating the voice over IP market, and it could have dominated so much more.”
Babayigit: Farmville sold more virtual tractors daily than real-world global sales
“I read a statistic somewhere that there was more tractors being sold in a day on Farmville than anywhere else in the world combined.”
Babayigit Turned Down 2010 Zynga Job Offer Over Bad Corporate Culture Reports
“And that element of understanding the psychology behind that actually made me interview at Zynga, and this was in 2000 10, and back then I was told the culture at Zynga was not very good. I had classmates from HBS who were working there, so I ended up not taki…”
Babayigit: Startup situations are never as bad or good as they seem
“And the biggest thing I learned at Facebook actually is things are never as bad as they seem and never as good as they seem.”
Babayigit: Over 90% of Facebook revenue comes from mobile app ads
“And Facebook invented a new type of ad unit called the mobile app, mobile ads at the time, but really it was mobile app ads. And fast forward to this day is 90 plus percent of Facebook's revenue is, is coming from that.”
Stebbings: Younger startup founders are much more volatile than older founders
“With young founders, they're much more volatile to swings, good and bad. And I find actually with respectfully older founders, Akin, that you're just much more tempered.”
Babayigit: 35% of early Facebook mobile revenue came from three Russian developers
“There was a period of time when I think 30 Five percent of Facebook's mobile revenue was coming from like three developers in Russia at the time”
Babayigit: Facebook became overly bureaucratic and designed products by committee
“I left Facebook because I was frustrated how big it was and how bureaucratic everything was Getting, and, you know, there's a saying called, you know, a camel is, is a horse designed by a committee, and Facebook was designing, you know, camels all the time”
Babayigit: Mobile gaming studios can win in evergreen categories like Solitaire
“The thesis was, you know, gaming will always be, I mean, I'm simplifying to make a point, but you know, there will always be a market for solitaire. And I felt that I could, and we could out execute some of the other companies that were making solitaire games.”
Babayigit: The founder of $1.4B gaming company Tripledot is not a gamer
“Triple Dot is a company that's doing quite well. But I'm not a gamer by definition. Now, it depends on what you mean by gamer, but any kind of definition you have. You know, I am not a hardcore gamer.”
Babayigit: Requiring domain passion is a dangerous Western startup myth
“I think it's a very Western centric view of the world To think that you have to be, you know, passionate about the domain that you're in. And I think that ends up actually in quite dangerous territory because a lot of people who are passionate for winning, who…”
Babayigit: Startup Mission Statements Are Mostly Disingenuous
“I mean, money doesn't buy you happiness, but it can eliminate some forms of unhappiness, right? And a lot of people fetishize this kind of, you know, grandiose meanings in life, and, you know, what it means to have a mission statement, and you put it on the wa…”
Stebbings had one million dollars saved by age 21
“I had a million dollars on my balcony. I was like, 21.”
Babayigit: True innovation comes from iteration rather than novel problems
“True innovation happens through iteration, right? You start working on something and you iterate, you do this thing one percent different, this thing one percent different, and then the aggregate impact ends up being something completely innovative.”
Babayigit: Startups must slow down at critical strategic curves
“Speed of execution allows you to do more iterations than others. Right. But there are points that this is a road, and the road has curves, and you know what? When you're approaching those curves, sometimes you have to just slow down and actually think and take…”
Babayigit: What an early-stage startup plans to build will always change
“If you simplify it to its core, what you say you're going to build, Is going to change. I don't care who says what, it will be different.”
Babayigit: Successful founders always respond to messages right away
“The people that have, that will succeed, if you kind of look back, they'll have grit, they'll have perseverance. They're the ones That actually respond to you right away.”
Babayigit worked only two hours a day late in his Facebook career
“When I was working two hours a day towards the tail end of my career at Facebook. By all measures, it was supposed to be super comfortable and, you know, whatever. I was cruising, right? I was Barely doing any work at all.”
Babayigit: True work-life balance means doing work you continuously think about
“Work-life balance is not true in the standard sense of, you know, you work, you finish your home, so you work, you finish your work, you go home, and then you chill. That's not work-life balance, right? If you're, you know, lucky enough to be doing something t…”
Babayigit: Entrepreneurship gets easier over time like raising children
“I think it does get easier, right? Because it's, I think it changed the nature of the problems change. It's like when people ask me about kids, you know, when you have a small kid, you worry about something relatively minuscule every single day, maybe every si…”
Tripledot mirrored its cap table to Luna Labs for existing investors
“So in our case, again, this goes back to, you know, we are always doing the right thing. I always try to do the right thing. What we did was precisely because of that, we said all people who invested in triple dot basically will mirror the cap table to Luna. S…”
Early startups need room to diversify and pivot beyond one product
“So that judgment, it all comes down to basically judgment, right? That judgment of what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on the right thing? Or you need to have some breathing room To allow yourself to pivot. If the thing, you know, you talked about diver…”
Babayigit: Knowing when to pivot vs. persist determines startup success
“There's just no silver bullet about when to know to persist versus when to know when to pivot. That probably is the singular biggest determinant of success is.”
Babayigit: Early-stage startups should ignore PR and brand building
“You have to focus on execution because in the early days, you know, nothing else matters. PR doesn't matter. Brand doesn't matter. You know, It just doesn't matter. You have to be focused on execution.”
Stebbings: Startups must focus on brand, PR, and diversity early on
“I think that PR and brand, often it's a bit like culture, and it's a bit like hiring diversity, which is people go, at a stage of time, I will focus on it. But at that stage of time, you're 50 white dudes in an office, and it's really hard to layer on diverse …”
Babayigit: Technical Skills Can Be Taught in Months, Intrinsic Hunger Cannot
“You can teach marketing to anyone. You can teach pretty much anything you do. Even what we discussed, three, the art, you can teach it to a person. You cannot teach the hunger, and this is very true.”
Stebbings: The younger generation of workers is lazy and expects high compensation
“I think this generation is fucking lazy. They do not work, sorry, I'm on a rant now. They do not want to work hard, they do not want to come into the office, they get paid top dollar, and actually, they want great package, they want all of this, and they don't…”
Babayigit: Hiring senior startup talent based on pedigree often fails
“If I look in the past, it has been those cases where we've hired for etiquette. So you hire someone who's worked at gaming company X and you say, oh, wow, they're, you know, super senior. They've done this. They even, you know, check out in terms when you do d…”
Stebbings: Past operating experience decays faster than ever due to AI
“The rate of decay on operating experience has never been greater because of two things. One is actually, I think, AI fundamentally changes so much about Enterprise stacks. I think you could say the same for cloud actually in on-prem in some enterprise cases. A…”
Babayigit: Startup Valuations Reflect Market FOMO Rather Than Cash Flows
“Valuation to me can only be useful if it's a meaningful heuristic For future potential cash flows, right? But valuations now are a measure of what that markets FOMO is for that business.”
Babayigit: Eastern European Startup Candidates Often Reject Equity for Cash
“What I can tell you that, you know, we have operations in Eastern Europe, and I have had a lot of conversations when, you know, we may want to give someone equity, and they're like, you know, no.”
Babayigit: Startup Employees Will Regret Foregoing Equity for Higher Cash
“If you apply any type of regret minimization, right, to this, I think, you know, you will regret not getting that equity for your sweat, blood, and tears.”
Babayigit: UK and US Candidates Wanting Cash Over Equity Signal Misalignment
“It's a bit cultural dependent because, you know, there are parts of Europe where that's just not a thing. Like people just, people think you're trying to pull a fast one on them. If you say, I'm going to give you equity. And so it is, you know, case by case. B…”
Babayigit: Rishi Sunak has a pro-business, tech-friendly agenda
“The fact that Rishi is, you know, the prime minister out of all the kind of candidates, I actually think he has a pro-business agenda, which I really like, and he has this kind of ability to articulate a vision that is, you know, tech friendly.”
Babayigit: Tripledot lost months of productivity to silly GDPR regulations
“We've lost months of productivity over something silly called GDPR and et cetera, right?”
Babayigit: Lower foreign tax rates will not tempt him to leave the UK
“It's not tempting enough to upset the settled lifestyle that I created for my children, right? My children are very British, which is hilarious thinking about it now, but they are very British, and they have friends here, they have schools here, my wife loves …”
Babayigit: Mobile game success comes from live operations, not creative design
“And if you look at the business as a whole, the success of a mobile game has nothing to do with how you make the game. It's all about how you operate the game. And how you operate the game is not, you know, I think a lot of times people think about gaming and …”
Stebbings passed on Riverside and Descript due to podcasting expert bias
“So I missed Riverside, which is a great, you know, podcasting tool. I missed Descript because I was like, I knew this better than anyone. I've done 3000 shows. Idiot expert.”
Babayigit: Japan's Pachinko industry generates more revenue than the Japanese auto industry
“The average revenue per year From pachinko is larger than the Japanese auto industry, which is several hundred billion dollars a year, right?”
Babayigit: Gaming companies trade at 3-4x revenue versus SaaS at 10-30x
“Gaming companies are valued, you know, three, four times revenues, you know, whatever, future looking, backward looking, however you want to do it, right? Roughly. Whereas Software as a service company can be anywhere between 10, 20, 30.”
Babayigit: Gaming companies are always the first to adopt new tech platforms
“If you look at any platform from Microsoft To Facebook, to mobile platforms, to VR, AR, whatever. Gaming companies are always in the first place to adopt those platforms, right?”
Babayigit: AI reduced Tripledot's 3D character modeling time from days to minutes
“Yes. So we have, we use AI driven tools that You know, enable us to, you know, increase our productivity dramatically. So we use tools that, you know, in the old days, it might have taken us X days to build a three D model of character to be used in a game. An…”
Babayigit: AI startups do not require proprietary data to build valuable businesses
“So you know, but I don't subscribe to a lot of the criticism about the business model because it will change. You know, you don't have to have necessarily proprietary data to create a valuable business. You can offer tools. You can offer services that really c…”
Babayigit: Tripledot hires for bias for action and asking forgiveness over permission
“One of the things that we say is we want to hire people who ask for forgiveness, not permission, and that is something that is probably the single best embodiment of the triple dot recruiting culture is we want people who will do things, who will take initiati…”
Babayigit: VCs cannot add operational value to truly exceptional founders
“Because I don't think a VC can truly add operational value to a truly exceptional founder.”