The Exchanges

Q Can I ask, what do you think is a good value? I know it seems stupid, but I'm just thinking about kind of the, if I were to say values of my companies, I haven't set values, Steph. Maybe I should have done.

A No, no, look, the, the, I mean, values is the behaviors you would expect You know, the, the, the leadership and the, the employees to abide by when they, they are in, in the company environment. And, um, and so what, you know, what we used and actually, uh, uh, what I would be using if I had another company is we, we try to balance them. So for example, one of the values was supportive, but demanding, right? Because, you know, we were a hugely caring company. I mean, we, and, and so the, the, the founding team was fantastic and they, we had these shared values, uh, And, and, uh, you know, and all of us were really, you know, deeply caring about, uh, people and about the employees, and so we were very supportive, but also, um, you know, we, we wanted people to, to stay focused and, and, and, and to deliver, and, you know, we were basically running, you know, the, the biggest game in the world, and we, we, and, and we had the biggest network of players, and we had a responsibility towards these players, And so we were gonna be demanding with ourselves and with our employees to keep delivering, you know, outstanding entertainment to, to our player base.

AI assessment note: “for example, one of the values was supportive, but demanding, right?”

Q What did you, what did you tell yourself in that time?

A You know, I had confidence in my abilities. I think I had, you know, performed quite strongly. Uh, earlier, you know, I, I had done two companies before, and, and, and actually, you know, both of these companies went on to become unicorns, even if that internet bank was only a unicorn for a few months before the completion. You know, I couldn't find an opportunity, uh, and, uh, and so it was, uh, quite a challenging and stressful time. Um, and then when another opportunity presented itself, um, well, first I tried to, to, I was a founder, so I founded a payment company, which Didn't take off, so I pulled the plug after a year. That was hard too. And then, um, I joined an enterprise software company which, you know, got, uh, crushed by the great financial crisis in 2008. So, you know, I, I worked from oh five to oh nine, um, in, you know, for, for very little. And then, you know, basically we had to, to restructure and sell that company for, for quite little.

AI assessment note: “I had confidence in my abilities. I think I had, you know, performed quite strongly.”

Q What are the biggest ways that communication breaks down? What are the most striking?

A It's when trust breaks down. Because, you know, horizontal communication is also very important. So when you, you, you get your stuff together, It, it, it's all about sharing information or sharing challenges and also, you know, getting feedback from the rest of the team in, in, that might help you in, in solving your challenges. And you can only do that in a trusted environment. And so when, you know, at some point, um, as you scale, you know, politics, uh, starts to enter the organization where, you know, you might have leaders who do not have the right fit or who might have been imposed or, Whatever, suddenly you lose the congenial nature of the meeting and the discussion around the table, and you have a communication breakdown.

AI assessment note: “It's when trust breaks down.”

Q Can I ask, from a communications standpoint, when you reflect on your own, what are the biggest communication mistakes that you've made?

A They typically would be, uh, um, decisions made too fast and communicated too fast. Um, you know, I think, uh, communication takes work, um, and, uh, you need, you know, it takes structure. Communication is about telling a story, and telling a story, it, it takes time to, to build, you know, the right narrative and the right structure and find the right words. In my experience, you know, I, I made communication mistakes when I, When I, I communicated before I was ready. Uh, and they, and typically they would be, um, you know, saying something in front of somebody which, which was not the right thing to say. And, and then, you know, I have no problem to go and apologize. I mean, I'm, I'm, uh, I, I, I can say sorry.

AI assessment note: “decisions made too fast and communicated too fast”

Q What did you, what did you tell yourself in that time?

A You know, I had confidence in my abilities. I think I had, you know, performed quite strongly. Uh, earlier, you know, I, I had done two companies before, and, and, and actually, you know, both of these companies went on to become unicorns, even if that internet bank was only a unicorn for a few months before the completion. You know, I couldn't find an opportunity, uh, and, uh, and so it was, uh, quite a challenging and stressful time. Um, and then when another opportunity presented itself, um, well, first I tried to, to, I was a founder, so I founded a payment company, which Didn't take off, so I pulled the plug after a year. That was hard too. And then, um, I joined an enterprise software company which, you know, got, uh, crushed by the great financial crisis in 2008. So, you know, I, I worked from oh five to oh nine, um, in, you know, for, for very little. And then, you know, basically we had to, to restructure and sell that company for, for quite little.

AI assessment note: “I had confidence in my abilities. I think I had, you know, performed quite strongly.”

Q Can I ask, where do you find most people fall down? Why do most people struggle when you work with founding teams today? Among those four, where is the most common failure point?

A With founders in the early days, it's, I don't think that that grid would be applicable because there's so much uncertainty, and so, you know, you can, I mean, it's important to set targets early, but you need to navigate much more tactically. Uh, in, in the early days and the early, the early years of building a company. I think the, the framework applies better to professional executives and managers than to founders. You know, we, you will find the founders spiking exceptionally on some of these and maybe less on, on some others. Uh, and that's probably okay. And they should hire a great team, you know, next to them to, to do the rest. I think for them it's, you know, a lot of it is going to be about The ability to put a fantastic team together and then show them the way. Uh, as opposed to, uh, getting high marks on, on all of these dimensions.

AI assessment note: “I don't think that that grid would be applicable because there's so much uncertainty”

Q have hundreds of thousands of founders that listen, and I think they struggle with this a lot, which is like, how much information do I share with my wider investor base? Obviously, boards you have to share, you know, board materials and board packs, and a lot involved with that. But for investor updates, how do you advise founders on how much to share in terms of information and data?

A Again, I'm not sure there is, there is an, an absolute rule. You shouldn't share, obviously, anything that, that could competitively expose you. I think we are, we're living through very different times today where, uh, it's obviously much more, much more challenging. You know, there are some very strong headwinds. I think the information you wanna, you wanna share with your investors, you have to be truthful in terms of, you know, how the, the, the company and the team is performing. Uh, but you also, you know, don't want to leak into the market information that could be detrimental to your ability to fundraise, or to do a transaction, or, or, or to secure, you know, um, new clients, because some clients might ask about the potential longevity of the company, of your company, if, if you are challenged from, from a financial standpoint.

AI assessment note: “You shouldn't share, obviously, anything that, that could competitively expose you.”

Q Can you help me with that? Cause I always think when someone does something and you're providing feedback and communicating that to them, it's Best done in real time. You know, Steph just did this. Let's discuss it now. And as he said, sometimes things need a little bit more thought.

A You can be very spontaneous with praise. Uh, you, you want to be, you know, very systematic with it. When you see something that's great, you absolutely have to call it. But at the same time, you want to be sparse because otherwise it loses quite a bit of its value. Uh, and, and employees will, you know, everybody will know that if you are sparse with your praise, When you get it, they will value it immensely. I think for, you know, more challenging feedback, you need to pick your time and, and you need, but, you know, it's also highly valued. If you have the right team members, you just need to, um, box it in a way where you say, hey, by the way, you know, maybe you could have done this differently. You could have, and, and give an example and say, but, you know, no problem and move on. And, you know, you'll, you will deliver that within, you know, two minutes or three minutes, not make a beef out of it, move on. And, and it's, Highly valued by, by the team.

AI assessment note: “for more challenging feedback, you need to pick your time”

Q How do you know when to pay up for a candidate versus not pay up for a candidate? I'm always hiring both investment team, media company-wise. People want a lot of money. Um, how do you determine whether to pay up or not pay up? And what would you, just your advice to me beyond that one?

A As you scale, at some point you have compensation frameworks, and it becomes very difficult actually to go outside these frameworks for a bunch of reasons. If it's for an individual contributor, that's easier. If it's You know, for, you know, managers or leaders who will fit within the existing organization structure, Um, you know, there are ways you can, you can structure things by, you know, buying out maybe some of the existing equity or, or having, you know, one-off, uh, you know, sign-off bonuses or special retention bonuses, but the reality is that you're gonna need to have some consistency, um, and especially once you're public. Basically, you know, a lot of that data is, is gonna be shared with your institutional investors, and, and they will actually pay attention. That's one of the things where you have to do a lot of work actually being, before going public. Is your, your compensation, uh, uh, policies. Hopefully, you know, the market is clearing a bit and we're going to a place where, uh, you know, the, the balance between talent and organizations, uh, you know, goes back to something which is closer to the middle as opposed to, uh, being very much, uh, you know, uh, uh, a seller market to the advantage of the individual, which has been the case for, for the last few years.

AI assessment note: “at some point you have compensation frameworks, and it becomes very difficult actually to go outside”

Q You know, a lesson that I have on management is like, you never stop worrying, and the reason I say that is because the best people you worry will leave, the worst people you worry you should fire today, and the middle people you worry are actually good enough. Would you agree with that?

A In what we do in, you know, early stage and, and growth, for most people, there is a, there's a, a, a cycle, uh, in the scaling, and so there will be, there will be a, a good fit between their skill set and the company for a while, and, you know, it might be a few years, two, three, four years, because, you know, they, they have A certain level of risk appetite, and because, you know, they like a less structured organization, or more structured, less process, more process, and then at some point, it's not the right organization for them anymore, and, uh, you know, you, you need to have grown-up conversations, and, and they need to find something where, where they can be very successful, and where there's a better fit without, you know, that it's not, you know, there's no, nobody has failed. It's just, you know, the way Things are, and, and I think organizations and people should be honest about it. When you scale very fast, it, the, uh, it's very hard, it can be very hard, because the, you know, if you think about our company, we went from, you know, 100 employees to 2400 employees in three years, and so you have these cohorts. So at the peak, we were hiring 100 employees a month, and so the people who joined, obviously, at the start of the journey, were They had a very high risk appetite. They, they had, you know, very horizontal skills. You know, they could do many, many diff…

AI assessment note: “there's a cycle in the scaling, and so there will be a good fit”

Q Can I ask, where do you find most people fall down? Why do most people struggle when you work with founding teams today? Among those four, where is the most common failure point?

A With founders in the early days, it's, I don't think that that grid would be applicable because there's so much uncertainty, and so, you know, you can, I mean, it's important to set targets early, but you need to navigate much more tactically. Uh, in, in the early days and the early, the early years of building a company. I think the, the framework applies better to professional executives and managers than to founders. You know, we, you will find the founders spiking exceptionally on some of these and maybe less on, on some others. Uh, and that's probably okay. And they should hire a great team, you know, next to them to, to do the rest. I think for them it's, you know, a lot of it is going to be about The ability to put a fantastic team together and then show them the way. Uh, as opposed to, uh, getting high marks on, on all of these dimensions.

AI assessment note: “I don't think that that grid would be applicable because there's so much uncertainty”

Q I have to ask some follow-ups there. When you say about, kind of, data over intuition, can you take me to, like, the biggest example for you where data proved something that intuition didn't suggest?

A I mean, let me give you an example. The, you know, we came up with a, a feature, um, in Candy Crush, which was, um, you know, incredibly good at monetization. To the point where it made us uncomfortable. And so what we did was we essentially kept the feature. You know, it was, I mean, at King we had a number of rules. We had, we were very privileged in the sense that we had A huge number of players. So at the peak we had five hundred and forty million players, and we had a huge number of spenders. We had seven or eight million spenders. And so we could afford to have, uh, players who would spend a very low amount of money in the game and still create a huge business. So we were not reliant on very high spenders. And so I think we were very careful, um, to, to, to make sure that, you know, we, we would not You know, essentially vulnerable people spending too much money on the title and putting themselves in challenging situations, and one way of doing that was to cap the amount of money that you can spend in the title, and when would, would, when we would see high spending, we actually would reach out to the players, and we would ask them if they were aware of what they were doing, and to make sure it was not one of the kids who was using some, you know, one of the parents' credit card, or, and, and, um.

AI assessment note: “we came up with a, a feature... which was... incredibly good at monetization.”

Q founders, and what matters is not where they are, but their rate of development, how fast they're learning, how fast they're growing. It's hard because you automatically compare the greats that you work with, your owners at Dream Games, to Everyone else you're meeting, and naturally there is a progression pathway to that. Sona five years ago was probably different. How do you think about analyzing rate of development founders?

A Yeah, well, first, many of them are, are not young in the young sense, right? If you look at the, uh, the average age of company founders, and I think we, there was a stat in the US that, you know, successful, you know, founders of, uh, founders of successful software companies in the US are in the early forties. And so, you know, very often we work with, with founding teams who are, you know, from late twenties and thirties, sometimes to the early forties. So the, the, the, and so, um, Obviously you, you apply a slightly different, uh, evaluation grid at, at, at that stage, but it's really what drives them. You know, what is really their, you know, their, their objective? What are, do they want to build something that's going to change the world? Are they self-aware? Do they have some, are they vulnerable? I mean, great leadership, you know, it's self-awareness and vulnerability as well. And, and those are qualities you, you don't need to be older to have these qualities, right? They are, they are on shore early. And, you know, do we feel they, they, they will be able to, to build a great team? You know, are they gonna be, and you, that, that's something you can see reasonably quickly. Actually, you just look around them, you know, if, if they, if they already brought a couple of people with them, and you get a sense for, okay, you know, do we believe that, you know, some, som…

AI assessment note: “Obviously you, you apply a slightly different, uh, evaluation grid at, at, at that stage”

Q Do you teach them how to communicate? Because it's not always obvious for people.

A Well, you role model it in, in the sense that, you know, if you have your, your staff meeting, you know, at some point it's your turn and, you know, also you should only communicate what's not being, what cannot be communicated, uh, communicated in, in, in writing or through reporting earlier. You know, when you run a digital organization, it, typically they're very data rich, and so we, we, we were, you know, designing and, and, uh, and distributing these very detailed, uh, reports with, you know, which, which would go pretty much everywhere, and you know, at King, everybody could access the data warehouse, and that was a deliberate choice, because that's driving engagement. That means I trust every employee to be responsible with the data, It's a very big decision to take when you decide to go public, because if you do that, that means the whole company will be inside us, and they can only trade within trading windows, and so you, you have to make that decision on whether you want to treat your employees as adults, and that will, they will be responsible with essentially the data and the power you share with them, or whether, you know, you want to allow them to trade any day of the week. You know, we had that discussion, I think, actually with, um, With Meta. I mean, we were very lucky. We spent time with, uh, Mark Zuckerberg before we went public. It was like a year after hi…

AI assessment note: “Well, you role model it in, in the sense that”