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David Helgason

Co-founder & Board Member, Unity Technologies · 2 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@davidhelgason ↗transition.vc ↗

David Helgason is a co-founder and board member of Unity Technologies, having served as its CEO until 2014. He is also a partner at Nordic Makers and co-founded Transition, an early-stage climate technology venture firm.

30statements → 8claims → 5claims resolved → 40%fully supported → 3.7/5average certainty → 2.13/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 6said about them ↓

2 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 5 assertions · 2 opinions · 16 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how David argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Helgason: Console gaming is not dying and will remain a healthy market
“No, I mean, like there's sort of, there's been that rumor and expectation, but I mean, the console guys kind of reinvented themselves. They opened their platforms up more. Seems to be no end to that, which, you know, I think is good because frankly you know, f…”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 8:31 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Helgason: I will almost certainly never start another company as founder
“As a founder, almost certainly not. Plus Unity keeps me busy. It's just like, it's sort of a Big B stuff of interesting projects and innovation and teams and brilliant people that it sort of keeps me occupied. No, it's hard. It's hard for me to imagine that I …”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 22:41 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
63% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.6 · coherence 4.6 · precision 4.3 · compression 3.9

answered every one of 14 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

293 words/min while actually speaking · 19.3 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,948 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 2 rated episodes:

host pushback ▾ 2.5/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 70%

Everything David Helgason said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Founders lacking confidence in scaling their team should consider selling
“So if you don't feel confident that you can evolve through your team, then definitely consider selling.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 23:25 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Helgason: Software pricing tiers are effectively under $1,000 or over $100,000
“There's two prices. There's up to a thousand bucks, and then there's over a 100,000 dollars. If you go past a thousand bucks, then you have to kind of go and do a dog and pony show, and you're just going to support them and hang out with them. And by the time …”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 10:21 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Prediction Partly held up
Helgason: Augmented reality will be massive and almost entirely business-focused
“It's going to be massive. It's going to be massive in a very different way. Whereas VR, I think, is all entertainment. Business users that are sort of entertainment-like, you know, kind of looking at products and things like that. Whereas AR, AR is going to be…”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 13:00 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Insight
Helgason: Premier VCs like Sequoia endure extended underperformance without fundraising issues
“A firm like Sequoia, they will, you know, they have to do pretty badly for pretty long before they have a problem raising a new fund, for instance. So, so they're just, I think they're just less worried about the individual deal.”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 18:08 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Opinion
John Riccitiello understood the games industry better than anyone else
“Of all the sort of, I met a lot of people along the way, but of all the people I had conversations with, he just understood the games industry the best.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 13:08 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Board members must act as shock absorbers during corporate crises
“A good board member should be a shock absorber for the company, because there will be shocks, and people will be rattled, and there will be all kinds of crazy things happening, and just slowing the process a little bit down, and like guiding the leadership int…”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 18:11 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Bad VC board behavior stems from LP pressure and asset illiquidity
“When I've seen sort of bad behavior or weird behavior, I think it often comes down to the fact that VCs are money managers for other people, and it's a bit the same as you get in kind of middle management in companies, that you get people that are under pressu…”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 19:05 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Stressed middle managers are the most destructive force inside companies
“I think it's actually the same you see inside companies. Stressed out middle managers are kind of the most destructive force inside companies. And by the way, they're stressed out because they are being stressed out by other people. I'm not saying, you know, a…”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 19:51 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Founders and investors are never fully aligned under any financing model
“You're not fully, completely aligned with your investors ever, no matter what model you have.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 23:47 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Helgason: User-friendly platforms win through high volume at low price
“If you have a user-friendly platform, and everything else in your industry is really not user-friendly, you could maybe, instead of, You know, selling it a few times for a lot of money. You could sell it for a little bit of money a lot of times.”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 5:09 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Prediction Held up
Helgason: Console gaming is not dying and will remain a healthy market
“No, I mean, like there's sort of, there's been that rumor and expectation, but I mean, the console guys kind of reinvented themselves. They opened their platforms up more. Seems to be no end to that, which, you know, I think is good because frankly you know, f…”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 8:31 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Opinion
Helgason: Overreliance on microtransactions creates an unhealthy gaming monoculture
“It's really just healthy for the ecosystem to have, like, many different ways of monetizing, and, you know, it's become a bit too much of a monoculture in some ways, like, the people that are making all the money are doing the same thing with microtransactions…”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 9:08 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Insight
Helgason: Developer growth peaks early in a platform's lifecycle
“The growth of developers happens early in the platform's life cycle and then slows down before the platform has finished growing.”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 12:34 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Insight
Helgason: Startup founders should strive for a monopoly every day
“You're striving for monopoly you know, and then afterwards you don't have one because, you know, there's rarely any, but, you know, along the way you, you've bumped up, bumped off a few competitors and you have some new ones and, you know, there's some theorie…”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 20:32 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Insight
A mission statement's value lies in guiding quality decisions
“The value of mission statement can sort of be measured in the quality of decisions it helps you make.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 6:48 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Unity was already profitable when it raised its $5M Series A
“We were 30 people when we raised the round, and profitable, and we actually remained sort of break-even-ish, profitable for quite a while.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 9:39 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Running a company is a liberal art, not an engineering discipline
“Running companies is like a liberal art, right? It's not an engineering discipline.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 15:16 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
External CEOs rarely match the unique internal influence of founders
“Founders have a special thing. They're listened to by customers and the people internally in a way that is very hard to achieve for a new person.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 15:20 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Over 90% of expressed M&A interest fails to result in deals
“Somebody wise told me once that 90% of all M&A interest doesn't happen, which I think is probably putting it optimistically.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 21:06 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Founders should treat unsolicited M&A inquiries as strategic learning opportunities
“Is that you should not waste too much effort on it and try to always make them a learning experience or draw some other use from them because otherwise you just spin your wheels a lot.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 21:11 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Disclosure
Achieving personal financial security allowed Unity's founders to relax and grow
“When the company got to a level where that seemed kind of almost certain for me and my co-founders, I think I just relaxed a bit. And it's like, yeah, like the rest is just fun and glory.”
David Helgason Oct 29, 2020 ▶ 22:10 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
Insight
Helgason: People naturally create the media they consumed during childhood
“People are attracted to Creating the kind of media that they consumed as children, and we'd all played games, and it seemed logical that there would be some, I don't know, he, well, he felt that there would be kind of a, an explosion of small game developers, …”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 5:41 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Assertion Supported
Helgason: Unity was the only major game engine on mobile early on
“And for various reasons, nobody else really cared about it for a while. So we were kind of the only player there for quite a while. Of course, you know, because all the money was in console gaming, which is a very different everything actually.”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 8:15 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Helgason: VR ecosystem is one-thousandth the size of mobile
“Even if you're really generous with VR, you know, it's something like one, 1000th of the mobile ecosystem, right?”
David Helgason Jul 22, 2016 ▶ 11:55 20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution

Show 6statements(6 left)

The other half of the tape: David Helgason's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 6 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 4

Every mention by year

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A C Oct 29, 2020 18m
20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Jul 22, 2016 16m
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