The Ledger
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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.”
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 …”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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, …”
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.”
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?”
Helgason: Unity faced 45 VC rejections before receiving 5 term sheets
“We got 45 rejections or so, and then in the end we had five term sheets.”
Helgason: Unity rejected acquisition offers that misaligned with its core mission
“There was a couple of times when we could have probably made some money, but you know, the acquirer was clearly not aligned with that idea. Not because they're bad people, just because they're completely different interests. And in that case, it was very easy …”
Unity raised a $5M Series A from Sequoia with 30 employees
“When we were 30 people, I moved to San Francisco and raised money from Sequoia Capital. First round, actually, five million dollars with Rola Fulta joining the board.”
Sequoia issued Unity a Series A term sheet in eight days
“They made us a very strong offer very quickly, like eight days to get a term sheet, and it was basically the best term sheet we had.”
Helgason: Unity originally copied Macromedia's $1,000 per user software pricing model
“We picked the macromedia business model, which, you know, is sort of, like, morphed into the Adobe business model, which was, you know, professional software, roughly a thousand bucks per user, and then you might sort of upgrade once every few years.”
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 …”