David Helgason
Co-founder & Board Member, Unity Technologies. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
1shows
2appearances
30statements
5resolved
2supported
1contradicted
40%fully supported
6said about them ↓ Everything David Helgason said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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.”
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 across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 4
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 6
2020 3 mentions in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
- 20VC: Why The Whole Industry Is Backward Looking, The Best Funds Are Entrepreneur Led and Venture Is All About Access with Alex Bangash, Founder @ Trusted Insight
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-founder & Board Member, Unity Technologies | 2 | 30 | 40% 2/5 | full record on 20VC → |