Holly Liu

Co-Founder, Kabam · 2 appearances on the record.

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

founderexecutiveinvestorhost@hollyhliu ↗LinkedIn ↗Wikipedia ↗

Holly Liu co-founded the mobile gaming company Kabam, serving as Chief Development Officer and lead designer of Kingdoms of Camelot before its acquisition by Netmarble in 2017. Following the exit, she served as a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and advised technology and gaming companies.

12statements → 3claims → 0claims resolved → 3.83/5average certainty → 1.92/5average debate potential →

1 not yet assessed 2 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 9 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 2 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.

Everything Holly Liu said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Mobile game studios must reserve at least $5 million for user acquisition
“If you're gonna spend money on Customer acquisition reserve at least five million dollars. That was like a year or two ago, I know.”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 21:25 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
Using established IP like Marvel significantly lowers mobile game acquisition costs
“So for us the IP has been very helpful in reducing that CAC. Because I don't have to explain what Marvel is. Like, I could go after the Marvel fans, and it's so much cheaper than just trying to get them to understand what is, you know, Edge World, or Dragons o…”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 15:35 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
Game studios with large budgets should not rely solely on paid ads
“Even if you have a big budgets, I wouldn't spend it all on customer acquisition. You're just not going to get like bang for your buck.”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 34:01 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Blockchain games suffer from VR-like hype without mainstream consumer traction
“I think that blockchain games are kind of a little bit currently suffering from the VR type world. There's a lot of heat. There's a lot of you know, excitement around it, and you can make some great cash like CryptoKitties, but I think They only drove like a 1…”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 39:37 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
High paid acquisition costs force mobile game studios toward organic marketing
“Because of the pressures of just straight acquiring, like, paid acquisition is the pressures are so high on there, that's when you see things move more towards organic, because you're always trying to reduce the cost of customer acquisition.”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 34:37 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
Game developers are best suited to build cryptocurrency virtual economies
“In my world gaming gaming definitely pushes those types of technologies forward, or at least test those boundaries of like, how far can it go? And I, I'm always encouraging, I think in the blockchain world and with crypto, like what better people to really exp…”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 41:23 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
Mid-core video game mechanics cannot be effectively tested in isolation
“There's so many things that happen in a mid-core game. That trigger all these other things that's very hard to, like, test on. Just one piece of it without the full context of the game to say, like, okay, is this thing compelling? Because it could actually be …”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 44:47 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
Game studio founders must raise enough funding for multiple titles
“Raise enough money, not just for one game, but two or three, cause you're never like your first one likelihood will not be a hit.”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 50:45 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kabam's mobile game development cycles stretched to 18 to 24 months
“But as we moved on to mobile, the cycles just got a lot longer to today. I mean, it takes us about probably like. 18 to 2418 months is on the short side, like 24 months, like two years.”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 12:50 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
Mobile games must launch with far more content than developers expect
“On mobile, What we call consuming content happens so much faster. So that means, like, when you release a game, don't have just, like, 10 levels. Like, you need, like, an order of magnitude larger than that, because you'll be surprised how much people just …”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 25:17 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Insight
Endgame alliance leaders act as key organic recruiters for mobile games
“One of the things that's a bit unique about almost every, I think every one of our games, yes, every one of our games is we have social features of Alliance as well as like chat and those types of customers that, that are loyal and, you know, play every single…”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 27:23 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kabam launched its early Facebook games in about three months
“Within about three months, we could launch a game, and that was really because I think our game mechanics were simpler, even for a mid-core game, like even.”
Holly Liu Apr 27, 2018 ▶ 11:09 Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Startup Hiring Advice from Lever CEO Sarah Nahm with Holly Liu · Y Combinator Jul 10, 2019 2m
Gaming Studio Founders - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu · Y Combinator Apr 27, 2018 28m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.