My firstminute | Bing Gordon, Kleiner Perkins, EA | David Helgason, Unity, Foobar

Happy wife investor, happy life

Many say an investor-founder relationship is like a marriage. That includes David Helgason and Bing Gordon.

In this episode of myfirstminute from May 2020, we covered everything from the earliest days of their careers, as founder and CEO of Unity Technologies for David and Chief Creative Officer at EA for Bing, to how they now enjoy helping and backing founders. David is a founding Partner at Nordics Makers, a group of ten top Nordic angels, and also has his private vehicle, Foobar.vc. As for Bing, he joined Kleiner Perkins in 2008 and serves as Chief Product Officer for the firm. He also leads Kleiner Perkins' Fund, the investment initiative to fund and build applications and services that deliver on the promise of the social web. 

Transcript

00:00:00:20 - 00:00:31:16
Speaker 1
First minute capital is $100 million seed stage fund sector agnostic and proudly backed by a number of top technology founders, including 30 unicorn founders. The My First Minute series is about learning from prior generations of successful entrepreneurs and sharing that insights and lessons with the next generation of tech founders. The series has two focuses. One, How They Got Started in their careers that first minute, if you will.

00:00:33:08 - 00:00:51:22
Speaker 1
And two, how they see the world today and what they're most excited about. My name is Spencer Crawley. I'm a co-founder and general partner at First Minute Capital. And today I'm speaking with David Helgason. I'm Ben Gordon.

00:00:55:16 - 00:01:08:11
Speaker 1
David is the founder of Unity Technologies. As I think everyone knows, the maker of the Unity Engine. And I think, David, how many monthly active developers are there now on Unity? Is it close to a million or above already?

00:01:08:11 - 00:01:17:16
Speaker 2
Oh, Lord. No, it's definitely over a million. I actually I don't know the precious number it might be 1.5 might be close to. I mean, Corona probably pushed it up for all I know, but actually I do.

00:01:17:27 - 00:01:37:01
Speaker 1
Okay. Well, as for those not familiar. Yeah, Unity offers developers a suite of game development tools. And David actually started out making games which are going to come to the second. And he's also a partner at Nordic Makers, which is a very blue chip investment entity in Europe, which is a collaboration of Nordic unicorn founders who invest together.

00:01:38:09 - 00:01:40:26
Speaker 1
Bing, bing. Hello to you. How are you doing?

00:01:41:25 - 00:01:42:27
Speaker 3
So far, so good.

00:01:44:07 - 00:02:08:05
Speaker 1
Now your intro being could take out the rest of the talk, so forgive me for missing out of your career. But the drama in literature at Yale, a stint at Stanford, some acting. And then you joined in 1982, which was a startup then. It's now a $33 billion market cap business you on Amazon bought for 14 years from maybe 3 to 2017.

00:02:08:06 - 00:02:29:14
Speaker 1
You joined Kleiner in oh eight, in which time you launched S Fund, which we're going to come back to you, was a founding director of Audible and many, many other things. I think I think the way that I would like to kick this off, with your permission, is actually to focus first on on David's first minute of unity.

00:02:29:14 - 00:02:44:15
Speaker 1
But actually, from your lens being because you mentioned when we chatted last week that you actually came across Unity first with a sort of Zynga hat on your office, on the board of Zynga. How when did David kind of first come into your line of sight as a as a founder?

00:02:45:25 - 00:03:14:02
Speaker 3
So I could tell you the first time we saw unity. But, you know, on reflection, I am probably David, I've met a lot of founders trying to start platforms. And the wisdom is you have to have a heads to launch a platform. And unity is probably the only exception of of of of a platform that hit a place and time, which is kind of a perfect product.

00:03:14:20 - 00:03:20:13
Speaker 3
And, and they didn't have it here in fact, you know, they started out with a terrible game.

00:03:21:18 - 00:03:23:22
Speaker 2
Console, like 2500 copies.

00:03:24:24 - 00:03:56:17
Speaker 3
I've sold worse and, and so they're the exception that proves the rules or something so good about I'd say that developer interface and the solutions that that unity works work from the beginning and even things like unreal all was basically a framework that you had to write new code in when it launched, and of course it had a bunch of epic games.

00:03:57:01 - 00:04:35:03
Speaker 3
So when, when Zynga was taking up on Facebook, on the Web, notice unity as a developer platform, we thought, this is this is great. Even I can look at that developer page for unity and see that this was a they're a company that understood developers. And yet when we tried launching games on the Web on unity the because there was like a 20 to 30 second download the impatient Facebook game players, we had like 90% fail rate.

00:04:35:21 - 00:05:27:19
Speaker 3
So 90% of people who started a Zynga game that ran on unity, that didn't have unity installed would not complete the install. So either this is this is too bad. It's such a it's such a great developer experience, but right now it's such a shitty user experience. And then and that could have been a near-death moment. But then mobile happened and, and the unity was so perfectly positioned for mobile because suddenly mobile developers could build an MVP really quickly and then it turned out could ship ship the the stuff they prototype all the way up to companies like Niantic with Pokemon Go.

00:05:27:19 - 00:05:40:20
Speaker 3
So probably the most the most downloaded game of all time is a unity game. This this platform that used to kill Facebook gameplay.

00:05:43:02 - 00:05:48:05
Speaker 1
But I think that being sensed you were going to interrupt his story which is why he muted you that I think that was.

00:05:52:10 - 00:06:10:08
Speaker 2
Himself because the kids were happy that I couldn't agree them anyway thanks to thanks thanks because it's a pretty it's a very true telling of this part of the story. Absolutely. We started you know, we started with yeah, you know, it wasn't a perfect product, but it was the right product for something. It just that's something to exist.

00:06:10:08 - 00:06:30:17
Speaker 2
Yes. And, you know, we struggled for years. The good thing is, you know, give us time to kind of hone or craft and make unity, not suck so much and be good at some point. But then, like, you know, like we built this beautiful sailboat in the desert and then the rain came with the iPhone where suddenly was like the really great product for the for the era.

00:06:31:20 - 00:06:33:13
Speaker 1
And it just moved.

00:06:33:19 - 00:07:00:17
Speaker 3
Hispanics are just perfect for any for anybody who's trying to build something that's developer facing. If you can go back in Internet history and look up Google images the the the developer page on unity was a thing of beauty before it was a business. And I've been involved with a lot of internal platforms from like Edith on The Sims and a bunch of other stuff.

00:07:00:17 - 00:07:28:12
Speaker 3
Video And the people that build tools usually think about the developer experience last and the ugliness of the developer page is usually an indicator of how much the platform developers care about about the developers and unity, even when it was small, only on the web, the draw page for the thing of beauty. So there's there was real artistry there.

00:07:28:12 - 00:07:39:11
Speaker 3
And I think that all starts with David's understanding of the developer experience is probably the best early stage developer experience I've ever seen.

00:07:40:11 - 00:07:47:03
Speaker 2
And definitely not just me though. It was the three founders and a few other good people that joined us really for thanks.

00:07:47:21 - 00:08:10:04
Speaker 1
And but David, to to take that point to things that intuitive understanding of the developer experience I think in part was shaped by the fact that when you started unity you and this was with Nicholas who you were a high school with you were you were your your first effort was at creating games. And, you know, before unity was called Unity, I didn't you told me it's called Over the Edge Entertainment.

00:08:10:20 - 00:08:17:14
Speaker 1
You were trying out to build games. Do you think that informed your understanding of that developer experience?

00:08:17:29 - 00:08:38:22
Speaker 2
Oh, no, absolutely. I mean, we were that team in the studio that tried, you know, there was something that existed. There were some kind of cheap options, but they were terrible. There were some expensive options. But you sort of had to kind of I don't think we could actually get a response from the big engines. Of course, Renderer was one that we acquired around the time iPhone.

00:08:40:02 - 00:09:12:11
Speaker 2
No, no, no, no, no. Complain about that. But it was, of course, very good for a business that happened. But we tried it. We couldn't really get a response because we were so insignificant because at the time, you know, sort of early, early notes, notes, all the money was being made in console and the and, you know, those are fairly large teams and, you know, you can have a very expensive engine license a few times a year instead of what we were ready for, which was selling like a lot of licenses to a lot of people at low prices.

00:09:13:10 - 00:09:18:19
Speaker 2
And then, of course, the mobile revolution happened and suddenly that was what a lot of people needed to do.

00:09:18:21 - 00:09:29:11
Speaker 1
Did you as a as a founding team, did you have a feel or an understanding for why you didn't succeed in creating games? But you did succeed in an effort to.

00:09:31:01 - 00:09:52:26
Speaker 2
We just didn't know how to make games. We sucked. I mean, I believe that we tried it for a few years. We tried it. We built a whole bunch of prototypes. And I mean, we might have gotten good eventually. I don't know. But but we're not we're not any good. But we had really good intuitions for developers, but also for like sort of just how computing was evolving and something I'm actually quite proud of.

00:09:52:26 - 00:10:14:02
Speaker 2
It's kind of you can't really see from the outside, but it was that we actually sort of happened to issues that mobile would happen at some point. And we've been watching kind of Nokia phones with 3D chips before the iPhone a couple of years before and felt that eventually they might be good enough and we couldn't we certainly not predicted the App Store, but something would happen that might make them relevant.

00:10:15:02 - 00:10:35:08
Speaker 2
So we sort of were kind of readying themselves for for that world we're looking at, you know, the chipsets and the amounts of RAM and things like that and had a feeling that, you know, in a couple of years this might happen and you know, that's been happened with with the iPhone in 2007 and the iPhone to which was really the one that had apps on it in 2008.

00:10:36:07 - 00:10:38:19
Speaker 2
And we're sort of ready to technology wise for that.

00:10:39:14 - 00:11:01:12
Speaker 1
I'm I'm going to come back to that moment because there's a there's there's a anecdote that being as this shadow when the App Store was first released. And I think it's a really important moment and obviously broadly technology trends, but also beings own journey. Just before we go, that being, I would love to go backwards in time and go back to to 1982.

00:11:02:02 - 00:11:17:07
Speaker 1
I'm sorry that your acting career didn't play out, but, you know, I think it led to other great things. I found a production of Waiting for Godot that you did with Sigourney Weaver at Yale, but perhaps that's for another time. Go.

00:11:17:07 - 00:11:20:21
Speaker 3
But really, I played Lucky and she walked me in on a leash.

00:11:22:18 - 00:11:34:05
Speaker 1
I hope there's a video somewhere. But the the 1982 joining. Yeah, I was here then. Who was that. What was the set up? You know, this is now such like a company.

00:11:34:05 - 00:11:36:07
Speaker 3
That was Trip Hawkins and Rich.

00:11:36:07 - 00:11:37:00
Speaker 2
Melman.

00:11:38:16 - 00:12:04:04
Speaker 3
And I don't trip at Stanford. And we met through Professor Peter G. W t and you said you guys both seem to be interested in, in computer entertainment and, and trip in 1978 said get ready, I'm going to start a software company in five years. So it was a trip.

00:12:04:17 - 00:12:05:21
Speaker 2
To give him advance warning.

00:12:06:22 - 00:12:56:20
Speaker 3
As Trip Bridge Melman, me and eventually five others writing a business plan with wife poster paper on the walls of Sequoia Capitals office. They gave us one room and Don Valentine had told Trip, you better leave out for now because there's already 136 computer game companies out there and the time is now. So we wrote the first draft of the business plan starting in September 82 and got got a series of 2 million on 3 million free from Don Valentine and Sequoia and Advisors.

00:12:56:27 - 00:12:57:26
Speaker 3
Kleiner Perkins.

00:12:59:21 - 00:13:03:10
Speaker 1
That's quite a seed around and the.

00:13:03:23 - 00:13:33:08
Speaker 3
Other company name on the business plan was soft start so S.T.A.R.T. and then Dan Brooke Brooklyn of a visit out there called software arch they they sent us a cease and desist because we were software and they were software. So we went obviously to an all hands off site and stayed up all night and came up with the name Electronic Arts.

00:13:34:08 - 00:13:41:23
Speaker 1
Do you remember a distinct pitch to Don Valentine or was it more just a continuation of the sort of incubation.

00:13:42:14 - 00:14:19:06
Speaker 3
That was a continuation, the there was another venture capital firm that had committed and they sent over a junior partner with the term sheet to shake hands and trip. And Rich were so bummed out we destroyed the junior partner venture capitalist view where sending your punk ass junior partners over to disrespect founders sitting there going, Oh crap, now what are we doing?

00:14:19:06 - 00:14:51:05
Speaker 3
The phone rang and it was John Dawn. Brooke Byers from Kleiner Perkins say we just hear on the grapevine that you're going to raise, raise money. Right now we're really interested. Could we talk to you? And a half hour later, fires was in the office and closed the deal could have been John John door but he had a phone call to do and Brad Pires walked into the office wearing White Valley loafers and he said, really?

00:14:51:05 - 00:15:03:03
Speaker 3
Like, I really like movies. I like this idea of new Hollywood. We looked at, Oh, my God, an investor who likes Hollywood, we like this guy. So broke buyers ended up being the other board member.

00:15:04:24 - 00:15:20:21
Speaker 1
Well, I think I think that you and your and David share Sequoia is as a seed investor David's was alongside and Diane Green of VMware just to to to to mark the.

00:15:20:29 - 00:15:47:10
Speaker 3
One mark comment on David early on. So the other thing about unity is these days in shelter, at home, it doesn't seem so weird, but Unity is a first great engineering company ever met that had a decentralized workforce, did engineers all over the place. And it was so modern. There was at least ten years and years ahead of its time.

00:15:47:13 - 00:16:05:07
Speaker 3
And, you know, at the time I knew companies that had one engineer working remotely. Amazon has one engineer who codes from a sailboat for the last ten years, but nobody did it as as standard. So, you know, that was my sequel.

00:16:05:07 - 00:16:08:21
Speaker 2
That actually, at the same time, maybe even earlier, my sequel.

00:16:09:09 - 00:16:11:26
Speaker 3
I never I'd never heard a never heard of anyone.

00:16:11:26 - 00:16:14:11
Speaker 2
So but it's true it was quite rare.

00:16:15:07 - 00:16:29:13
Speaker 1
But it's interesting that I actually look at tomorrow. Supercell is not decentralized physically as much, but they are in terms of decision making. But David, it sounds like you were something of a pioneer there. I want to just very quickly to tie of course.

00:16:29:27 - 00:16:39:15
Speaker 2
In our case, it just came out of like not being able to actually bind enough engineers locally. So we did end up hiring them where we found them. And that became this kind of decentralized model.

00:16:39:29 - 00:16:46:16
Speaker 3
But it also puts puts a premium on kind of interface design.

00:16:48:01 - 00:16:49:09
Speaker 1
Meaning what exactly mean?

00:16:49:23 - 00:17:21:06
Speaker 3
Well, that if you have to work remotely, you can't explain an engine by intuition. You really have to cross your t's and dot your eyes and common out your source code is examples because you can't sit over someone's shoulder and watch them code and give feedback. So I don't know. It's kind of the miracle of decentralization. I think probably also in the hands, the miracle of developer interface.

00:17:22:28 - 00:17:55:03
Speaker 1
Very interesting. Very interesting. I would I would be. Well, let's go to that now. What do you what do you think is the next iteration then in terms of if that if that decentralized workforce led to greater developer innovation and more clarity of thought, what do you see as the next wave given we now have accelerated trend of remote work, how what secondary effects do you see that?

00:17:55:03 - 00:18:18:26
Speaker 3
You know, we've seen in the use of video just in about the last four years that people of all ages have gotten comfortable with being on live video before. Four years ago, we heard for a bunch of people it was awkward because with with you could share photos but you could take ten and share one and videos hard at it.

00:18:18:26 - 00:18:52:15
Speaker 3
So I've been about four years. So in 1986, David Gardner and I at Electronic Arts, we launched an app called the Lux Video, which I did the marketing for and called it the world's first desktop video software. And but video is awkward. So video didn't become an overnight success, basically until edited video on YouTube and then lightly edited video, say, on Instagram.

00:18:52:15 - 00:19:24:29
Speaker 3
And so so people's comfort with video is, is pretty rare. So we look at kind of programs, we look at work from home and think of this as the next platform. So zoom as a platform, people are getting social meaning from Zoom in a way that four years ago people found video conferencing awkward. Certainly there is a premium on tools with great interface.

00:19:24:29 - 00:19:57:13
Speaker 3
We think there's a premium on shared goal setting, cascading goal setting. With OKRs, we're involved in a company called Better Works. That's a SASO care product. And and the thing that's missing right now from Zoom is games, of course, because that's always the best way to make new friendships. But also divergent thinking is very difficult to do on video conference right now.

00:19:57:28 - 00:20:31:26
Speaker 3
So I've seen people hacking, doing mock ups that in an office we do on a whiteboard, doing it on a piece of paper and taking a photo with their phone and then sharing a phone picture. So we still don't have a great tool or even great hacks for group creativity. So creativity, which can be done in real time in groups with whiteboards and spitballing ends up being iterative and serial on big time.

00:20:31:26 - 00:21:01:16
Speaker 3
So we're still missing that then, you know, I know David is saying, but the big game companies in our entertainment are video entertainment companies, live video campaigns are all as productive now as they were pre-coronavirus. So that's got to be a leading indicator of something as well, which is how do you work from home and be as productive as ever?

00:21:02:04 - 00:21:15:29
Speaker 3
Of course we have preschool kids. You need to home school. I'm not sure anybody knows how to be be productive and do that. But so we're at work from home is the next great platform after mobiles.

00:21:16:24 - 00:21:22:15
Speaker 1
David, you want to chime in there and some some some stuff you're seeing on those and those things bring us out like, yeah.

00:21:22:15 - 00:21:38:12
Speaker 2
I mean, just to just just in the work from home. I mean, it's hard to know in such a short time, but internal indicators of unity seems to show that our productivity as a company was actually to probably slightly up, which of course, you know, despite, you know, a lot of actual problems and people having to have kids at home and so on.

00:21:38:12 - 00:21:45:04
Speaker 2
So that might actually tell us that eventually, you know, it'll be very nice to work from home when our kids are actually in school. And so how do.

00:21:45:24 - 00:21:47:17
Speaker 1
You measure that? David Oh.

00:21:47:17 - 00:22:17:15
Speaker 2
It's just like, you know, again, hard to measure. Like it's not really trustworthy, but like, you know, like, you know, regression control software, check ins, you know, just internal messages, stuff like that. We had a sense that things were kind of communication between offices seems to be up and and there's something nice about because we have well well, we're it's a good it's built to have some fairly large offices and sometimes they kind of become a business, you know, communicating too much with themselves and with the rest of the company.

00:22:17:15 - 00:22:22:27
Speaker 2
And now going to people in more remote areas are actually feeling more connected, I think.

00:22:23:13 - 00:22:28:28
Speaker 1
I wonder to Bing's point, if you had an analysis of unity workforce split by those with kids at home and those without.

00:22:30:00 - 00:22:54:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm sure if the average is slightly off, it tells you that, you know, something's probably good, something good is happening. But no, it's hard to say, I think. I mean, lately I've been kind of thinking, I guess, and maybe spending some of my energies on carbon. Carbon, the problem of carbon emissions. And obviously, you know, games are low carbon entertainment.

00:22:54:07 - 00:23:08:23
Speaker 2
And now, of course, we're seeing this massive ratchet towards low carbon work and low carbon communications, which is wonderful. And, you know, fortunately, you know, I am in a few companies that are focused on that and I'm sure for a purchases as well.

00:23:09:09 - 00:23:09:25
Speaker 1
Is that.

00:23:10:07 - 00:23:10:12
Speaker 2
That.

00:23:11:17 - 00:23:28:20
Speaker 1
Perhaps, David, that's a good segue way just to allow you to to expand a little bit how Nordic makers came about because obviously you've got, you know, stellar group of founders from founders of Zendesk and just the Insight Corps and lots of others. How what what what is Nordic Make is for those not familiar.

00:23:29:11 - 00:23:53:13
Speaker 2
Yeah, sure, sure. So Nordic Makers is a group of business angels that are sort of we found the model that we like that is sort of so somewhere just between being kind of a network of angels and the funds, we don't quite have a fund that we sort of act like we do and it works fairly well. You know, what happened is that it was a group of people coming back from sort of various things running, running, you know, some big companies.

00:23:53:13 - 00:24:11:04
Speaker 2
And, you know, when we started those companies, the system in the Nordics was atrocious. And when we came back, it was better, but still left a lot to be desired. So the idea of Nordic makers was just just going to, you know, push the quality of the of the early stage investing scene in the Nordics forwards. And I think we did that.

00:24:11:04 - 00:24:26:28
Speaker 2
We just pushed for better terms, cleaner terms, more transparency, and then we invest in a few companies. So that's, that's stuff. And then on the side, I do a lot of Angel investing on my own, of which a lot now is kind of focused on, on the problem of carbon emissions.

00:24:28:17 - 00:24:54:26
Speaker 1
And I know you sit on the board of lobster as well, which perhaps we might come back to, which I think is a fascinating business. The the one dynamic that I would love to explore with you both, which is something I think about a lot, is the interplay between founders and investors and or board members. And, you know, I've been, you know, your partner at one of the most storied firms in the valley in the world.

00:24:54:26 - 00:25:15:13
Speaker 1
And you've been perhaps on the most interesting board journey of of one could have had in that and the 2000s in two tens but 14 years on the Amazon board and David you you've just explain to us what Nordic makers is is a fantastic group of angels teaming up together and unity is you know, it's a it's a $6 billion company now.

00:25:15:23 - 00:25:40:17
Speaker 1
So I think that I think the question that I would like to ask you both is how how do you both think investors distinguish themselves with founders after an investment is made? What are their most valuable things they they should do and don't do what both either either side maybe being you kick off and then we can ask David or.

00:25:40:24 - 00:26:15:26
Speaker 3
I go first. One of the surprises to me that I didn't see before joining Kleiner Perkins is that investing in a company kind of Series A or Series B, especially at Kleiner Perkins, where the other investors expect the Kleiner board member to do all the work so they can goof around. It is kind of a ten year journey, so you're signing up for a longer relation than the average marriage lasted in the US.

00:26:15:26 - 00:27:02:09
Speaker 3
And and then the next thing is I went back and thought about the boards I've been on and it's a board member contribution is a very low bar and my experience is most board members do about one useful thing for the founders per decade. And I think that founders have a right to ask for strategic value every quarter from their board members and so the next thing I tell founders is only let on your board people you pay to have dinner with because it's a it's a really expensive advisory board.

00:27:02:27 - 00:27:49:00
Speaker 3
So be careful about who you let in. And then that final thought. Is that the other that's the other thing I discovered is, is investors can't fire the founding CEO until there is product market fit. And so investors number one job should help the CEO deal with issues of scale and no investors think about that. So, you know, the board meetings should primarily be about the investors trying to help trying to help the founders see around the corner and plan a year ahead so the founder can grow his or her own skills.

00:27:49:18 - 00:28:02:00
Speaker 3
And usually board meetings are boring ass book reports, you know, and would scour and investors wondering why in this plan and that's just stupid.

00:28:03:04 - 00:28:29:04
Speaker 1
What being was because I you've mentioned before that John Doe is responsible for you or is a chance conversation after a bike ride in 2003 before you joined finance was how you then sat down with Jeff Bezos and one thing led to another and you became a board member. What was the contribution that you made to them as a board in that in that 14 year journey that you think most proudly on?

00:28:30:25 - 00:29:04:14
Speaker 3
Chair So as I told you when I met Bezos, I said that Amazon as a brand needs to be curated because Amazon is what I made up the term Internet treasure, a brand that proves to its generation that it's superior to their parents, and that every time an Amazon box showed up at my door, I had this warm feeling that I'm better than my parents.

00:29:05:03 - 00:29:05:18
Speaker 2
And.

00:29:06:17 - 00:29:36:01
Speaker 3
That that that needs to be curated. So, you know, I had multiple ideas that that the two kind of smartass thing that I said as one for the world's most customer obsessed company, self-styled customer obsessed, you don't know much about your customers and here's how you learn about your customers. And then the second thing I remember, like my second board meeting, I said, you guys are an ambitious enough.

00:29:36:11 - 00:29:54:24
Speaker 3
You know, this could be a $50 billion company. Now, looks to me like really you know, I think this some degree what I learned from John Doar, a great board member, asked really great questions.

00:29:55:27 - 00:30:22:19
Speaker 1
Well, I think that's that's a great takeaway for for us to have. I think, you know, David, when you look at your cap table, you've got everyone from Sequoia to Silver Lake on it at Unity at what for you was some of the in terms of how you think about yourself now as an angel investor, how do you try to behave with founders and how is that informed by your experiences with your own unity?

00:30:22:25 - 00:30:43:27
Speaker 2
VCs Sure. I, you know, at some point I sort of came to the conclusion that I only had one requirement for my board members and investors, and that was that they'd be awesome. And because, you know, there's a lot of not awesome behavior and many ways not to be awesome. And I guess, you know, that's what we try to do.

00:30:44:09 - 00:31:24:13
Speaker 2
One thing I really kind of appreciated about, you know, having especially really for us my kind of mentor committee is when I was running the company, he joined the board ten or nine and we were together four or five years after that and still on the Board of Unity. So this was just an extremely thoughtful person. And, you know, I was running around kind of sometimes spinning a little bit in my we also in the first time CEO and it sometimes just helped me create the space to kind of be thoughtful and definitely, like I say, bring some really good questions and sometimes sort of shut down stupid stuff I said in a kind way

00:31:24:22 - 00:31:48:21
Speaker 2
that I took well too. And so and so I actually listened to I still quoted from time to time when sort of, you know, wise things properly. But a lot of the time, you know, we're too busy as founders to really spend time with with the investors of the boards. And, you know, so be it. You know, it's it's a very non-linear like this kind of, you know, trying to advice founders an extremely non-linear process.

00:31:48:21 - 00:32:13:23
Speaker 2
You can kind of tell them all kinds of stuff. And if it's not the right timing, they know they don't get it to the center. They don't have the capacity to act on it. And having been kind of on the receiving end of a lot of really good advice that I was unable to act on, that kind of gave me some sense of, you know, try not to waste people's time with smart advice or wait till the time is right.

00:32:13:23 - 00:32:15:11
Speaker 2
It's sort of non-linear.

00:32:16:00 - 00:32:28:08
Speaker 1
And would you say in terms of your own pattern recognition, which no doubt Boeing has perfected over over many years, would you say that you're a good investor? Can you spot what you think are the characteristics of a great founder?

00:32:29:29 - 00:32:50:18
Speaker 2
I will not limit you. I'm a prolific investor, so I'm training a lot. And I love I love working with founders 11. I think this is just such a wonderful way of engaging with people, you know, it gives us this continuity. You kind of have some interest together. Like, you know, they have a reason to stay in touch.

00:32:51:01 - 00:33:09:23
Speaker 2
Of course, on a board, it's more like a some kind of marriage. And you know, when you're able to kind of have like in a marriage, if there's a problem, you kind of have to take it seriously and address it because, you know, you're still there many years later. They don't always work out, but still you have to kind of take it seriously.

00:33:09:23 - 00:33:13:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, the question I will say I'm I'm a good industrial.

00:33:15:15 - 00:33:41:05
Speaker 1
Thing in terms of being a good investor. To go back to your point about boards, have a good board members should ask great questions. Do you think as an investor you are a better investor to certain types of founders, whether those are more deeply technical or not, whether those are more introspective or extroverted like, do you think that you being as an investor have a fit with a particular type of founder.

00:33:42:17 - 00:34:37:19
Speaker 3
That I'm terrible with? People aren't highly motivated, that I get really snarky or people are not highly motivated. So the fun thing about venture is people are pretty highly motivated and so it's self-select active. And then Andy Jassy at Amazon had a really good one here he is go to interview question is how do you learn and if people don't have a a well thought through answer about how they learn he's done with the interview so I think in general the the ability to pay attention and learn is pretty important because the founders journey has a bunch of passages.

00:34:37:23 - 00:35:19:07
Speaker 3
And as David said, you know, you know, it is it's somewhat open ended, so say so learning. And then what I also tell founders is a great investor pitch doubles evaluation of the company and show great investor people who make great investor pitches also do great recruiting, also do great marketing. So the ability to communicate story kind of with energy that turns the investors into customers and makes them leading in their chair.

00:35:19:07 - 00:35:30:16
Speaker 3
That's also part, I'd say, you know, communication skills, learning skills, passionate kind of high aspiration.

00:35:31:14 - 00:35:45:13
Speaker 1
Have you come across founders who portray those traits being that you felt you weren't the right investor for? I'm just interested in your own self-perception and how you ascertain the skill sets of.

00:35:45:13 - 00:36:14:13
Speaker 3
How well I'm a I'm highly interested in games and gamification as a way to create meaning in life. I like to joke that games is the the category that creates the second most meaning of all human creative endeavors. And the first, of course, is religion. But games doesn't kill as many people. So I like and then I'm a fan of using math to improve lives.

00:36:14:27 - 00:37:01:25
Speaker 3
And so, broadly speaking, that actually gamification is things like Duolingo or MyFitnessPal or Coursera. So it's, it's useful to have some kind of of domain knowledge. So I think about games like gamification as a way to motivate people and give me now. So founders to lean into that and I find really interesting and then also when and when in doubt I like helping young people which for me is under 30 to progress faster and then always take a meeting with people in games and I'll try to take meetings with female founders.

00:37:03:03 - 00:37:17:29
Speaker 1
That's that's good to know. I'm part and now turning over to Q&A. Hey, guys, I want to know your.

00:37:17:29 - 00:37:19:01
Speaker 2
Perspective really on where.

00:37:19:01 - 00:37:23:13
Speaker 1
You felt that the meeting was going. I'm a founder working in the space.

00:37:24:09 - 00:38:18:03
Speaker 3
We've already got cig worlds, you know, and I'm a fan of the vision of Second Life. I'm I believe that whether it's dystopian or not, that all should connect. The humans are going to going to live a full time alternative life in a synthetic world. I'm curious about synthetic and species or synthetic characters. You know, if you think, you know, four and five year olds, many four and five year olds have a special imagine friend I know from a roboticist that's a physically embodied embodied algorithm has more resonance for most people than just a pure algorithm.

00:38:19:27 - 00:38:53:02
Speaker 3
But I think we I think we're going to see synthetic actors in movies over the next decade. It might be on my way to create a set in a work from home environment. So I think synthesized worlds with probabilistic and procedural agents is going to going to be a major source of meaning over the next ten years. So you're in a good place.

00:38:54:17 - 00:39:16:16
Speaker 1
So say hello thing. We have something in common as well. I actually co-founded a studio with Tripp Hawkins in the past, so that was fun. But David, I primarily had a question for you about unity, and it's grown hugely as a product and obviously right now it's capable of doing so much more than it was at the beginning.

00:39:16:26 - 00:39:37:15
Speaker 1
I'm wondering how do you maintain focus on on features? So there's obviously a lot in there to do with indie developers. There's the new HD app that allows triple-A developers to make games, and then there's also the kind of real time stuff that I can see you're pushing to do with cinema and animation. So how do you maintain focus?

00:39:37:15 - 00:39:40:11
Speaker 1
How do you decide where to go next?

00:39:40:11 - 00:40:00:00
Speaker 2
Sure, it's not simple, and I'm not that involved with it anymore. I'm on the board, you know, as you can imagine, it's not setting the sort of product direction, you know, in the early days, it was just whatever the few customers we had to ask for, plus some good intuitions we have for where to take it next, sort of beyond what was being asked.

00:40:00:00 - 00:40:25:16
Speaker 2
Overall, I guess there is a there's the thesis which we have, which is that, you know, sort of low risks, you know, games, simple games, high risk games, large games, and ultimately also sort of, you know, real time visualization of engineering and architecture and so on. Share so much, you know, share so many needs that it's valuable to have, have them in one platform.

00:40:25:24 - 00:40:50:02
Speaker 2
You know, the learning of developers going from one use case to the next, you know, it's valuable enough to be able to reduce, reuse, unity across these different areas to make it, you know, potentially more complicated product. And then beyond that, it's, I think, of really smart engineers and, you know, product in front of people working together. I know that's not a very precise answer, but it's you know, they're working on a lot of things systems.

00:40:50:23 - 00:40:58:01
Speaker 2
But those are two pieces, you know. Yes. If there is a value to having it in one platform.

00:40:58:01 - 00:41:16:28
Speaker 1
That was a David and interlinked question for you from from a colleague, Steve Crosson, who I think you've met, who was many years at Google and then at DeepMind. And Steve's question was that if we were living in a and an artificial reality at the moment, could it have been designed by unity?

00:41:16:28 - 00:41:17:19
Speaker 2
Definitely not.

00:41:18:27 - 00:41:23:15
Speaker 1
Why not? For a limited world?

00:41:24:01 - 00:41:27:00
Speaker 2
I mean, not with the current feature set, but of course, the features that the.

00:41:29:19 - 00:41:52:22
Speaker 1
I'm conscious of the clock and I'm hugely grateful to both of you. We've run over the time that you both kind of set aside. David, you know, you spoke at our Investor Day last year and brilliantly insightful again today and being it was a total pleasure to speak to for the first time. Well, we spoke last week for the first time to speak properly today.

00:41:53:20 - 00:41:57:02
Speaker 1
So thank you both. Know mostly for your time.

00:41:57:24 - 00:42:04:12
Speaker 2
It's so great to reconnect. I was just checking my records. I think it's been six years since we met or maybe seven actually.

00:42:04:29 - 00:42:09:18
Speaker 3
I remember I remember that one. The Follow the dress.

00:42:10:08 - 00:42:11:08
Speaker 2
Super fun. Yeah. Thanks.

00:42:11:26 - 00:42:12:08
Speaker 1
Well, and.

00:42:12:08 - 00:42:12:22
Speaker 2
That, of course.

00:42:13:07 - 00:42:18:14
Speaker 1
Will be to the trampoline. And Ben will leave you to a happy Californian sunny day. But thank you both so much.

00:42:19:26 - 00:42:24:00
Speaker 3
Have a good one. David Gardner, nice to see you.