How Istanbul Became the New Capital of Mobile Gaming – And Where It’s Headed Next

[Music] well let's kick it off gentlemen uh M AIT batan chelbi and gkim Turk did I get the names right yes all right thank you for having me inan thank you for coming welcome thanks for having us um I'm excited always always excited to come here to the uh the capital of mobile games this is officially it Helsinki used to be it but you've uh clearly captured it and so for folks who don't know you so um MIM you started gram games you were the CEO CPO then CEO and um Grand games was acquired by Zinga for officially 250 we're not going to talk about any earn outs or anything but it was a great exit one of the first exits for the Turkish ecosystem Y and um ban you've been in the news last week so whenever this comes out it's been lately uh so you're the fastest company in ke

to raise series a am I correct yes out of everything all the tech and everything you went and if you were to compare the size I think the we are at 5 fth or sixth in terms of the round size damn cuz you went from um a seed round that was sometimes in August to like 6 months later you raised a $30 million uh series a I think the preced Run was on February but we didn't announce the news until like 6 month has passed because we wanted to differentiate ourselves from the other rest of the preced funding companies because in Turkey it was really popular to see like uh Studio X raised this amount from Studio wi or let's say investor wi and you don't hear from them afterwards there was a boom in turkey and we we wanted to separate ourselves from that news therefore we wanted to we waited like two we waited to publish two games before we launched the news so preced was on February but the announcement was on August and the cities day was on like October damn

super fast and of course I don't remember what the other game is but the other one is magic sword and it's like crack and people it means a lot coming from no no like I I have to say like when cuz we were trying to record this and I'm like okay so what has Grand games made a game about like magic potions putting together I'm like what is this and then I started playing I'm like I need to get this on my daughter's phone cuz like it teaches you logic and it's like so rewarding I was planning through like almost the whole flight here it was just like so good thank you so much uh if you haven't downloaded magic sword please do please don't it's it's going to take all of your time so and uh and of course girim uh the um Laton Ventures you were in news today yes that you closed $50 million uh early stage fund for Turkish ecosystem and Beyond yes so what does Laton do

well like uh L is an early stage Venture Capital fund investing in the preced seed stage uh gaming companies as well as it also nine gaming apps uh companies uh mostly mainly in tury but also let's say Beyond turkey as well yeah well congratulations on that news today thank you and and talking about like all three of you are incredibly successful already I mean we're not me yeah you're you're beyond success yeah people are kind of like gunning towards that direction and I'm I'm really curious to to understand the origin stories of your companies and what were the the challenge that or or the uh the problem that you started to solve like why did you start your company so remember if we start with you yeah thanks um I guess like when we built the company back in 2012 uh the the mobile game was exploding so there weren't many

established like game mechanics like merging I like match three that kind of stuff uh like there were lots of ideas I guess the since we were from since we were kind of like technical Founders uh with my co-founders and the initial team we wanted to I guess the the idea was uh to to remove the guest work from the game design and like since we are technical guys we just wanted to build a like a data driven uh gaming company so that's why we um like created this prototyping culture every Friday was all about prototyping like every I guess in the beginning we were just like five or six people but even when we were around like 100 people uh 50 people here 50 people in London uh on every Friday we were prototyping I guess uh like I'm really proud of saying this in everywhere but we were really happy to be able to kind of like kill around I

know like 30 or 40 games every month wow hyper casual before hyper H like it was uh like I think we were the first company who coined that term as well uh the hyper casual stuff like we were doing hyper casual kind of like games like prototyping because we were giving people just like a single day two Fridays just to finalize the game uh and even the kind of like the button designer uh knew what uh retention was because back then I know like right now it's not the case the CPI wasn't a big problem uh like you were able to kind of like acquire like many people with a single Dollar in every part of the world back then so I guess uh like we wanted to kind of like build a data driven company with a high data literacy even uh like kind of like uh having the button designer or UI designer or the game designer knew what uh they want what's the importance of day one to day

T to retention uh while trying to keep the creativity as well not killing the creativity I guess that was the kind of like the U like the the the driving Factor behind our success uh like from the early days of 1010 to all the peak revenues we did with u merch dragons that was the problem we tried to solve I guess it got it so unlike many gaming companies you didn't start off with like creativity but more with data yeah and like not very technical yeah it's it's a hard balance though because like you have creative people you can't just like oh no like green doesn't work because the retention doesn't say that you have to give them the creativity but you just tell them okay you want to kind of like turn this UI into I know like the purchase button buy button into kind of like a green button just create a few variations and then put it onto an AB test you have the autic guy here and then you will see which color works best because they those kind of stuff were not established back then right now like

there are lots of from your blog post ear blog post and like many other successful gaming companies you can just like take a look okay you have to put the um most expensive package into the first place the button should be but back then I guess like uh we were was kind of like creating trying trying to establish a data driven uh game development culture while trying to keep the creativity awesome what about the what do people say about Graham nowadays so I didn't know know the 30 Games a month that's a lot so that that's that's amazing but volume negates lck right so you if you test everything probably you are going to hit like a really great title and it was amazing that I didn't know the strategy so I'm really amazed I'm trying to still process this so what people are saying about gram yeah if they're OG like if they're like within the gaming for more than five or six years so I think there's a huge chance that they are a fan of tan because I was a fan of T I played like really really huge hours into this game and uh I think

Gram's success is like one of the igniting factors that also enabled Peak dream and also this turkey ecosystem so and I we look up to gr gram in terms of the company culture and also the structure so all good things does it when when you were starting off like I mean you've had the the rocket ship of rocket ships of a start yeah does it when when you have these successes in in the ecosystem like grah like Peak like dream uh just to name a few does it make it easier to kind of to kind of say well those guys did it like I've met me he's not he's nothing impossible like I can do it too or is there that kind of a feeling or like yes I think I think so because before let's say p gram or dream we couldn't imagine the mobile gaming ecosystem that huge in in Istanbul so some somebody doing it

sets an example for later stage incomers and it it was really inspiring for us to see what Peak dream grum succeeded and it still is it still is a huge motivation for us moving forward yeah well tell me about the the start of grand like how did you how did you get started where did you come from and you know before you blew up so quickly so we are three founders and all of us has been working on good job games before so we are coming from an employee background yeah and the pains we had was actually from the pains that we were actually an employee at guap games and also any other gaming company in Turkey I don't uh separate Gap in terms of culture and otherwise so the the biggest pain we had was every game started to look like identical so everybody was trying to uh emulate what dream games did in terms of trying to do match three puzzles or Tom BL similar structures and we were really we were really pissed

that there is no product differentiation nowadays and we are coming from an era that hyper casual was booming and every week you you could see lots of different games and you were to you get to enjoy lots of different tastes and this is the biggest pain we had so in terms of strategy we wanted to do something really different compared to any other mobile gaming company that is operate operating in turkey and the second biggest pain we had in terms of starting GR was ownership and this is huge for us in terms of culture and also values because at guap games or any other company that uh that is successful and operational Founders really have huge sa in what is going to do and what is going to what game we are going to do Etc and we wanted to emulate the super cell culture which is like ownership of small Studios to Turkey because this is a pain for us we have seen what it can do in

the long run in short term if there is a problem Founders tend to fix it but in long term it has consequences in terms of employee uh trust and also employee ownership so we wanted to do this the long way which is like super celles way in my opinion and if I were to summarize my answer strategy and also culture is the biggest pains that we are soling as Grand strategy and culture yes tell me about the other culture of of grand game like is it decentralized in a way yes it is I'm still not happy with the mechanic of car match that is like a the the definitive statement in terms of like this is the proof we were at like month four everything was uncertain and we we bet on people rather than ideas and if the product owner of car match believes it is the correct mechanic and if I'm not certain that it is wrong we go go that way and we see action produces

information and then we adapt interesting how do you balance that off like because that's a that's like in theory that's great and that's how it should be decentralized command you can make the calls but in practice usually like now you don't have the problem but when you have a finite Runway yes and every decision you make is either life or death in the way of the company and so it's hard to give away that ownership because in the end if the company goes down it's your fault it is how do you balance that uh like and how have you been balancing it of U of as you said I don't make the call unless I'm certain it's wrong one like how do you how do you find the the the certainty that you need to interfere so if it's like game-changing in terms of life or death decisions in terms of game design I tend to discuss the idea and if I'm certain that it is wrong I intervene if I'm not certain I don't and

I tell the idea I tell what I'm thinking and there are there are some cases that we find the middle ground and go on a really uh let's say middle way but there are some cases we disagree and commit and I think we have lived this in the most uncertain era of Grant and if we can pull this off at that era I think we can pull this off now because at month four or five we were a struggling company that that is trying to survive right now we are trying to scale so the stress level within the company is less compared to what we what we were enduring there and I think it depends on the person if you can't find that person that you fully trust I don't think this ownership model works if you can find that person I think it works fascinating yeah hiding is the key yeah finding the right people how did it work at Graham game same same same I totally agree my like since I'm not the CEO of the

company my kind of like uh methodology was uh like when when I tried to kind of like do the less interview they go from stages of course like technical interviews and then culture and then I did the final interview and then like in the 50 in the first 15 seconds or something if I can say okay I can share a beer with this guy okay let's just hire him like that was the in the first 15 seconds I would make the decision there's something like that with SAR as well from P he shares the same idea but again it's the like because like we we didn't have any kind of like mener rooms like we had the same culture as well uh so uh it was always kind of like finding the right T because you have to provide lots of responsibility so uh if they want to take one of the prototypes uh that we didn't kill to production they could just like do that and you have to give them that responsibility to be able to give that kind of power you have to find the right people I think that was the one of the biggest problem that is

the challenge that we are still enduring in terms of yeah because dream and Peak really have and gram also have the top talent and most of the talent there is like compared to us is a bit risk ofers and I'm not talking about grum but dream and Peak has a really cult-like structure so if you're working there yeah if you're working there you don't think about any other any other gaming company because you think you're working at the best place ever and you don't question it whether you are at the right spot or whether it's the correct career move for you to stay there mhm and it is hard to convince people in terms of okay there might be some other options that can benefit you rather than staying at dream or Peak and right now we are really close to Breaking that wall but it was hard for us to do that the dream wall hey game makers we got something super cool to share with y'all last year hybrid casual games proved there more than just a trend they are a

game-changing force in the industry that's why deconstructor fund teamed up with none other than meta to crack the code on hybrid casual success our new and free hybrid casual Playbook dives into what's driving this explosive growth the kpis you should aim for cornerstones of hybrid casual design how to structure your development process maximizing inap ad and Ina purchase revenues and growing your hybrid casual game now whether you're you're a veteran or just getting started this Playbook is your ultimate guide to understanding the market perfecting the business model and unlocking success download it now by following the link in the description below and level up your hybrid casual game today well talking about other uh companies and leadership styles like like gam you work with with and talk with every Turkish studio is this typical or atypical this sort of a uh decentral command I think it's a bit atypical like

the majority of the time I think the standardized approach is just simply all the decisions are uh at the founder which simply creates a bottleneck after some amount of time because the company scales team scale number of decisions that the founder needs to give a single day is basically capped that's why that I really uh let's say uh respect the approach of decentralizing the decisions like it is in uh Grand and it is in gr and basically this is how you scale uh major companies uh it was the same in the supercell as well they publicly announced it but I think uh it's an Innovative approach for the Turkish ecosystem yeah huh well let's let's talk briefly what not briefly in in as long way as you want to say like what were you solving when you started the fund before going back to uh to the question to the question well like uh uh cuz it's you're not the first Turkish fund I

think no we are not the first Turkish fund yeah but first by a Turk first by a Turk first Sur not first by a Turk but first first first by somebody who surname is Turk well I think like the at the original point I think it was one and a half years ago or something I just thought about two simple uh hypothesis to start a fun if there's an uh need in the market the first thing is that I thought about the great companies that we as Turkish ecosystem has created like gram dream Peak Etc and then I thought that why not to create a fund who can do the same Excellence level who can catch the same Excellence level in the investor profile we have created the best talent we have created the best companies why not to create the best Fund in the world which can just TAPS in the same ecosystem that was the hypothesis one and the hypothesis to was that the way that let's say a fund is approaching to his portfolio companies I was just thinking about like can it be

done differently so I'm I'm not a fund manager before Laton I'm basically a UA guy we were working with and not a former founder like many no no like not an investment Bank yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah why are you running a fun yeah I'm learning learning at the first one so like I was just thinking that what happens if you bring the best of best in a single house like the best people who have done it before as the backers of the fund the exit Founders like best Founders that you can invest in and simply double down and operationally supporting them pretty hands on like I know it's a buzzword for most of the investors or Partners out there but what happens if you go really deep like being a let's say daily Ally I think these was the two hypothesis and simply obviously because uh being a bridge between the Turkish gaming ecosystem and international e gaming e system meaning that giving any type of

an investor be it angel investor be it IND individual and be it a corporation give access to Turkish best startups and the vice versa taking the Turkish knowhow and applying it to the non-gaming Turkish companies so these were the main uh gaps that we need in the market while starting lot and one of your uh limited partners so investors into your fund is supercell so have you connected him with supercell not yet but like he talks about the culture yeah I think I think I think you need to go visit he already had had his hands full in terms of Operational Support so the the the biggest challenges we had for for like within the first six months was like we weren't operational on Google Play let's say no because we were banned due to some unheard of reasons so connecting us with ilka wasn't his top priority he was trying to handle all the operations in terms of make ground operational first then set the stone for later yeah well well you said something interesting when you we're talking about like how your company wants to be

different one is how you lead the company uh which is of course different to traditional Turkish companies or any companies and the second part was the product strategy of like everybody is copying everybody and you want it to stand out and so I'm curious to understand like on the ecosystem side like how you're seeing it because like looking from outside the Turkish ecosystem has gone from like the early puzzle and merge successes to hybrid casual successes no to hyper casual hybrid casual it's what next because like match seems to abely full merge full hybrid casual really hard hyper casual kind of done already yes so now it's the hybrid casual so look like what's happening on the product side where's the uh the next growth for this ecosystem does it come from product Innovation does it come from uh the ways of working Innovation well in my personal opinion let's say I will a broader answer and a narrow one

and the broader answer is that you know like before this chob at Google I was interviewing with uh new grats fresh out of University and you know what like uh we weren't able to hire the best of best uh every time like in the turkey simply they go to gaming companies like I don't know many of the countries where the best talent of that country is going to Simply the gaming companies and choosing the gaming like not Consulting not IB not big Tech anymore but gaming what I mean is that like the trends can change you know it was puzzle and then let's say uh it was hyper casual it was hybrid casual the thing I am trying to say is that no matter where the trend will go the brightest Talent of the country will find a way to adapt and let's say uh build a scalable business model in that uh Market I think that's a unbeatable Edge that the country has if I just want to Deep dive in the details personally I think turkey simply is the best country in terms of puzzle knowhow like beat

hyper hybrid full casual I think we we have best of best talent knowhow and experien in uh puzzle and unlike the rest of the industry I personally think that uh puzzle puzzle is way far away from being a red ocean like Grand has proved it uh recently and then we keep seeing companies I think there are plenty of areas that you can uh still innovate within the puzzle and scale so I personally think that at least for the short term or let's say for the midterm there are plenty of room to grow uh in the puzzle sub genre where Turkish ecosystem can do better than anywhere else and turkey has had like steam hits as well like battle bit yeah uh the uh was the man Lords down here as well Liar's bar liar bar Mana Lords so so it's like not only like there's plenty of yeah yeah yeah but uh yeah B how do you see this uh ecosystem evolving like in terms of like product you have been into the

system so please started AI company even like you moved you moved also to to a different direction yeah I think like with uh with those experiences I had and I'm also like trying to kind of like meet new people who are looking for like uh like resources and um I like uh like even some gaming companies and non gaming companies I think the way I look at the next like paradigm shift or the next era of the gaming is I think it will be about like creating an experience for the user so um maybe I know like it will be like the help of AI so for example um I can just like give examples from like gr games because I know the data there so people were waiting like two weeks for us to kind of like draw some NE and know like the N Egg N dragons animating them but like think of people just like getting to the game and like generating their own and

like uh dragon or egg in like in real time with with AI or new technology I guess uh like we are like this is the first kind of like the steps we see but I think it will be uh of course like there will be some new mechanics as well but since like the the competitiveness of the market is kind of like building up uh I think like it will not be just a n uh kind of like Get creating any new mechanic or something but it will be about like uh connecting those mechanics in a in a in a better way to create like a great experience so I think that's the case for the media as well it's uh like right now like people are kind of like trying new technologies trying to new stuff I think um that will be the same uh for for the gaming as well like we have seen Paradigm Shift every 10 year and we all already passed that 10th year threshold I think we will see some new experiences coming to Mobile gaming or

nonmobile gaming and that will be the like the winning strategy I believe I think you can back me on this but like back then 10 years ago there weren't a lot of people that know Unity development and there weren't lots of artists that were interested in Mobile gaming and any other sector so in terms of hiring I think the the pool has enlarged tremendously but in terms of strategy I think the and strategy and also Excellence within the product I think the bar has risen so I think it's impossible to hit a let's say amazing title with Hyper casual quality now I think the the bar has risen to hybrid casual level at minimum but hiring is like in terms of pool grow grow tremendously so we are probably going to see lots of new gaming companies moving forward and I think the best is yet to come in terms of turkey well you you mentioned that best talent goes into gaming

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that are quick to implement letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience ready to ship fully featured engaging games check out hero today at heroic labs.com good question I think there are few answers to that the first one is that people simply want to cowork with the best so I think like the best talent in the University simply goes to gaming and they see their let's say uh fellow friends and so on they just want to be operate in an environment where let's say smartest people operate I think the second one is that there isn't any other vertical at least as far as I know in Turkey is that uh statistical statistical wise give you that let's say ambition or hope that like at the very young of an age you can make a huge amount of money with a very scalable uh business model like it's not about just money but like you can just make a huge success story with a let's say monetary reward in a

relatively very young age and I think another uh reason at least uh in my opinion is that that sector is one of the few sectors that turkey is simply best at in the entire world so if you're at the heart of something uh which is the heart of mobile gaming in Istanbul why not to go to anywhere else like if I were to go to college uh right now I would also choose simply get why not to go anywhere else you know where the best uh people developers like statistical people were going uh like from the bestest uh like universities before gaming private Equity no make another guess ah Banks Banks well kind of the same like like there were some kind of like uh like they were doing some events to hire the best people and uh like I was uh like with them with some of the events and we

were just like trying to tell the banks have no future in terms of kind development come work with us you love gaming we kind of like create games like that was the case that was the alternative in Turkey because people were just like kind of like doing that uh and they were thinking that okay that's the kind of like the top for a developer right now it just changed and I'm really proud of like people working on different stuff I understand totally where it comes from cuz like you know growing up in in Finland and being in a business school and then like looking for my next career for me gaming was also the thing because it's either that or like it's not even that because I was thinking about like what to do as I graduate and as you said banking or Consulting but you'd be working in your own country so it's not so it's like you're selling beer in Finland or like nor like or like you're not there where they make the Big Brand decisions all the global brands are somewhere far and in gaming if you're really good in gaming in Turkey you're the best in the

world yes and you're and the entertainment that you create is automatically Global and it's scaled everywhere and so I wanted to kind of like ask the question of like of um well probably with you m like how's how has your view of scaling changed over time because when you started early on and you scaled your company how do you look at scaling right now company scaling yeah I think like the the the reason why like turkey became the gaming Hub was uh the uh like people treated the constraints as advantages uh like whether knowingly or not uh because like as you know like before Lon there were not kind of like specific game specific kind of like VCS who were interested that kind of stuff so I guess like scaling a company uh like back in my time I think I can say that after years maybe I guess the the the the uh there

were lots of kind of like challenges uh scaning the company of course like uh accessing to resources like uh smart money and also kind of like getting uh like into good networks like with app markets and like the big companies back them Facebook and like Google we were spending huge money there I think it was the biggest part but I guess the the biggest struggle we had was like hiring during the scale uh so we talked about it kind of like earlier but I guess uh in 2015 after we saw that 10an had I know like 30 or 32% day T attention we said okay like now is the time let's double down to kind of like hire the best people uh because we didn't know how to find and kind of like hire the best people and kind of like utilize them and and get their potential out uh

I guess we went from 15 to 45 uh in 2015 I guess that was the biggest kind of like the problem uh looking at the companies I uh Mentor uh I I see that problem even nowadays scaling a company because scaling a product whether it is a gaming like game mobile game or a I don't know a product or a hardware is not not uh all about kind of like uh hiring like more people and then like creating more products or creating more features or developing more futur I think it's uh trying to establish a new culture uh while keeping the uh like the while keeping the people happy in the company because when you are scaling a company uh you are trying to establish a culture while getting more people inside and you don't have an established culture so for example uh in our uh kind

of like work agreement uh paper people were signing uh it's uh forbidden to drink uh anything alcohol like consum uh alcohol in uh in the office but we had a full open bar uh like those kind of stuff like were kind of uh like the the thing we were trying to kind of like uh establish but we weren't ready for the for example I know what's the case right now but we didn't have stock option we were kind of like trying to do Phantom shares even after we did the exit with ground games people didn't have any signed stock options we just gave them our word and then like we a lot of so I guess money on the back of the like the back door like okay they all all they had was our kind of like word for them okay like when we did an exit we will give you money that kind of stuff some like you promised yeah oh I

forgot when yeah I just like even with with those kind of like problems scaling uh is like the the big struggle we had with scaling was the highing like increasing the head count while trying to keep the uh culture we were trying to establish but the one you're scaling now right yeah and this is the exact problem that I feel that we are experiencing because you mentioned like you opened the discussion with this so you raise the fastest series even though it's a blessing it it has also a curse side because we have to grow really fast and since our culture is based on ownership we can't really grow team size that huge amount so we have to keep the team small ownership large and that is going to be the biggest challenge that for us moving forward because marketing is in in terms of Basics it's spending money and earning money it's basic math so in order to create the value that can scale is the biggest problem that companies

should focus on so and that is that all ties up to hiring and hiring the right people not over hiring or not under hiring and also trying to keep the balance between uh Studios as well yeah so that is going to be my biggest challenge for like one or two years well M said like it was the challenge to keep the culture or even build the culture while at the same time bringing more people and culture is incredibly NE way it's like basically it's almost like saying a brand or a culture it's like we don't know what it you know exactly means but we can kind of explain it and so as you're building your culture like even referencing to some ilas interview that that came oh was on the speedrun thing he said like the one thing that he wished or one of the many things he wished he would have done differently was to establish the culture in a written way and so have you done anything that way cuz like when you have it written you like any religion everybody can follow it like cult yes

that's of course that's but like have you gone to that place where you have to write it so that people can follow it rather than interpret what you mean yeah right now our culture is how we behave each other so as Founders we try to establish the the good communication that is required in order to eess Communication in terms of moving forward and also uh I think culture is set and Stone after people are trying to emulate what we doing and I can see that when we were only 15 people yeah doing the series around so we added like we expanded the team like eight people after the series a round is complete and I'm trying to establish that with the new headcount now and I once I feel like I'm secure in terms of everybody's established the culture and everybody's embraced it I think I can enlarge the team but uh my kpi is if the behaviors between me and I and

gam and you are similar and if they are similar that's okay and if we were to let's say move into the new office which we are still trying to do we are probably going to write some values in terms of there everybody can see yeah yeah or not even like values but like whatever it is like I read the other Mr Beast had had written like like it was like very much in his way and the Nike has the same thing where Bill Knight wrote like quickly of like what he means to run this company so so so that's kind of like in your plans at some point you'll see that people are not listening to you then you go to a room and then you write quickly and then just sorry nail it on on the uh on the wall but but Phil Knights also mentions that he overdid it right so he he wrote like 100 values I think that's a bit too much I think you have to keep it like five to six in order for the remembrance and also embracement so I can't remember a 100 values myself yeah of course I'm not expecting anybody to to do that as well so we are probably going to keep it low

in numbers but high in meaning so fascinating and the culture book and everything yeah Grand yeah sh big fan yeah gim like you're seeing many companies scale uh and you're hoping naturally that every company that you're a part of scales grow me fast like what kind of a like what what learnings are you seeing in in what works and and what can be done better cuz like this is the most challenging thing is when the when the company scales like it it really is because I one thing I just I I just remember because I get to talk to Founders often I was talking to this you know American founder his company is scaling like crazy I think they did the series B already it's like super fast every revenue and he's like bringing everybody just flying everybody in like you're the best come here I'll fly you and like you'll get part of this rocket ship and I was just thinking wow what a hard times to build a company culture where you're just flying all the best people building a real Madrid over there but

everybody has their own ways of working if I bring the best engineer from that that place and the the best designer from that other place like they're you know they're strong individuals who probably want to work in their own way so anyways just kind of thinking of like the challenges of scaling even if you're growing super fast and have infinite money yeah I think it's it's really one of the main challenges uh it's a it's a smooth balance of Effectiveness and efficiency right like you shouldn't be too slow you shouldn't be too fast like you should be just right uh and what is right I think it depends we see that you know like companies like supercell Peak they really operated with super super small teams and Etc and also we have seen super successful companies who has operated with let's say relatively larger team so I just don't Target that there's just a single right but I think you just as a Founder you just need to Define your own right which maximizes

the Effectiveness and efficiency and you should be just let's say in that uh Cadence what I see like one of the main let's say uh not in terms of just scale but in general one of the main challenges that I have seen I think in almost like I have worked with more than 50 or 60 Founders in the past six years in my former and uh current capacity I think like the main mistake that I solve uh is that sometimes Founders question themselves uh either too soon or too late I think that questioning whatever you are doing scaling the company product strategy whatever that important decisions for that time being it shouldn't be too let's say uh soon because you need to give uh enough commitment and time to yourself uh to experiment that strategy and it shouldn't be obviously too late uh until it's too late so what do you mean in like questioning yourself like imagine that like you feel the efficiency is

decreasing in the company or imagine that product simply doesn't work like kpis are not there you are burning burning money and Etc I think like and you are the guy uh if you don't have a like a sish culture uh we were just discussing about people are let's say giving their own decisions but imagine that it's a typical company where founder is giving all the decisions I think like you should basically simply uh Cut the Rope uh whatever is going right uh not too late not too soon I think like the more problem I see in the Turkish Founders is too soon give up too soon not give up it's not giving up like they never give up it's not it's not in the dictionary don't give up quit quit too soon train your thing like TR like let's open the second s this thing is not going to work like let's make the planb double Opex double the head count we like uh give up it's not give up like even the even the money is off it's not

give off like it's refill for the Turkish Founders but I think that's one observation I have but I think it's it's embedded in our culture because it it is common for us to have high expectations and people with high expectations tend to have low resilience and with low resilience I think resilience matters in success and it is in our culture to uh enjoy the road and also trying to reach to point A to point B so it it really matters a lot for example for car match the process of understanding the level design took us 6 months and we were really close to let's say killing the game but trying going over that Journey really taught us much compared to let's say magic sword day one was 55 when we launch the game so we didn't learn anything from magic sword but with car match we did learn and it is a really blessing for us to go through that p as well because I don't think it's fair to let's say assume everything going to be great and for for a startup it is crazy to assume that because lots of days are

not that that bright in terms of results so we learned the process way butan do you doubt yourself I I I do doubt myself every day by so I I'm not sure if it's too late or too soon we'll see but I think questioning yourself can be a curse and also a blessing as well so I'm not trying to second guess everything that I do I'm just trying to make sure that we make the right decision with the limited data that we have at that time how do you push forward because like it's it's a it's a pretty natural question because most people you know doubt their decisions and especially because it takes time before you see whether this uh where whether I'm on the wrong path or the right path or what I should switch so how do you kind of on your day-to-day kind of s like um build the confidence that what you're doing even though it's not working is what you should be doing so we try to separate the two motivations one of them is

external so the external motivation is if a game succeeds so we get validated from the users and we try to find an internal motivation as well so which is like for magic sword it was making the best water sort game ever in the genre so even if the game failed we knew we have succeeded in terms of the art and level design also the product overall look and feel so if the in a purchase bet for Magic sord failed we still find peace in terms of fulfilling the internal motivation that we had and if you combine it with only external I don't think I think burnout is inevitable even though the success comes so what we do is we try to mix internal and external wait a minute if you combine it with external burnout is inevitable if you if you only focus on external burnout is inevitable meaning like external validation yes exactly interesting what do you think about that MTH that was the same for us as well in the early days of merch dragons uh 1010 was

just like uh because it was the at at Driven uh Revenue model uh it was kept uh to to to an extent of course but for Merch dragons I think we started with just like $300 a day and then climbed up to the a million dollar a day with the Live Events and everything I think again uh like when we started scale that game like we always had lots of ideas like looking at the like the feedback we were getting from the users we were doing lots of user testing that kind of stuff we also getting a lot of ideas from the game designers we had we were like we used to have two or three teams uh like building features for the game but we were just like trying to take calculated risks I guess like with the help of the data driven culture like I guess like most of the time for us uh um um like we were just able to see the

things that we should prioritize or we should kill or we should uh like double down on that kind of the features I think that kind of like culture helped us to find the right pet even with did some uh wrong choices yeah what is your take on that right way on which one on external and internal I'm really curious uh external validation versus internal yeah it's a I am so I would say I had the same problem when I was a Founder is that I would merge the the success of the company with my own feelings of like my selfworth and that become That's not healthy because companies go up and down and sometimes you know sometimes it's not even tied to you sometimes it's tied to the market sometimes to this so for example if you're going through a funding round and if you're not getting your your funding then it's I'm not good enough not the company's not good good enough but but if you're tied yourself and I think that's very unhealthy yes uh

and you have to separate yourself from the company um and I do agree that's why I asked you about the burnout like yeah the burnout is definitely there if your whole identity is tied to your company's success yes and that's not on your control which is like external and also no company is always successful yes and so that means you're preparing yourself for for for bad times and if we're talking about startup then there's over 99% chance your company goes under so it's like not even a good idea to tie yourself into into a highly likelihood of a fail because you're just setting yourself for a failure and failure are for people like nobody's perfect so you have to give yourself that kind of like space to make some wrong decisions of course this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just

insightful it's essential enter apps fer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps sler where your app's potential meets performance talking about that like um failure uh if we're talking about American culture then failure is like natural part of course he's going to fail not for turkey exactly that was my questioning it's like do you Saddle Up Amer like well you burn through $5 million let's get a new round and let's start a new company that that cap table already looked bad let's go again but like was it like in Turkey like what if uh what if you fail let's say you get through seed maybe series a and then failed then fail then money Runs Out you

can't find a new hit and you kind of dwindle away I think it is pretty tied to the culture itself not just at the gaming like people obviously to be honest will not let's say uh commercially gift you like it's in American culture okay let's say you have blowed up x amount of yeah this is the new one now you learn this is the new one it it could happen by the way but like a typical let's say muscle uh is not that but I don't think it's also people punish you or let's say people evaluate your own uh personal attributes like people will just try to I don't know give you morale and motivate you in Turkish culture I would say like it will be not neutral like and I think it's it's very it's very let's say different like it's a different culture like it is when you are on that road and when you're in there like people can criticize you but like once you fail I think they will be not that critical like because it could

have happened to them as well because you moved to alenia by that time and nobody know where you are no and they feel that it's could have happened to them as well like you never know as you say you never know like it could have happened to anybody but like they will not give you okay learning is done $5 million more it's not it's not happening that was a good learning experience no no I completely agree with you yeah so failure is like a real thing that there's a fear of failure here yeah yeah definitely like you do everything not to fail when you fail you try to hide it and that's same thing in our culture like even when you fail at a class uh you have the same stuff at school like that's what your culture kind of like teach hide your like insecurities failures and that kind of stuff so it's really hard and also one other thing about our culture is uh like we take everything personal yeah that's very

healthy when you have I think that was one of the problem we had like uh we had around like uh 45 people in London and then we were kind of like giving our kind of like Turkish people okay like he he did say that he said that that level you designed uh didn't uh kind of like work and it created some issues but it's not about you it's about level so you don't have to kind of like get into a discussion or kind of stop talking to him so it's just about the game it's just a game so after that discussion you can still have a share a beard like don't take personal that kind of stuff it's one of the kind of like this advanage we have but also it's sometimes a blessing like like the things I said like sometimes you take tra this kind of like stuff constraints and of like the cultural heritage kind of stuff into into uh kind of like um I like in a in a in a in a good way yeah

everything everything good has its cons and everything bad has it has it problem like if there's a true fear failure then people don't give up because you have to go till the end uh and and um well I'm I'm curious to like mentioned some of the uh the sort of constraints or the downsides what other downsides there are in the uh in the tur CH system what should I take if you I need to be political yeah I will be political well like uh nothing since no we work too hard since we have since we have so many good funded Studios obviously uh turkey is by the way for the record I have just checked the data before coming here from crunch Bas for 2024 like for the gaming sector turkey was the most dollar invested country in the entire gaming for preced SE mob capital yeah number of deals all the capital is simply number one so we have

the capital and this capital is trying to hire limited number of people meaning that like there is a 90 million Turks and they're trying to hide you know wishfully like all of them are working for that's why they are yeah there's a supply demand let's say uh discrepancy in the hiring stuff so that's one uh Challenge and disadvantage uh about the industry ban obviously can comment better he's just experiencing it every day that's one thing like there is so many so much money and there is let's say limited uh amount of uh Talent so hiring is hiring let's say bottleneck is one Challenge and I think the Second Challenge if you would let's say call it challenge but it is something some fact since we are so good at casual and since we are so good at innovating around casual puzzle somehow Market is let's say concentrated around casual puzzle it is good again as an investor I will double down on this I like this I think

it's the I don't think like it's the data it is the biggest let's say sub genre in the mobile and there is still let's say uh plenty of areas to go in there but still I think if you're are betting on this industry to be the main let's say uh startup path of the country I think somehow we need to learn how to innovate how to be let's say uh Bal in trying something different as well uh that's also a challenge let's put like concentration in a uh single specific genre in my opinion yeah what do you think so in terms of dream and Peak success in terms of the blast and also M genre I think it had its Rippling down effects with the other let's say gaming studios in Turkey because I think it is also coming in our uh culture to let's say find the easy path to success trying to find that easy to shortest path to success and what uh most of the gaming companies saw was

okay dream did this and they really got successful so if you were to let's say do the exact same thing they're probably going to be successful but uh I'm not sure if this is like the right strategy in terms of because this is the feeling based uh sector let's say this is not really in terms of if you do the if you copy the same structure and also the same methodology I'm not sure if it's going to work you have to make the game playay and also the part also perfect and I think it it made its effect on Turkish ecosystem by making the product differentiation really small due to the huge successes of dream and Peak and it is going to change I hope so I hope we be we will be the let's say uh top of the industry in terms of trying out new games and we can be the example for the other uh new newcoming gaming Studios to test something different fail that's okay you're probably going to fail at Match 3 also so fail at something that

is going to take G guts and also take some risk this is our approach and uh this is this is helping guts by the way as of now since this is the uh current current ecosystem in Turkey so so basically two kind of like major thing one is the talent pool which again it has pros and minuses because on one hand um the pros there is you have compact teams and compact teams are faster and so the the you know the speed that Turks you know release games is insane much faster than somebody else using AI you've already shipped and pivoted by the time they're they're getting their their first you know Market tests in and then um and then on the other hand is the product uh it's like yes you're expert at casual and Casual puzzle games especially but then it brings volatility because you're only expert in one well kind of one big category with its subg genres but and move forward and the talent pool is is also a challenge because like you can't grow your team

sizes too big because you're used to working in smaller teams and there's a restraint on how much talent you have and because you have compact teams that limits you from going towards other genres that need more people whether it's Social Casino or strategy or RPG all those are really manhe heavy um development cyes so kind of asking there like how come you haven't um like like why is the talent pool so small like can't you draw Talent from outside turkey attention app and game developers are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games with sensor Tower you get the ultimate Competitive Edge whether it's breaking into new markets fine-tuning your UA strategies or boosting mization dive into Data like never before track Global Trends across app stores an ize Market leading inap purchase and inap AD strategies and Benchmark your

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very fast I think the talent pool is increasing as said like the fresh grats University they keep flocking to the gaming but like the pace like the uh I think the monetary support it's is going faster than the uh talent pool it will take time it will take time these guys just enter to the companies as the entry level but again please correct me let's say if if I see the perspective different but what I see is that the main bottleneck is somewhere around let's say mid level and also the lead level rather than the entry level in entry level there are plenty of University graduates who want to come to gaming and learn but the bottleneck is just basically somebody who knows it and just you can just day one can be operational right exactly so the biggest challenge we have is product owners not product managers or like Junior artists senior yes but why can't you hire them do they have to be Turks I think so because due to our culture based on communication so gaming is a multidisciplinary let's say uh area so you have artists you have 3D artists you

have developers you have product managers you have growth so the team has to communicate with each other perfectly if if you hire someone outside of turkey and try to mix it blend it in with a Turkish people like a Swede yes I don't think it will work but you can maybe you can do an out of turkey team full fully composed of English speaking people that you can do but I'm not sure trying to blend then someone that can speak that cannot speak Turkish will be helpful to us at this stage maybe like in two or three years later so can change so your company as you said is limited by hiring essentially only Turks and there's limited talent pool and especially experienced Turks EX in gaming but but um but M you opened up a studio in London and you hired a bunch of foreigners yeah how did that go for you we we had to ban uh speaking Turk yeah that's like even when even with my

managers for example like like FL of Turkish people mhm uh I tried so hard to change that but uh I wasn't able to uh that's one of my regrets but even when we were going I wasn't smoking but since they were smoking when we were kind of like having a scet outside in our hammeri office with my Turkish managers we used to talk uh we wanted to talk English because like one of the employ could come and talk to us and like we could uh like we wanted them to feel welcome and also it was the same case for turkey before opening our office in London we heard many people from roio uh blizard uh stick for example like who was the designer of Diablo uh they they came to here and they worked for us for some time and Aon like one of our employees the the American spy yeah I think we could say that right now

uh so even after she joined like we had around 40 Turkish uh employees and we hit just like five uh foreign employees and at that point we told everyone okay the English is the only kind of like uh language we had and also it was same for London like I said you have to keep the established culture we moved around like 15 people from here to our London office because didn't want to create a new culture from like didn't want to reinvent the whe from there we moved a good uh portion of uh like our people who knows the established culture very well so that we can build on top of that culture while hiring more people when when you start as a Turk I think that's the the same for everyone when you start talking English it's uh it feels very I know like direct uh to to kind of like foreignness for example you say okay you don't say can you come here you say come here so it's how you say in Turkish uh

it's a nice way but you can just like translate the politeness of like what you want to say in English because you're kind of like you're not really good at so those are some of the cultures and also there are some board games in turkey that can be really I like um looking really bad for kind of like some foreigners especially games board games like yeah like which one I don't want to name them okay but interesting yeah but for for especially for some countries uh very close up and then you see like at some point for example I know like it was around like 2017 or 2018 we were around like 100 people and I saw this message on like hey uh we just bought this game who wants to play this game and there were like some people some minorities let's say in our kind of like company and I pushed every button on S just

to delete that message so you like it's really hard uh but at that point we had a proven success we were kind of like we have some cash uh call games and that kind of stuff so at that point you can spend some resources and you can take that risk to kind of like uh lose a little bit on the communication that uh B was uh kind of like talking about so you can invest in those areas but we couldn't do that in the early days of when we were trying to scale you can just say hey guys let's uh be sensitive about this these are minorities these are kind kind of and how how how have other companies followed What grams did and and brought like foreign talent to to the scale I think as far as I know except gram dream is the only company who has a nont turkey office a physical but in terms of employing non Turkish people there are a few let's say not

many but a few per company but I think the main uh hesitation or let's say dmma the founders heavier is there as you say the teams are so efficient so small operating so fast so I think they kind of feel like a like sugar coating that sentence in English it's also a loss of efficiency or loss of time when you make it 10 time 20 a day right yes maybe they just prioritize Turkish talent but at some point we need to do either expand the Turkish pool or let's say go that direction because the uh company has to scale yeah so it's it's similar than than the gaming companies that are from formed Soviet Union cuz like they all use Russian language as as the as the main language even though they're different countries now yeah and um and for them it's really hard like we had play Ricks on a podcast and it was really hard for them to you know to integrate more people because like once you scale to like 4,000 people and so forth like you're you know that's a big

company already and trying to find more people it's hard and so now they're trying to like very late on to like how do we actually add English and it's probably tough to change the company language yeah yeah so so talking about like challenges like what could the Turkish gaming ecosystem like what could help more Studios to succeed in Turkish gaming ecosystem other than having Leon backing you up yeah you don't have to answer I answered it for you so but but what do you think um yeah we start with you like what talking to many Founders from gaming companies uh like uh in Turkey I guess uh the I guess the like they they should uh really find some mentors uh like guidance get from them like learn from their experiences so it's not just kind of like um I like

getting some uh smart money and I know like hiring the best people but they also have to find a balance uh in their kind of like work uh how they manage the company how they as you know there are lots of dramas uh going on with the Turkish Founders I'm sure that's the same for the rest of the world but here because we take everything person uh I think like uh on top of all of those kind of like problems scating the company and that kind of stuff I think they should uh like it helped me a lot um like I had many kind of like mentors like who helped me with lots of stuff I think like since we have money right now thanks to some specific VCS focus on like and we have some uh like much more Talent like compared to 10 years um like before I think uh like those are the

areas that people should take into consideration like especially the founders so um so so that they can have a like a better Vision uh for how to scale the company how to kind of like find the right money uh and um uh like make the kind of like the like see the um longtail of of this uh of this game uh I think that's one of the issues I see uh so that would really help the companies to um like succeed because it's not just about kind of like finding a game with a good retention or like low CPI and fighting skill so yeah it's 100% are you mentoring people yeah like um I'm like most dedicate my time trying to kind of like talk to people uh that's what I got from my mentors as well uh none of them kind of like accepted any retainers or anything they were just kind of like trying to help me on some

of the ideas whether it was an accountant problem or a Founders uh kind of like fight or that kind of stuff and that's that's the same I'm trying to give it back to the to the founders that makes me really kind of like happy and he's let's say generous enough to offer his support to L on portfolio companies as well oh he he comes as a bonus he doesn't no no no like like when when you get L on you get me to come in be careful he's promising all kinds of things publicly here I'm than I'm more than happy to be used so B what what do you think can help studi s succeed so like everything in life having the best having a good partner helps either it's in marriage either it's in a business relationship or either it's like a funding a company and I really had an amazing time with also with Laton and also backbenches as well and what Laton did in terms of the

early days so if you're starting a company right now I can guarantee that lots of things will go wrong and most of them you you won't be able to let's say forese before you you found the company and there are two approaches when things go wrong either investor can tell you how can I help you which is like laton's way of helping and also all hands in and the the other responses why did why did this go wrong so with the first one you're fighting with someone towards the same cause and with the second one you are trying to report to someone like he is a manager or something so we really had our full share of luck in terms of selecting the right partner and knowing youram for like more than 5 years has helped and when when he told me about starting Laton before he didn't tell I I told him that he should F fund the let's say found the new company in terms of a gaming specialized VC because he has a symmetric knowhow in terms of compared

to any other uh let's say founder uh for a VC because he knows the people he knows their working style much better than a two-hour interview trying to understand the uh full history of that person yeah and he has to use it and he's doing it and I hope everything goes well for him as well so the first one is partner finding the right partner I believe and the second one is so everybody in Turkey now is product focused and trying to make the product perfect but I think somewhere along the line we have forgotten what marketing meant for the business as well so trying to understand the pain points of the users I think has been forgotten with the dream success so understanding the pain points through CPI or let's say trying to combine marketing and product is the new wave of gaming in terms of my opinion and just not just making the game but asking the question of is this product really needed I think the f I think the second best advice that we can

give interesting so choosing the right partners and and marrying product and marketing together exactly holistically what do you think well like I will Echo what said I think the like when the best Founders uh like also uh similarly we were lucky at the Grand games and uh B and Mustafa and me at his co-founders case like when the best uh Founders just ACC companies with the best Partners be it investors speed mentors I think like that is way better in a journey where the founders single or have the let's say uh not the ideal Partners that's that's one thing the second one thing we already had let's say discussed about it being Innovative about let's say hiring product strategy Etc and like as a Founder trying to utilize all the resources in the current market be it other Founders be it let's

say mentors uh like partner uh employees Etc not the investors but like I don't know like ad channels Etc utilizing like the most in our in let's say our very own market and also let's say the other markets I think like the uh rest is simple for a Turkish founder where the uh gut and commitment is there so we men a lot of things that that turkey has a challenges with but the fact is this is still the biggest and the fastest growing mobile like this is the the center and I think the right question would be to ask is like what can other ecosystems learn from the success of of turkey and especially Ean yeah well like let me start in there this is an easier question than challenges obviously well like I was let's say uh we have uh joked about it but let's say this never give up is really at the DNA of Turkish people like I don't know if it's something teachable or let's say uh learnable but like I

didn't see any founder who simply gave up see who simply let's say uh gave up the journey that's one thing I think the second thing is that I will say something let's say much more uh laser focused Market reading in terms of games right I think the Turkish Founders really don't overlook at the data really don't over look at the market reports Etc they really filter out the noise of the external factors uh external let's say uh inputs about the market they took it they took it to their advantage they read the data but they like each founder who has uh created a huge success like with the merge dragons like now with the magic sword like now with the uh other game studios who are successful they have they had a different kind of hypothesis different kind of a market reading that's one thing let's say looking get the market from a different perspective let's put it that way that would be the second learning that can be

taken uh from the uh Turkish ecosystem yeah I think the third one is being efficient let's say full commitment uh without burning out like I didn't I think that's that's something to put on the table like Turkish Founders and teams working insane but like I don't personally remember a single f wonder who have burned out I think it's really a interesting data live in Al H live in Al now yeah I should go to Al don't see them or or they just ask their team members to talk to me when they burn out so like I don't know yeah um okay so never give up attitude ability to read the market and efficiency yeah that my thing what do you think about the I think gam has a symmetric NOA compared to me since he he has the he he gets to meet with lots of Founders from outside of turkey but if I were to

let's say uh I'm completely agreeing with him by the way and the hustle part really helps in terms of since you have a limited Runway the best you can do is try to fail or succeed fast and the best way to do it is work much more than compared to any other let's say country's company and I'm really Amazed by how gr games really pulled off 30 Games within month this is really uh the the summary of like the the edge of turkey in my opinion trying to get the Prototype really fast try to let's say uh learn fast and that is like a huge Edge compared to any other speed to learning and maybe by the way I I think it's important one more thing to add from my side is obsession with product Excellence yeah like look at magic sword look at mer dragons look at Royal match look at toune blust like like these products are not the first ones probably maybe except merge dragons of their genre but they are simply the best

product best executed product uh in an Innovative way in their sub genre I think like Turkish teams have a Obsession in a good way to excel uh in the product quality yeah I think I think uh like adding to all the things uh said I think the iteration cycle uh uh like Fast iteration Cycles would be something they could get from Turkey because if you look at the kind of like the companies uh like in the case of ground games like dream Peak there were always like the advantages from these constraints uh they were small teams who who like which was given enough freedom to take the responsibility I think those were the companies who were successful and if you look at supercell again uh that was the same uh case like uh I remember talking to Timur I guess and I said like

uh was the the first prototype of uh like Clash of Clans really was uh like with uh circles and rectangles and triangles that was the first prototype and he said yes like because the you have to to test the mechanic you don't have to create a 3D model and then render it texture it and then put it into the game after that point I got the idea of kind of like this let's create this prototyping this so they had this fast iteration Cycles with teams who has freedom and responsibility I guess uh we did it here in Turkey because of the constraints we didn't have lots of kind of like a big talent pool uh but I guess it helped us it can help the other companies outside of turkey as well I like asking this question because like it's so easy to not easy but I think we always deconstruct others success but we never deconstruct our own success and it's kind of weird because that's and

and if like when I've deconstructed turkey success like from looking from the outside like tell me if this is totally wrong so you mentioned never give up ability to read the market efficiency speed to Market speed to iteration um when I look at it from the outside I would say you're you're really business focused and that means that not only like how the business does but when you're building a product you're not building from like this is what I always wanted to do it's more like this is what the market needs and what I have resources for and what I can achieve in a certain amount of time like very you know like logically approaching it rather than doing the game for yourself I don't know if you did magic sword for yourself but uh but it's a it's it's a it's a product for a market then um the second one is like as you said like the never give up I would say it's like no plan B like like like people here just go all in and and part of it of course is is is I

don't remember who I was talking about with with this from Turkey but uh but they were just saying like like people's careers are not pre-written like you have to make yourself in this like it's a doggy dog world and you have to make yourself to to the person you be and you can't go on this like a like cushy career path I'm going to go this and I'm going to go there and I'm going to do this I'm going to buy this car and it's like everything is pre-written like in certain countries but here you kind of have to make your own fate and and that that you know that that makes that leads to the other part which is in my experience Turks work incredibly hard like one of the most hardest working people I've I've I've seen in in gaming if not the hardest it's just like the insane amount and even like hearing the stories of dream even at this point I don't remember at what event I hope I'm not like releasing anything but but a person said that um that they were making some big release and then then the the manager came into the product team like okay guys you know cancel your plans we're going to work really hard

and they were like what do you mean we've been leaving at 9 11: p.m. every day it's like what's what plans it's like how can we work harder and um and then that's kind of like normal it's people kind of joke around it but but that's that's what it takes to be on top is is really hard work and and people here understand that and then if you go somewhere else it's like you know people start thinking about like what's the work life balance and the balance is maybe on the long term I was just going to say that after after we opened an office in London the first time I tried started to like hear that term like how is the work life bals at g games I said pardon yeah we we work and then uh on Sundays uh if there's a problem we work we come to the office and then like I was talking to batan like before we started and he said like I'm at the office from 9:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. to until 1 1: a.m. 1:00 a.m. and and and

that's what it takes and you're not glorifying it it's just it is and then but at the same time you're not villainizing here in this culture it's like yeah people work really hard it's not the the mo like you don't you know you invest into it it's not what you always want to do but what you have to do and so there's no point in complaining about they enjoy they enjoy well you know yeah you can but later on you enjoy not doing it so it's but and the work life balance comes maybe throughout the years but you have to put the work in and also there's no other way of kind of like having the success like you you have to work as much as you can like as efficient as you can like exactly it's not a n to five that's the formula you know yeah and then the last part that I would say that that you didn't mention was that the uh one of the success fa factors that I see is the teams like the companies and the teams are homogeneous yeah and we often times say like diversity is really important and it is diversity of mind and so forth is is important but you've as you know

as Chinese teams and some others have been able to build quite remarkable products you know very homogeneous teams and there's nothing to it like you this is how you like to be and it's it creates faster more compact team but homogeneous is your advantage at this point exactly okay well you don't disagree so all right so last question um um what do you think the uh the gaming ecosystem in Turkey looks like in the next three years like five is too hard five is too hard three is like barely at the limit we'll go with you last cuz this is what you think about let's start with Bon yeah so I think uh there there will be more and more companies like us in terms of moving forward and I hope that is my wish and uh we we reach a state like where we can be mentioned with the same sentence with Peak dream type of gram

type of companies so we are trying to set a monopoly in terms of hiring the best talent providing them ownership and stock option of equity and there will be more and more companies that share the same backstory with us which is like employee backed employee turned into Founders and they're trying to test something new and I only I only think it's going to move upwards with dream with dream success with peak's new new title success with us and agave and also other newcoming gaming companies trying to climb their climb their way up to to reach their state I think the ambition level is much higher compared to like 5 years ago and the talent pool is still growing and the pool is in terms of n grats is huge right now so I'm I'm thinking of like three or four great companies which like which is like unicorn status and also five to six really promising companies in the future in the next three years let's say

nice M what do you think I think like we will see much bigger Acquisitions in the upcoming like three years uh like all of the money that uh that was kind of like received by Turkish gaming companies I think it will turned into like really great titles with like great mechanics and like great live Ops um I think we will have a like a solid with all of our kind of like Turkish um gaming companies games in the in the top charts and I think uh hopefully like those those Acquisitions will really help like to kind of like make the kind of like the make our place uh much better and much uh sustainable in in this kind of like being the gaming Capital that's uh what I see basically do you expect a big exit in three years yeah three yeah probably he's invested in all the local funds so he better expect we older old no not

just dream like I I'm I'm sure like dream will make an exit uh but like I think like you there are lots of kind of like very promising like very kind of like great companies doing great stuff and three years will with all the money they got like they that money will not just like bring new users in terms of kind like uh marketing span that kind of it will bring experience like Consultants lots of people so we will definitely kind of like invent N Stuff at n kind of like game mechanics on top of this uh the the games uh that are really successful right now and I think it will definitely turn into like great Acquisitions that is what I believe yeah I believe that well like similarly turkey is currently number one market in the mobile gaming as we have discussed like I think three years time like it will even go further and it will be let's say out of question by far the number one uh Market uh for the mobile

gaming that's let's say uh number one outlook for myself and the second one is about casual puzzle I think like we will stretch the limits in unleashing the full potential of the let's say addressable Market in the Casual puzzle like let's say Grant it for the sort genre and extended Market I think we will just uh create new success stories in the puzzle and let's say make people request themselves like if this was the market they called the red ocean I think this that was the second uh Outlook and the third one hopefully is that like we will see the first let's say Innovative steps about the new genres new titles we are seeing about it's about the steam by the way as you have like let's say uh rightfully mentioned and I think that we will see a few more about that let's say uh in a way the mov yeah red ocean is not a problem red is your favorite color there is there isn't red it's orange for us yeah um I'll mention two things that

I think is going to be helpful for the ecosystem like the ex the AI tools are going to allow you to keep your teams Compact and talent pool is always like the issue that you're saying in all the conversation hiring talent pool talent pool hiring and with AI you know you can stay leader and and that allows you to grow without growing the headcount and and if I would wish something from the ecosystem I would wish there would be more vertical expansion so meaning that there's been expansion in terms of the game genre kind of horizontally of like what can be uh the next type of a thing in in in merge or puzzle or and so forth um it would be great that that vertically expand not only to Steam games and PC uh but it would also expand to to Tools in Tech like I'm just saying because you spend so much money on ads and UA how come you don't have your own adte companies here like it's kind of crazy that's true that that you use everybody else like where's your you

know mediation companies where where are all those companies that are working with you so it's so I think uh you know whoever is kind of moving to that direction you have the talent yeah um to to build also you know the full ecosystem here that that gives you everything not just the creative part totally agree I'm glad that you agree totally agree with that good EXP expansion so on that note um badwan me gim thank you so much for having me and and allowing me to inter inter interrogate you on the the success of of the Turkish ecosystem than you thank you for thank you you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if You' subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service for your choice those stars and likes while a small in your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fun slack

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