How to Bring a Game Company Still Owned by its Founders to the Next Level

[Music] hello yes so cell of winners of sorry [Music] yes sorry about that some problems this wasn't the plan I am actually starting today but I want to tell you that in

case I passed out today it's because I was in a car accident today morning but luckily I survived and all could hear but it was a taxi driver on my way here from the airport so but actually let's call the topic so I started with fingers at around seven months ago it was last summer and when I started there was multiple people asking for me like why did I join the company and it seemed that basically everybody had an opinion about it me joining a rally came company and I don't personally even own a car didn't kind of seem a good fit for me but but then I actually wanted to hear what people think about it and I was listening to them so what did people actually say there were smart buildings and many people said that the finger soft has a amazing IP of course Hill

Climb racing which has been really highly successful and then also like of course that the game was made by Tony who's the founder and he did it alone and it was basically overnight success but then there was something really interesting also what I heard and someone said to me that fingers of is like amoeba and that got me really thinking I was thinking like because my my background is a lot in biology I was studying that before actually before I joined game industry and it caught me really thinking like what is the amoeba really and this is actually the exact definition in medical terms and that really really kind of made me stop I was thinking like if someone calls that that it kind of it's it kind of tells a lot about that also that it's something that changes all the time and and I was thinking maybe that's what winners of these like maybe that's

something that we want to be that that we want to change ourselves all the time and actually to take our our IP for the next level we already have 1.4 billion downloads and I was thinking like maybe there's some potential did to actually take it at the next level so what did I see then when actually started there was a sorry sorry so yeah so it's a mobile image studio based in Finland we have around 60 people we have a pretty cool founder Tony and there was later people of course coming in and at the moment we have 60 people then there is of course all the people who really they are really passionate about what they are doing and they love the case we have and they want to make the real ones and then of course the high P we have so

Hill Climb racing it has been a really great success and it's a self develop and self-published and there's not so many kings which has has even close to 1.4 billion downloads and I think there's still something that we can do about it just to give a comparison there's 7.5 billion people on the planet so if you think about that number it's pretty great numbers to have so actually I came to the conclusion that but we actually have a pretty great things and it if someone actually thinks that we are maybe it's it's a good things being something that it is able to change and do things differently it's it's it could be our strengths and not even our weakness as I thought it and if you think about the whole evolution it's pretty amazing actually to be this

summer and I'm thinking that we could have a still like 1 1 billion years to go ahead and actually change ourselves and and think about it hopefully we don't end up being the dinosaurs but trying to avoid that so what should we do then didn't evolution actually happen by itself how can we actually crawl from this if you go back to the if you go back to the Charles Darby is theory and think about what he actually said so he said that it's not the strongest or the species that survive not the fastest but the most responsive to change and if you think about the gaming interested today the industry is changing around us rapidly in a matter of decades we have seen industries which sing a lot there

has been a premium games and still is of course but it's heavily moving to free-to-play games and of course a performance marketing is a big thing to drive products to growth path and of course the consolidations are happening and our competitors seems to get even bigger now and stronger than we are how can we survive this how can we actually change ourselves and I see that our answer for that is is to make fingers of intercompany that can adapt to dust competition and chains but but also into a place that can attract the best talent so what is what does it mean actually in today's world we will not maybe be the biggest or the fastest but we are we will be definitely the one who's willing to change and hungry for doing that for that we will need two things which we already of course half

but we will need to support those we will need to create people we do have them already but we will need to hire more and really the ones that are really hungry to learn unfriendly humble with the growth mindset hopefully we have those already and I'm super proud of the people we have but our challenge is to keep them growing and learning and make them more make them as adaptable as as as possible to change all changing environment and in the culture we need the right culture I personally believe like more in in a culture at and culture fit I think culture is something that comes from the people and it's not something stable it's not something that we can define that this is our culture we actually have think about it like when we add new people to the culture does it change it and which direction we want to culture the change there's no extra layers extra

bureaucracy or extra steps in our company we have a healthy business with growing revenues and growing profit and this is nice nice things to have for sure then also the presser I think everybody said to me when I started that that I said I basically take all the press survey as a CEO and that would be something that would be like my top priority to do I don't I don't really completely see it in that way I think it's my responsibility to stop creating unnecessary pressure but to keep the one that is needed and not just any kind of pressure but the kind that selects for the survival for the tomorrow's environment we will need people around us who are the best at what they do and take and solve the problems for us there of course there will be always the challenges but we make every need to make sure we have right people for that

environment and who can actually solve those for me and for the whole team it is more like I would say my responsibility to change our DNA our culture and the ways of operating in a way that keeps fingers of the adaptable to change alcohol is definitely to have our people experiencing tomorrow's environment today and prepare for the challenges of course this number of barriers and problems that aren't relevant for our competitive environment and therefore those won't help us to move forward and and I will of course help with those so how do we figure out what tomorrow looks like with the right mix of missionaries and crowd minded people I believe we can do it and actually identifying those end users that are clearly ahead of the curve and learning from them and listening to them and actually making the products for them in Phoenix

envelope was actually called Al Kaline and that can be translated as a starter animal in English for me it says this is the this is only the starting point for us and and with the right kind of environment and people I actually believe that we can make it happen and we can actually make the speaker even then it has been before this is all the starting point for us I believe thank you [Applause] what do you see as your next change or next step in your evolution then so definitely bringing new products in so that's what we are working on at the moment and we actually really focusing

on the early game development phases we have and that's really a key thing for us now at the moment and of course building and seeing new markets for the here amazing IP so that's really exciting times [Music]