How to Ship Successful Word Games with Michael Martinez, CEO of Funcraft

videos go on uh well since we're already recording let's just talk about it so the videos are technically going to youtube if i have a chance to put them on youtube but you know it's kind of like i'm a little bit busy if you will so uploading a video on youtube is one of the last things that i do in my week uh hence there hasn't been youtube uploads on youtube i don't get how you do all of this i don't either i don't either but let's not let's not we're not here to talk about me mr martinez we're here to talk about you mr fun craft so let me just do a little introduction from people who are not on the know uh michael martinez ceo of fun craft previously started off your your career at zynga set up juice box in a in a very very hip location on the side street in san francisco in front of a barber shop in front of a low-key coffee shop just behind the wine bar i was a frequent

visitor of that spot yep great spot yeah then you moved on to ea after juice box closed doors you went to ea you launched one of my favorite ips if not my favorite commanding con and now you're back on the grind back on in the soul aka entrepreneurship so tell me actually let's not talk about that one let's go a little bit of a ahead into the moment today so i'm gonna yeah let's talk about first about fun and then we'll talk more about about uh about your career we got here yeah exactly so we're now talking about fun craft and you had four games come in back to back to back like january 2020 you launched your first game boom next one follow up the third one and then the fourth one and the fourth one is pictor words so three out of four games have been word games one has been a merge game the latest one scaling up nicely what's the story behind that one well we actually had six games believe it or not

so yeah we've had six games and um so pick two words is a turn-based crossword puzzle game and this game is really what we've been searching for the whole time it's like we started out this company we knew the types of games that we wanted to make and we wanted to go fast we knew we had to had to get a lot of games out there um and this is really what we've been looking for great long-term retention great metrics and it's just like once you get a baby like this you just have to nurture it grow it give it all the attention that it needs give it all the fuel give it all the uh exactly yeah fertilizer to to grow um ready to go fast launch a lot of games that's probably coming in from your previous failures right exactly yeah yeah so definitely learned a lot both from juicebox and electronic arts um i think so jason mcgurk and i started

this company together and uh we've known each other for over 12 years now worked together for almost a decade and we really see eye to eye in terms of how to approach making games how we work um and really the opportunities out there and um we chose games that we could get into the market quickly um and that we think a lot of other folks would um would overlook so i actually pitched this concept to electronic arts of hey this is why how i think we should succeed this is how we build free-to-play chops within the team um and it's just un uninteresting to them and i think the types of games that we're making they're going to be interesting to these larger companies um two years down the road um and and will have will have taken over the market by then okay well let's start breaking these thin down so you said you're going to focus on certain genres that are overlooked by the big boys how do you

find these how do you find these pot these these pockets of blue ocean these blue spots in the red ocean yeah it's the whole mobile here in space is just all red ocean it is so brutal everything like we yeah really we usually see each other at gdc and i've always hated gdc because you it is put in your face how many other people are working on games and it's terrifying so you have to be a little bit crazy to do what we're doing um but how we found these these pockets it's really just tons of research so um spending a lot of time on app annie um pouring through the the older um and the the low some trying to find gems on the top grossing um as well as really getting into a habit of just downloading every game that i get an ad for so that was something for a year or two i was just

downloading everything playing everything getting a sense of what's out there um and really looking for these these pockets that we could see were um [Music] types of games that looked like they could grow they had solid metrics already but weren't given the attention or focus or ambition that that we hope to apply to them um yeah i mean you could have just said that you know you redeconstruct your fun look at the economy kind of understand the market as a whole use denser tower and maybe some marketability tools like eat lab or 12 trades to understand the pockets and the audiences to target but instead app annie and just raw play just play play play yeah i'm sure my phone like yours is littered with um with with many many uh pages of of un unfound apps unorganized well i'm i'm now on android and they kind of they

kind of have a this thing called game launcher so it's just like a one app that you tap and it just opens up everything and it's like hey did you play this you want to play that like wow android shout out to you so it's uh it's even even better i don't know if that's a samsung specific but it's pretty cool um okay but why fast like where did that like how did that learning come in so one is i understand you're looking at the market you're very way more market driven and don't ask why that and also why specifically fast like we we all know that fail fast learn fact those are aren't right but why in your particular situation yeah i mean one of i i have this idea that um that a game's success is decided really really early on in the uh conception of the game and that concept will fail or succeed um so i think command and conquer rivals that game was a failure because of the um the core gameplay was too intense

the ip was a mismatch in terms of um command and conquer players didn't want that game and nobody else knew about command and conquer so it's a new ip so i use it and then third um the going going into clash royale territory yeah is a bad place to go so those three decisions i think were the fundamental flaws of that product so all this tremendous work that we did all the optimizations and an amazing team and it's just like that's really we needed to go into the market to find that uh to discover that reality but that was the truth so i think it's so important just to put things out there and really let the players decide obviously people will say oh you can grind a game you can improve it but i think you find out about a game's core metrics and attributes so quickly um

and um i think it's it's certainly less random than throwing spaghetti at the wall because of based on all of our uh experiences and knowledge of the market and choices where i hope that we are choosing games that have a higher likelihood higher likelihood to succeed but i think that the market is just so challenging um you have to put it into the market and let players decide and also i think really a game that didn't succeed three years ago you could launch it now it's like maybe it would work now yeah and who who it's crazy so that that's the that's the pursuit of of fast uh so that you can find out from real worlds from let the market tell you rather than ideas or pontificating it's like who who knows so so let me tell you this michael i know i'm just kidding um no no

it's funny that you're now this so i don't know what which podcast i'm gonna release first yours or play rex one so player x has the opposite approach and they're you know pretty good at what they do they're they really become that right yeah the second largest publisher on mobile has the hashtag tencent you know that's the only one so they are their approach is the opposite what you explain and i and i think there's really like two spectrums so what you said works perfectly it's faster the market see what works if if the numbers are not even close to where you're at drop it let's go on to the next one let's focus on until we throw in something that shows impressive numbers and grow from good to great that's one uh and of course understanding the market shout out taxonomies geek lab yeah uh anyway so um so the other the other

one is is like what players described is quite interesting is i think scopely is kind of in that way as well like yeah they do a tremendous design document like they spend right a long time just figure out everything and just kind of like on paper challenging thinking you know like what what if what then and just answer all the questions once everybody is in line and all the possible questions have been answered go and then they invest a lot and build something and at that point they've already invested they answered so many questions that it's all about execution and yeah i like that the other part is like when they go to soft launch like they grind soft watch like they're they're sculpey's a good example of that as well they put in a game like that avatar game i don't know what's going on like it's a long time but i'm sure it will come out no it's they're not killing it don't don't do that it's going to come out it's going to come out great and that's what they do with all these games like they put it in and they god damn grind that game until it comes out because they've invested and they've kind of

thought out all the elements to it so those are two opposing and they both work yeah but well i think they're they're really different for the main reason that we are a we are a startup and they're an established company so i think when you are a startup the the desperation that you need to find and have to find that revenue generator and to become self-sufficient and to have that base that's a very different pursuit than when you are a play rex and really it's what they've established as well at this point i think you need the bat you need to learn and you need to build all these functions as a company and the best way to do that is by doing and by um and by building that competency and bringing it into your team so for um for playwrecks they've generated that and now they're they're taking their their playbook that they've proven out so many times

and it makes sense to make a big investment um i think for us or for a lot of younger companies you could build out the whole team build out everything um and i think the challenge there is you can get into this point where you're betting your company on a single game and i've done that before and i'm not interested in doing it again because i think you build so much knowledge along the way um that's what has value so you want to make sure you keep keep going if we have enough time no no question we'll get there um so we just want to make sure we have that chance to to get there yeah that's that's a really good that's a really good point and a really good perspective and you don't have to be a you know it's not only the big companies that that do this sort of a measured very calculated take on the market and they grind through it there are big companies that also try different things you know half a year into development like you've got half a year to prove this works quickly the

market they're usually very genre focused they're they have the tool says they have the assets they can get quickly into the market and boom then they either prove that they're wrong or prove that they're right so um do you see many small companies doing the the other where they're saying okay we're gonna build the perfect game i mean i see a lot of funding announcements talking about that yeah um but it's hard to don't don't see too many of the successes it's uh well i would you know if the success ratio is the same for big games and small games yeah and of course the ones that make big games just don't have that many shots on the goal right i remember when after i launched uh after we launched honorable excuse me at juicebox which which came out of the gates really strong was it was a great success for us i was talking with auntie and he was like oh okay now now your next game is going to be a failure and i was like what no it's not we're going to be two for two yeah

auntie was right and the problem there was that you jumped from the successful game to launching a new game that failed right uh well we launched the second the the first game was kind of in the middle it was it came out of the gates really strong and we weren't able to transition from this was the days when featuring mattered from the days of um we couldn't transition to getting the ua engine going and trying to grind it trying to grind it couldn't quite get it there so then we had that second game had better metrics but um we were running on fumes at that point damn damn and then then there was ea time and then there's it and then it was a year 10. that's what happened that's what happened um so so let's talk about picked awards like how big is like how big is the team now like how big is the team that gets the game out and and as you've gone through six games you

cut the game like i said i saw merged merged towns yeah merged kingdoms merch kingdoms came in yeah strong out the gate and you pulled the plug out of that like when i look at our legends in alabama it's like oh somebody somebody played that one yes exactly we definitely did pull the plug so uh picked words it's uh like i said it's a crossword puzzle game so we started this game in uh we decided we were going to pursue it march of last year so march of 2020 and uh at first we were just we spent the first two months just figuring out how we were going to get all the puzzles you need a lot of puzzles for this game players play them they're consumed we started development on it two months later in may um and then we soft launched the game in november so that was three people that that built the game um and now we have one two [Music] five five on the core team um so we globally launched this game in

until we launch it in march and then you're right merge kingdoms came out and i think that's the other thing too globally launching for smaller companies it's just an extended soft launch at this point we are still really in software of course there's no there's no cap to uh there's no saturation whatsoever when merged kingdoms came out we were like oh this is it this is our game and it had this big spike but the long-term retention was was was not good and then we saw this pictures and it was just like slowly and steadily we weren't paying much attention to it and it surpassed it uh a month and a half later and we could just see the the really excellent long-term retention and we started pouring more money into it just getting the ua process going and seeing these really great paybacks and that's it's just like okay this is this is what we

have to focus on so it's been that transition of seeing that really slow and steady great growth and it is such a relief people always talk about long-term retention that's the truth it it works it's like you can plug it into a model obviously everybody wants it that's what we're all trying to make and then you get a game where it's like three percent two percent day thirty it's like well okay yeah i want better d30 retention that's not my goal to build that um but you the game has to show it so this is what we're talking about give me day 30 number give me a go so it's a you know it depends which cohort which is okay it's good so yeah it is

good when sometimes i look at those numbers i'm like whoa yeah we were we were close um so it's like 15 to 18 day 30. that's a that's a sweet one and this is like soft launch numbers like there's plenty and and in terms of fun craft like how many games do you have in in in works at the same time and what does the central team look like because the way i understand like you have several teams then you have a central one it's like marketing right right yeah exactly so um we're transitioning right now where previously we set ourselves up to make lots of titles and make all these bets and and see what's working now we're in a transition of okay now we need to focus and really staff these teams particularly on picked awards um to to to support it and give it the support that it needs um so one of the things that we've done in our approach that's been pretty interesting and i'm sure you're gonna um

we'll see what you think but we've we've partnered with outside developers and we've found um it's been a uh a lengthy process to find them to select them and then to work with them and then we find these great teams and give them a designs back we work on the game and they help get us get the game to launch they hand it over to us and then we plug in a lot of our our shared services that that power the the back end and the the live ups of the game um and that's really a point to just allowing us to go to go faster um into um to see what works and then once the game works then it's a process where okay let's let's take on more and more of that title interesting so you do the design you give a third party the execution basically just do the code and add some art on it then you put it into soft launch apply your marketing expertise on it and if it flies it flies if it doesn't well

none of us even touch the code yes and in in spirit that's how it's supposed to work obviously when the rubber reads the road it can be a little bit more complicated than that but yeah exactly how do you so so does the ct like you have a cto of course and or a technical lead or so forth it does they co-founder sure that the code base is the spaghetti that is that it's quality yep that it that it works totally yeah nice that's really cool so now so we're in a place right now where so we have this picture works game and we're obviously we're excited about it we think there's more opportunities to uh build similar games on that i don't want to call it a platform but it's a platform it's a platform it's a platform it's just a classic platform it's a classic platform so we found this really great team that um we've we've partnered with and they're doing excellent work on it and

we just want to build tighter relationships and more long-term work with these companies and give them we kind of give them more access and let them dive into the examplecraft codebase and do more of those integrations so that it becomes a deeper partnership then you started with your first game that way or is this something that you've just recently started doing yeah so the first few games were proof of concept of and obviously we wanted them to succeed but produce the concept of um building the shared services all of the events all the social and just getting the game out the door it's actually i mean in casual companies know this but being able to have the processes to launch many apps um that requires a little work as well so putting all of that in place um we did partner with um one studio to make this this great-looking tri-peak solitaire game

and one of the things that we found with that where we've had to adjust our approach and model a little bit is when you're going into a and that's a red ocean you need to be grinding that game and have the full give it the full attention that it needs so we found that it's its core metrics weren't good enough and we we pulled the plug on on that as well it's like this could be a business we could make it a business but it's going to require so much to get there we think there's more opportunity elsewhere we have some really great ip there and um so so what's the story behind behind fine craft like there's two founders you guys did you work together at ea or just not at e8 we worked together we met in 2009 at zynga um and then we started juice box together and did that and then over our years um post

juice box we licked our wounds for a little bit and then periodically for a while juice boxes were quite the must be a [ __ ] like a shock it was yeah i really was i was walking the halls people would introduce themselves and tell me about their job and the people they oversaw and i was like are you are you messing with me is this there's that we need that many people this is a meeting we're having a meeting about this yeah um but we would reach out to each other every once in a while and be like i'm ready let's do it yeah and it's like i'm no i'm not ready yet or vice versa and then every it's like okay now we need an idea what's the idea we can't just do this sometimes and come up with an idea yeah

launch fast get to the market everything that you haven't done at the end zone so you basically 180. there was one vc's reaction who said no he was like i worry that you're just doing things to react to ea yeah um and i i don't i don't think this you should have just called 180 games it's like what 182 1080 snowboarding yeah so um and like a fun fact it was a gdc uh so we hung out at gdc and uh we were we went running we went running on land's end beautiful right i hate running but somehow at all the event so every time i meet you or auntie it's always running i never run outside those though sometime the third one like i never run and then you guys take me on like a 10k or a 15k so we went running and i remember we were talking about this you're like i'm ready i'm going like what are you talking about michael stop so you have a crazy position at the

end right your boxes love you yeah i visited you at redwood like people loved you though like michael was the guy you're making command and concur right you're getting paid right and you live in san francisco by the ocean why would you like to destroy your life i remember using it you were like dude don't do it don't do it you made it yeah you this is it this is as good as it gets yeah you're you've you've gone through the battle and now you're in the retirement home of the warriors and yet and yet here we are and you you are on the other side doing the same thing i hate you guys you may you told me this this thing is like a good thing you should do it how much fun you get to shift give it a go anybody who's listening if you're thinking about startups don't do it just don't do it like trust me do not do it no opposite yeah always jump in

but if you really want to do it dm me i know anyways um so so that's uh that's a that's that's an interesting thing and and um okay so everything is differently than before why word games uh you know you did rpgs yeah started out at zynga and zinka poker and then um worked on farmville and yeah launched farmville too exactly and now yeah and then you went to rpgs and then you went rts yep what's going on yeah well i think i mean i think all of these are um they're all games first of all let's start there okay that's a that's a like we so we found something that we agree on so i do have to say game may be the most category that i've ever been what the what what adjective

well i i don't know again i generally hate word games because they make me feel dumb because they're all like very you know i'm not native in english and right nobody who's not native in english plays these games right right it's 85 95 english speaking countries correct well our game is in english so yeah and then audience is 90 female now 90 ours is 70 to 25 that's that's a highly inclusive ward game yeah yeah um so i think i mean all of these the the knowledge and the experience that we have with rpg games um with the games that we worked on in the past are super informative because it allows us to layer all of that good stuff on on top of it so when we started fun craft really the idea we were inspired by tomblast in particular word scapes as well but it's just like taking these and hyper casual too taking these really wonderful core mechanics and then layering on top of them

a fairly basic event system and social and if you have that magical core you can really build wonderful daily rituals for our players so the the word game is one the word genre excuse me is um a game that or a genre that you can get into relatively lightweight but there's a lot of nuance there and i think for um for for i lost my train of thought i don't know how this doesn't matter it doesn't matter we were just talking about the word games and why ward games and essentially you're saying that you've learned a lot of things from mid-court that are not utilized in the ward category because word games quite honestly haven't even grown on par with the market uh you know the growth rate on 2020 looking at deconstructor fun beautiful beautiful charts like all these genres shows about 27 percent growth in that purchase year over year but the ad

monetization must be pretty sweet and there's plenty of board games that have great ad monetization because the audience fits perfectly with the puzzle genre where you guys sell a lot a lot of games so talk a little bit about that thank you the ad monetization is is wonderful um we are at about 90 ad uh ad monetization right now um we've grown ips a little bit but we've found that our players are um they just play is they really play this game so much 15 of our dau plays seven days a week um 50 of our players make over 20 moves a day so this is just something where they're like our players are in it and it's um pretty straightforward to provide an ad experience for players that fits into the game play it's always a nuance and a balance to try and get that experience right i think with this great long-term retention

we want to make sure that we aren't scaring our players away by any stretch of the imagination so we want to do things make sure that we're experimenting um but there's no need to um to be overly aggressive with our players we don't we it's like our we see this payback every 15 days row as increases another five percent and that just keeps going day 45 to 60 90 to 105. it's just like five percent five percent five percent and that's um there's there's tons of room for us to to grow that even more so 90 comes from ad revenue yeah that's that's an important thing because everybody who's listening to this they will go to sensor tower app and they look at the uh they look at your number still like sage yeah what is this why are they talking about it guys yep ninety percent coming in from that monetization think about it right there's no apple or google taking no cuts like this is straight up you know iron source might take a little

heap out of that yep but yeah but uh but they they do give good jobs i think too what you're talking about in terms of audience overlap um companies are like there's there's some really great opportunities here so there's great overlap with with puzzle there's great overlap with casino as well um play simple the indian company was acquired for with the earn out over um over half a billion yeah right or no no mtg mtg mtg yep um and that was based on daily themed crosswords and then um you see new york times um i think is going to turn into a games company um they're advertising their games business everywhere um they just brought on jk well not only that they had this an old pm that i worked with at zynga manuel

bronstein he just joined their board of directors he's the chief product officer at roblox um so i think it's something they they see how powerful games are he was on formula three right from veltil did you go to youtube was that is that the same thing then he went to youtube that's exactly right i remember i remember uh yeah he left just a little after i i joined i was like and then i don't remember this guy okay so he's now at new york times just joined does the board well he's on the board at new york times and his main job as chief product officer at roblox listen that's a good good board seat good good main job i think it makes sense and they're gonna they're gonna probably show them like words with friends type of numbers they're like guys these games make bank here we go yeah exactly like stop hating on joe rogan let's do this this is where the real money is right i just saw um i get the paper now

and there's the the front page of the the main section the whole back page is advertising spelling bee it's just like they're pushing it so hard um i jk did join um i don't know probably over a year ago um but they're bringing in some really excellent game folks and it's based on on word games so they have obviously the crossword puzzle and then spelling bee as well um just like it's it's bringing in subscribers it's incredibly powerful should they acquire fun craft um yeah not yet we will maybe we'll become a news company that's yeah they come into your your jumping rod you're gonna go there right they want to play you can do that game even more left we're going to set up a stringer service plan craft news craft news

we make yeah we make the news that's a good idea that's a i like that you might need to raise a little bit more money but um but overall a good idea a good brand overall right backup plan um so when you when you started funcraft did you spend time on on things like mission or values or were you just so in line with your co-founder that you didn't need it because you were just texting in the evenings and and like god we need to do something i see my life slipping away getting too many great benefits and watching these ideas and that's it meetings where i don't have to do anything right that i need to grind i need to lower my salary to right i need to learn about that um we really do see eye to eye and we've known each other for so long that we didn't have to spend too much time on it um [Music] and i think it's something we certainly think about

uh about when is the appropriate time but i think uh it's still we're we're at that lucky and small size where um and the really fun size where um every person we bring on is so much more important so trying to and going through the review process and in the interview process to make sure that we're we're bringing on the lines people and just establishing that in how we work day to day week to week like that's what's most important and will define us um but that is something that we i i know as we continue to scale we're going to have to go through that exercise more fully not go through that just have fun with it like it's yeah i know it's always the back it's right i think uh it does matter it obviously matters and have making sure that we're all aligned that we're going in the right direction like communicate communicate communicate um i mean i think that is

one of the things that i learned about electronic arts is importance of of extra extra extra communication over communication over communication but i really do think i mean this is where jase and i are so aligned is we like to do and we think whether it's product we want to ship games we want to ship features we want to find out um and we we define ourselves by our our results and what we're working on well listen michael you just described values and you shouldn't like like like honestly like this is really like no you're describing what you do what you're like really important like it would be horrible if you go to this workshop and then just thinking like hey let's come up with [ __ ] that we don't do that sounds really cool right and just write it down as rules or virtues

yep yeah yeah yeah fair point yes i'll play that back i'll see what it i'll see what we end up with exactly what you do right now and be like i think this is us let's describe what we do and that way it's just verbalized uh for people because you guys work remotely right we do yeah when are you gonna get back are you gonna get back together and are you gonna be based out of east coast west coast or are you gonna be based out of you know america yes we're based out of america we do so we now have um we have someone joining us in in a couple weeks um so that will bring three into the bay area um i i mean offices there are still not in so it doesn't quite make sense yet um but i think we we will open up an office there again um and um i mean i think this remote working is it's it's been working for sure for us um

obviously there are there are challenges to it um so i think we'll want we'll want an office in san francisco um and we'll we'll see if if we get more in another place whether we'll set that up but i think what just what's so great about remote work is really how it opens you up to to talent and yeah the number of people that we've been interacting with and working with whether they're in poland netherlands spain philippines colombia it's just like there's so much talent out there um that we want to we want to have x keep access to that i think it's like i think game making has really changed so much from 2009 where back then you had to define and figure out okay what does a daily bonus look like what does a level up system look like and now it's just like there's a language that exists for all of these systems so when you

um are are making a game or adding features to a game it's like okay let's take this from that and this one these are the let's let's put these components together in a new way and and that's the game and and there's i i really can't believe how talented people are it's a joy to work with people all over the world it's awesome no no and they're hungry that's what's the best part about it it's like that's what you need i think that's the most exciting thing about a startup or any company really is making sure you have that attitude where people um want to where they feel invested they feel ownership um they have that attention to detail that's where the magic happens what about what okay here's what i wanted to ask why san francisco i mean i know that it's such a great location for young talent very cost efficient very saying well that's that that's where our people are right now so we have we have three there um and that makes the most sense

to bucket we gotta uh to put together an office for them i mean we're not gonna have an office um where we don't have people in in that that was a very very logical thinking i really like berlin um or helsinki so we don't have offices there maybe i'll set one up no no no it's how big so we are um there's six of us on the team um two are joining and then um with our outsourcers um and and dev partners it's another that's another um another 12. okay that's well well that's why the communication is so simple because when you're talking about when you talk about any outsourcers they are there to jump when you say jump i mean that's you don't have to explain to them you

don't have to have a long lengthy conversations they're there for execution it's when your internal team grows significantly like they don't jump like that they they're like why why are we jumping right can you give me context yeah and and then the challenge on that other side is on the ownership piece that they don't get that same sense of ownership from step partners sometimes yeah yeah of course you need them to feel like it's theirs so that that's certainly the challenge um but i i um yeah i think that the the execution focused is is what we're we like that yeah no no it makes more sense i was just trying to understand a little bit better but but i totally understand that when when your own internal team is so small that you can almost you know do one-on-ones with everybody every week meaning like you have five reports uh that's um then it makes sense but as it grows then you start need to you know communicate that's when a physical office makes a

lot of sense because you know we're going to go have lunch with people they're going to see michael in real world you're really pretty even though the camera oh thank you well everybody knows the most handsome guy in ed like that was they're like hey where's michael he'd be like look for the most handsome guy in the egg stop it stop it some heavy heavy competition there with the that yeah it has been increasing or the competition on the uh um it's just a it's a well-dressed executive company but pretty proud you have a smart casual approach to it yeah i didn't do the euro style as much as skinny jeans and all that right yeah now i need to put this on youtube because we talk about your look so all right we'll do that yep fine uh i'm just jealous that's that's really it i know i'm not i'm certainly not as strong as you yeah well to get there that that only attracts um same sex

anyways so let's focus let's let's let's bring this baby home because we're really steering away from the most important right um so next steps for your company and picked awards what's going to happen yeah so we i i know it's annoying but we we really do think that we're in early days of what's going on with this game um we think that this game can be like a words with friends um type of of long lasting game um so we're we're building all of the pieces that make that happen we have so much to improve we have a great roadmap we need help building it um so we're we're looking for amazing people who are excited about this space who want to uh have a lot of ownership work quickly product managers ui ux designers um engineers analysts market like really really

all the pieces we're where it's time to light a fire under this as i said it's a platform so we have more more picture words products that are in the works um so there's an opportunity to to work on those as well um we need we we are building in a way so that we can have outsize impact um and build things once that we'll be able to reuse across their games so let me let me sell this for you so you want to join fun craft because you would you you'd really feel bad of not joining now because the numbers the numbers the it's all about the numbers the numbers are very very solid and this baby is going to grow big and later on when you consider like well i don't want to join this because it's a startup it's only six people they work without this and that it's like no you're gonna regret this because that's what the people said when original farmville came in when when when zynga poker came in

when all these when clash of clans launched like oh it's a small company that doesn't have really that much success yes there's maybe a a small attraction but i want to work at a big company it's like no this is it you get a lot of ownership you get to ship game you get to grow game you get to learn so many different steps and guess what you don't have to be sitting in meetings explaining what you want to do next you're going to do things and they're going to tell you how you did those things and then you're going to learn and you're going to grow and you go and this company is going to be highly successful and you're going to get a share of that pie of the success and you're going to be really happy with your decision so that's why you want to join fun craft thank you michael is great i've known him for years um i can i can um attest that he is yeah fantastic ceo good people thank you yes um it's like have have fun while we're doing it that's that's the whole point exactly in the description of this podcast below you'll find the link to find craft you'll find a link to michael's linkedin

page pingham yes tell him you want to grow fun craft to rival new york times let's do it we're going to take down new york times the game company michael funcraft.com on that note everybody have a great day great evening whatever you're doing we love you guys we appreciate you guys michael thank you so much for joining the podcast it's been a pleasure thank you bye bye everybody bye