Walter Driver is the co-founder, Chairman, and co-CEO of Scopely, one of the fastest-growing mobile game companies globally.
Walter joins us to discuss the art of understanding weaknesses and surrounding yourself with people that compliment your skillsets. We talk about the importance of confidence and the power of storytelling when it comes to selling your ideas, and how he envisions a future where we more closely interact and foster deeper connections with the entertainment we consume.
Scopely creates and publishes a highly-diverse portfolio of top-grossing, immersive game experiences, including the award-winning MARVEL Strike Force, Scrabble® GO, Star Trek™ Fleet Command, and YAHTZEE® With Buddies, among others. Fueled by a world-class team, Scopely leverages its proprietary technology platforms to bring directed-by-consumer, interactive experiences to audiences worldwide.
Under Walter's leadership, the company has achieved more than $1B in lifetime revenue and attracted more than $450M in financing from leading venture capital firms, tech luminaries, and cultural icons.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with my good friend Walter Driver. Walter is the co founder, chairman,
and co CEO of Scope Lee, one of the fastest
growing mobile game companies in the world. Scope Lee creates
and publishes a highly diverse portfolio of top grossing immersive
game experiences, including the award winning Marvel Strike Force, Scrabble,
(00:44):
Go Star Trek, Fleet Command, and Yazzi with Buddies, among
many many others. Fueled by a world class team, Scopelie
leverages its proprietary technology platforms to bring directed by consumer
interactive experiences to audiences worldwide. Under Walter's Lee dr Ship,
the company has achieved more than one billion in lifetime
revenue and attracted more than four hundred and fifty million
(01:05):
dollars in financing from leading venture capital firms, tech luminaries
and cultural icons. I was fascinated to hear how self
aware Walter was the outset of his career, that although
he had the vision, he knew himself well enough to
hire a team with complimentary skill set to make his
dream a reality. We talked about the importance of confidence,
in the power of storytelling when it comes to selling
(01:26):
your ideas, and how Walter envisions the future where we
more closely interact and fostered deeper connections with the entertainment
we consume. Please enjoy my conversation with Walter Driver. Walter,
welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. I I
believe we're blocks away from one another in Venice, California. Yeah.
(01:48):
I feel close to you right now in my heart, Jeff,
even though I would love to be seeing your face.
What a way to start the podcast. That's such a
lovely thing to say. Walter. You are, you know, a
dear friend of mine. We've been buddies for about ten
years now. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast,
and I've gotten to, you know, watch closely this journey
of years in building scope Lee and building your wonderful family,
(02:11):
and just it's great to know you buddy. Likewise, it's
hard to believe the ten years have gone by to
happen fast. I believe you were living with both your
wife and a dear friend of ours. You had just
launched Scope Lee when we met here in l A. Yeah,
I was. I was actually living with a mutual friend
of ours, and he gives me, you know, frequent reminders
(02:33):
that the first rounds of interviews with Scope engineers happened
on the couch in his living room, where I had
actually hired an engineer off of Craigslist to interview other
engineers that I was interviewing because I wanted somebody more
technical of me to ask the questions while I observed.
So you hired an engineer off of craigslist. Yeah, I
met him originally on Craigslist. I interviewed a bunch of
(02:53):
them and found the one that I thought was best,
But rather than hiring him to be an engineer, I
hired him to help interview and vet other engineers I
was working with you. That's a lesson in leverage well.
And the way that you understood, like begin with how
to hire engineers or to even think the higher engineers,
is that this was not your first technology business. You
(03:15):
were the CEO of a Negative Media where you developed
online games, and you also had a company called Ignition Interactive,
which was one of the very very early third party
app developers for Facebook. And I want you to take
us back before that, frankly, to start this story, because
you know, scope Lee is now one of the fastest
growing gaming companies in the world. Going back, Uh, you know,
(03:37):
I know that you're from the Atlanta, Georgia area, correct. Yeah, yeah,
I grew up in Atlanta, was there for you know,
the first eighteen years of my life, and then uh, yeah,
I went to college in New England, which was a
major cultural experience for me growing up in the South.
Brown University. Yeah, I studied uh English literature and creative
(03:59):
writing there and was mainly focused on on storytelling, which
seemed like it was probably not going to be a
great career choice. But yeah, I actually wrote a movie
uh that into my senior year that got some attention
from production company in l A the option the rights
to it, and I want up moving out to l
A just after college, you know, pretty quickly decided that
(04:22):
I didn't want to write movies and work in feature films.
It was just a very long cycle of takes years
to get something made. And at the same time, I
really fell fell in love with l a bright up
in the South. I just I had never really met
anyone who had started their own company. Here I met
people who were, you know, doing it, you know, in
all different categories of business and just making it seem like,
(04:45):
you know, anything you could dream of was possible, and
really supporting each other in the pursuit of of doing
things that where they were creating new kinds of businesses.
And I found that superinvigorating, exciting, amazing. In high school,
were you an entrepreneur really? I mean I think I
always had a an entrepreneurial streak. I mean I was.
I was the kid who was you know, I had
(05:07):
the massive baseball card collection and was wheeling all the
time with stuff in that ecosystem. But I mean I
was primarily playing sports in high school. I mean they
were a huge part of my life. I played at
football and and tennis competitively, and that was, you know,
besides school, friends, family, that was really what I did.
And for me, actually it was stopping playing sports after
(05:28):
I had three concussions my senior year. Hart playing football
was one of the great things that ever happened to
me because it gave me so much time back to
to have a college experience where I was able to
think about what else do I want to do with
this time and learn a lot of other skills and
pursue other interests. So I didn't I didn't know that
I would be an entrepreneur, you know, when I was
graduating from Brown, I think the two the two biggest
(05:51):
employers my senior year Brown were Goldman Sacks in the
Peace Corps. So that was kind of like the two
paths that people were on around me and uh, and
I didn't think that either of those was was for me.
But um, looks I learned over time that that I
like to be creative both and you know, creating creating
experiences for people, but also in creating businesses. And that's
(06:12):
kind of what I've been doing ever since college. Totally.
Every time you tell me that you were like writing
movies and that's what brought you out to l A,
it seems like such a different skill set completely to
what I would think would make for like a successful CEO.
But when we get under the hood and the way
that your technology and your platform works, that's what powers
you're directed by consumer experience. How have you use that,
(06:33):
you know, prison or that view on your work. Yeah,
I mean for me, I think storytelling is is really
central to entrepreneurship and building a business. And so I
didn't take you know, any business or finance classes at all.
I I did, um, you know, take a lot of
a lot of classes, um and and it's been a
lot of time thinking about, you know, narratives and why
(06:56):
people are able to you know, internalize the narrative that
matters to them and something that resonates and will give
you meaning to them over time. And ultimately that that
was kind of my impulse to do that through movies,
and then I sort of realized that, you know, it
was a much more exciting opportunity to do that in
the next generation of entertainment, which were you know, interactive
experiences and then passively consumed ones like you know, being
(07:18):
able to create software to enable experiences that people could
interact with and they could change over time and people
could customize them and make them their own. That seemed
like the next generation of entertainment and you know, far
more exciting on a on a creative basis, building worlds,
not singular stories. Yeah, building worlds of people people could
really make their own where they had an identity inside
(07:40):
of an interact world and they make different decisions than
other people would, and it was more of a dialectic
where we you know, it would create a foundational infrastructure
for for them to really customize and make it their own.
And I found that interplay to be a lot more
interesting than than creating something in a vacuum and then
have somebody watched it in a dark room for two
hours four years later and you don't get any real
(08:00):
feedback and it doesn't change and evolve, And so I
thought that, you know, that was much more interesting to
build these software driven experiences. And you know, at the core,
I think I think the founder of a company's core
job is storytelling in a way, because you're kind of
starting as a a person with a vision in your
head of something that might exist one day that doesn't
currently exist. And at the beginning, you have to convince
(08:22):
that first person who's gonna stop what they're doing and
quit their great job to come work with you when
you know you have nothing right, or the first you
know investor to to back you, or the you know,
first consumer to to try your products um and so
the ability to clearly articulate what you're trying to build
in the future that doesn't yet exist is kind of
always you know, at the center of being able to
(08:45):
draw the circle of people who believe in what you're
trying to do wider and wider. It starts really small
with just you, and then you're you know, really trying
to build more people who can see the vision that
you have in your head as it becomes more clear
and there's more, you know, evidence in the outside world
outside of your brain up of what's going on there.
And so, you know, I think that's probably been the
skill set that had served served me best. And just
bringing great people into the scope really family by helping,
(09:09):
you know, explain what we're trying to do and then
finding people that are far far better than I am
at doing all the things that are necessary to create
that future. Awesome man, And I want to understand that
the scope Lee timeline more too. So you're you're on
the couch, you're interviewing engineers. There was that story then
and the vision that you had then. You know, I'm curious,
was it was it from the beginning that you were
(09:31):
going to build this directed by consumer experience platform that
could build multiple games, or did you have a first
game in mind that you wanted to build. To take
us back a little bit, I didn't really know. To
be honest, I knew that, you know, I felt like
I wasn't going to thrive in a job somewhere. I
thought I needed to kind of create my own experience.
(09:51):
And I knew you know, what I was interested in,
which was you know, software driven entertainment, and so kind
of kind of thought about where, you know, the opportunities
were there. And I had been building games online, you know,
primarily on social platforms like Facebook and MySpace, and and
I think a few years just learning how to build
software and how to make experiences that are you know,
(10:12):
compelling to people. But you know, those products were not
you know, massive transformative businesses. And so I thought, you know,
after a few years of doing that, I wanted to
do something much much bigger and really channel all my
energy into something that I could do for a long
time and be really proud of. And and yeah, so
I you know, I think, you know, interviewing engineers off greg'slist,
(10:32):
and thought it was probably time to stop doing that.
And so you know, I thought I needed real technical
co founder and and that's when I found Uncle Bulsara,
who you know, had been building my spaces UH developer platform.
I reached out to him cold and UH invited him
to have coffee with me to the next day, and
I promised him it would change his life forever. And
(10:54):
in the first email, you said, come up coffee with me.
It'll change your life forever. Yeah, yeah, I said, I
think it's gonna change your life forever. And he responded
like thirty minutes later and said, I don't normally respond
to these called average, but you sound crazy enough that
this might be interesting. And he meant me for coffee
the next day and I told him and I thought
he was ready to be, you know, a CTO of
trans Transformational Company. And he said, how do you know?
(11:15):
And I said, I just had that feeling. Of course
I didn't really know, and I had. I also sent
a similar email to another another CTO candidate and was
me as well at the same time, but I spent
more time with Krey turned out to be, you know,
an amazing guy, and he was. He was a great
choice to co found the business with and really compliment
my skill set, and we started you know, building you know,
(11:37):
digital experience. As we tried building a bunch of different
kinds of products, you know, we had a number of
people that were kind of trying to figure out where
where the big opportunities were, and we were looking at
the mobile mobile app ecosystem, you know, which was relatively new.
You know, the iPhone had created a whole whole new
ecosystem of of app developers, and that ecosystem was very
(11:58):
nascent and quite fragmented, and so we actually had a
couple of guys that were working with us who all
they did was kind of go through the app store,
reach out to developers and have calls with them, you know,
and find out what was working, what wasn't working, where
they thought the industry was headed, what did they need.
And we were looking to kind of form a thesis
around what the best opportunities were and see if there
(12:18):
were things that we could you know, acquire or learnings
that might guide our strategy. And and basically what we
we saw was, you know, there's a lot of innovation
happening around the world with people building building applications, but
the central infrastructure to kind of turn those those games
and experiences into businesses was lacking for a lot of
(12:38):
those developers because basically the central publishing functions and in
a gaming business get better with more scale that you have,
but you don't necessarily become more innovative at scales sometimes
it gets harder, whereas small, focused, passionate teams that are
trying new things were creating a lot of the new experiences.
And so, kind of having studied other forms of media,
(12:59):
I thought, you know, in books, movies, music, console games,
those industries had had kind of matured quickly and consolidated
around a handful of publishing entities, whether they're movie studios
or record labels, um or game publishers that that had
that kind of central infrastructure to turn and content into
a business. I thought that, you know, that wasn't the
(13:19):
case and free to play games in the Western world,
and if we could build that, that was going to
be really exciting. And so we were started to build
some of that central tech infrastructure that we thought would
be helpful to make any game of better business. And
then and then we found we found that a guy
who had built a game called Dice with Buddies who
was living in mermnto and he I think he was
(13:39):
working at UM at Best Buy at the time and
the nights and weekends to build this this game that
you know, was pretty small. It was making about, you know,
three dollars a day. But we were talking to him
and he was giving us some of the engagement metrics,
and the average user was playing eleven times a day UM,
and it was a pretty primitive experience. And we thought, wow,
if this is such a basic experience, it could be
(14:01):
optimized in every way and people playing a liven times
a day there there could be something here. So so
we reached out to him and said, why don't why
don't you fly down to l A and uh and
let's talk about what we could do. And so he
flew down and I remember thinking we had, you know,
found a real diamond in the rough. And and I
told him, you know, I think I think we can
make this a ten million dollar year business together U,
(14:22):
and we should buy it and you should come be
part of scope ly and we'll scale it. And and
he looked at me it was like, no way, it's
not gonna be ten million. And I thought, you know, no,
I think we can get it to tim million. He said, no, way,
this is at least a hundred million. I was making
him out three hundred dollars a day, and I was like, Wow,
this is gonna this is gonna be a tough a
tough conversation, if from a pricing perspective, but we were
(14:44):
able to work out a deal. I like this guy though,
because it was it was you know, it was it
was pretty funny that he could you know, he could
see it too, and he came joy us scope WI
and we built a team around that product and and
we did. We scaled it, you know, to be a
multi hundred million dollar franchise. He was right, And then
we started building more of those experiences over time and
(15:06):
kind of accumulating amazing people and great, great partners and
some of the leading IP holders in the world that
create digital experience out of brands that people cared about
and some great investors. And we've kind of been at
it for the last eight years, getting progressively better at
all of this. We'll be back with more out of
(15:26):
the hustle after the break. Some of these games have
half a billion in lifetime revenue now at this point.
Correct like it. The thesis couldn't have been more proven.
Correct at this point. Yeah, I mean, the I think
the core ideas were the right ones, and and it
(15:49):
turned out to be pretty big businesses school. He's done
over a billion dollars of of lifetime revenue, and you know,
it's had about a seventy five percent company or growth
rate of the lat six years. So it's it's wild
ride for sure. I recall this era of the first
generation Facebook and mobile social games. We knew a lot
of those same game developers, and many of them ended
(16:10):
up at some of those like production houses, the Zinga's
of the world. But you know, that type of game
design that those addiction mechanics to me, that type of
game design you're thinking about, how do you get somebody
who wants to play this? Not just like one time,
but you know perennially, was this intentional or was this
like through the experimentation that you ended up going aroute
where you build the latter version of a game studio. Yeah,
(16:34):
I mean I think look, everyone started, um, you know,
with simpler, shallow or products, I would say, and this, uh,
in this ecosystem of free digital experiences, and people figured
out how to make them more interesting for longer periods
of time because you know, we wanted to great experiences
that people would play, you know, for for years. And
to do that, they you want to give them a
(16:55):
lot of agency and a lot of control over their
experience in a sense of customization, and and ways to
build meaningful relationships inside the products. I mean, I think
that's what keeps people um engaged in these communities. They're
like social networks inside of a digital playground, and that's
what matters to people most is they you know, they
come for the game, but they stay for the relationships
they have, and you know that that's always kind of
(17:16):
been the part of it the interest me. I was
never very interested in making games and people played alone
in a vacuum because for me, it was the way
that you know, gameplay facilitates relationship building that was interesting.
And a lot of these you know, people you know
that are out there feel like, you know, wherever they
are physically, they don't feel like they can find people
who are like them, who think like them, and they
(17:38):
might feel isolated, you know, sometimes lonely. And I think
it's really powerful for people to be able to find
like minded people and connect with them through play around
the world and have meaningful relationships with people that that
transcend physical geography, and and that's what happens in a
lot of these games. And I think that's a more
fulfilling part of it than than just the fun aspect.
For me, is is kind of the long orm relationship
(18:01):
building definitely. And I mean in COVID nineteen Lockdown that
we've all been living through the amount of friends that
are spending time in gaming environments on different platforms and
hanging out with one another. It's just funny when, like,
you know, my business partner, I'll be like, oh, I
have you met so and so You're like, no, you
know what, but I play you know, Call of Duty
with them like a couple of hours a night, a
(18:22):
few times a week, or you know I'm on Marvel
Strike Force or Star Trek Fleet Command. Do you scope
for the examples, you know, hanging out with people that
you know share my interests in a sense. Yeah, no, exactly.
I mean we want to Scrabble go in early March,
right as a lot of people were going into Lockdown,
and you know, we had millions of people playing every day, Um,
you know, saying this is how I'm staying in touch
(18:42):
with my friends or my family. I don't have much
to say to them right now because I'm sitting at
home the same way they are. But I want to
stay in touch with them. I want to play with them,
and this is a fun way for us to stay,
you know, feeling connected. And like a Star trek Fleet
command eighty percent of players placed seven days a week. Yeah,
I mean, is there a you know, we we really
try and build things that are you know, part of
(19:04):
people's daily lives for long periods of time and you know, provide, provide,
you know, deeper meaning as I said, and so yeah,
and something like Star trek Um about eighty percent of
all the players place seven days a week. And you
know that's we're trying to create experiences that the matter
to people that aren't disposable, right, because it's it's more
creatively ambigious, is more interesting, it's more fulfilling, and it's
(19:24):
a better business to create, you know, things that matter
to people over longer periods of time. And that's really
what's changed a lot from the early days of free
to play games. As you describe, we're just gierly more
disposable experiences. Thank you for going down the rabbit hole
with me. On all this stuff because it's so fascinating
with you and your journey. Like it's not often that
founders are the same people that are talking the ship
(19:45):
and hustling at the very very onset and then scale
with the business. You guys, are this amazing company. Now
it's a it's a multi billion dollar enterprise. You're literally
buying companies from Disney nine years ago. Not only were
you a startup founder with no staff, you were like
new to the game of starting businesses in the first place,
(20:06):
you were writing movies. You must suck at some stuff,
tell us about it. To be honest, that that was
kind of the foundational precept is that I probably am
not good at almost everything, and I'm not good enough
that everything that needs to be done. And I think
some startup founders, I know, you know, try to do
everything themselves and it's hard to scale. Um. But if
(20:27):
you start out with the concept that you are not
going to be good enough at anything, and you need
to find, you know, the best people in the world
at whatever you're trying to do as fast as possible
and and learn from them as quick as possible and
let them drive you know, that's how you you can scale,
and so yeah, I mean I was I think I
had the self awareness to realize that I probably wasn't
(20:47):
going to be able to build a business like like
we built alone. And so yeah, I brought good fortune
to kind of find some partners also early on that
I could bring in and that I could learn from
that had experience operating at scales. So Javier Ferreira to
m O'Brien, two guys at UH they were you know,
running basically Disney's gaming business in two thousand and fourteen,
which was you know about you know, a hundred thousand
(21:10):
times bigger than ours, and you know, they came over
as my key partners when we were siveds Age Company,
and and really I learned a lot from from both
of those guys about how to how to scale. And
then we went and brought a bunch of other people
into the Scoby family that that we all learned a
lot from. And so that's the hard evolution as a
as a founder is you have to be you know,
very very confident in your own perspective in the early
(21:32):
days because no one, no one is gonna come work
with you, or invest in you, or spend their time
on something that is totally unproven with somebody who doesn't
really believe in their own vision or who's really questioning it.
So you have to go from being extremely confident in
a very uncertain future to gradually becoming increasingly more skeptical
(21:52):
of a more proven future. Continuously over time you start
to have more data points of success and uh, and
that's when you really need to start being skeptical again
of your own vision and and be looking for people
who have contrary perspectives at that point and and be
more attuned to what am I missing? Whereas the beginning
you're you're really more in broadcast mode all the time
(22:13):
of saying who we are and where we're going, because
if you don't say it over and over again, it's
people forget it very quickly because there's no there's no
actual data to support what you're saying. But that's the
hard part of the scale is kind of you know,
starting to feel like you need to become increasingly skeptical
of and less certain of your own views. You know,
as as you grow. You were just talking about, you know,
(22:34):
the wonderful partners that you have today, um, that are
managing the business. You also have like a hall of fame,
you know, uh alumni network of people that you know,
we're at Scope Lee and then went on and started
really amazing companies. And I think about that captain mentality, right,
Like there's a great book called The Captain's Class that
just talks about that being the differentiating factor of like
(22:56):
the great franchises throughout history, sports dynasty these it wasn't
about the greatest of all time player, it wasn't about
having the best coach, but it was often having a
captain who wasn't the best player on the team. Bill
Russell being like a prototypical example, he never had a
scoring title. He wasn't he wasn't the player that was
like the most exciting. He never had the most of
any stats. But when he left, they stopped winning championships.
(23:20):
You've always been able to empower great players who also
are in their own right like CEOs and entrepreneurs. And
there's something very very rare about that. Yeah, I mean,
I guess for me, it's it's really like, you know
about the experience, right, I didn't. I didn't start out
in this company, frankly to build a specific product or
(23:40):
to have a you know, specific kind of financial outcome
or anything. I just wanted to have a really interesting
experience that you know, I was fully engaged in. And
for me, I thrive off of just like the exertion
and the challenge of the simulation of needing to learn
and grow all the time. Like that's kind of my
my addiction for me. You know, if I want to
keep learning and growing, I need to be surrounded by
smart people that are challenging me and taking taking things
(24:03):
that are farther than I could ever take them. And
so my mentality was that we need to get you know,
better faster, and and one of our core uses is
just iterates to success. This idea that we need to
to learn and iterate faster than anyone else. And that
comes from, you know, the dialectic of getting multiple perspectives
together and feeding that into the system and creating a
(24:23):
better perspective than and then and getting that fly wheel
spending faster. So I spend a lot of time, you know,
talking to talented people and and trying to get them
into the scope we ecosystem, and then good things seem
to happen even if you don't know, you know, you
can't foresee all the great things that a great person
is going to be able to do over years and
making thousands of decisions every week, but those compound over time,
(24:45):
and and so I always felt like the highest leverage
thing I can spend time on was spending time with
great people that are working at scope WA and and
that we want to have a scope we and you know,
if we get the best people together and have a
queer idea of what we're trying to do, and we
have the resources we need, then everything else will will
unfold over time totally. And then what's the plan? Are
you guys becoming more international? Where are you leaning into
(25:06):
right now? Yeah, it's a pretty exciting time for the business.
You know, as the said, we started a company like
two thousand eleven and and we grow more in the
last twelve months than we did, you know, in the
first eight years. So pretty exciting as you know, as
an entrepreneur, because you know, you kind of get up
every day and you go just push on a wall
and then one day, you know, eight years and it
(25:28):
kind of feels like the wall the wall falls down,
and uh, and you're kind of going downhill suddenly, because
you know, people are interested in coming to work at
your company or interested investing or you know, uh, you
have people that you know are are playing your games,
and people want to come be part of what's going on.
Instead of having to convince people that the future is
is going to be exciting, there's you know that external
(25:50):
data to supported and so that's been pretty exciting. We've
had pretty wild last year with Star Trek Fulle Command
is grown exponentially and as one of the the most successful
in themost strategy games in the West right now, and
and the team behind that has just blown me away
over the last few years what they've been able to do.
And then yeah, we launched Scrabble in March, which is
(26:11):
by far the biggest audience game in the industry of
the company, and so that's that's pretty exciting. As you said,
we we bought some of Fox's gaming assets from Disney
earlier this year and acquired a game, Marvel Strike Force,
that was, you know, a game that we really admired
creatively and the players loved, and um, we thought it
could be even more successful than it was, and and
(26:31):
it's grown tremendously since since we acquired it and has
been very stimulating. So at least, yeah, I'm sure most
of this is happening from home. You know, how is
your is your office all remote? Partially remote? How are
you guys dealing with COVID right now? Yeah, we have
everybody working remotely, you know, across fifteen locations on four continents,
and you know, I think it. You know a lot
(26:53):
of companies have had this experience. It's gone remarkably smoothly
so far. Um we did, you know, fortunately have a
lot of experience working with distributed teams because we have
locations around the world. But everyone's still trying to figure
out what things are working better, because it does feel
like there's some real advantages, but also maybe some things
that we're missing in terms of how you build trust
and human connection. You alluded to this before we pressed record.
(27:18):
What are some of the things that you know need
to get better and that you guys are improving upon
and the way that you work together remotely that you
know we'll all be able to do ourselves. Yeah, I mean,
I think I think the biggest thing for us is
that I think we relied on physical proximity sometimes as
a as a crutch. We were not as deliberate and
sophisticated about designing communication flows that that would really scale,
(27:40):
and a culture and values that that travel well. Yeah,
building more discipline, values, architecture and principles that that travel well,
and behaviors of how you work, and just you know,
think about how you define those things and how you
onboard new people into a way that you know, when
you onboard people physically like they they are very sophisticated
(28:00):
and absorbing, you know, cultural norms very very quickly, right
from seeing how people are behaving, and you just don't
get that remotely. And so you know, really defining a
lot of those things, I think we'll make make it
when when we can work together, you know, it will
make those systems sharper and more powerful. So it's it's
really about thinking about what what have we been using
(28:20):
proximity for and how do we solve for that in
a remote environment and maybe kind of having more texture
and what we do when we have proximity. Right, It's
like a lot of the work day before was was
kind of similar in nature. You go to the office,
you go from one room to another, have meetings, work
alone at your desk, but you're having a lot of
the same kinds of experiences with people and and so yeah,
(28:42):
I've definitely been thinking a lot about if one of
the primary things that proximities for is about building trusts
and connections so that people can be really candid with
each other and and understand that each other have each
other's best intentions at heart, then then you can challenge
each other more and get better faster. Then maybe we
should be spending more of that time, you know, doing
things that directly are focus on building connection and trust
(29:06):
rather than than just sitting in a meeting. Maybe we
should get out of the office more and do things
together outside the office that you know, are more of
a context shift to create different kinds of relationships. I mean, unfortunately,
we're you know, we have some time to figure it
out right now. It doesn't seem like we're gonna be
back together soon. But we've been very fortunate that it's
gone very smoothly for us. But you know, I miss
(29:27):
I missed being around people. I miss the energy of
being with with all of my team and partners of scope,
because like that's what keeps it keeps it energizing every day.
And so it's nice as it's nice to not be
on an airplane all the time and really nice to
spend more time with my with my family, but I missed,
I miss seeing my friends of work. Art of the
(29:48):
Hustle will be right back after this short break. I
want to understand, you know, the the more macro generational
consumer a little further. Is there things that in particular
that have been fascinating that you've learned about the archetypes
of player games right now? Are their consumer behaviors? Yeah,
(30:11):
I mean, I think, you know, we have a portfolio
of games. It appeals to different types of people and
and so I don't think I'm I'm an expert in
kind of you know, the next generation of you know,
what the kids are doing are saying. I think I
think my insights are are more probably around how the
next generation of entertainment is evolving for everyone. I think
that's kind of the big shift is. And you know,
(30:33):
if you look at the history of media, it's really
been about people having more agency and more choice over time, right,
and people people like that. So you had a handful
of you know, network TV channels for a long time
with you know, not a lot of choice about what
you watched or when you watched it, or how you
paid for it, and uh, and then you know, this
direct to consumer revolution created much better consumer experiences because
(30:55):
you can go to Netflix and watch whatever, So do
you want to watch whenever you want to watch it?
That's very taylor with your interests, and you can unbundle
it from a lot of other content and decide, you know,
whether you want to pay for it or not. Fundamentally,
there's just a lot of passively consumed content that's being created.
There's hundreds of millions of hours of video that's created
every day, and I think the biggest shift is that
the passively consumed media that's sort of the same for
(31:18):
everyone is becoming a little bit more commoditized. There's a
little bit downward pressure and how how special it feels
to people and how much to invest in it. Obviously,
they are exceptions that stuff that you know, really matter
and breakthrough, but but it's a you know, as a
general trend, there's just a lot more supply is growing
faster than demand in terms of passively consumed media, and
(31:40):
so I think the biggest shift is that this idea
of directed by consumer experiences, where you know, we we
let people not just watching the show they want to watch,
but actually direct the show and decide which characters they
want to engage with and how they want to play
and to do that. You know, as a person who
has an identity inside of a world that's a reflection
of you know, their choices, their decisions, and that means
(32:01):
that experience is going to be unique to them. And
so that's it's kind of a snowflake experience that no
one else is going to have and that you know,
that's one of a kind and then has a lot
more value to people if it's a reflection of their choices.
And so I think that's the big shift that that
we're really focused on. Content is definitely going through that
moment right now in a sense, just just in terms
(32:21):
of how much we're watching it. We're all at home.
If your team were would make a movie or television
show right now and use sort of the principles that
you use in game design, like tell us more you
mentioned interactivity, I think, like choose your own adventure style
like you know, page turner. But I'm sure you have
a much more evolved definition of what you're talking about.
I mean, we talked about this a lot, and and
(32:43):
you know, content is expensive, as you alluded to, and uh,
and increasingly it becomes somewhat disposable where people, you know,
watch a few hours of TV that cost you know,
millions of dollars to produce, and they don't even remember
when they watched five days later because the velocity of
of consumption is so i and so it's a bit
of a furnace that you have to keep kind of
feeding as a business, and it has less meaning to
(33:05):
people over time because because they're consuming so much. And
so that's kind of what we say, like we don't
want to create content, we want to create context. So
it's really about like creating a digital context where people
can take actions inside of an environment where there's a
lot of significance of those actions and it means a
lot to people. So it's less about this like taking
(33:27):
people on a linear narrative where we're prescribing what's gonna
be interesting, and it's more creating an environment that's it's
more like creating a digital theme park, right where people
can come in and they can go on the rides
they want to ride and the restaurants they want to
go on. And you know, different people at different ages,
different family profiles, want to do totally different things when
they go to the theme park, and so it's more
(33:47):
about how do we create the most interesting theme park
where where people can find the things that resonate with
them and and then even customize those things. And so
I think that's that's kind of been a more interesting
and iterative experience than of commuting content that that kind
of blows by you really fast and you never see
it again. You're describing, you know, like the digital theme park,
(34:08):
Like I imagine we'll live more and more of our
lives and digital environment. Do you see this like near
future where things that we've done socially are going to
continue to extrapolate digitally, Like these early markers of a
future that we're all sort of leaning into right now.
It's hard to not believe, having gone through this COVID experience,
that they're going to be things that happen in digital
(34:30):
realms that people didn't really do before. They're over time.
Seems like with with higher speed internet connectivities and and
people having developed new habits around how they connected, certainly
they were going to be you know, digital experiences that
may supersede real world experiences a certain cases, but obviously
I think, you know, there's nothing more powerful in our
(34:52):
evolutionary hi biology than physical proximity with people we care about.
So I don't think any of that stuff is going away.
We're not as focused on creating kind of one one
encompassing kind of metaverse and ready player one. I mean,
it's possible that someone will create that, but we I mean,
I think we're more creating, you know, focused on creating
a digital pockets that are really meaningful to certain certain
(35:12):
groups of people rather than one overarching one. You know,
I think that's definitely already happening, right, There's no there's
no question about it that there's thousands of game experiences
out there that you know, lots of people engage with
every day where they're you know, building meaningful relationships and
have you know, personas and avatars inside of them. That's
that's already happening, whether they're all you know, uniform and
(35:35):
united and inside of you know, some single meta experience.
At some point you know, we'll see. But but certainly,
you know, it's trending that more we're able to do
more and more things digitally. You know, every decade that
goes by, I am really blown away by everything that
you guys have done. You know, like the culture that
you've built, the people that you've recruited into the company,
(35:55):
the vision that you had, and you know, the and
and really just you know the time I know it
took for all of you guys to do the hard
work that put you in a position to where now
you're going down the hill, which makes me really happy
for you. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's um, you know,
you've you've seen it all unfold since the beginning, and
you know, you know the you know as are necessary
(36:15):
ways said. You know, you must always be prepared to
work without applause because you know, at the beginning of
building anything, you know, there's a lot of time where
you know, not many people think you're, you know, gonna
be able to pull off whatever you're trying to do.
And uh, it takes a lot of you know, resolving
people around you that are supportive and encouraging around that
enterprise and in that enterprise. And I think the best
(36:36):
advice I've ever been given about this is, you know
that people really overestimate what they can do in the
short term and always underestimate what they can do in
the long term. And so if you kind of keep
channeling your energy you know, towards one project for a decade,
you can accomplish a lot. So what are the leadership
qualities that you admire? What are the things that you
know you you seek for yourself that you really admire
(36:56):
other people? You need a combination of of steady resolve
and consistency. I think, you know, people really value folks
who can be responsible for kind of the energy that
the organization is writing on and UM and so I
think kind of being a custodian of that energy and
making sure it's it's positive and healthy and sustainable and
(37:17):
comes from a good place is really, you know, a
critical element of leadership because people feel feel that energy
and if it's manic, are inconsistent even it's it's hard
for an organization to really build continuity at scale. And
so you know, there's an element of real conviction and
confidence that I think is critical. But there's also an
element of curiosity and UH and self awareness that is
(37:40):
necessary as I said, when you when you scale UM,
I think people really value people who are curious about
their opinions, who don't feel like they have all the
answers yet there that their perspective is just a partial
perspective that is incomplete and can only be completed by
hearing from people who have, you know, different vantage points
on whatever is happening. And so you know, for me,
I think it's that combination of you know, long term
(38:03):
conviction and confidence and resolve and and also you know,
curiosity and admiration for people who are you know, giving
their all and doing things that you don't know how
to do it, as we said, And I think then
then people feel like they're in the right place, they're
going in the right direction, and you know, they're appreciated
and value. I want to be respectful of your time,
and I really appreciate you being on the podcast and
(38:23):
um and as we and as we sign off, you're
remarkable and you're a brilliant guy and all the things.
But you know what I love most is that, like
you really have a great way of breaking things down
into the achievable and approachable ways in which you could
see the unattainable. And I mean, dude, it's it's it's
a remarkable, remarkable generational story that you guys have built
(38:45):
over there. So thanks again, well, yeah, thank you. I
mean I've met so many of my favorite people through
through you and Summit, and I think it's you know,
it's exactly the complementary component of like, I love getting
together with you know, interesting people and discovering them in
the real world, which has been you know, you guys
have done such a great experience of fostering those environments, um,
(39:06):
you know, in the real world, and we've been focused
on the digital side and so um you know, deeply
appreciative of of your friendship and all the amazing stuff
that you guys have done over the years of Summing.
All right, well, thanks again for being on part of
the Hustle. Appreciate it. Walter Driver hear the map. For
(39:40):
more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with my good friend Walter Driver. Walter is the co founder, chairman,
and co CEO of Scope Lee, one of the fastest
growing mobile game companies in the world. Scope Lee creates
and publishes a highly diverse portfolio of top grossing immersive
game experiences, including the award winning Marvel Strike Force, Scrabble,
(00:44):
Go Star Trek, Fleet Command, and Yazzi with Buddies, among
many many others. Fueled by a world class team, Scopelie
leverages its proprietary technology platforms to bring directed by consumer
interactive experiences to audiences worldwide. Under Walter's Lee dr Ship,
the company has achieved more than one billion in lifetime
revenue and attracted more than four hundred and fifty million
(01:05):
dollars in financing from leading venture capital firms, tech luminaries
and cultural icons. I was fascinated to hear how self
aware Walter was the outset of his career, that although
he had the vision, he knew himself well enough to
hire a team with complimentary skill set to make his
dream a reality. We talked about the importance of confidence,
in the power of storytelling when it comes to selling
(01:26):
your ideas, and how Walter envisions the future where we
more closely interact and fostered deeper connections with the entertainment
we consume. Please enjoy my conversation with Walter Driver. Walter,
welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. I I
believe we're blocks away from one another in Venice, California. Yeah.
(01:48):
I feel close to you right now in my heart, Jeff,
even though I would love to be seeing your face.
What a way to start the podcast. That's such a
lovely thing to say. Walter. You are, you know, a
dear friend of mine. We've been buddies for about ten
years now. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast,
and I've gotten to, you know, watch closely this journey
of years in building scope Lee and building your wonderful family,
(02:11):
and just it's great to know you buddy. Likewise, it's
hard to believe the ten years have gone by to
happen fast. I believe you were living with both your
wife and a dear friend of ours. You had just
launched Scope Lee when we met here in l A. Yeah,
I was. I was actually living with a mutual friend
of ours, and he gives me, you know, frequent reminders
(02:33):
that the first rounds of interviews with Scope engineers happened
on the couch in his living room, where I had
actually hired an engineer off of Craigslist to interview other
engineers that I was interviewing because I wanted somebody more
technical of me to ask the questions while I observed.
So you hired an engineer off of craigslist. Yeah, I
met him originally on Craigslist. I interviewed a bunch of
(02:53):
them and found the one that I thought was best,
But rather than hiring him to be an engineer, I
hired him to help interview and vet other engineers I
was working with you. That's a lesson in leverage well.
And the way that you understood, like begin with how
to hire engineers or to even think the higher engineers,
is that this was not your first technology business. You
(03:15):
were the CEO of a Negative Media where you developed
online games, and you also had a company called Ignition Interactive,
which was one of the very very early third party
app developers for Facebook. And I want you to take
us back before that, frankly, to start this story, because
you know, scope Lee is now one of the fastest
growing gaming companies in the world. Going back, Uh, you know,
(03:37):
I know that you're from the Atlanta, Georgia area, correct. Yeah, yeah,
I grew up in Atlanta, was there for you know,
the first eighteen years of my life, and then uh, yeah,
I went to college in New England, which was a
major cultural experience for me growing up in the South.
Brown University. Yeah, I studied uh English literature and creative
(03:59):
writing there and was mainly focused on on storytelling, which
seemed like it was probably not going to be a
great career choice. But yeah, I actually wrote a movie
uh that into my senior year that got some attention
from production company in l A the option the rights
to it, and I want up moving out to l
A just after college, you know, pretty quickly decided that
(04:22):
I didn't want to write movies and work in feature films.
It was just a very long cycle of takes years
to get something made. And at the same time, I
really fell fell in love with l a bright up
in the South. I just I had never really met
anyone who had started their own company. Here I met
people who were, you know, doing it, you know, in
all different categories of business and just making it seem like,
(04:45):
you know, anything you could dream of was possible, and
really supporting each other in the pursuit of of doing
things that where they were creating new kinds of businesses.
And I found that superinvigorating, exciting, amazing. In high school,
were you an entrepreneur really? I mean I think I
always had a an entrepreneurial streak. I mean I was.
I was the kid who was you know, I had
(05:07):
the massive baseball card collection and was wheeling all the
time with stuff in that ecosystem. But I mean I
was primarily playing sports in high school. I mean they
were a huge part of my life. I played at
football and and tennis competitively, and that was, you know,
besides school, friends, family, that was really what I did.
And for me, actually it was stopping playing sports after
(05:28):
I had three concussions my senior year. Hart playing football
was one of the great things that ever happened to
me because it gave me so much time back to
to have a college experience where I was able to
think about what else do I want to do with
this time and learn a lot of other skills and
pursue other interests. So I didn't I didn't know that
I would be an entrepreneur, you know, when I was
graduating from Brown, I think the two the two biggest
(05:51):
employers my senior year Brown were Goldman Sacks in the
Peace Corps. So that was kind of like the two
paths that people were on around me and uh, and
I didn't think that either of those was was for me.
But um, looks I learned over time that that I
like to be creative both and you know, creating creating
experiences for people, but also in creating businesses. And that's
(06:12):
kind of what I've been doing ever since college. Totally.
Every time you tell me that you were like writing
movies and that's what brought you out to l A,
it seems like such a different skill set completely to
what I would think would make for like a successful CEO.
But when we get under the hood and the way
that your technology and your platform works, that's what powers
you're directed by consumer experience. How have you use that,
(06:33):
you know, prison or that view on your work. Yeah,
I mean for me, I think storytelling is is really
central to entrepreneurship and building a business. And so I
didn't take you know, any business or finance classes at all.
I I did, um, you know, take a lot of
a lot of classes, um and and it's been a
lot of time thinking about, you know, narratives and why
(06:56):
people are able to you know, internalize the narrative that
matters to them and something that resonates and will give
you meaning to them over time. And ultimately that that
was kind of my impulse to do that through movies,
and then I sort of realized that, you know, it
was a much more exciting opportunity to do that in
the next generation of entertainment, which were you know, interactive
experiences and then passively consumed ones like you know, being
(07:18):
able to create software to enable experiences that people could
interact with and they could change over time and people
could customize them and make them their own. That seemed
like the next generation of entertainment and you know, far
more exciting on a on a creative basis, building worlds,
not singular stories. Yeah, building worlds of people people could
really make their own where they had an identity inside
(07:40):
of an interact world and they make different decisions than
other people would, and it was more of a dialectic
where we you know, it would create a foundational infrastructure
for for them to really customize and make it their own.
And I found that interplay to be a lot more
interesting than than creating something in a vacuum and then
have somebody watched it in a dark room for two
hours four years later and you don't get any real
(08:00):
feedback and it doesn't change and evolve, And so I
thought that, you know, that was much more interesting to
build these software driven experiences. And you know, at the core,
I think I think the founder of a company's core
job is storytelling in a way, because you're kind of
starting as a a person with a vision in your
head of something that might exist one day that doesn't
currently exist. And at the beginning, you have to convince
(08:22):
that first person who's gonna stop what they're doing and
quit their great job to come work with you when
you know you have nothing right, or the first you
know investor to to back you, or the you know,
first consumer to to try your products um and so
the ability to clearly articulate what you're trying to build
in the future that doesn't yet exist is kind of
always you know, at the center of being able to
(08:45):
draw the circle of people who believe in what you're
trying to do wider and wider. It starts really small
with just you, and then you're you know, really trying
to build more people who can see the vision that
you have in your head as it becomes more clear
and there's more, you know, evidence in the outside world
outside of your brain up of what's going on there.
And so, you know, I think that's probably been the
skill set that had served served me best. And just
bringing great people into the scope really family by helping,
(09:09):
you know, explain what we're trying to do and then
finding people that are far far better than I am
at doing all the things that are necessary to create
that future. Awesome man, And I want to understand that
the scope Lee timeline more too. So you're you're on
the couch, you're interviewing engineers. There was that story then
and the vision that you had then. You know, I'm curious,
was it was it from the beginning that you were
(09:31):
going to build this directed by consumer experience platform that
could build multiple games, or did you have a first
game in mind that you wanted to build. To take
us back a little bit, I didn't really know. To
be honest, I knew that, you know, I felt like
I wasn't going to thrive in a job somewhere. I
thought I needed to kind of create my own experience.
(09:51):
And I knew you know, what I was interested in,
which was you know, software driven entertainment, and so kind
of kind of thought about where, you know, the opportunities
were there. And I had been building games online, you know,
primarily on social platforms like Facebook and MySpace, and and
I think a few years just learning how to build
software and how to make experiences that are you know,
(10:12):
compelling to people. But you know, those products were not
you know, massive transformative businesses. And so I thought, you know,
after a few years of doing that, I wanted to
do something much much bigger and really channel all my
energy into something that I could do for a long
time and be really proud of. And and yeah, so
I you know, I think, you know, interviewing engineers off greg'slist,
(10:32):
and thought it was probably time to stop doing that.
And so you know, I thought I needed real technical
co founder and and that's when I found Uncle Bulsara,
who you know, had been building my spaces UH developer platform.
I reached out to him cold and UH invited him
to have coffee with me to the next day, and
I promised him it would change his life forever. And
(10:54):
in the first email, you said, come up coffee with me.
It'll change your life forever. Yeah, yeah, I said, I
think it's gonna change your life forever. And he responded
like thirty minutes later and said, I don't normally respond
to these called average, but you sound crazy enough that
this might be interesting. And he meant me for coffee
the next day and I told him and I thought
he was ready to be, you know, a CTO of
trans Transformational Company. And he said, how do you know?
(11:15):
And I said, I just had that feeling. Of course
I didn't really know, and I had. I also sent
a similar email to another another CTO candidate and was
me as well at the same time, but I spent
more time with Krey turned out to be, you know,
an amazing guy, and he was. He was a great
choice to co found the business with and really compliment
my skill set, and we started you know, building you know,
(11:37):
digital experience. As we tried building a bunch of different
kinds of products, you know, we had a number of
people that were kind of trying to figure out where
where the big opportunities were, and we were looking at
the mobile mobile app ecosystem, you know, which was relatively new.
You know, the iPhone had created a whole whole new
ecosystem of of app developers, and that ecosystem was very
(11:58):
nascent and quite fragmented, and so we actually had a
couple of guys that were working with us who all
they did was kind of go through the app store,
reach out to developers and have calls with them, you know,
and find out what was working, what wasn't working, where
they thought the industry was headed, what did they need.
And we were looking to kind of form a thesis
around what the best opportunities were and see if there
(12:18):
were things that we could you know, acquire or learnings
that might guide our strategy. And and basically what we
we saw was, you know, there's a lot of innovation
happening around the world with people building building applications, but
the central infrastructure to kind of turn those those games
and experiences into businesses was lacking for a lot of
(12:38):
those developers because basically the central publishing functions and in
a gaming business get better with more scale that you have,
but you don't necessarily become more innovative at scales sometimes
it gets harder, whereas small, focused, passionate teams that are
trying new things were creating a lot of the new experiences.
And so, kind of having studied other forms of media,
(12:59):
I thought, you know, in books, movies, music, console games,
those industries had had kind of matured quickly and consolidated
around a handful of publishing entities, whether they're movie studios
or record labels, um or game publishers that that had
that kind of central infrastructure to turn and content into
a business. I thought that, you know, that wasn't the
(13:19):
case and free to play games in the Western world,
and if we could build that, that was going to
be really exciting. And so we were started to build
some of that central tech infrastructure that we thought would
be helpful to make any game of better business. And
then and then we found we found that a guy
who had built a game called Dice with Buddies who
was living in mermnto and he I think he was
(13:39):
working at UM at Best Buy at the time and
the nights and weekends to build this this game that
you know, was pretty small. It was making about, you know,
three dollars a day. But we were talking to him
and he was giving us some of the engagement metrics,
and the average user was playing eleven times a day UM,
and it was a pretty primitive experience. And we thought, wow,
if this is such a basic experience, it could be
(14:01):
optimized in every way and people playing a liven times
a day there there could be something here. So so
we reached out to him and said, why don't why
don't you fly down to l A and uh and
let's talk about what we could do. And so he
flew down and I remember thinking we had, you know,
found a real diamond in the rough. And and I
told him, you know, I think I think we can
make this a ten million dollar year business together U,
(14:22):
and we should buy it and you should come be
part of scope ly and we'll scale it. And and
he looked at me it was like, no way, it's
not gonna be ten million. And I thought, you know, no,
I think we can get it to tim million. He said, no, way,
this is at least a hundred million. I was making
him out three hundred dollars a day, and I was like, Wow,
this is gonna this is gonna be a tough a
tough conversation, if from a pricing perspective, but we were
(14:44):
able to work out a deal. I like this guy though,
because it was it was you know, it was it
was pretty funny that he could you know, he could
see it too, and he came joy us scope WI
and we built a team around that product and and
we did. We scaled it, you know, to be a
multi hundred million dollar franchise. He was right, And then
we started building more of those experiences over time and
(15:06):
kind of accumulating amazing people and great, great partners and
some of the leading IP holders in the world that
create digital experience out of brands that people cared about
and some great investors. And we've kind of been at
it for the last eight years, getting progressively better at
all of this. We'll be back with more out of
(15:26):
the hustle after the break. Some of these games have
half a billion in lifetime revenue now at this point.
Correct like it. The thesis couldn't have been more proven.
Correct at this point. Yeah, I mean, the I think
the core ideas were the right ones, and and it
(15:49):
turned out to be pretty big businesses school. He's done
over a billion dollars of of lifetime revenue, and you know,
it's had about a seventy five percent company or growth
rate of the lat six years. So it's it's wild
ride for sure. I recall this era of the first
generation Facebook and mobile social games. We knew a lot
of those same game developers, and many of them ended
(16:10):
up at some of those like production houses, the Zinga's
of the world. But you know, that type of game
design that those addiction mechanics to me, that type of
game design you're thinking about, how do you get somebody
who wants to play this? Not just like one time,
but you know perennially, was this intentional or was this
like through the experimentation that you ended up going aroute
where you build the latter version of a game studio. Yeah,
(16:34):
I mean I think look, everyone started, um, you know,
with simpler, shallow or products, I would say, and this, uh,
in this ecosystem of free digital experiences, and people figured
out how to make them more interesting for longer periods
of time because you know, we wanted to great experiences
that people would play, you know, for for years. And
to do that, they you want to give them a
(16:55):
lot of agency and a lot of control over their
experience in a sense of customization, and and ways to
build meaningful relationships inside the products. I mean, I think
that's what keeps people um engaged in these communities. They're
like social networks inside of a digital playground, and that's
what matters to people most is they you know, they
come for the game, but they stay for the relationships
they have, and you know that that's always kind of
(17:16):
been the part of it the interest me. I was
never very interested in making games and people played alone
in a vacuum because for me, it was the way
that you know, gameplay facilitates relationship building that was interesting.
And a lot of these you know, people you know
that are out there feel like, you know, wherever they
are physically, they don't feel like they can find people
who are like them, who think like them, and they
(17:38):
might feel isolated, you know, sometimes lonely. And I think
it's really powerful for people to be able to find
like minded people and connect with them through play around
the world and have meaningful relationships with people that that
transcend physical geography, and and that's what happens in a
lot of these games. And I think that's a more
fulfilling part of it than than just the fun aspect.
For me, is is kind of the long orm relationship
(18:01):
building definitely. And I mean in COVID nineteen Lockdown that
we've all been living through the amount of friends that
are spending time in gaming environments on different platforms and
hanging out with one another. It's just funny when, like,
you know, my business partner, I'll be like, oh, I
have you met so and so You're like, no, you
know what, but I play you know, Call of Duty
with them like a couple of hours a night, a
(18:22):
few times a week, or you know I'm on Marvel
Strike Force or Star Trek Fleet Command. Do you scope
for the examples, you know, hanging out with people that
you know share my interests in a sense. Yeah, no, exactly.
I mean we want to Scrabble go in early March,
right as a lot of people were going into Lockdown,
and you know, we had millions of people playing every day, Um,
you know, saying this is how I'm staying in touch
(18:42):
with my friends or my family. I don't have much
to say to them right now because I'm sitting at
home the same way they are. But I want to
stay in touch with them. I want to play with them,
and this is a fun way for us to stay,
you know, feeling connected. And like a Star trek Fleet
command eighty percent of players placed seven days a week. Yeah,
I mean, is there a you know, we we really
try and build things that are you know, part of
(19:04):
people's daily lives for long periods of time and you know, provide, provide,
you know, deeper meaning as I said, and so yeah,
and something like Star trek Um about eighty percent of
all the players place seven days a week. And you
know that's we're trying to create experiences that the matter
to people that aren't disposable, right, because it's it's more
creatively ambigious, is more interesting, it's more fulfilling, and it's
(19:24):
a better business to create, you know, things that matter
to people over longer periods of time. And that's really
what's changed a lot from the early days of free
to play games. As you describe, we're just gierly more
disposable experiences. Thank you for going down the rabbit hole
with me. On all this stuff because it's so fascinating
with you and your journey. Like it's not often that
founders are the same people that are talking the ship
(19:45):
and hustling at the very very onset and then scale
with the business. You guys, are this amazing company. Now
it's a it's a multi billion dollar enterprise. You're literally
buying companies from Disney nine years ago. Not only were
you a startup founder with no staff, you were like
new to the game of starting businesses in the first place,
(20:06):
you were writing movies. You must suck at some stuff,
tell us about it. To be honest, that that was
kind of the foundational precept is that I probably am
not good at almost everything, and I'm not good enough
that everything that needs to be done. And I think
some startup founders, I know, you know, try to do
everything themselves and it's hard to scale. Um. But if
(20:27):
you start out with the concept that you are not
going to be good enough at anything, and you need
to find, you know, the best people in the world
at whatever you're trying to do as fast as possible
and and learn from them as quick as possible and
let them drive you know, that's how you you can scale,
and so yeah, I mean I was I think I
had the self awareness to realize that I probably wasn't
(20:47):
going to be able to build a business like like
we built alone. And so yeah, I brought good fortune
to kind of find some partners also early on that
I could bring in and that I could learn from
that had experience operating at scales. So Javier Ferreira to
m O'Brien, two guys at UH they were you know,
running basically Disney's gaming business in two thousand and fourteen,
which was you know about you know, a hundred thousand
(21:10):
times bigger than ours, and you know, they came over
as my key partners when we were siveds Age Company,
and and really I learned a lot from from both
of those guys about how to how to scale. And
then we went and brought a bunch of other people
into the Scoby family that that we all learned a
lot from. And so that's the hard evolution as a
as a founder is you have to be you know,
very very confident in your own perspective in the early
(21:32):
days because no one, no one is gonna come work
with you, or invest in you, or spend their time
on something that is totally unproven with somebody who doesn't
really believe in their own vision or who's really questioning it.
So you have to go from being extremely confident in
a very uncertain future to gradually becoming increasingly more skeptical
(21:52):
of a more proven future. Continuously over time you start
to have more data points of success and uh, and
that's when you really need to start being skeptical again
of your own vision and and be looking for people
who have contrary perspectives at that point and and be
more attuned to what am I missing? Whereas the beginning
you're you're really more in broadcast mode all the time
(22:13):
of saying who we are and where we're going, because
if you don't say it over and over again, it's
people forget it very quickly because there's no there's no
actual data to support what you're saying. But that's the
hard part of the scale is kind of you know,
starting to feel like you need to become increasingly skeptical
of and less certain of your own views. You know,
as as you grow. You were just talking about, you know,
(22:34):
the wonderful partners that you have today, um, that are
managing the business. You also have like a hall of fame,
you know, uh alumni network of people that you know,
we're at Scope Lee and then went on and started
really amazing companies. And I think about that captain mentality, right,
Like there's a great book called The Captain's Class that
just talks about that being the differentiating factor of like
(22:56):
the great franchises throughout history, sports dynasty these it wasn't
about the greatest of all time player, it wasn't about
having the best coach, but it was often having a
captain who wasn't the best player on the team. Bill
Russell being like a prototypical example, he never had a
scoring title. He wasn't he wasn't the player that was
like the most exciting. He never had the most of
any stats. But when he left, they stopped winning championships.
(23:20):
You've always been able to empower great players who also
are in their own right like CEOs and entrepreneurs. And
there's something very very rare about that. Yeah, I mean,
I guess for me, it's it's really like, you know
about the experience, right, I didn't. I didn't start out
in this company, frankly to build a specific product or
(23:40):
to have a you know, specific kind of financial outcome
or anything. I just wanted to have a really interesting
experience that you know, I was fully engaged in. And
for me, I thrive off of just like the exertion
and the challenge of the simulation of needing to learn
and grow all the time. Like that's kind of my
my addiction for me. You know, if I want to
keep learning and growing, I need to be surrounded by
smart people that are challenging me and taking taking things
(24:03):
that are farther than I could ever take them. And
so my mentality was that we need to get you know,
better faster, and and one of our core uses is
just iterates to success. This idea that we need to
to learn and iterate faster than anyone else. And that
comes from, you know, the dialectic of getting multiple perspectives
together and feeding that into the system and creating a
(24:23):
better perspective than and then and getting that fly wheel
spending faster. So I spend a lot of time, you know,
talking to talented people and and trying to get them
into the scope we ecosystem, and then good things seem
to happen even if you don't know, you know, you
can't foresee all the great things that a great person
is going to be able to do over years and
making thousands of decisions every week, but those compound over time,
(24:45):
and and so I always felt like the highest leverage
thing I can spend time on was spending time with
great people that are working at scope WA and and
that we want to have a scope we and you know,
if we get the best people together and have a
queer idea of what we're trying to do, and we
have the resources we need, then everything else will will
unfold over time totally. And then what's the plan? Are
you guys becoming more international? Where are you leaning into
(25:06):
right now? Yeah, it's a pretty exciting time for the business.
You know, as the said, we started a company like
two thousand eleven and and we grow more in the
last twelve months than we did, you know, in the
first eight years. So pretty exciting as you know, as
an entrepreneur, because you know, you kind of get up
every day and you go just push on a wall
and then one day, you know, eight years and it
(25:28):
kind of feels like the wall the wall falls down,
and uh, and you're kind of going downhill suddenly, because
you know, people are interested in coming to work at
your company or interested investing or you know, uh, you
have people that you know are are playing your games,
and people want to come be part of what's going on.
Instead of having to convince people that the future is
is going to be exciting, there's you know that external
(25:50):
data to supported and so that's been pretty exciting. We've
had pretty wild last year with Star Trek Fulle Command
is grown exponentially and as one of the the most successful
in themost strategy games in the West right now, and
and the team behind that has just blown me away
over the last few years what they've been able to do.
And then yeah, we launched Scrabble in March, which is
(26:11):
by far the biggest audience game in the industry of
the company, and so that's that's pretty exciting. As you said,
we we bought some of Fox's gaming assets from Disney
earlier this year and acquired a game, Marvel Strike Force,
that was, you know, a game that we really admired
creatively and the players loved, and um, we thought it
could be even more successful than it was, and and
(26:31):
it's grown tremendously since since we acquired it and has
been very stimulating. So at least, yeah, I'm sure most
of this is happening from home. You know, how is
your is your office all remote? Partially remote? How are
you guys dealing with COVID right now? Yeah, we have
everybody working remotely, you know, across fifteen locations on four continents,
and you know, I think it. You know a lot
(26:53):
of companies have had this experience. It's gone remarkably smoothly
so far. Um we did, you know, fortunately have a
lot of experience working with distributed teams because we have
locations around the world. But everyone's still trying to figure
out what things are working better, because it does feel
like there's some real advantages, but also maybe some things
that we're missing in terms of how you build trust
and human connection. You alluded to this before we pressed record.
(27:18):
What are some of the things that you know need
to get better and that you guys are improving upon
and the way that you work together remotely that you
know we'll all be able to do ourselves. Yeah, I mean,
I think I think the biggest thing for us is
that I think we relied on physical proximity sometimes as
a as a crutch. We were not as deliberate and
sophisticated about designing communication flows that that would really scale,
(27:40):
and a culture and values that that travel well. Yeah,
building more discipline, values, architecture and principles that that travel well,
and behaviors of how you work, and just you know,
think about how you define those things and how you
onboard new people into a way that you know, when
you onboard people physically like they they are very sophisticated
(28:00):
and absorbing, you know, cultural norms very very quickly, right
from seeing how people are behaving, and you just don't
get that remotely. And so you know, really defining a
lot of those things, I think we'll make make it
when when we can work together, you know, it will
make those systems sharper and more powerful. So it's it's
really about thinking about what what have we been using
(28:20):
proximity for and how do we solve for that in
a remote environment and maybe kind of having more texture
and what we do when we have proximity. Right, It's
like a lot of the work day before was was
kind of similar in nature. You go to the office,
you go from one room to another, have meetings, work
alone at your desk, but you're having a lot of
the same kinds of experiences with people and and so yeah,
(28:42):
I've definitely been thinking a lot about if one of
the primary things that proximities for is about building trusts
and connections so that people can be really candid with
each other and and understand that each other have each
other's best intentions at heart, then then you can challenge
each other more and get better faster. Then maybe we
should be spending more of that time, you know, doing
things that directly are focus on building connection and trust
(29:06):
rather than than just sitting in a meeting. Maybe we
should get out of the office more and do things
together outside the office that you know, are more of
a context shift to create different kinds of relationships. I mean, unfortunately,
we're you know, we have some time to figure it
out right now. It doesn't seem like we're gonna be
back together soon. But we've been very fortunate that it's
gone very smoothly for us. But you know, I miss
(29:27):
I missed being around people. I miss the energy of
being with with all of my team and partners of scope,
because like that's what keeps it keeps it energizing every day.
And so it's nice as it's nice to not be
on an airplane all the time and really nice to
spend more time with my with my family, but I missed,
I miss seeing my friends of work. Art of the
(29:48):
Hustle will be right back after this short break. I
want to understand, you know, the the more macro generational
consumer a little further. Is there things that in particular
that have been fascinating that you've learned about the archetypes
of player games right now? Are their consumer behaviors? Yeah,
(30:11):
I mean, I think, you know, we have a portfolio
of games. It appeals to different types of people and
and so I don't think I'm I'm an expert in
kind of you know, the next generation of you know,
what the kids are doing are saying. I think I
think my insights are are more probably around how the
next generation of entertainment is evolving for everyone. I think
that's kind of the big shift is. And you know,
(30:33):
if you look at the history of media, it's really
been about people having more agency and more choice over time, right,
and people people like that. So you had a handful
of you know, network TV channels for a long time
with you know, not a lot of choice about what
you watched or when you watched it, or how you
paid for it, and uh, and then you know, this
direct to consumer revolution created much better consumer experiences because
(30:55):
you can go to Netflix and watch whatever, So do
you want to watch whenever you want to watch it?
That's very taylor with your interests, and you can unbundle
it from a lot of other content and decide, you know,
whether you want to pay for it or not. Fundamentally,
there's just a lot of passively consumed content that's being created.
There's hundreds of millions of hours of video that's created
every day, and I think the biggest shift is that
the passively consumed media that's sort of the same for
(31:18):
everyone is becoming a little bit more commoditized. There's a
little bit downward pressure and how how special it feels
to people and how much to invest in it. Obviously,
they are exceptions that stuff that you know, really matter
and breakthrough, but but it's a you know, as a
general trend, there's just a lot more supply is growing
faster than demand in terms of passively consumed media, and
(31:40):
so I think the biggest shift is that this idea
of directed by consumer experiences, where you know, we we
let people not just watching the show they want to watch,
but actually direct the show and decide which characters they
want to engage with and how they want to play
and to do that. You know, as a person who
has an identity inside of a world that's a reflection
of you know, their choices, their decisions, and that means
(32:01):
that experience is going to be unique to them. And
so that's it's kind of a snowflake experience that no
one else is going to have and that you know,
that's one of a kind and then has a lot
more value to people if it's a reflection of their choices.
And so I think that's the big shift that that
we're really focused on. Content is definitely going through that
moment right now in a sense, just just in terms
(32:21):
of how much we're watching it. We're all at home.
If your team were would make a movie or television
show right now and use sort of the principles that
you use in game design, like tell us more you
mentioned interactivity, I think, like choose your own adventure style
like you know, page turner. But I'm sure you have
a much more evolved definition of what you're talking about.
I mean, we talked about this a lot, and and
(32:43):
you know, content is expensive, as you alluded to, and uh,
and increasingly it becomes somewhat disposable where people, you know,
watch a few hours of TV that cost you know,
millions of dollars to produce, and they don't even remember
when they watched five days later because the velocity of
of consumption is so i and so it's a bit
of a furnace that you have to keep kind of
feeding as a business, and it has less meaning to
(33:05):
people over time because because they're consuming so much. And
so that's kind of what we say, like we don't
want to create content, we want to create context. So
it's really about like creating a digital context where people
can take actions inside of an environment where there's a
lot of significance of those actions and it means a
lot to people. So it's less about this like taking
(33:27):
people on a linear narrative where we're prescribing what's gonna
be interesting, and it's more creating an environment that's it's
more like creating a digital theme park, right where people
can come in and they can go on the rides
they want to ride and the restaurants they want to
go on. And you know, different people at different ages,
different family profiles, want to do totally different things when
they go to the theme park, and so it's more
(33:47):
about how do we create the most interesting theme park
where where people can find the things that resonate with
them and and then even customize those things. And so
I think that's that's kind of been a more interesting
and iterative experience than of commuting content that that kind
of blows by you really fast and you never see
it again. You're describing, you know, like the digital theme park,
(34:08):
Like I imagine we'll live more and more of our
lives and digital environment. Do you see this like near
future where things that we've done socially are going to
continue to extrapolate digitally, Like these early markers of a
future that we're all sort of leaning into right now.
It's hard to not believe, having gone through this COVID experience,
that they're going to be things that happen in digital
(34:30):
realms that people didn't really do before. They're over time.
Seems like with with higher speed internet connectivities and and
people having developed new habits around how they connected, certainly
they were going to be you know, digital experiences that
may supersede real world experiences a certain cases, but obviously
I think, you know, there's nothing more powerful in our
(34:52):
evolutionary hi biology than physical proximity with people we care about.
So I don't think any of that stuff is going away.
We're not as focused on creating kind of one one
encompassing kind of metaverse and ready player one. I mean,
it's possible that someone will create that, but we I mean,
I think we're more creating, you know, focused on creating
a digital pockets that are really meaningful to certain certain
(35:12):
groups of people rather than one overarching one. You know,
I think that's definitely already happening, right, There's no there's
no question about it that there's thousands of game experiences
out there that you know, lots of people engage with
every day where they're you know, building meaningful relationships and
have you know, personas and avatars inside of them. That's
that's already happening, whether they're all you know, uniform and
(35:35):
united and inside of you know, some single meta experience.
At some point you know, we'll see. But but certainly,
you know, it's trending that more we're able to do
more and more things digitally. You know, every decade that
goes by, I am really blown away by everything that
you guys have done. You know, like the culture that
you've built, the people that you've recruited into the company,
(35:55):
the vision that you had, and you know, the and
and really just you know the time I know it
took for all of you guys to do the hard
work that put you in a position to where now
you're going down the hill, which makes me really happy
for you. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's um, you know,
you've you've seen it all unfold since the beginning, and
you know, you know the you know as are necessary
(36:15):
ways said. You know, you must always be prepared to
work without applause because you know, at the beginning of
building anything, you know, there's a lot of time where
you know, not many people think you're, you know, gonna
be able to pull off whatever you're trying to do.
And uh, it takes a lot of you know, resolving
people around you that are supportive and encouraging around that
enterprise and in that enterprise. And I think the best
(36:36):
advice I've ever been given about this is, you know
that people really overestimate what they can do in the
short term and always underestimate what they can do in
the long term. And so if you kind of keep
channeling your energy you know, towards one project for a decade,
you can accomplish a lot. So what are the leadership
qualities that you admire? What are the things that you
know you you seek for yourself that you really admire
(36:56):
other people? You need a combination of of steady resolve
and consistency. I think, you know, people really value folks
who can be responsible for kind of the energy that
the organization is writing on and UM and so I
think kind of being a custodian of that energy and
making sure it's it's positive and healthy and sustainable and
(37:17):
comes from a good place is really, you know, a
critical element of leadership because people feel feel that energy
and if it's manic, are inconsistent even it's it's hard
for an organization to really build continuity at scale. And
so you know, there's an element of real conviction and
confidence that I think is critical. But there's also an
element of curiosity and UH and self awareness that is
(37:40):
necessary as I said, when you when you scale UM,
I think people really value people who are curious about
their opinions, who don't feel like they have all the
answers yet there that their perspective is just a partial
perspective that is incomplete and can only be completed by
hearing from people who have, you know, different vantage points
on whatever is happening. And so you know, for me,
I think it's that combination of you know, long term
(38:03):
conviction and confidence and resolve and and also you know,
curiosity and admiration for people who are you know, giving
their all and doing things that you don't know how
to do it, as we said, And I think then
then people feel like they're in the right place, they're
going in the right direction, and you know, they're appreciated
and value. I want to be respectful of your time,
and I really appreciate you being on the podcast and
(38:23):
um and as we and as we sign off, you're
remarkable and you're a brilliant guy and all the things.
But you know what I love most is that, like
you really have a great way of breaking things down
into the achievable and approachable ways in which you could
see the unattainable. And I mean, dude, it's it's it's
a remarkable, remarkable generational story that you guys have built
(38:45):
over there. So thanks again, well, yeah, thank you. I
mean I've met so many of my favorite people through
through you and Summit, and I think it's you know,
it's exactly the complementary component of like, I love getting
together with you know, interesting people and discovering them in
the real world, which has been you know, you guys
have done such a great experience of fostering those environments, um,
(39:06):
you know, in the real world, and we've been focused
on the digital side and so um you know, deeply
appreciative of of your friendship and all the amazing stuff
that you guys have done over the years of Summing.
All right, well, thanks again for being on part of
the Hustle. Appreciate it. Walter Driver hear the map. For
(39:40):
more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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