10 Lessons Learned Growing from 1 to 1000
summary
Describes how a small studio scaled to ~1000 staff after a 2010 merger with Goodgame, using concrete operational changes: tuning game servers to handle about 25,000 concurrent users, redesigning tutorials to cut a 78% drop to 19% (saving ~8,000 players), and learning from a failed title where designing for creators (keyboard controls) hurt conversion. Also covers organizational moves: introducing a technical product manager role in Jan 2013, strict CDN/vendor testing, hiring ~17 of every 100 applicants, and keeping a KISS architecture.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:07Partner and team selection
- 5:13Build product for users
- 9:46Diversify risks
- 11:57Avoid product complexity
- 12:59Long-term goals
- 13:20Focus for speed
- 17:08Sales and promises in writing
- 18:57Test CDNs yourself
- 20:25Question efficiency
- 21:51Cross-department communication
- 23:15Technical product managers
- 27:32Organize communication at scale
- 29:20Keep software simple
- 30:26Use external services
- 34:03Avoid micromanagement
- 35:09Measure everything
- 39:48Right people right roles
- 43:18Growth challenges
- 45:03Q&A
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