Show Notes
Welcome to Secret Stash's first-ever podcast episode, hosted by Justin Kan and Archie Stonehill. Today's guest - legendary investor Mitch Lasky! Since the mid 1990s, Mitch Lasky has been building and investing in some of the biggest game companies in the world. He was one of the first, if not the first, investor to take game developers seriously as a venture-backable business. He helped build Activision, was CEO of Jamdat (one of the first mobile game studios, which he took public before selling to Electronic Arts for $680M), and was an early investor at Riot Games, helping turn League of Legends from a rough wireframe to the sensation it is today. Suffice to say, Mitch has been around the block and has some secrets to share - specifically the importance of GTM and how to innovate in it. While the game industry is quick to attribute some of the biggest successes to groundbreaking product and design, Mitch says there’s more to the equation - that distribution and GTM is arguably the most important element. Read the highlights here: dev.stash.gg/blog/secret-stash-ep-1-mitch-lasky-reveals-the-secret-to-gaming-gtm 0:00 - Meet Mitch Lasky 1:45 - Mitch reveals why he didn't invest in Twitch 5:56 - Some business models are gross 12:06 - How Riot innovated their GTM 17:37 - Mitch's practical advice on GTM 21:13 - Regulations are opening up mobile and Steam 26:04 - Is AAA bad at direct-to-consumer? 28:57 - There's room for innovation in funding 35:02 - How thatgamecompany and Jenova Chen innovated GTM 40:09 - The AAA business model is gross too 41:51 - Looking ahead 48:13 - Mitch's biggest secret from his Riot days
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Gaming isn’t about blockbuster budgets or flashy graphics - it’s about fun. And somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that.