David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interviewed some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Walter driver, the CEO of Scopely, one of the fastest growing mobile first video game companies in the world. In April 2023. They launched monopoly go, which has become the most downloaded game in the United States, they doubled their revenue, and then they were recently acquired for almost $5 billion. Now, if you're like me, you hear numbers like that. And you got to think what in the heck are they doing to drive that kind of success, where you're going to hear for yourself in this conversation. But Walter says one particular phrase that I just love, and I think it's a big factor in their success. And his words, he's not just building a company, he's building a learning machine, a work environment where people can iterate quickly see what's working, and what's not. And use that knowledge to get better. If you want to see how to build that kind of culture. Keep listening. Here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Walter driver.

Walter, you founded Scopely in 2011, and recently, you were named mobile game maker of the year for the eighth year in a row. Give us a snapshot of of the business you have today. Yeah,

Walter Driver 1:44 

we're one of the largest video game companies in the Western world, we have, you know, over 100 million people playing our games and and that's across a diverse portfolio of products. Products, like Monopoly go stumble guys, Marvel StrikeForce and Star Trek fleet command. So very different kinds of experiences appeal to different kinds of players. And, you know, we try and create experiences, they're gonna matter a lot to players over a long time period. And that's really been the foundation of what we've been trying to build as subgrade meaningful experiences where players can play and connect with like minded people around the world. So we've been having a lot of fun building this company.

David Novak 2:19 

Yeah, you've had a fantastic success story here. And I got to ask you, where did the name Scopely come from?

Walter Driver 2:27 

I get that question a lot. You know, to be honest, the domain name was available for $8. When I started the company, that was a key data point. But you know, I think we I was also we made a list of of names, and we wanted a name that didn't already mean something to someone that we could come to define. And so scope was was a word that we thought could conjure, you know, some vague ideas that ultimately could come to be defined by what we what we did and what we built.

David Novak 2:57 

I want to take you back, before we get into, you know how you built this tremendous company, that tell us a childhood story that really is impacted the way how you lead.

Walter Driver 3:07 

You know, one story that comes to mind is, you know, my parents originally from Texas, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and I played football growing up. And when I was nine years old, I was playing in the under 10 League. So it was on the the younger year of that, and I was the backup running back at the beginning of the season, and I got elevated to be the starting running back by like the third game. And in practice that week, I took a helmet to the ankle and chipped the part of the bone off my ankle. And so I had a broken ankle, I went to the doctor and and they put in an air cast on it and, and I showed up for the game that weekend. And the coach said to my mom, like there's no way your son's playing, he's got a broken ankle, and my mom said, we're from Texas, he'll play. And, you know, I think that was kind of having a mom that says, you know, you can play with a broken ankle, not because she forced me to do things I didn't want to do. I wanted to play I was excited about the opportunity. But she was an extreme competitor. And, and you know, I think that sense of competition really shaped who I am as well.

David Novak 4:08 

I got to ask you, were you into games when you were a kid.

Walter Driver 4:11 

I was. I mean, I wasn't an extreme gamer, by most definitions, but I love to play games, video games with my friends. And, and that was the main point of it for me was I loved to play video games alone. I loved the feeling of playing games together. And I think, you know, our mission of scope is to inspire play every day because I think plays is the foundation of how we form our first friendships and relationships on the playground when we're when we're kids and sometimes as adults, we lose touch with that sense of play. And the way that it helps us you know, build connections with new people is the most natural way to to form a new relationship is to play together. And so it was really the social aspect of games as a kid that that I really loved. And you know, I don't think my my parents at the time thought that would ever become a career for me and that that time spent playing video games was probably not A great investment for my professional success, but it turned out to be a good one. So

David Novak 5:04 

I know you know that I know your your father very well, he's good friend of mine. And I understand that he's been your mentor. And you guys talk a lot, obviously about a lot of things. Tell us a time when he gave you some advice that really has inspired the way how you think about leadership.

Walter Driver 5:22 

Yeah, I mean, I am fortunate, I think, to have a built in role model in my house, my dad is a natural leader, he has been a leader of virtually every organization he's come into contact with in his life. And I think that's been a tremendous advantage for me. And, you know, one of the key pieces of advice he actually gave my sisters, and a document he wrote for them, and then they gave a copy of it to me when I was older, but one of the things that really resonated was, you know, he said that the secret of success in life is to recognize your strengths, and maneuver yourself into a position where, you know, your strengths are the key factors of success in whatever endeavor you're in, and try to navigate to a position where your weaknesses are as relevant as possible. You know, it sounds pretty basic, but it's hard to do. And I think that advice was really foundational to, really the whole idea of scope, we because a lot of my original inspiration for scope was figuring out, you know, what it is, that lights me up what I do really well, and being hyper aware of all the things, the many, many more things that I don't do well, and trying to create an environment where, you know, I could be professionally successful, I think a lot of people start companies, because you didn't know they had a hard time finding a good mattress, or whatever it is. And for me, it was the problem that I was solving was was I'd never had a job before. And I didn't really want to get one to be honest, I wanted to go on an adventure and I and I want it to be you know, I wanted that adventure to be successful and to work with amazingly talented people that could teach me things I didn't know and, and to be able to learn and grow and, and to be a self directed and kind of that exploration. And so I really designed scope with without advice from my dad in mind.

David Novak 7:01 

I understand you didn't pursue business or technology in college, but you graduated from Brown with a degree in English literature. How did that kind of formal education impact your leadership perspective,

Walter Driver 7:13 

I would say my degree from from Brown were spent a lot of time in poetry classes, and that kind of stuff wasn't, you know, the most directly applicable concept to starting a technology driven video games company on the surface. But really, actually, it served me incredibly well. Because I think as a founder, CEO, leader, one of your chief jobs is really being the storyteller of the organization, because you're trying to create something that doesn't exist today. And to do that, you need to be an extremely effective communicator of a world where it does exist in the future and be able to, to build sort of collective conviction of all the people you come into contact with that this reality will, that you're talking about will in fact, become a reality over time. And so I think storytelling and communication is maybe one of the most essential skills for a founder and a leader and one that sometimes gets overlooked.

David Novak 8:07 

Well, you're obviously a great storyteller. And I understand when you first moved to Los Angeles, you were actually pursuing the screenwriter career, and you actually had written a script that was getting some attention in Hollywood, tell us about that.

Walter Driver 8:21 

I did move to Los Angeles initially, because I was at a movie script that had gotten some attention from a production company and, and I arrived in LA kind of, you know, trying to figure out where that project was going, and also what I really wanted to do. And, you know, I pretty quickly realized that I do love being creative professionally. And I also have a strong business orientation. So I needed to be in an industry that can combine creativity and business, but I also want it to be in a really dynamic and growing space. And I felt like, you know, the feature film industry at that time was already relatively slow moving, it took years to make a movie and, and if you were lucky enough to write something that got made you were going to sit in a dark room with a few 100 People in silence for a couple hours, and then they would get up and walk out and you you didn't know which characters they love which scenes mattered the most to them and, and there wasn't really a role for for them to play and CO creating their own experience. And it felt like software was eating the world. You know, as Marc Andreessen famously said, but but it was going to eat entertainment as well and that interactive entertainment experiences where people could really customize experience and make decisions inside of the software that would reflect their choices and preferences and enable them to connect with other people and and have an identity inside of a world all of that was was more exciting to me and it was also an sort of a new frontier where felt like it was going to be the biggest entertainment category it is today. Gaming is bigger than, you know, film, music and books combined. And a growing space where we would have a lot of run way to be able to pursue bigger and bigger dreams. And I sort of made an adjacent hop from creating experiences for people in writing to creating them, you know, through games.

David Novak 10:11 

Did you have a aha moment? Walter where, you know, you just, it made you say, Hey, I don't want to be a writer, I'm gonna really make this pivot. Yeah,

Walter Driver 10:20 

I mean, I think the thing is, you know, a lot of people growing up, you know, they're drawn to have an idea of a career that they want to have, they have a dream of a profession that they envision that they'll really enjoy. But you also have to think about what is the reality of that, like, and how do you actually spend your time and, you know, when I was working, writing, I was spending a lot of time alone with my computer, with fictional characters and, and just writing all day, every day. And I felt, you know, I realized, I'm really extroverted. And I get a lot of energy from interacting with other people. And honestly, my favorite part of being a writer was being in the room, pitching the story we were going to write and why it was going to be fantastic. And then I would go home and have to sit here and write this thing, you know. And I realized, you know, if you don't love the actual process, like if you don't love the reality of the work, it's impossible to be world class at something, you have to have an inherent love of the craft and, and the core thing that you spend your time actually doing. And, and so I realized, yeah, it would be way better off. And suddenly, where I worked as part of a team, you know, where I could surround myself with people that had really complementary skill sets. And I could put a lot of the same skills to use but in a different context and have a different daily experience where I was energized by the people around me. How

David Novak 11:33 

do you go about building the foundation and know how in technology in gaming to start up a company like Scopely,

Walter Driver 11:40 

it's been a, you know, quite a process for the last 12 years, it's, you know, really required every fiber of my being on a lot of fronts. But you know, I didn't have I'm not a programmer, I'm not a game designer, I'm not a marketeer. I don't have a finance background, I don't, I don't really have any specific skill sets that are relevant to, you know, any of the functional areas in our company. And so, you know, I started with this feeling that I needed to create an environment where the most talented people in the world would want to come work, and we could get the best people in the world at all those things that I don't do as well. And so pretty foundational to start in that process was figuring out who had the skills that we that we needed, and who had done it before, and flying all over the world, interviewing people and asking lots of questions of everyone I met about who's amazing at this thing or that thing, and, and then pulling on those threads, and then being really relentless. And sometimes spending years trying to talk those people into coming on board and, and joining us on the scope we adventure and, and so I've really learned a lot of things I needed to learn, you know, I still don't know them well enough to do them myself at a world class level, but I'm much more fluid and all those things, because I've been surrounded by people who have taught me a lot from inside the company. And, you know, I think people sometimes underestimate how much they can learn from, from all of their co workers inside of an organization is certainly where I've learned the most, you

David Novak 13:01 

know, thinking about your business, mobile gaming, and I have to ask you, what went on in your mind when you first saw the iPhone, and in 2007

Walter Driver 13:12 

the advent of the iPhone certainly felt like a generational opportunity. It took a couple of years, I think, for it to fully come into focus, how it was gonna be the biggest, you know, smartphones would be the biggest platform in the history of humanity to be able to make something once and put it in the hands of literally billions of people around the planet. And so it just obliterated a lot of the distribution obstacles for anyone who is creating, you know, consumer facing businesses and, and, you know, people also have it with them, you know, 24/7 it's not something that you have to go home to be in front of a desktop computer or a television. And so you can have a different kind of relationship with those products. And, and fundamentally, it's a phone, right, it's a communication tool. And so when you have 3 billion people now that have a gaming platform with them 24/7, but it's also a communication tool where they can, you know, use it to, to communicate with people inside of these games, it really seems like, you know, the opportunity of a generation that I had had to focus on, because it was really the most exciting thing that was going to happen for a very long time. And, and it kind of coincided with this shift from games being content that people would purchase and consume, to pay $60 for a console game that was in a box, and then you would play it and finish it and be done with it and wait for the next thing to come out to this shift of what we call live services, which are, you know, always evolving always on products that are really more of a destination that people can go visit. They're really social networks built around a digital playground and the the phone was really conducive to those kinds of experiences. So it has been a big part of our success at Scopely. And I think there are many other people around my age who who saw giant opportunities with the advent of the iPhone and whole industries that have been built on the back of it.

David Novak 14:59 

Not A lot of people see those opportunities, but not a lot of people really sees them. What is it about you and your DNA that really made you want to start and build your own company,

Walter Driver 15:11 

to some extent it was, I just don't know, or extreme, I guess, awareness of my of how my brain works, I had learned at a young age that I had, you know, an extraordinary, I think, amount of persistence and ability to focus and work extremely hard if I was working on something that was self directed, that I was super interested in. And I have virtually no ability to focus or concentrate or apply any, any kind of consistent effort to something where I was told what to do. And so I felt like I you know, or to be the best version of myself, I really needed to start something on my own. You know, at the same time, I also realized that, that I needed to really complement my skill set with with partners around me, and that it was going to be sort of critical, I guess, to create some magnetism around the organization that would sort of create a club that that people want to be a member of. I mean, that's how I thought about it from the beginning was when you're building a company, you're really creating a club, and and, you know, people want to join that club, did they want to stay part of that club? Are they proud of their association with it? You know, and are they proud of the all the association was with the other people were members of it, and, and if you can get that right, then a lot of things take care of themselves. And, and once you lose that thread, where people no longer want to be part of that club, it, it becomes really hard to to be successful.

David Novak 16:28 

You know, I asked you earlier about the name Scopely. And you said you wanted to keep it kind of vague. And it didn't cost you much to pick it up, which is a great benefit. Did you and your co founders set out to create a game company? No,

Walter Driver 16:42 

I think we we didn't know exactly what we were going to do. When we started the company. I remember sitting with honorable Syrah, my co founder and CTO and saying, you know, we should start a company. And he said, What are we going to do? And I said that, I don't know. But it's going to be huge. You know, I think that that was an unusual way to start an organization where a lot of our strategy was less about which specific products we were going to build and more about what kind of company that we were going to build to be successful, we knew that there was huge opportunity, creating social experiences for people that were facilitated by play, but what kinds of play and what what kinds of experiences we didn't know. But we knew that there were, you know, different challenges that you needed to build a single product that resonated and then a consumer facing digital experience and challenges that you needed to solve, if you were going to build a company that would be would become an institution that consists systematically kind of be successful in bringing products like that to market. And so we knew we didn't want to be a single product company that we wanted to be able to build infrastructure we could use over and over again, to be systematically successful, and we knew that we're going to have to find a series of products that resonated. And so it made the company harder to build initially, because, you know, we're raising capital when when you go to investors, and they say, Well, what are your products? What are your revenue, and you say, well, we have a few of these small products, but don't worry about them, because we're actually going to make better ones, and we're gonna keep releasing new products in the years to come. And what you really need to focus on is this operating system that we're building and, and all these capabilities that we can apply across anything that we do in the future. And we're gonna build a technology platform play Gami, that is going to help customize digital experiences and made it really hard to get started. But it actually made it way more likely we're going to be successful, longer term because we, we were thinking about building a company rather than a product from relatively early on. And then we sort of, were open minded about which products were going to best serve the vision for the company. And so we did it sort of in in reverse order to most companies in our industry.

Koula Callahan 18:48 

Have you ever wondered what David is thinking as he interviews our guests each week? Or have you been interested in hearing David's take on some of the questions that he asks his guest? Well, I do and I know a lot of you do, too. My name is Kula Callahan and together with David, I host the three more questions podcast that airs every Monday. These episodes are just about 15 minutes. And in them, I asked David three questions that dive deeper into the themes of his episode with his guests. David shares incredible insights and stories from his career leading yum brands. And all of His answers are super practical and inspiring, like this great insight David shared and one of our most recent, three more questions episodes.

David Novak 19:30 

Cool. I think the most important thing is that as a leader, you want to make the best decision. You don't care who has the idea. All you care about is getting to the right answer. So the first thing I would tell you is you have to have a willingness to hear everything that's out there that's going to impact the decision that you're going to make and people got to know that If you want the unvarnished truth, that you want their opinion, and it doesn't have to agree with you, you know, so many times leaders are so hell bent on getting done what they think needs to get done. They don't care what anybody has to say, they just want their decision executed. And a lot of times they find out, it's not the right way to go. And they have to go back and do it over and it wastes time and money and energy. And that's why I really believe it's so important to have the mindset as the leader that you want to make the very best possible decision, and that you're going to talk to the people that need to be talked to, to get that decision. So I think one of the things you got to do when you're making the decision is say, Okay, who should I go to, that's going to give me the best and widest perspective on this issue. So that I can end up with the best possible route to take,

Koula Callahan 20:56 

get the three more questions, podcasts and your feed each Monday and dive even deeper into the episodes you know, and love. Just subscribe to how leaders lead wherever you get your podcasts.

David Novak 21:15 

Walter, you say and I love this, it's to excel a business, you need to create a narrative. And you've talked a little bit about your communication skills and how it's helped you create the story for Scopely. But the narrative that you had, you're selling this dream without real products, I mean, tell us how you formulated that narrative and brought it forward to investors and your people, because you had to get people to come along with you, it's not easy to join a company that doesn't necessarily have a product.

Walter Driver 21:46 

You know, I think when you're starting from zero, and you're and you aspire to build an institution that's around for 50 plus years, you have to do it one believer that time, and that the first believer has to be you, right, you have to have a clear understanding of, you know, what you're trying to do and why and you have to be able to inspire one other person to believe in that. And then you got to add a second person, a third person, fourth person of 50 people and 200 people until it's millions of people. And when women millions of people believe, and what a company's potential is, it becomes a reality. But it always starts, you know, in someone's brain or a few people's brain. And, you know, I was really, I guess, focused, not just on the specific contours of like, this is exactly what it's going to look like, because I knew it was going to change. And so we talked a lot about, you know, what kinds of behaviors are we going to focus on inside the organization, and that our strategy was not going to be about a specific product, like we're going to make role playing games, as you know, our strategy was really, that we're going to make experiences that matter to a lot to people and experiences matter a lot to them over a long period of time. And that we're going to be really agile and dynamic and figuring out where the market is headed. Because this is, it's a big Tam, but it's, it's a very fast moving team. And we thought the most dynamic and agile companies were going to be most successful and, and to build a company that can change faster and learn faster than any other company in the space is, you know, something that really was a key objective for us. And we started saying that, you know, relatively early on in the company lifecycle that we weren't trying to build a company, we're trying to build a learning machine. And that feeling that if we could learn faster than any other company in our industry, that ultimately we would come out ahead over time, because that knowledge would compound and if we were just learning, you know, 3% faster than anybody else, we would end up in an amazing place, and that it attracted, you know, the kinds of people who are very open minded about the specific tactics, but I think inspired by the mentality and and that enabled us to, I think, evolve very quickly and, and make a lot of tactical pivots when we needed to and seize new opportunities while still having this through line of, you know, how we thought about the company itself as as a learning machine.

David Novak 24:03 

I love that idea, the learning machine. How did you institutionalize that inside the company as you've grown it,

Walter Driver 24:09 

we've focused a lot on you know, I think celebrating the process rather than the outcomes and focusing on inputs rather than outputs and, and being really comfortable with failure. Because in order to learn fast, you have to be operating at the frontier of your current capabilities, right? You have to be trying to do things that you're not, you don't know how to do. And that process is really messy. It involves failing a lot. And it also necessitates really rapid iteration. And so iterate to greatness is one of our five cultural tenants that Scopely that we've been talking about for a long time. And if you're willing to fail quickly and iterate relentlessly, those are the key ingredients for learning. And you know, Winston Churchill famously said that success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm, and for me that resonates as much as anything Hang in a startup. Because if you create a culture where people are hiding failure, or they're not comfortable with it, or they want to have a neat and tidy answer for everything they're doing, then you're going to end up doing things you already have done in the past. And you're not going to learn and grow at the rate you need to. And so you really just have to get people comfortable systematically with with messiness, ambiguity, and uncertainty and forward propulsion, because you've got to move through those learnings as quickly as possible.

David Novak 25:27 

One of the ways you've differentiated yourself, as I understand it, is, as you've created a studio echo system, tell us about what it is and how you created it.

Walter Driver 25:37 

Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that was key to I guess our blueprint for an enduring company was that we were going to have different kinds of products, you know, we were going to make products that were different genres of games that appeal to different demographics. And you know, to do that successfully, you need groups of people that are extremely passionate about those specific kinds of products and eat, breathe, and sleep MMO strategy games, or whatever the genre might be. And, and those people are different than the people who who want to make word games. And so we needed to create a, as you said, an ecosystem that was not monolithic, where, you know, you could have teams that had their own sense of identity and culture and their own ways of doing things that would be supported by central resources that hopefully could be a force multiplier on what they're doing and make them more likely to be successful in a systematic way, because we give them access to technology and publishing capabilities. But, you know, a core part of it is that we needed to be the partner of choice to the best game makers in the world. And that means that if we were trying to hire people, we needed them to believe that this was the place they could do the best work of their career. And if we were trying to buy a company, and it was a competitive process, that the people leading that organization with would, you know, in their heart of hearts hope that they wound up at Scopely, because they thought it would be a more fulfilling experience and their products would be more successful, and they would be more successful. And so we just spent a lot of time trying to make sure that this experience can be the best experience of people's professional lives. That was, really the first goal that we set as a company was that, you know, 70% of people in the organization could say that this was the best experience of their professional lives. And, and when you see the work you're doing through that lens, you know, it changes how you think about all kinds of details in the organization. And if you do it well, and said a lot of things really take care of itself.

David Novak 27:29 

As I understand it, you have a highly successful partnership with your co CEO. And a lot of people will tell you that having co leaders in any organization is a formula for disaster. But yet it's worked for you guys. Why is that?

Walter Driver 27:44 

Yeah, I have a co CEO, Javier Ferreira, who's been an extraordinary partner over the last almost 10 years now at Scopely. And yeah, people have asked us that question many times, like, how do you do this with two people? And, you know, when the company has had a 70%, compound growth rate for 10 years? And our question is sort of like, how do you do it with one, because you can't be everywhere you need to be, you can't focus on everything that requires attention, when you're maintaining everything you're currently doing, and trying to create a future things that are going to propel next year, and the year after that, and the year after, that's growth. And so we really believe that people make better decisions, when when there's a dialectic, when there's some discussion and debate. And pretty much every major decision that we've had over the last decade, we've discussed it, and really stress tested it between us. And I think that's sharpened our respective thinking on everything that we're doing, and helps us fill in a lot of gaps in our own experience and our, our own blind spots. And so, you know, we tried to model that for the whole organization and and say that, you know, one of the most important aspects of being a leader is, you know, especially as a company becomes more successful is, is really managing your ego, and negating that wherever possible, because when you start actually getting positive feedback from what the company is doing externally, you can, you know, start to feel somehow self important, but that sense of ego, it really, it's a massive inhibitor for the organization, because it creates separation from all your key partners that you need to be relentlessly in relationship with, you need to be in sync with all of them. It makes you afraid to make mistakes, it makes you you know, focus on how people are going to perceive what happens rather than what actually happens. And, and so I think being able to share leadership responsibilities is I guess, a reflection of our desire to try to get to the best outcome that we can get to not the best outcome we can get to by ourselves.

David Novak 29:37 

You know, you said earlier that your company was really never guided by a specific roadmap, but instead you focused on cultivating behaviors. And that I'm sure really represents the foundation for your culture. What behaviors are you really trying to drive deep in the organization?

Walter Driver 29:54 

Yeah, well, we have five cultural tenants that Scopely that, that we talk about a lot that have been You know, pretty consistent throughout the lifespan of the company, we've we've iterated on a few of them over time. But you know, they're played when cared deeply, embrace the adventure, iterate to greatness, and ignite passion and earn loyalty. And it started with with play to win. I think, you know, there are some people who find a way and some people find an excuse. And if you work with people long enough, you can tell that people kind of consistently find a way, they're never a victim of their circumstances, when the circumstances or problem they figured out how to change those circumstances or, you know, solve it some other way. And I think that is a key ingredient, this idea of embracing the adventure, the kinds of people who welcome adversity and unpredictability and ambiguity and, and they don't see adversity as an adversary, like they see it as a catalyst for for personal growth and creativity and people who care deeply, we, we really believe that you got to care about the people you work with, you know, their personal welfare, their success, you got to care about, in our case, the software, we're building, the players and the experience that they're having, you got to care about all of the details immensely, because as soon as people start seeing something at a meeting where they're like, this is not a very good plan, but it's not not even worth commenting on, I'm just gonna let it slide. think that that kind of indifference is really toxic in an organization and, and we try to get people to care about all of those details and to care about each other. You know, this idea of igniting passion earning loyalty is something that started with with our players that we want to create really strong, passionate responses, our players not just something that they liked, but something that they is their favorite thing to do. And that remains their favorite things to do over long periods of time. But very quickly, that became something that we also, were gonna start thinking about internally, that was true for for all of our leaders across scope as well that they needed to ignite passion and earn loyalty and be worthy of loyalty for the people that they worked with. And alongside, and we talked about this iterate to greatness concept, which really propels the learning machine. But I would say the crux of that is, we have found that a lot of people, they complete a task, and they want to check the box and say, This task is done. We have a plan. And, you know, it's, it's sort of the last 10% In our industry, at least, you know, when you think that you're done going another three rounds of iteration, that's actually 90% of where the success is. And so some people just want to want to be done with it. And some people are willing to, you know, have the meeting, run over, come back and follow up next week, and push it further and listen to feedback. And, you know, I think that orientation of like, it's not good enough, until we've done, you know, multiple more passes past the point that we thought it was, it was good enough, has been really instrumental in whatever success we've had today.

David Novak 32:54 

Tell us a story. When you iterated for greatness, where maybe you started out with something that looked like it wasn't going to make it but you end up with something that truly is great. Yeah,

Walter Driver 33:03 

I mean, one great example of of iterate to greatness and action is an April this year, we launched monopoly go, which is one of the largest mobile game launches of all time, it has been a massive success and a transformational product for the company. You know, from the outside, it looks like an overnight success where, you know, 60 days after launch, it's the top grossing game in America and the most downloaded game in the United States. And, you know, behind the scenes, it was a different story, you know, it was a story of failure and persistence, and, and really like one ongoing struggle, and from one failure to the next for seven years. And so we originally had a partnership with Hasbro and decided to make this game Monopoly go and, you know, brought in some people we really believed in who had a passion for bringing that to life. And the first approach they had to the product, you know, we tested it in a few countries, and it looked like it was gonna be reasonably successful, but not as successful as, as we thought it could be, and not as successful as the, the core team who was responsible for it, thought it could be. And we made a really difficult decision to go back to the drawing board and redesigned the core game loop, and, you know, pursue a more uncertain outcome. And then, we actually made several acquisitions of teams that we added to the core team and, and kept trying to find the alchemy of the right skill sets and people and continue to invest in it. And we invested because we, we like to follow teams that have passionate teams that are iterating and evolving their approach rapidly and this team was and any sane sort of CFO would have probably killed this project a long time ago, because it was wildly, you know, over budget and wildly late and it's been the most successful thing the company has ever done. And so it's sort of counterintuitive, but things that appear like they're going well early, are often things that are familiar and have smaller upside than things that that are you know, might be more transferred. formative and have higher ceilings, those things often take longer to mature and come into focus and require more patience and more iteration. And so I think you have to be really patient with the results and impatient with the rate of learning and the velocity towards, that you're making towards that outcome. But you've got to be willing to go through some messiness. If you're going to try to do something you've never done before.

David Novak 35:23 

How do you go about the process of making money, you know, scaling your products, and monetizing your products? Yeah, so

Walter Driver 35:32 

all of our games are free to play, we, you know, believe that we're trying to create experiences that matter to the most people possible. So we don't want to create barriers for people to engage with those experiences. And, you know, we, we want to give them opportunities to invest in enhancing that experience in a way that is pertinent to their interests. And so, you know, for the most part, people buy virtual currency inside of those games, and then they use that virtual currency and round all kinds of ways to customize their experience and enhance it. And it varies, you know, both across products, but also by player. And I think, you know, one of the key elements of our, I guess, business strategy is that, you know, people like to have discretion over how they invest. When you have agency and choice, it becomes a reflection of who you are, and, and your own unique identity and your own preferences versus when you're charged something like a flat rate. If we just said, There's a free version, there's a premium version, and for $12 a month, and everyone gets the same premium version, you know, that premium version isn't really a reflection of your personal tastes and who you are. And the way you get charged for that it sort of happens to you, like you get a bill every month, and it's, it's coming at you rather than saying, you know, I'm opting in to make this purchase right now. Because I'm, I feel, you know, like, it's, it's a worthwhile purchase to make, and, and we have to earn, you know, the desire for people to purchase over and over again, you know, every time it's got to be worthwhile, because if they, if they didn't feel satisfied, the last time they spend money, wherever games, they, they never have to do it again. So I think that that creates a nice forcing function to make sure that, you know, the value that people are getting from, from investing money and those experiences is worthwhile, because if it's not, they stopped doing it very quickly. And it becomes very clear that it's not gonna be a successful product.

David Novak 37:24 

You know, you've you've developed these great partner relationships with IP holders like Mattel, Marvel Disney Warner Brothers, and you know, it's a basically a who's who list goes on and on, you know, how did you lead on this front? You know, because obviously, I mean, you know, everybody liked to partner with these people, but they're partnering with Scopely.

Walter Driver 37:43 

Yeah, we've had really phenomenal partnerships with a lot of the companies that you mentioned. And it started early in the company lifecycle, we we believe that people cared about a lot of these brands in these worlds, but creating an immersive digital experience where people could come spend time in and you know, the world of wheel of fortune, or the walking dead in the early days of the company was creating that world was challenging for the people who own those IPS is a very different skill set. And we thought we were building, you know, that expertise. And so we signed some early partnerships, and with some, some folks who really trusted us to try to win, we didn't have a track record, to try and create worlds that people wanted to spend time in. And then we had some early success. And that track record started to build on itself and enable more opportunities. But I think the thing that has been most helpful as those partners have, have, all of them been, say, really intellectually engaged with understanding, you know, why things are successful in our industry. And in the case of monopoly, go, we were, you know, Hasbro was like, Wait, you're soft, launching this product and a bunch of geographies, and it's doing reasonably well. And we did a play tests across our entire company with 1000s of people and people loved it. And now you're saying you're gonna go back to the drawing board and, and reset the whole thing? And we said, yeah, like, and we, you know, we showed them some data and, and you know, why we thought we could do better. And to their credit, they said, We understand, like, when we trust you that was trying to do something better. And now it's a much more successful product for both of us. So we tried to approach all those partnerships with, you know, the orientation of like, let's really learn what's important to them and, and share what's important to us and how our business really works. And believe that, you know, when you create shared context, you can actually make much better decisions in a partnership. And, you know, we've also been blessed with partners that were really open minded about trying to get to the right answer, whatever that looks like in all those relationships.

David Novak 39:46 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Walter driver in just a moment. And let me tell you something, if you want to succeed as a tech startup, you've got to excel at learning, like Walter points out. That means you've got to get good At understanding data, speaking to that will, Ahmed is the founder and CEO of the wearable tech company whoop. And for him, it's key to prioritize the right data.

Will Ahmed 40:11 

You know, we didn't view that our core function needed to be pushed notifications or telling the time or allowing you to call an Uber or look at your email. But we did view that the core use case for woop was to improve health and to do that in a world class way better than anyone else. That meant the most accurate product, the best coaching, the best interface. And by focusing on those areas, it led us down a much more minimalistic, I would say design for our hardware. And that's, I think, been been really good to us. At the end of the day, I think people will evaluate whether they should wear whoop or not purely through a lens of of health. And today, we're proud to say that if you've been on whoop for a year, you have a lower resting heart rate, you have a higher heart rate variability, you're getting more sleep. So we're actually changing behavior and improving health.

David Novak 41:03 

You know, it's so easy to get head fake by all the data and feedback that you hear. But effective leaders know what to pay attention to, in order to make the best decisions. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with will episode 64. Here on how leaders lead.

Well, you're one busy guy, for sure. Because I know over the last 10 years, you've made at least 10 acquisitions. I mean, tell us a story about the one that had the biggest impact on your company. Pool.

Walter Driver 41:41 

Yeah, we have done a lot of acquisitions. And we've kind of believed that in in the gaming world. Like no matter how much talent innovation you have inside your company, there's always more happening outside. And so you know, one of the key ideas of fueling this learning machine was that we have to be engaged in programmatic exploration of all the m&a opportunities that are out there. And I think one of the ways that that has made us better is that we might look at 500 companies a year to do a one deal a year. And so I would say the across all those deals we've done, they've, they've really all been very successful, I would do all of them again, but we got very close to doing some deals, that would have not been so successful and might have torpedoed the company entirely. And so are our sort of anti portfolio of deals that we thought about seriously and didn't do. You know, it's pretty terrifying. But I believe that that building that muscle of looking at lots of stuff, and engaging with a lot of curiosity to understand these teams, what they care about why they've been successful, where they're going, and makes you, you know, a lot more sophisticated in terms of what you're looking for. It's sort of like being a baseball player, it gets to watch 100 pitches go by before you even start your at bat. And you're just much more prepared to know what what you're looking for. And we've made a bunch of these acquisitions. And I think the best thing I could say about all of them is that we've had a lot of leaders of those companies we bought, who also have engaged and really open exploration of what's important to them, and what's important to us, and how do we build a successful partnership. And that requires a lot of a lot of iteration and really making what's important to your partner important to you. Because when people feel that way, you can get a lot of things done. And you can represent, you know, everybody involves interest effectively. But But that process requires a lot of effort. And, yeah, not everybody's up for that kind of effort. And fortunately, we've chosen, you know, leadership teams that and that's been a big factor in which, you know, deals we've decided to do is which leadership teams do we believe, you know, we can work with really effectively and can teach us things we don't know. And we can learn from that, that have that, you know, spirit of collaboration.

David Novak 43:54 

I'll tell you what, I'm learning a lot for this conversation. And you know, it's been so much fun, and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this?

Walter Driver 44:03 

Sure.

David Novak 44:04 

What three words best describe yoo hoo.

Walter Driver 44:09 

persistent, consistent and curious

David Novak 44:14 

if you could be one person besides yourself? Who would it be one person beside

Walter Driver 44:19 

myself? And this is kind of a strange answer. But I would say one of my kids, there is the stage where they're so full of wonder and everything is brand new for them. It looks awesome. It looks like they're having a blast all the time. And I just I love them so much that if I could spend a day as them I feel like I might understand them better and understand what it's like to be them and and that might help me in some way.

David Novak 44:43 

Your biggest pet peeve? Yeah. I

Walter Driver 44:45 

mean, my biggest pet peeve is is people who accept things the way they are without even a basic questioning of it. And when people say you know, this is the way it is or the way it's always been done. I have a very strong allergic reaction to that orientation.

David Novak 45:01 

The book that every entrepreneur should read.

Walter Driver 45:03 

Well, I just read a book that I think every entrepreneur should read, called Mastery by Robert Greene. I had been a big fan of Robert Greene's works, he wrote, you know, the laws of human nature and the 48 Laws of Power, but I had not read mastery, and I recently finished it. And I think it's a great deep dive on masters in various fields and how they've learned from the greats in their their fields and, and where they've gotten their apprenticeships from and how they've, you know, put the things that they've learned to use at the highest level. It's, it's inspiring and insightful.

David Novak 45:36 

What's something about you a few people would know?

Walter Driver 45:41 

Something about me? Few people would know, I've never had soup in my life. I don't, I'm not into it. I don't. I don't want to eat liquid food. I like I like solid food. And soup is not for me. So I've done a life without soup.

David Novak 45:59 

If I turned on the radio in your car, what would we hear?

Walter Driver 46:04 

Well, I have three small children. And so they are actually pretty obsessed with the soundtrack to Hamilton right now. Just unusual for toddlers. But they got really into the Founding Fathers and they want they requests Hamilton soundtrack pretty much every time we're in the car, you've

David Novak 46:23 

got your toddlers, and I've got my grandkids. The same goes for them, too. I think it's really popular for them for sure. All right, that's the end of the lightning round. Thank you very much for doing that. Walter. And I just got a couple more questions for you. Recently, you just sold your company to savvy games group for almost $5 billion. So congratulations, again. That's fantastic. Can you talk just a little bit about how you picked your partner? Yeah,

Walter Driver 46:47 

we recently completed this transaction with savvy that closed, just, you know, two months ago. And, you know, throughout the history of Sculpey, we've we've been approached by, you know, a number of parties that were interested in a strategic relationship. And as we scale, we also started thinking about the public markets. And, you know, we were really struggling, I think, in some of those conversations, to envision a world where the future potential of the business was more exciting than it was, you know, as a standalone path. And so we, you know, didn't engage in any of those transactions, because I just couldn't, I couldn't imagine a world where I was more excited about the future post transaction that I was before. And when we met Brian Ward, the CEO of savvy couple of things came through one day at a real sense of ambition, they were interested in becoming the number one company in gaming, by far, he said, and that was pretty exciting for companies, like two years old, and was just getting started. They had really long term orientation, you know, they were saying, like, what's possible over the next, you know, 10 years. So the opportunity to be aligned with somebody, you know, a group that had a great deal of ambition was really had a long term orientation. You know, that was exciting, I could imagine a world where scope, we could achieve things we couldn't have done on our own, you know, the men have access to more capital to continue to do more m&a, which has been very successful for us so far, but now we might be able to do it on a larger scale. And so that's why we did the deal. This was we thought, you know, our future potential might be greater than than our, you know, if we didn't do it. And so far, it's been a great relationship, it's off to a good start. And I think it's, it's been helpful for sure to have been on the other side of 10, m&a deals, and been through that process a number of times. Because you gotta, you gotta front load a lot of effort on both sides to really understand each other and try and form a foundation where he can meet whatever adversity and challenges you'll face from a position of common common understanding and shared objectives. And so far, so good.

David Novak 48:53 

You know, you've said that the more you believe you're a visionary, and obviously, you could be a visionary, but they're not many successful founders, like yourself in this this world. But you've said, the more you believe you're a visionary, the more you could miss opportunities. Explain.

Walter Driver 49:11 

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm not very bullish on the concept of a visionary I think. I think vision is collective and creativity and insights come from synthesizing lots of information that's usually out in the world. And so, you know, to the extent that you feel like your vision is is somehow predestined to lead to greatness, I think it makes you less receptive to the massive amounts of information that you're getting all the time about, you know, what the vision should be. And so, I think being really open to new information and aggressively seeking it out, is a key part of continuously curating and refining the vision and and making sure that there's room and whatever the vision of the company is for lots of people to contribute to it. Because if it's your vision alone, you know, it's really hard to execute on a vision by yourself. But when a lot of people feel like it's their vision, and they've had a chance to shape it and contribute to that vision, suddenly you have lots of people who have a shared vision, and it feels like it really belongs to a lot of people. And that creates a much, you know, deeper sense of ownership. So I'm less bullish on this solitary founder with a great vision as I am as amazing team and a great culture where a lot of people can participate in that vision can evolve as it needs to be successful.

David Novak 50:36 

Going forward. Walter, what do you see as your unfinished business?

Walter Driver 50:41 

Well, the business is always unfinished, you know, I, I have always described Scopely as an adventure, with no destination in mind is it's a, it's a process of becoming. And I do it because I like to learn and grow as fast as I can, and to challenge myself and to do it alongside people that I respect and admire and to belong to something larger than myself. And that is, you know, what, I hope we can kind of keep continuing in the next decade, you know, we've had a really huge explosion in our audience over the last year, we've 10x, the amount of players that are playing our games every month, and that really excites me the chance to make products that are not just some people's favorite thing to do, but but really, you know, shape the culture and, and achieve a different degree of familiarity to large amounts of people, but still have that, you know, intense resonance with the people who love it most. And this still lasts for a long time, I think, you know, our ambition to create things that, you know, have really broad appeal continues to grow with the scale of our audience. And, yeah, I guess I also look forward to, you know, seeing what everybody who comes work at Scopely is capable of I mean, you know, as a company scales, it increasingly becomes more about being surprised by the innovation and, and the determination of people across the organization that is about what you personally are making happen. And I find, you know, there's nothing that excites me more than being surprised by something amazing this happening at the company. And when you feel like man, I never would have thought of this, or I never would have thought this would be successful. And here, somebody's taken some initiative and driven some innovation. And I find that super energizing.

David Novak 52:27 

When you're an entrepreneur like yourself, you know, it's it's 24/7 It seems like, how do you make your relationship at home work? And how do you view that as a role as a leader? Yeah,

Walter Driver 52:40 

it's a great question. And one that I think people don't talk about enough people just talk about the version of yourself that shows up once you get to the office, and that version of yourself is predicated on a lot of things going right, you know, outside the office at home, and I have been married to my wife, Kay for almost 10 years now. And which is basically the entire scope of the story. And so she's, she's seen it all. But in order to be able to perform your best at work, like you have to be in relationship and in sync on the homefront, when you're going through turmoil and you feel disconnected or, or, you know, something is off in your relationship at home is it's really hard to bring your best self to work and, and so I would encourage all entrepreneurs and leaders to make sure that they're keeping their primary relationships at the forefront of, you know, what they're doing, not not just because it makes them better at work, but because ultimately that, you know, the quality of primary relationships determines a lot of the quality of your life, I would say that nobody does this, who's married, you know, builds a company, without a ton of support and understanding and somebody else holding down all kinds of other things in their life. It really does take teamwork to make the dream work. And I've been really fortunate that I've had a partner that's helped me, you know, be able to pursue my dreams at work while still pursuing the dreams I had for, you know, having a great marriage and having amazing kids and, and doing it all while she's building her own business. So, yeah, I've been very fortunate. And we encourage everybody to, to invest in that their primary relationships.

David Novak 54:10 

Last question, Walter, what's the best piece of advice you can give an aspiring leader?

Walter Driver 54:17 

I think the most important thing for someone who's, you know, I give this advice to somebody who started something from zero versus somebody who's, you know, doing a turnaround of a fortune 50 company. I think learning how to manage your own inner world and the state you're in is a dramatically underrated capability. Because building a company is really stressful. It's challenging, it can produce a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. But what what the organization needs if you're trying to create something that didn't exist before is emotional consistency. And, you know, that's the foundation on which an institution can be built that it has to have somebody showing up and bringing the same energy and optimism day after day for you yours to have a chance for sort of scale to a crew around this, this company. And if you're tired, if you're drained, if you're not inspired, if you're not curating a diet of the right brain food and thinking about who you're spending your time with, and making sure your relationships outside of work are in a great place, you know, then you're going to be in a bad state. And that state is going to color how you perceive opportunities and threats, and it's going to impact your decision making and, and ultimately make you a far less effective leader. And so it's sort of, you know, I think leadership, people see it as something that is about how you interact with others and tell other people what to do. But for me, I think it's about managing yourself. Because if you're a leader, there's there's no one else to manage it, you have to learn how to manage yourself. And it really starts with managing your inner world and creating a sense of calm determination, because I think a calm mind is greatest weapon a leader can have. Well,

David Novak 55:56 

Walter, I had a lot of fun doing my research for this podcast, and I knew I was gonna really enjoy this conversation. And I have Congratulations on all your success. And for you, I know the best is yet to come. I mean, I just love the approach that you're taking the bill to build your company.

Walter Driver 56:13 

Well, thanks for having me, David, I have a lot of fun as well. And I'm a big fan of your podcasts and, and I look forward to listening to many more episodes in the future. Keep doing what you're doing. Thank

David Novak 56:23 

you. Appreciate it.

Now, I gotta be honest, I'm not too sure about Walters take on soup. I thought everybody likes soup. But otherwise, I've gotta tip my hat to him. He's one heck of a leader. And you can really hear how intentional Walter is about the culture. They're building Scopely. And one of the biggest tenants of that culture is how they want to be a learning machine. I just love that phrase, learning machine. If you follow along here much, you know, I'm passionate about the power of learning for leaders. But learning is a key part of a healthy culture too. It means being willing to fail quickly, give feedback and iterate again, it takes persistence and curiosity, and a team that's comfortable with getting it wrong sometimes, so they can get it right most of the time. If you can create a company that's a learning machine, you'll stay agile and ahead of the competition, and you'll have a culture where curious and creative people can really thrive. So this week, consider how your team and your company culture prioritizes learning and feedback, then just go look for one opportunity, you have to get better at it. So do you want to know how leaders lead what we learned today is the great leaders make their organization a learning machine. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Lisa ludolph. Pirlo the former CEO of Celebrity Cruises,

Speaker 1 58:03 

I rose from the very bottom to the very top and I also wanted to share that if I can do it soak in you. You just need to just be purposeful about it and think about what you want and and don't take no for an answer. Just keep going as far as you can go. So

David Novak 58:21 

be sure to come back next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be