119: Holly Liu | Co-Founder, Kabam

This episode features Holly Liu, co-founder of Kabam, discussing her journey from early gaming experiences to establishing and scaling a billion-dollar company, and her insights on leadership, entrepreneurship, and innovation in the gaming industry.

1. Entrepreneurial success can come from unexpected beginnings and pivot points.
2. Strong company culture and diversity are crucial for sustainable growth.
3. The transition from a founder to an executive involves adapting leadership styles to scale the company.
4. Female entrepreneurs face unique challenges and opportunities in tech and gaming industries.
5. The importance of adaptability and resilience in personal and professional development.

1: Childhood and Early Interests

Holly Liu describes growing up in Palmdale, California, and her early exposure to gaming and entrepreneurship.
Holly Liu: "I was probably the only Asian in my small town, which definitely influenced who I am today."

2: Founding Kabam

Discusses the initial idea behind Kabam, its pivot from a corporate social network to a gaming company, and the strategic decisions that led to its success.
Holly Liu: "We didn't start out as a mobile gaming company; it evolved based on market opportunities and our team's adaptability."

3: Leadership and Culture

Holly shares her approach to leadership, the development of Kabam’s company culture, and the challenges of managing a global team.
Holly Liu: "It's crucial to balance alignment and diversity within the team to foster innovation."

4: Challenges as a Female Founder

Holly discusses the specific challenges she faced as a woman in the tech and gaming industry and her perspective on diversity in tech.
Holly Liu: "Being a female founder in tech often meant overcoming additional barriers to prove my capabilities."

5: Reflections on Success and the Future

Holly reflects on the lessons learned from Kabam’s sale and her ongoing role as a mentor and investor in the tech community.
Holly Liu: "The sale of Kabam was not just a financial win but a validation of our team's hard work and innovative spirit."

1. Embrace flexibility and openness to change in your career.
2. Invest in building a positive and inclusive company culture.
3. Seek diverse perspectives to drive innovation.
4. Prepare for challenges and use them as opportunities for growth.
5. Mentorship is valuable both for the mentor and the mentee; engage actively in knowledge sharing.

Holly is the Co-Founder of Kabam – a mobile gaming company that sold for approximately $1B to NetMarble in 2017. They grew Kabam to over 1500 employees with 6 offices worldwide.
Prior to Kabam, Holly graduated from UCLA with a degree in Communications and East Asian studies and received her Masters from Berkeley in Information Management and Systems. She started her professional career in consulting and working as a User Interface Designer at AOL.

Throughout her 10-year tenure as the Co-Founder of Kabam, Holly led efforts in a variety of roles: including User Experience, HR, Development and People. Her work has contributed to record revenue growth for Kabam year over year from $0 to $400MM annually, that led Kabam into the unicorn club in 2014. She led the design for Kabam’s award-winning "Kingdoms of Camelot" franchise, which has grossed over $250 million in less than four years and the extension game, which was the top grossing app on iOS in 2012.

After Kabam, Holly transitioned to the other side of the table as an investor. She spent 2 years as a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator - the leading startup accelerator for entrepreneurs.

She is a consummate entrepreneur, executive, and startup mentor. Naturally, Holly has been a leading woman in gaming and entrepreneurship, named by Fortune as the “10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming”.

People

Holly Liu, Carly Malatskey

Companies

Kabam

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Holly Liu

Content Warnings:

None

Holly Liu

What do I need to be good at? To be great at something?

Carly Milatzky

Hello, everyone. You are listening to. She leads with Carly, and in this. Show, we talk to the absolute best, brightest, and, yes, badass leaders. Tap into where your natural curiosity takes you.

Just making sure you're not your own roadblock. Even if you do fall, you're gonna. Fall and you're gonna lure. Together, let's build a DNA of what it takes to rise to the top and truly make an impact.

Carly Milatzky

I'm your host, Carly Milatzky. Hello, everyone. I am super excited to welcome our guest today, Holly Liu. Holly is the co founder of Kabam, a mobile gaming company that sold for approximately $1 billion to Netmarble in 2017. They grew Kabam to over 1500 employees with six offices worldwide.

Prior to Kabam, Holly graduated from UCLA with a degree in communications and east asian studies and received her master's from Berkeley in information management and systems. She started her professional career in consulting and working as a user interface designer at AOL. Throughout her ten year tenure as a co founder of Kabam, Holly led efforts in a variety of roles, including user experience, hr development, and people. Her work has contributed to record revenue growth for Kabam year over year, from zero to $400 million annually. That led Kabam into the Unicorn club in 2014.

She then led design for Kabam's award winning Kingdoms of Camelot franchise, which has grossed over 250 million in less than four years, and the extension game, which was the top grossing app on IO in 2012. Post Kabam, Holly transitioned to the other side of the table as an investor. She spent two years as a visiting partner at Y Combinator, the leading startup accelerator for entrepreneurs. She is a consummate entrepreneur, executive, and startup mentor. Naturally, Holly has been a leading woman in gaming and entrepreneurship, named by Fortune as the ten most powerful women in gaming.

Holly, it is such an honor to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Of course.

Okay. I am so excited. We have so much to cover. But first, Holly, what I like to do, as you know, is I want to know, five year old, ten year old Holly, who were you as a kid? Where did you grow up to?

Holly Liu

So I grew up in a very small town right outside of the, like, on the edge of La county. It was called Palmdale Lancaster in the Mojave Desert area. I was probably the only Asian. My parents are immigrants. They're originally from China via Taiwan.

They came to the US for their master's degree. They actually ended up in Oregon for their masters at OSU. And my mom became a special ed teacher, a resource teacher. My dad studied statistics and history, and he later became a math teacher. But originally he was doing.

Actually, I found out he was doing a business called Fun store. So it was like the 99 cent store at the time. So it might play into some of the things in terms of how it kind of formed me, but I had no idea he had done that. And, yeah, I pretty much grew up in that town. It was a very typical, if you watch stranger things, a tv show, it's typically that that's what it was like, the technology at the time and everything, and just not as many Asians there, so not as much representation.

And that definitely influenced who I am today. And a lot of just my perspective on things, on different things. Were you. When did the passion for gaming start? Obviously, you know, it's been such a big part of your life.

Carly Milatzky

And how was it for you at a young age? It's funny because if you think about video games, they didn't come out till the mid eighties. And my dad's like, oh, if it drops to, like, $50, we'll get you an Atari. Atari was the first one, but we computers also came out when I was growing up. Yes, I grew up a decade, several decades before.

Holly Liu

I just remember us crowding around the pc. Cause at the time, that's it. You crowd around the tv. There's only like one screen. There was a couple of games we'd love to play, which was.

There was one that was very simple called brick Breaker. And you just move the cursor back and forth, and there was a ball that would just bounce up and off and you try to catch it, obviously. Frogger, which was just one of our favorites, decathlon, which was like, you would run and you would jump. It was one of those runner games, and then there was a shooting one called Buck Rogers. So in terms of, like, video games, that's what we started with.

That's what we had. It was on the pc. And I would never have expected. This is an industry that I would go into, end up influencing a lot and changing. But, Holly, tell me this.

Carly Milatzky

When you were growing up playing games, I imagine it was very much a passion, rather than this is something I want to go into and, you know, make money from. Were you thinking about in that lens or more? So this is a passion. Let me go to school and get my studies and then. And then start a career.

Holly Liu

Yeah, I have asian parents. There's no way I could do art or, like, anything of that sort. I actually never wanted to be, like, a video game maker. I wouldn't even call myself a gamer, quite frankly, but certainly had a ton of projects with. With people, with the neighborhood.

Kids we, like, would have a Coley sack newsletter. A lot of projects around, like, making things and selling them. So I certainly think, like, in terms of that, it, like, it never died. Like, I probably say the first occupation I wanted to be was a tv cameraman or camera woman. I don't know why I thought that was the coolest thing.

And then that ended up drifting away. I was like, maybe I want to be an architect. And then I saw how difficult, like, and competitive it was, and I was like, okay, not quite. Not quite. It's okay.

So certainly I think, like, there are certain kids that are. Have a certain, like, I've wanted to be a pilot ever since I was ten. Not quite that person. And in some ways, that's okay, too, I think, because it offers you a lot of flexibility to kind of just even discover your hobbies, what you enjoy, and gives you time to really be a kid and really play. And that's like a big human condition.

And it's also, I guess, my theory around, like, raising kids, too. Absolutely. And I think, and I think your childhood, just reflecting on it, it sounds like play in any realm was at. Its core, I would think so. I think about it now, like, I have kids and I'm raising them, and I'm like, they joke around.

They're always like, holly or not Holly. They're like, mommy, did you have us just so you could do kids stuff? I'm like, absolutely. Of course I want to go in the jumpy house. I didn't have this as a kid.

This is awesome, you know? And so I think there's probably a lot of things that you end up trying to, like, recreate or redo or even make up for when you do have children. Holly, ultimately, like I said in the intro, you go study at UCLA in communications and east asian studies, and I've learned that you were gravitated towards government and even working for the american embassy in Ireland. So walk me through that journey and what gravitated you towards that and how you were thinking through it. It's interesting.

Yeah. Cause I never had one. Like, I've always wanted to be this since I was ten. And I tell a lot of people I love college. I loved it so much.

Yeah. You could figure out what you want. Don't. Like, I go, always pick up internships because you can at least figure out what you don't like and then, you know, kind of thing. So, huge fan of trying a ton of things out.

And I was very, very interested in Asia in particular. I think the influence, quite frankly, of not having a lot of Asians around was almost like, at school, I was rediscovering a lot of my heritage. There were certain things that I didn't grow up that my other chinese american friends grew up with. Like, they had to go to chinese school every week, but there just wasn't enough of us to even do that. So I'm like, oh, I didn't even know.

And what was really funny is I started taking chinese language classes. So if you ever take a language class in college, it's the 08:00 a.m.. Class. It's usually five days a week, right. And I was always really interested in, like, particularly China's history and its society, culture, all of those things, because I was learning so much about myself, learning about the events that impacted my parents, because again, I didn't, I didn't know any of that stuff in college or in high school.

I just wasn't as exposed to it. That's how I ended up doing east asian studies. And I was very interested in going into the foreign service. So basically it's an institute. A lot of people had did briefing reports on, like, different countries.

You got to meet a lot of students from all over the US. And then I found out, like, oh, as a foreign service officer, you can travel. And I was like, oh, I should go try to see what an embassy is like. And so I don't know how I ended up choosing Ireland. I think it was just, oh, I think there was no openings for the East Asia bureau.

And it also started feeling like, I mean, that's where I got to learn a lot about going into foreign service work. And the government is great. There's just all these things that are really wonderful. But I also realized it just probably wasn't a path for me. It was a little too slow for me.

It just wasn't my cup of tea. And then you didn't have any choice on where you could move. You really didn't. And one thing I'm actually curious about, even before we get into, you know, that real big shift into consulting technology, AOL, and then obviously, kabam, I want to know, Holly, from a personal standpoint, did you start to find peace with your, your asian identity, that side to it? Because being the only one and then learning the history of it.

Carly Milatzky

Like, was there almost a personal, you know, transformation that happened? You know, it's kind of funny. I think it's a journey that still is. I'm still on it in many ways, but absolutely going to UCLA was like a big jump, and staying there. UCLA, if you don't know, has a lot of ages.

Holly Liu

They do, yeah. Just FYI. So a lot of people look like me, and it was. It was literally culture shock for me in many ways. This is actually really funny.

I was telling somebody this the other day. I was like, growing up, I actually thought Chinese American, when people would ask me what I was, because I got that question a lot growing up. I'd always say I'm chinese because obviously they can't figure it out or they'd ask, right? Maybe they think I'm white or something. So I'm like, and for the longest time, I thought Chinese American meant you're half chinese and half white.

I didn't quite realize. And even when I decided to study, I never studied asian american studies or amnesian american history. I studied chinese history. You know, we could talk about more of this later, but the reason why it's been a journey is that I've taken several trips to China. I still have grandparents, and I've had relatives there, and I've gone back over time.

Even Kabam opened up an office in China. It wasn't until probably a couple years ago when I was there, I was like, wow, I might feel chinese on the inside, but I'm not chinese. Like, they look at me as american. It certainly, like, helped me become more and more comfortable as, you know, definitely as you get older, you're just like, I don't know. This is it.

This is all I can do, I think. But there were certain parts in my. Head where I'm like, yeah, I mean, that's so. It's so interesting, though, because I think a lot. A lot of people deal with this, right, where they could feel, you know, inside, this is who they are as, you know, as a person and their identity.

Carly Milatzky

But on the outside, you know, they feel that they're an outsider or, you know, they're a foreigner. So it's like, at what point can I fit in? Can I ever fit in? So anyway, that's amazing. And I'm sure it's.

It's a. It is a journey. Like you said, once you made that, that realization that, you know what, foreign services, it's. It's too slow for me, and I need. I need faster, especially with the Internet coming walk me through that next journey of, you know, going into consulting and then just finding this whole new wave.

Holly Liu

Yeah, absolutely. So not only did government, where I was like, okay, this probably isn't for me, but I also needed a job. And the nice thing is, before I ended up going, it's almost like a secured gap year is what I ended up doing as part of it is, before I left, I got a job at Arthur Andersen. Probably a lot of people don't know who they are right now, but they used to be one of the largest accounting firms, and accenture kind of spun out of them. Eventually, probably a lot of people have heard of them.

It was like the.com boom. There was SAP implementations, oracle fancy, fancy. And so I ended up taking the opportunity to just travel some more. So what ended up happening was.com boom. And then it busted.

They called me up and they're like, we need to move your date back, like, in the fall, they needed to keep moving it further back. And finally they said, you know, we had to cut some jobs, and so you're going to have to come back. If you want to work with us, you're just going to have to come back and interview somewhere else. So I was talking to tax people. I was talking to audit people.

I was like, yeah, auditing sounds cool. So does the tax codes. Super interesting. I was like, I was just looking for a job, man. So it wasn't as lofty.

So I ended up working there for about 18 months and realized pretty quickly, like three or four months, and I was like, this is. This is not me. I wanted to get into, you know, like, I don't know, coding, scripting, whatever. Back then it was seen as coding, but now not really. So I applied to.

Actually, I think I only ended up maybe. I applied to two schools. It was Berkeley's information management and systems. It was their old library science. This was probably maybe two.

Like, maybe the year Google might have been formed. I can't remember what year Google was formed, but I do remember that they came and recruited on our campus. Like, it's like this guy Larry Page, this, like, whoa, okay. But he wasn't like, you just didn't even know at that time, right? They were just recruiting students and stuff.

Carly Milatzky

So you need. It's. It's funny now, you know, thankfully, all is safe and well and everything, but it's funny. You needed that, that, you know, oh, shit. Moment.

Push. Yeah, yeah, some push to, like, kind of put you into that next gear of saying, you know what? I'm actually not passionate about this and I need to be doing something else. So, so eventually, when did you make it your way to consulting? Because obviously looking back, it was such a special time.

You ultimately met one of your co founders for Kabam. That's right. That's right. So it's kind of funny. I ended up studying information management systems.

Holly Liu

I actually fell in love even more so with just the tech industry up here. I fell in love with the particular discipline of human computing interaction. I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to design. I want to do product designs for software.

I loved it. I loved how people could have a say in the story and the whole experience. And there was no jobs. When I graduated, I went back and I was even making less than, like, when I left my entry level job. It was just that bad.

And all these companies, these tech companies were just going under left and right. So that's how I ended up in consulting. And I think I'm a, I'm a huge fan. If you're like, working somewhere, you're thinking about it. You should just talk to other co founders, do some stuff, some projects on the side.

Cause you get to see how you work together. And this one, we were at the same client site. He was doing a little bit of a different of a project. And I'm like, you know, you're leaving every day at a certain time on Friday and you look more dressed up, like, what are you doing? He's like, well, I'm doing this startup and we're pitching VC's and I'm like, ooh, can I help?

Like, do you need any, like design help? He's like, sure. And we just kind of became friends in the process. And his startup didn't really go anywhere, but he ended up joining us when we were, I remember I was talking to my net who became the CEO. And so as co founder.

So I remember when I was at AOL, I was like, I think it's time to go. And, but I don't know anything about a business, as you can tell. I might be a little bit more on the creative side of things. And I remember, like, pitching him, I'm like, I had this little, like, bug book almost of like, I don't know, things that, like, could be designed better some, I think it was somebody idea who said, this is like, I'll have a design bug book. And I go, oh, that's a great idea.

So it'd be things like, I don't know, like stain proof, like shirts. So when you eat spaghetti, it doesn't splatter things that are dumb like that. Or like, so, like you said, right. Is the importance of working together as a co founding team. I want to now know, take me into that time where you developed the water cooler, right.

Carly Milatzky

The first iteration of the company. And I want to go a little bit through those big pivots that you had. But first, take me through that initial point where you're like, you guys, there's something special here. We should start a, we should start a company. Yeah.

Holly Liu

Yeah. A lot of people don't know, but Kabam didn't start out as a mobile gaming company. In fact, the mobile phone wasn't even launched when we started. So when we started, it was a corporate social network. I think you might have just fell asleep as I said those three words.

But, like, the CEO was like, holly, these are all great ideas, but we need somebody who can build it. And I'm like, oh, I know just the guy. So I pulled the guy from that I met at Accenture, and then he goes, oh, holly, these are all great ideas, but, like, I need, like, I need the, I need a front end guy to go, oh, I know just the guy. I'd work with him at AOL, and we had been doing projects together. The four of us kind of got together, and we started talking about different ideas.

And the greatest thing is, our CEO had worked as a vc. He was also an investment banker. So he thought a lot about market and business and kind of the idea of, like, you know, at one point in the company, we were scrapping everything and we were trying to come up with different ideas. And of course, everyone always comes up with food and dating. And he was always like, well, the problem with dating is there's no exit opportunities.

Like, who's going to buy it? Or even, he didn't say, well, even this part of, like, if you're successful off of these dating sites, you leave. And so there's not this long term kind of benefit that, that benefits the business and benefits your customers. Right? You want them to keep on building a long term relationship with you.

Carly Milatzky

It was also at the time, around 2006, it wasn't also at the time where Facebook, you know, they've, they've gone in some social network, but again, to, like, poor college students, and they couldn't really. Exactly. So that's exactly what we're thinking. We raised on the idea of a corporate social network because we're like, oh, these crazy people at Facebook, they going after people who are poor time rich, but poor but we know people who are, like, rich, you know, these young professionals. So we're like, what if we were to lasso it?

Holly Liu

Like, it's almost like we created an intranet, really. We lassoed it by their, the company domain, and we're like, okay, this should kind of help. Well, after eight months, we had about 1400 registered users. Five daus, which is probably our moms, right? And I'd say like 20 cease and desist letters from our, from lawyers saying, like, hey, you can't just email people directly like this.

This has to become sanctioned. And we took a hard look at ourselves and we said, do we really want to, you know, do we want to build a b two B business? Where it all came from, what we call b two c, that was our background. That's what we knew a bit more. We were younger, too, so it's not like we had all the connections and we were, I mean, this had a play into it.

We were an all asian team as well. So it's, I think traditionally hr b two b sas is usually, if you're a bit more experienced, not more on the caucasian side and male, it's a little easier because you just call up your contacts and say, like, who did that? Like, you know, hey, I got this new thing to sell you, and blah, blah, blah, blah. So we're like, do we really want to do this? Right?

Carly Milatzky

Like, there were external factors coming into it that, like, you couldn't even put in your control. Yeah, okay, exactly. And we were. We were even at the time. So even fundraising at the time was so different.

Holly Liu

And at the end of the day, it was the VC firm that I joke around. I'm like, they took pity on us and gave us, like, five hundred k. And I remember our CEO's like, this is great. It's in a form of a convertible note. We're like, yeah, we don't even have that anymore.

It's like they loan you the money in exchange, we give them stock. We don't have to do a price round. We're like, okay. We were just so green and, like, YC didn't exist. Like, there was no such thing as an angel, right?

Because people hadn't quite fully exited yet, and the Internet was still, you know, growing. And so it just was a lot harder to kind of figure, figure that out. So I joke around, she took pity on us and invested in us, but it paid off in many ways. And we were thinking about returning the money after 500. We're like, well, maybe we'll just return what we have.

And she was like, you know what? It's not even worth the tax write off. So that's when you know. So. So tell me, what did that look like from there to kabam?

Carly Milatzky

Right? Because I know at one point it was like that series B funding and Lehman Brothers crash. Like, there was a lot that happened. So tell me a little bit about that gap. So right, when.

Holly Liu

When she was like, yeah, don't. It's not even worth the tax write off. It's fine, guys. And so we're like, okay, what do we do? And we had a product manager at the time who was like, his hobby was to write about Facebook, this new thing that was coming out.

That was the reason why we hired him, because we're like, hey, we're building Facebook, but for corporations. And he said, hey, guys, there's this thing called an app developer network that they decided to do. So this is like super old school a long time ago, but Facebook was incredibly smart. They basically opened up a developer platform for, obviously, developers, and they said, hey, come build your app. Here.

We have, obviously, the distribution, the platform, the network. You can make basically features for us and feel free to also monetize. Right. It was like such a win win because they got expanded on features. Of course, there were a lot of apps.

So this is during the time of, like, plants, zombies versus vampires. Super Poke Zynga was doing poker at the time. Farmville hadn't come out, so we ended up. It's funny, I remember we came in on a Saturday and we were doing, like, a huge brainstorm of, like, man, the. The way the platform was growing was just nuts.

Like, nobody had ever seen anything like it. Like, it was growing, like, millions over the weekend. Like, I still don't. Maybe. Yeah, chat GPT is probably, like the closest or the mobile phone adoption, but even that took years over.

It was just. Facebook was nuts, I would say, on installs, app installs. And so we were looking at that and saying, like, what can we build? You know, it sounds like it makes sense, right, given where you got to. But one thing I'm wondering about is, like, going from b two b to gaming is so different.

Carly Milatzky

And naturally, gaming sounds like you need. You need those type of people with experience and that expertise. But how were you guys, did anyone be like, guys, we're not. We're not gamers. How did you think through that?

Holly Liu

Of course. Of course. We're like, so it's a confluence of things. So we didn't jump from b two b to games. But what we ended up building on Facebook was basically community.

Apps for tv shows and fans got it. So that started us looking a lot at community. We grew that to probably 60 million registered users. It was crazy. Like ABC wanted to distribute video on our applications, not Facebook, because they just didn't have the fans at the time.

And now there was fan, then it turned into fan pages and groups. But what was very interesting is during that time, a whole new world of games came out. Farmville, Cityville, Mafia wars. And there was a whole new business model that was quite different, that was very open to people who were like us, which we call web based background. So if you look at the game developers at that time, the zyngas, there was one called kicks Eye.

There was other contemporaries, like a storm eight, there was a crowdstar. All of them had a new business model which was called free to play, or you can call it microtransactions. So it's very different than the traditional games where you buy a console, you unwrap it and you cannot return it. That's like the movie industry. You buy a ticket, if you don't like it, you can't return it.

Whereas with this new business model, you had to think a lot more long term. You had to. We call it live operations. Once a game launches, like once you have a pilot episode of a tv show, you can't not do anything. That's why sometimes they write out ahead of time, they think about the arc of the character.

The way the games are even developed are very different. And it play to our advantage of not being game designers, actually. And so if you look at the people at the time, League of Legends is one of the largest esports games. They weren't on Facebook, but they are consultants, Zynga's consultants. Our background's been consultants.

And we're all web. Yeah, we're all web. And the thing is, is the problem with, like, if you make a movie or anything where you have to package it up and ship it, everything has to be perfect, right? But we were launching stuff that wasn't even done yet. And we're like, that's okay, we'll patch a fix because you can.

That's how the web world works. It's very iterative. Now, there's definitely, definitely some parts of, like, game design that you cannot do that. That's the one thing I learned is, like, game design is a lot more in terms of like a core loop, and then you expand out of that. No different than some things that you do on products, productivity products, like your email, there's a core loop and then there's extra features on top of that.

But this one, you know, you'd have questing your games. So we decided to go into games. You had mentioned a little bit about our series b. That was before we went into games. And the cause of why we decided to go into games, our series, you know, we were growing our community, our community kind of apps, and they were growing at a good clip.

But Facebook was changing things. But the biggest impact was the 2008 recession. We started fundraising in May, closed term sheets like a couple months later. And the day that Lehman brothers fell to a dollar was the same day that the VC was supposed to wire the money and the money never came in. And finally, after a week of calling them, they said, we're very sorry, we cannot do this.

Like, this is, this is not good. There's so much macro. It is kind of funny now being on the investor side and seeing the pullback and I'm like, I get it. Like, and they shouldn't have done that. And that started probably particularly for our CEO, like, one of the worst fundraisers ever.

So it didn't even just impact our fundraise. What it also impacted was we were ad supported business, the community, apps. So we saw $3 million contracts disappear all overnight. We saw, like, the payouts for, you know, our ad impressions dropped to, like, I don't know, less than pennies. It was just terrible.

Carly Milatzky

Did you have to do a lot of layoffs, like, from the team or how did that change? Yeah, yeah. So we're about 30 people at the time. It was also pre pandemic. So I can't even imagine what these CEO's have had to go through during the pandemic and doing everything remote because there was something really nice about everybody in the same room, like, kind of banding together and saying, we'll get through this.

Holly Liu

And it really impacted the culture. So we had to lay off the sales team, which is about, I don't know, four people. We had to take some people and try to make them into game people, you know, and because we were just like, the writing was just on the wall and we're like, well, I guess we, we know Facebook. We have, like, almost 100 years of experience on Facebook with this team. You know, there was like, there were great games on there that were casual, but they weren't like, what we call mid core or.

Our CEO was a huge gamer and he's always like, I really wish there was this particular game for me. We leveraged a lot of things we learned about interest, space, and community within our chats. And really social gaming was like a bigger thing. And so there was a lot of our games were a little different. They were more competition based.

They were, call them, like, closer to settlers of Catan. Like, you grew your resources and then you build your little fiefdom and then you go to war or you make treaties. So it was just this epic game where you just continuously. And it's so funny because we didn't even have, like, well, we were cash constrained, so we had a lot of art interns come in. Art school students were like, hey, can you help us out here?

Carly Milatzky

Yeah. And, Holly, take me to you. Mentally, right in that moment, did you ever have those moments where maybe it's even like that asian background of saying, I need to have a secure job and make money and like, is this the right choice for me? Did you have that where you're like, am I in the right position? Or did it never waver?

Holly Liu

Well, it's kind of funny when we're smaller. That was the thing us founders would always say, especially early on. We're, like, thinking about returning the money. That was really sad. And nothing, like, nothing was gaining traction.

I never wanted to talk to anybody about the company because it was just too embarrassing for me. I was like, we're not even succeeding. And so we never really talked a lot about it, but we also talked about, well, I guess we'll have to go try to find Silicon Valley jobs somewhere type thing if this doesn't work. Yeah, you were thinking of the next thing, right. But that's a very blessed place to also be in where I'm like, okay, I have that safety net of, like, maybe I can go.

As it, as it got bigger, it. It certainly felt in some ways more lonely, too, because the starts growing bigger. You don't, you lose out on a lot of the beginning project feel, which is super fun. And you're just in a room and you feel like the rebels. Cause you're like, I left my stick it to the man job and now here I am.

So whatever. We acquired a company and they, they said something on the call. They're like, yeah, we just want to make sure the mothership is happy. And I looked around and go, oh, crap, where mother ship now? And part of that growth that I'm always curious about is scaling culture, right?

Carly Milatzky

It becomes naturally becomes much harder to really create a great culture as you scale not only, you know, within the US, but then you went global. You have an office in China. And whatnot. So one thing I read, by the way, in founder musings and anyone listening, if you're a founder, like, I actually think it's so valuable and I wish you were still writing them. But anyway, you write these essays.

Holly Liu

Good encouragement. Yes. But anyway, Holly, you wrote something there that stuck out to me, which was like, likes, like, you know, and almost hiring, making sure that you have similar values. I wanted you to talk a little bit about scaling culture in that lens, but also, how do you ensure you also have diversity of thought? Yeah.

So it's kind of interesting because you want similarity enough to be aligned and then you want diversity to be able to, like, kind of be able to fly out there. And because innovation is always like the hardest thing for anything, especially if everybody thinks alike, it's really hard. So as I mentioned, our whole founding team is chinese american. And so it's interesting that we absolutely attracted a lot of Asians. About 25% of our company employees were women.

I'm 25. 25% of the founding team is women. Yeah. So it's just kind of interesting how it does kind of templatize. And initially it's partly because you recruit from your networks.

Right. We have a lot of relatives that initially worked for us because we just didn't have enough. Like, you know, you're not going to pay a recruiter. Like, it just gets harder, so. But then it also gets harder to recruit from your own tapped whales.

So you have to go out a little bit further. Right. You have to start creating systems to where the other people become recruiters and you put those systems in, or you have to have those people recruit folks that are not like us but like them, you know? And you always have to kind of take that bet of like, okay, they're a little bit different for me in this way, but in terms of values, I certainly think that that's incredibly important where I think you have to be aligned on your values because if you're not, then it just gets really, really hard to just do business. Or you start.

You start the employee themselves start, like, I don't know, did I choose the right place? The other one where if you're just not, if you just don't believe in the strategy or where it's going, that's the other reason why folks do end up going on those two. So the interesting thing about scaling culture, and I was on the team of, like, helping to write values, like, constantly from the beginning. It was actually all the same values. And we had to actually update our values.

We updated them like three times to almost scale with the. So the first, the first spot, everybody has read the Netflix culture and we try to have something like that, too. Leadership. This is what it means, humility. And then, so it was just one word, but it was the clip that we were like, hiring folks at.

And just trying to explain these big paragraphs is really, really difficult. You obviously, once you do performance reviews, you have to put it in there and you'll have to manage to those, like, values, right? Yeah, if it manages to that. And then obviously the goals have to be set in terms of that. Like, everything's kind of there.

And one that, here's a great value that never scales very well. Transparency. A lot of people are like, I'm going to be totally transparent. Here's my calendar, here's this. And you know what everybody thinks about transparency because you don't have enough time to tell about, like, context is they're going to be like, oh, transparency means I have a say.

I have a say in where we move to. I have a say in this. Like, you're not being transparent because you didn't tell me, like, involve me in this strategy meeting or you're not showing me your calendar. And it just gets information overload. And that's what they think transparency is.

But it's like, it. It's. It's a little bit of underneath that. It's like needing to have integrity. And that's underlying that is humility.

And so we had this one that was we definitely how to ditch transparency and make it into integrity. It turned into humility. But what we ended up doing was the first one was just words, and then the second version was almost declaratives. It was like, start with customer loyalty. Think and act like an owner.

Like, success is never final. Super, like, boom, that's our asianess. Success is never final. Why not a plus, right? You know, the other one that doesn't scale very well is get shit done because you just end up with a lot of shit.

Right? It's just, excuse my language, on a podcast, you might have to do that. But, like, you just get, like, it was just kind of ag. Not aggro, but just a lot of energy there. And so things moved to things like make it happen.

And then from make it happen, it was. It turned into we statements. The last version really reflects a lot more. Like, we make games that will last forever. We got each other's backs, you know, so much more we statements.

And it was really interesting. I should try to dig them out, but it was interesting. Maybe that will be my next article. Maybe I should write that article on that one. I was like, maybe I didn't.

I didn't write it. No, I mean, it's also interesting because you share even beyond that, like, you know, the transitions of teams and scale as you get bigger. I know you have, like, the rowboat synonym and analogy, but, like, I think there's this totally similar thing or at least something to build off of with values, too, because it's something that at least I think a lot about. So I love that. And then, Holly, I want to know, you know, now you've obviously had an incredible career in gaming.

Carly Milatzky

I want to know what your experience has been like as a woman in gaining gaming, as a founder. Did you experience that? You know, like you said, going to pitch to investors. Yes. The asian co founding team.

But also being a woman, how has that experience been for you? So that's interesting. We never went all together. It was just one. I think we just felt like there's always an asian stereotype of, like, we're the Borg, and, like, it feels like we cluster the asian mafia.

Holly Liu

So very sensitive. I'm very sensitive to that, even to this day of, like, sometimes I'm like, oh, I think we're too asian. We got to diversify. And it does. Naturally, it is easier.

It's funny because I grew up around, like, non Asians and how a lot of my personal network is Asians. And I get it. There's a shortcut there from culture and some of the values and how you grew up, but it doesn't make the best stuff sometimes, right? Absolutely, it doesn't. So you have to be very intentional about that.

One of the things that I did not mention about culture is 100%. The culture is not only set at the top, but it's also who you bring in the door that's, like, not 100%, but 98%. And we had amazing folks that came, worked at Kabam. We saw marriages. We saw.

It was just such a special time, and I can't take much credit for, like, people that are just amazing at the same time. It was just such a great kind of, like, time in the market as well. Like, a lot of things were easier. So I definitely think it's funny. I would have said early on that being a woman, I would have just said I'm just a founder.

Like, Marissa Meyer would say this a lot. I'm just. I'm not a girl engineer. I'm just a nerd just like everybody else. Right.

But what you don't realize is other people don't see you that way. And I think it's very, very important to realize that, that as much as I have this joke, I go, man, on the inside I feel like a white male, but people keep treating me like an asian female. I don't know what's wrong, right. No matter how much I feel on the inside. Absolutely.

There's impact to things on the outside, and it's particularly as we grew bigger, you only have little wisps. Like, I would get judged on things that I had no context for them to get to know me on, right. Because there's so many employees I'd be judged on, like what I dressed, what I wore. There's even female founders who like, there was one female founder, she a b tested curly hair versus straight hair. And she's like, oh, straight hair works better, you know, and women unfortunately have to do that.

It's no different, particularly in gaming. And sometimes it's just even worse. But it's all around the inequities, all around in every industry. Now, Holly, now that you've seen, now you're on the other side, right? And you've seen what it's like to be the investor.

Carly Milatzky

Do you have advice for female founders who are coming in and what. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, so. Absolutely. So first, huge fan of any woman who wants to go on the investing side or the, or the founder side.

Holly Liu

We need more women on both sides of the table so that, because there are certain problems that we have that need to get funded and there needs to be a lot more support around that. So I just want to say that kind of out there, I think, and there's been studies around this, around preventative questions and potential questions where you have to, where women tend to get asked preventative questions. So like, are you sure you could do this? And I hate to admit it, but I will admit it, I have done it before too. I remember this one woman, she was coming, she's like, holly, I want you on my cap table.

I'm doing a gaming comment. There's this, this and this. And I was like, but have you liveopped a game before? Because you know, these people, this position in my team didn't like, do you know the number? And she was like, finally.

She's like, holly, why don't you believe me? And I just, I just stopped dead in my tracks. I was like, yeah, what is going on with you, Holly, like you're buying into. Because all I see are this is how women are getting treated, and this is how I should treat. And some female founders will come and tell me they're like, I get treated worse from women than I do men, and men themselves get judged, obviously off of potential.

They've even seen this with performance reviews. I've even had it at my own company where I get judged for certain things. And I'm like, really? Okay. Okay.

Like, I'll change the way I dress and look, but I really realize it just doesn't change how they think about you kind of thing. So. I think so. But the other things also, and this is for actually a lot of, a lot of, not just women, but, you know, pitch the entire market. Don't just pitch.

Like, if we get 10% of this, men tend to just go for the whole kitten caboodle because investors will do kind of like a haircut anyways, so it's okay. I also think, yeah, women do tend to be a bit more cautious, but they absolutely over perform. Yeah. In so many ways. Right.

They tend to be the most profitable, and I don't know if they even choose to be profitable because they're like, I think Katrina Lake once said, she's like, oh, I didn't choose to be profitable. I had to be because nobody wanted to give me any, any money. No. And I'm glad you brought that up. Even from your own experience on the, you know, not on the receiving end of saying, like, it got up to me too.

Carly Milatzky

Right. And just, like, recognizing that, because I think it's almost that self like, fulfilling prophecy that feeds into others and how you're sharing with others, in a sense. So I'm happy you said that. Okay, Holly, before we go on to the more fun questions, I do want to ask. I do want to ask.

You ultimately sold kabam for over a billion dollars. Just talk me a little bit through that. How was that experience for you? So I have to hand it out to a lot of the other execs who are on the team. I mean, that.

Holly Liu

And in particular, our CEO. Like, amazing amount of work done by the presidents and them. Like, I I was much more probably support in many ways. I was definitely in China helping to initially kick off some things, and then I'm like, but I can't even think that I could take even infaminute, like, the amount that they had put in and the amount of work that they had pushed. And don't get me wrong, it takes all the employees just to even get it to the point of making it that valuable.

Right. By the time, if you have a company and you're so. And you're lucky enough or blessed enough to get to the point where we were. There really is, like, a couple of things. One, there's only a subset of buyers who have enough cash to buy you.

That's one thing. Two, basically, it's very hard to say, please buy me. Please buy me. Please by me. It's much better if it's the other way around.

So it's almost like a fundraising process, but very, very particularly interesting. Yeah. Because it's for. It's usually, like, strategic value that they want you. So eventually, what the CFO and our CEO did and the exact team did, that was pretty.

Made a lot of sense, was they called it a proforma, like. And you see this a lot. Pro forma financials perform a cap table, and it's like a version of what the financials look like for a particular business unit. So the greatest thing about game studios is you can have a lot of studios, and it's the same business model. So they could roll up.

They could be their own p and L. They could roll up. One of our largest games was Marvel contest of champions. It was a street fighter, but with Marvel characters. That game was built by so many people in Vancouver, it was grossing almost $400 million a year.

70 people. Crazy, right? So if you cut out all the rest of us, the R and D, and don't get me wrong, other game teams absolutely floated the rest of the company for a while. China was killing it on our mobile game, right. And they were floating the rest of it.

But if you think about it, we're like, okay, from that lens, our EBITDA and our profitability look really great. And that's when Netmarble bought that, spun out the rest of the companies or rest of the divisions into kind of its own parts and created something called aftershock. So a lot of things unfortunately got split for parts aftershock. You know what's really funny is our LA office became. They were building this one.

It was a really fun game called Marvel Strike Verse. It's still there. That one got sold to Fox next, which I think got bought by Disney, which got sold to, like, it's just kind of funny to see where all, we call them kabamers, kabam alumni are at. And we have a big game conference called GDC. So it's always fun to run into them and see where they're at in the industry.

It's like such a huge team effort on doing on, you know, even the person who's pushing the art to make sure that, like, there's enough content to make sure that know the customer has something that they can find a value there and. Incredible. Maybe increase the revenue. Yeah. Like, there's.

Yeah, there's just so many things that are involved. So. So, yeah, that's pretty much how it was a bit parted and added up together. I love it. I love it.

Carly Milatzky

Okay, Holly, what is a book you would recommend for everyone to read? This might be controversial, but I would say the Bible. It has so many interesting characters about humanity. Great proverbs in there, all the way to. Just a lot of lessons in it.

No, that's great. A lot of lessons. And how much people like, I was like, oh, my God, this is humanity right here. It's crazy. I love it.

Holly Liu

So I'd highly recommend, okay, one of the best. Was it best selling books do? Yeah, no, for sure. And, okay, Holly, what is a craft that you are spending your lifetime honing? I think the craft, like, after having this conversation with you that I've been spending my lifetime doing is being, like, trying to be open.

Like, just open. Okay. Like, I was like, oh, yeah. I think it's a hard thing to do because I get super crotchety and super niMBY and I'm like, man, if I could just be open. Yeah, okay.

A lot of things can happen. I love it. Holly, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. She leads.

Carly Milatzky

You're the best. This is great. Of course. Bye. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening to the show this week. If you enjoyed, please spread the word. Tell someone about she leads or post about it on social media and tag us. If you want to contact us. Feel free to send over a message through the she leads Instagram pagehealeads show.

If you want to follow us on Twitter. Our account is she leads show and mine is arliemiletsky. This episode was produced and edited by Nick. Thank you also to our partner, Floodgate. If you are passionate about startups and want to learn more about the starting journey of those who have built groundbreaking companies, I highly recommend listening to starting greatness with Mike Maples Junior, the founding partner of Floodgate.

He has an incredible show that, in my opinion, is definitely worth your time. Thanks again.