 to be here. My name is Clement C. Burton Hill. I'm a BBC broadcaster and journalist and I had the immense pleasure of interviewing Ilka earlier this year and I'm super thrilled to be back. So thank you for having me. I'm going to move a little bit closer to you, having moved a little further away. The warmest possible welcome to Ilka Parnanan and to Martin Lau. I'm sure they don't need much of an introduction, but just to put it in context, Ilka is one of the co-founders of Supercell. They are the world's leading mobile games developer behind, as we've just heard, things like Clash of Clans, Heyday, Boom Beach, and Clash Royale. They have more than 100 million daily users of their games. So really, a game changer sitting on my right right here. We also have one over there, Martin Lau. He is president of Tencent. They are one of the world's biggest technology companies and investors. The largest games company in the world. We're going to be hearing more about the very happy partnership between Supercell and Tencent shortly. They recently passed Facebook's valuation of $500 billion. They are a major shareholder in Supercell, but also have a very broad portfolio of other companies too. Social media, for example, WeChat and QQ, and also internet infrastructure services, looking at content, looking at finance and cloud services. So a really incredible company. I'm so excited to be talking to these two. We've got about 25 minutes. So we're going to start by asking you where you first met and how this happy partnership came about. Do you remember the day? Okay, why don't you go first? So I think I had been in touch with various people from Tencent since I think 2012, I believe. And of course I knew of Martin, but we actually hadn't met in person before we even finally met in 2016. It's March 2016. Right around the time when you guys launched Clash Royale. Correct, correct. Yeah, so that's where we met for the first time. And what I remember actually about that meeting was that I was so impressed about Martin and his team, because like they really like, they all seem to be like so passionate about games. And Martin, for one, was seemed to be a kind of a hardcore player of our Clash Royale game. I think you, is it true that you were actually on the top 10 globally? Top 100, top 100. At one point. Yeah, that was old history, but no longer. So Martin, you could have the option of investing in pretty much any company you want. Ilker, I imagine investors are queuing up to work with you. What was the chemistry? What brought you guys together? And what makes this such a special partnership? Maybe I can go first. I think the first thing is really when we invest in company, we look at the product of the company, right? That's how we first get to know Supercell, right? Ilker talked about we had some interaction between the organizations starting from the year of 2011 and 12. That was a time when they came up with Heyday. They came up with Clash of Clans. I have to say, at the time of Clash of Clans, we actually gave an offer to invest in Ilker at that time. We said we would love to take 20% of the company and work with you. At that time, I think the shareholders of Supercell wanted to sell majority. At that time, we were concerned. When you actually buy majority, what does it mean? Are the people going to stay? I actually made a big mistake of not meeting with him at that time. It was a $3 billion mistake. Eventually, we got to where we are supposed to be, but we pay $3 billion more at the very least. The product is very impressive for us. Then when I met with Heym, Ilker and the core team of Supercell, I think the people we immediately fell in love with. These are the people who are really passionate about games. Ultimately, they are very good people. They work together with each other really well. Finally, when we dig more into Supercell, I think it's the culture that took us away. I'll pass it to Ilker. We're going to talk a lot about that culture because it is so exceptional. It is the secret to Supercell's remarkable success. Ilker, what are you looking for in an investor? Why did you find it in Martin? I guess for us, the most important thing was that we wanted to find a partner who would value our independence. I mean, what really makes Supercell great is it's people who form these amazing teams and the culture that keeps everything together, and I just felt that Martin and his team got that immediately, and they really understood that. Then the other thing for us was that we wanted to have a partner who is very patient, truly thinks about long term. Those were the two most important things, but then of course, the additional benefit that comes in with Tencent is that first of all, they are games companies, so they really understand games, and second of all, they are huge in China, so they have a lot of users there. Obviously, getting access to their resources in China is a big advantage for us. We were saying earlier it's not inconceivable that you can have a game that is played by 100 million people daily in China alone, and we'll talk a little bit about those potential opportunities. How have you guys been working together? I've had the great pleasure of being backstage with these two for the last hour or so, and they clearly have such a great personal chemistry, but how does your relationship work on a kind of one-to-one level? Well, it has been pretty amazing to work with Ilka. I think we're not as close as you saw us to be, because we actually keep Supercell in a very independent position. There's only at times when we have issues that we need to talk about. We would get up to call to each other. We see each other every quarter, and I think our family are good friends with each other, but other than that, they are on their own. But Ilka, you were saying earlier that when you went through a rougher time last year, there was a moment when Martin gave you a call, and that that personal interaction really meant a lot. Perhaps you could tell us about that. Yeah, so I think I even talked a bit about it in the last year, but I think it was literally maybe a month after we had closed the deal with these guys. We went into a bit of a rough period. Actually, I think all of our games fell out of the top 10 list, and we had various kinds of issues. Then I just remember Martin giving me a call during that time, and he just reassured me that the reason why they invested was because of the team and because of this shared vision and belief in the long term. He also asked me to tell that to everybody else at Supercell, which of course I did, and I think it was quite remarkable. So imagine somebody who has just invested to you in a $10 billion valuation, and then immediately thereafter you go into this rough period, and making a call like that. Well, I think it speaks a lot about Martin and the culture at Tencent. Tencent, Martin has had its own ups and downs, as all companies will. Talk us through this idea of the long-term vision, because clearly that's vital to what you give to Supercell, but it's also not necessarily what people would expect of in this very fast-moving tech world where so much pressure is put on huge growth very early on. I think when you look at the way we look at our own business and the way we look at our investing companies, the companies that we back and we want to build relationship with, we really look at a long-term. And the most important thing that gets us excited about a company is really the people. And there are a lot of people who ask us, in a traditional corporate world, a lot of companies, big companies would acquire companies. And for us, we very much prefer to invest in companies and be partners with them. And I think the very important thing for us is we invest in people, not just the business. We invest in creativity, not invest in efficiency. And we look at people and culture and creativity over a much longer-term period. It's only through that period that you can build this kind of skills. Because if you look at Ilka and his company, it didn't become a breakthrough they want. They have gone through many, many stages of ups and downs and eventually through a lot of learnings and resurgence from mistakes and failures and overcome challenges and eventually they build a great company. And I think that's actually something that gets us really excited about. Well, Ilka, give us the secret. If people in the room don't know how Supercell is organized, that's really where the magic lies. And again, it comes back to this idea that absolutely of paramount importance is the people. And the way that you work with your people is what unleashes this incredible creativity and ultimately the great success. But talk us through how Supercell is organized and why that's so radical and how you got to that decision. Well, first of all, I should emphasize that the magic lies with our game development teams. And that's where the magic is. And it's because of these amazing teams and the great work that they do. We've been successful. And of course, we've also been ridiculously lucky in addition. So in addition to having the best possible teams, Supercell is about trying to create the right type of environment for these teams. And how we sort of define that, like for us, the right environment is one where these teams can have the biggest possible impact. So the way we are organized is that it's sort of a, or maybe I actually should talk about first, like how most gaming companies are organized. So in most gaming companies, you know, the product vision comes from the leadership. It comes from the top. And then everybody else underneath is just there to like implement this vision and execute against it. And Supercell was born out of this idea that we actually wanted to turn this traditional organizational model upside down. So we asked ourselves that what would happen if instead of the management, the product vision would be owned by these individual product teams. And the sole role of the management would actually be to enable these teams to be successful. And then somebody suggested that, you know, this is such a kind of radical idea that we actually shouldn't call these teams teams, rather let's call them cells. And then the question was, okay, what do we call the whole company? And then that of course is the Supercell. And that's where the name of the company comes from. So we are organized into these small independent teams, which we call cells, which you could almost think as their own independent companies, as I said. People might be surprised to know that that means that it's only those cells that can develop or kill a game. So even if there's a game that you're passionately in love with, if your team decide that it's not going ahead, they have full autonomy over that game. Exactly. And everyone, the structure is incredibly flat and level, so that everyone is involved, everyone gets an email on a daily basis, letting people know what's going on. I mean, talk us through the kind of culture. What could you expect, say, if you were working at Supercell? Well, for us, it's really, it's about two things. So it's about independence. And then it's on the other hand, it's about the responsibility. So independence, of course, it's the fun thing to talk about. I mean, everybody wants to do the things that they want. But then the other side of the coin is the responsibility. So independence comes great responsibility. And for what it means to us is that we have a very high quality bar in terms of the types of games we want to do. I mean, our dream is to create these games that people would play for years, and that would be remembered forever. And it's a pretty bold dream in a marketplace that gets, I guess, like 10,000 new games every single month. And we also have this internal goal that we don't want to launch games, games that we believe that don't have a chance to hit the top 10 globally. And again, it's a very sort of bold dream and goal. And for that reason, like we actually, Martin was talking about these ups and downs. And for us, like, it's going to continue. So and we won't be launching that many games, you know, like between our game number three, which was Boom Beach and game number four, which was Clash Royale. We actually developed 10 games, and nine of those 10 were killed, and one was released. And I fully expect that to be the case like going forward. And I view that as a kind of positive thing. So we want to be in this place where we take as much risk, which then leads to innovation, which then hopefully, if you get lucky leads to hit games. Martin Tencent is also organized, not as a traditional company. You also think about empowering individual teams. Perhaps you could break down how it works from your side. Yeah, well, of course, we we operate at a different scale, right? You know, Supercell has got now 200 odds, you know, employees. We actually have a team of more than 30,000 people, right? You know, and you know, we have a lot of different businesses. But you know, as we grow our company, we wanted to scale our company in such a way that's not in like a traditional company that work in command on orders. You know, we actually want to have a company that embrace an ecosystem approach, you know, in which, you know, we work with our teams like what, you know, we work with our investing companies, right? You know, allow our different teams to be small, to be nimble, to be driving for what they believe is the right product experience for the users. There's a common theme at the company, which is, you know, you have to create the best user experience for the users. But other than that, you know, you have to come up with the right way to do it. And for example, right, you know, in the case of a very important product of ours, which is called WeChat, right? It's a mobile chat product, which, you know, was created in 2011. And at that time, we had our flagship product called QQ, which is a PC-based instant messaging plus social network. And it's also creating its own version of the mobile product. But we said, you know, we need to have a mobile-only chat and social networking product. So at that time, the company has got three different teams who put up their hands and say, we want to create the next generation mobile chat product. And we actually allow all of them to create a product. And eventually, one team create the best product, and that became WeChat. But in that process, right, you know, we enable each one of the teams to come up with the best product. That must create a healthy degree of competition amongst your companies. Yeah, we want to look at our own teams, you know, not as competitors, right, but more like sports team, right, you know, different sports, you know, teams within the company trying to compete and race with each other rather than, you know, engage in unhealthy competition. Ilke, here we are in Helsinki, hugely exciting for me, my first time. This place has such incredible energy, clearly one of the great tech hot spots of the future. I'd love to know your thoughts, Martin, of your sense of the opportunities here in Finland and why it makes for such an interesting and exciting place to invest. Yeah, I would say, you know, number one, I feel incredible amount of energy, right, you know, in here there's a lot of entrepreneurism. And I also felt, you know, Finland, right, you know, it's giving me an aspirational place of, you know, where the world should be going, right, because in a lot of different parts of the world and, you know, surely in Asia, you know, there's an increasing concern among people about, you know, what technology is going to do to the society and, you know, whether there's going to be a lot of inequality. But, you know, if you look at Finland, right, you know, it's a very advanced country, you know, with a very strong egalitarian culture. And, you know, there are people who engage in different types of work and they respect each other, they enable each other to do great things, right? You know, and one of the things I would say, right, is, you know, they are incredibly, you know, nationalistic too, in a good way. Because I remember, right, when we look at the financials of supercell during the due diligence process and when we negotiate on the deal, you know, the number one criteria that Ilke put on the table for the deal is that we'll never move the tax jurisdiction. You know, it will always stay in Finland. You know, I think, you know, that's a very interesting ask. You know, it's going to be quite costly from some people's perspective, but I actually think, you know, that's the right thing to do, right? And the other thing is that, you know, when we look at the capital structure, we saw there's a foundation which they have put shares in, you know, which they would be doing good, right? That's another thing which I felt we're dealing with the right people because they intend to do good. And the right people in the right place, Ilke, it must be very gratifying to hear Martin talk in that way and he must feel fully vindicated in that determination to keep supercell in Finland, but also be a kind of poster child, if you like, for what this incredible community can do. We were talking earlier about the possibility of creating a very frictionless technology hub here. Talk to us about why Finland is such a great place to be and where you see the future going. Well, I think it comes down to many of the things that Martin already mentioned, like what's great about the Finnish culture or even the Nordic culture as a whole. And, you know, there's just like so much talent in this country and at least, you know, and there's like more talented people who want to move here. And, you know, because I mean, in Helsinki, you can actually, the quality of life is actually really high. So, we have a great infrastructure here. We have the best schools here. And then, you know, and you can read the rest from if you use the Brack for Finland hashtag. But, you know, there's so many great things about this place. And I think we have a real opportunity here to bring one of the leading tech hubs here and not just in Europe, but globally. And do you feel that as a culture it can be very nimble, for example, setting up more kind of English-speaking or Chinese-speaking daycare and schools? Yeah, I think like the most important thing that Finland can do right now is to kind of enable all of this. So, first of all, we have to remove like all possible friction for the foreign talent to move to here and work from here and, you know, set up their families here. And then it comes down to very practical things like having, as you said, English-speaking daycare, English-speaking schools. And also, actually, like I think probably equally important in the very near future is going to be Chinese-speaking daycares and Chinese-speaking schools and so forth. Martin, you're nodding. Do you think that's a likely look ahead? Well, I think this is a great place to live as well as to pursue entrepreneurship and especially given the talent pool that's here, it's very attractive. And also, I would say there's a broader mission, right, which we felt we can facilitate, which is, you know, Europe actually can have more exciting tech startups and bigger tech companies, right? You know, I think, you know, one of the things that we, when we look at Europe is that, you know, a lot of European tech companies, you know, have got amazing start, but then, you know, they got somewhat, you know, sluggish toward the midlife because there's probably not a lot of capital market support. There may not be enough infrastructure services to support them, you know, and a lot of European tech companies actually got sold too early, right? And what we would love to see is, you know, we could be, you know, helping some of these amazing European tech companies, right, to get access to capital and maybe get access to some market in China and to grow into a much bigger company independently. Ilke, that's obviously a huge opportunity for you, you know, this idea that the same game can be a huge hit in Western markets, but also in Eastern markets and opening up that incredible opportunity in China. Tell us a little bit more about how you see the partnership going in that direction. Well, that's the big dream that they have. So our dream is that one of these days we can develop a game that is a truly global hit game. So not only would it be number one in the Western markets, but then it would be also number one in each of these big Asian or Eastern markets, China, Japan, Korea, and also in the rest of the world. And it feels to me that for the first time in the history of gaming, it's actually possible to do that. And in these days, everybody carries a gaming device in their pocket with a smartphone. And distribution can be truly global. And of course, with the help from Tencent, for example, we can actually it is entirely possible for us to do that in China as well. And of course, what it takes is a great game, a lot of luck and a lot of patience to get there. But if your time perspective is not just years, but maybe tens of years, I believe it's entirely possible. And that's super exciting to us. Watch the space. Very exciting times ahead, I feel. We've got a couple of minutes left. We're looking at this incredible sea of faces. So many dynamic entrepreneurs, potential founders, even founders here in the room. What is the one takeaway that you would each like them to leave with? You've got a minute each, Martin. Well, I would go back to my original theme, which is when you look at a company and an entrepreneurial process, what's valuable in that process is not the successes you have. It's actually the challenges that you face. What we found, we have invested in 600 different companies around the world. So we have a broad spectrum of interaction with different founders. What always excites me is when we see founders who might not be making the first right move, but then over time can actually research, rebunk from the mistakes and overcome the challenges. And through that process, build a much stronger character, build a much stronger culture at the company. And at that time, you see, and this is a much better company. So I think when you face challenges, don't give up easily and keep going for it. Ilka? Well, I think last year at Slush, I said something along the lines of like, my dream is that the next Google or our next Facebook or maybe the next Tencent could be actually be born out of Helsinki. And then after that event, I got feedback. I'm sure it didn't come from the Slush audience, but from somewhere else that, you know, this is this I think the Finnish word was started up het. It's probably translates into like pipe dream or something like that and that. But it really, like I am really serious about it. So if your perspective is, is not just one or two years, but it's decades. And if we can do the things that we just talked about, so if we can make Helsinki a kind of a global hub for the best talent in technology, I think it's entirely possible. But also what that requires is that we, all of us here who are in this ecosystem, we understand that the competition for the best global talent, it's extremely fierce. So the best talent has an option to move like anywhere in the world. And we just have to make Helsinki the best place for them to move. And I think there's still some work to do, but feels like we are in a great track there. Okay, Helsinki, let's do this. Are you up for it? Yes, you are. Thank you so, so much. Martin Lau from Tencent, Ilka Parnanen from Supercell. Thank you everybody.