 My name is you see and this is my very good friend David and to kick off We had a nice introduction, but I want to put a little bit out there about unity for those of you who don't work in Games development. So today unity is about 1500 people working on a tool set. That's used by over five million game creators to create top-grossing games and award-winning games About half of all mobile games made and released in the last 12 months for made with unity and about 70% of all released augmented reality and virtual reality content not just games, but all kinds of content So you could say unity has made it. It's a company that's on its own field of game development is Really achieved something really big worth of a big vision. So that's what we have to talk about on how actually we got David Nicholas and Joachim and started a company took it from an idea to a vision and realize that but You know, we're so here to talk about a vision David. So what's the vision of unity? So The vision is to democratize game development. Okay, what does it mean? Yeah, you know enough for us. You know what does it mean? So so there's there's many ways of putting it first We were just a game company an incompetent game company company, you know, we try to make a game We kind of sucked at it, but really It was pretty bad along the way. We were building these tools for ourselves and then at some point You know as you know young people in basements tend to do we were sort of thinking about the meaning of life and And you know, we were pretty good programmers and and we're thinking like, you know, what does these tools mean? what you know, what is the meaning of tools and and we sort of realized that you know the the history of You know the human race, you know can be told through tools tools are like really fundamental thing Maybe the most important thing of everything not unity, but as a whole so we're thinking about that and then we were thinking about how new tools change the world and change industries and and and One of one of our founders Nicholas. He's a very creative person He's played music and made film and he sort of saw this thing where you know, the tools Changed the music industry the four track recorder changed completely like you know before I don't know if you knew I know how music was recorded before but you have a big room and the musicians would sit like at different distances to the recordings Equipment and it was very expensive and very complicated And then with the four track recorder the cost of production was brought down like a hundred fold a hundred fold And when that happens not only is it like cheaper to make music But all kinds of music gets created that would not have been created otherwise and we got rock music and all this stuff So you were working on your own problem say like we're gonna make this game We need to tooling and it's not available. So you had to make it so and then you look that well wait a minute actually making a tool Could be a force multiplier for also other people. Is that word a genesis of this idea? But it's like you could say that But how do you go from like making a tool to saying like democratize? So in a way you could say that democratize game development is just the way we summed up that idea Okay, you know let like by giving a great tool making it really easy really cheap Maybe the whole industry changes not just like you know saving some costs for some major company Which is useful and many companies do that and that's fine but like can we dramatically change the thing and and Yeah, we summed it up in democratize game development Which is open-ended and vague and I always appreciated that about it because there's no end to that There's no like endpoint like you're not done And it's really informed the company and sort of given a very broad sort of vague direction Right and the cool thing about broad vague directions is that you know people themselves sort of you know Initially just the three of us, but later more people can sort of infuse that with our own ideas Exactly. There's many answers to this question. So That was a genesis of the of the vision and and it it's actually It stayed with the company today if you go to a event unity host It's always there is something we say and it we really mean it But in the early days when you had to talk to people about and they haven't heard about unity How did that vision statement help you kind of a Get the company off the ground. Yeah, what did it actually do for you? It created a very sort of simple mental framework like sort of oh, okay That's what they're gonna do and you know the listener could then infuse it with their ideas Which were probably not exactly what we're working on but sort of positive friendly ideas. Yeah, yeah and it just created sort of a You know just a sort of framework around the brand or like the cloud around the brand So so it didn't go. I mean we were a tiny company We had no money for marketing or anything and I remember at one point. I was talking to one of our competitors And he said like you guys are so great at marketing Like we had zero marketing people So it was like a rallying cry both internally and externally like this is who we are about it's a stake on the ground we are here to do this thing and come with us if you want to do that exactly and then you get sort of the Self-selection people want to join the company because of that and it creates a very strong kind of internal direction Yeah, and often a feeling of like, you know, the leadership is not actually in charge Because you know, we've promised this not just to the customers, but also to our employees And it can be a troublesome thing Because it's sort of you promise so much like if you think about it this sort of you know every project But you know a company like has sort of a lot of degrees of freedom As a leader in theory you can make a lot of different decisions, but you dramatically reduce the number of decisions you're allowed to make We'll talk about that actually that's actually great lady and I really love that because this is my next question So, you know when you start off your small company and you basically have all the freedom in the world There's there's almost no employees. There's no customers. There's no revenues. It's only just limitless possibilities But once you grow, you know, some of it's not that easy anymore You have people to answer to you have people who expect a paycheck in order to support their families every month Customers who want to release right now and like where is why you're not fixing this box? So can you talk to a example or two where? Holding on to this big vision this big dream that you want to realize Meant that you actually had to walk away some from something you say like, you know what this would be really important We cannot do this because it would compromise our big vision. Yeah, so, you know a big promise like this creates sort of a Long arc that you follow and and I get forces you to ignore or at least, you know not run after a lot of things Actually for a long time. I after a long time I realized that The worst Decisions we've done in the company's history where decisions where we sort of decided to betray this idea And why would you do that? It was it's a big ball of money a ball of money Yeah, like you see like, you know the military industrial complex. Yeah, yeah, you know the military the game industry is like a $100 billion industry sort of all included and the military industrial complex is what a hundred times that I don't even know But it's a lot. Yeah, so if you like if you just get 1% of that, right? And so we were sort of you know lured a little bit by that Fortunately, we didn't betray the whole thing but we know we started sort of you know We had a lot of them using unity and for training and some of it is charming stuff Like you know post-traumatic stress treatment and you know things that are like are not that offensive to the sensibilities So we sort of started exploring it or like ran after it actually and yeah It's just it's a very different industry and and we would have to change the company quite a lot to do it And and the company like this all these people that were like in the team, you know had pretty strong how to say like like Allergic reaction allergic reaction. Thank you. Yeah, or like yeah, well Yeah, well, I was looking for a different word. Thank you. I'll go with that yes, and and You know, we're all friends. We trust each other So we believe that you know if we make a lot of money here, we can fund the core product So it's not it's not gonna betray it, but it's also You end up with something that sort of requires different people So so I think maybe maybe the the vision of unity made us in unable to do it So it might actually hurt us on the other hand, you know, it kept us very sort of unified and and I think it's probably a better company for it Yeah, so at least a company that I enjoyed working for more So that was a decision where there was a little bit of step taken towards the direction and then corrected But is there some time where you say like I really wish we would do that, but we cannot and we will not I Don't know no, no. Oh, is there a time where like Yeah, no, I know it's not necessarily but it's but so it was But that I think that would assume that there wasn't ever or that actually Means that you were so internalized the vision that you would never even contemplate something that would Dremendously break that so you were tempted, but you were like you had that so it was so ingrained And I think there was a company was also One thing about this being a CEO you can set the direction, but then the direction holds you your employees And you were talking about actually very holding you accountable Yeah, so kind of at the hard side of having that big vision once it's imparted you it's really hard to change Yes, you're you're fixed you have to go. Absolutely. Yes. It's yes There's a beauty to reducing the degrees of freedom like there's it's commitment. It's you're promising It's like being in a relationship or something No, absolutely so One thing I wonder about because the vision of democratization is It's it's almost like something that inevitably leaves the conclusion that hey, this should be free Like if you really take the democratization all the way to the end you should give away the software But we're running a company and that means there are people whose salaries suit to be paid and nobody wants a tool If it's not good, yeah, so you need to actually pay good people good amount of money to make that So it's kind of paradox you want to basically give it away free But you cannot give it away free and we're talking about About this a little bit so free and revenue is vision and cold at reality. Is that the ugly side of the vision? So it's it's actually not always so pretty or messy. It's not actually though because it You're working towards a longer term goal and you know, it's talking to a Niklas Sennström of atomico Last night and some other VCs and there was this general agreement that you know companies that are short term focused on Money and revenue they they go badly like I mean they don't succeed as much So there is by having a sort of a long-term arc that holds you to something It's sort of you know, I think I think it makes sure that you you know, you create more Momentum of your own so but but like early on I was like no, I want you need to be free for everybody And now it is for everybody who doesn't have a lot of money. Let's talk about that a little bit because you mentioned that One of the kind of a if you were the the boldest and Potentially riskest moves was actually making something that people used to pay good money for yeah completely free for people To use until a certain under the hitter center money revenue, which a lot of people also unfortunately may abuse But giving away something people paid for how did that make how the decision-making you are in the executive suit and you say like If we do this it it will be fantastic It's aligned with our vision, but it may completely screw up our bottom line and our top line and we may lose a lot of money Yeah, so talk to that like balancing that that's a really hard balance between the vision and the reality So so we had wanted to make the software free for a while We talked about it a number of times then one of our employees. He was a programmer He was like guys. We got to do it like you know, we promised this we are democratizing this thing Like it can't cost all this money And he had a good sense of you know the developer community and he was exactly right So we did some analysis and then we raised some major capital actually so so we'd have a buffer Because that was pretty risky like we were running on like basically no profit So we had no buffer like with no cash in the bank So you change the pricing scheme of something it can have very unpredictable consequences Exactly like you you lower price of a product, you know, that's you can't calculate how much it's gonna cost you And you can almost never raise it up. Exactly. It's a non-linear thing. So but having several million in the bank we stepped into it and and Our community actually freaked out a bit Because you know people are like but I paid for it now somebody else is getting it for free It sort of created confusion and I and we understood some of these see me motions But again like being pointed at the long-term goal, of course it was the right thing to do right it did cost us money though we we had our flat revenue for like half a year after it and I'm actually curious. What did the VC say? They loved it. They loved it. Yeah, of course because they have always more money for you to take Exactly. No, but the thing is like, you know, we came from Europe We were not very sort of sophisticated when it came to the technology industry Like everyone here is like a hundred times more sophisticated than we were at the time I don't think so. No because there's so much good instinct. Yeah We had instinct but there's so much knowledge and like this is codified now You can read about it and go to conferences and so on But in Silicon Valley, they've built this kind of Lore like I mean, this is a system. It's a playbook for how to grow this risk So in one sense your instinct and your vision led to a A tool set and a mission that was defining but also it led to that I would say a really a defining decision that catapulted unity from well, you know, it's it's a good tool to oh my god I can get it for free. I can try it out and suddenly I think it led to an explosion of user base It was amazing. So so then the next problem is, you know, we hire a lot of people and it's expensive and it's complicated And then at some point we're like, okay, you know, there's only so many developers in the world There's more we've not sold to ever all of them, but we need to grow the base and and and I was How my soul was in turmoil for a couple of years I was in a panic because I could see this problem arriving and And of course, how do you you could raise the price? But that sucks. You can take away the free version that sucks You can sell to more people we did that But we had to find another path. So I was so lucky that we had been sort of friends at these very good buddies for a while And you had built something Actually, you'd build a company with the same vision. So, right? Yeah, we also started in the mission of servicing developers like ourselves we were a developer we made a tool for ourselves and turn out to be a successful advertising network and joining unity was I Want to tell the story because the moment I was Announcing the acquisition to my team. I was so nervous I suspect by the way that you may have built the first at tech company in the world comprised only of like good honest people Yeah, I take it's kind of great. I'm for those of you don't know So the story is and that's this is how big unit is vision is the morning and we announced that we've been acquired I was so nervous about what my team of 40 people would say and the moment I say it by unity What an opposite yay, and if you would have been Microsoft, I don't think it would have happened So that's that's a testament to unity's vision But kind of we only have a minute and a half to do this the rest of this so I want to I want to give it So sense of closure so a lot of you are startup founders and I have two questions for you Is it essential to have a big vision to build a startup? Is it like when you think of all the troubles you go through? How important is it and or how much can increase your potential success people that have analyzed startups? Vcs typically because they spent a lot of time analyzing startups in a big picture looking at a lot of them categorizing them You know flocking them by region and size and blah blah blah They have come to a conclusion that the best companies have a big vision There is a lot of tea or a correlation. I do not know but that is believed I just as a human, you know Why would you work on something that's not meaningful? I fully agree and now now the really fun God-feeling question because you cannot tell anybody what their vision should be they have to find it but how do you know? How do you feel when you find your vision? I like how do you need to feel like for in part the last bit of reason for this guy when how did it? How can they know they've landed on something? When you feel love Like when you when you actually feel it's like don't explain I think that that's we got ten seconds left and that's a perfect ending You know unity is a love letter from us to the developer community, right? And that's and they feel it and we feel it. It's a real thing And we're right on time. Oh man. I'm your love find your vision and go build the next awesome company. Thank you Thanks, you see. Thank you. Thank you guys