My guest today is Wilson Kriegel - and he’s going to tell us the story of a perfect storm that he lived through that in many ways shaped & pioneered the way we think about virality and breakout growth. Wilson is today the CEO at HrtBeat Audio, a wearable hardware and software company that could very well change the way we communicate and capture moments safely using handsfree devices. Wilson has been a leader in many companies in gaming and mobile since far before the first smartphones came on our radar. On today’s episode, we will dive into the story of one of the earliest breakout hit games on mobile - OMGPOP’s Draw Something, which Wilson was a huge part of. Draw Something was launched when its maker OMGPOP was less than a quarter away from running out of money. They’d let go of people - and were mentally gearing up to close shop when their new game Draw Something came out. Draw Something not only dragged its team back from the brink - but also saw some astronomical numbers and incredible viral growth that changed its team’s fortunes literally overnight. Draw Something hit a million downloads 10 days after its launch in 2010, and 50 million downloads in the first 50 days after launch. Just as astonishingly, less than a month after Draw Something’s launch, OMGPop was acquired for $210 million. In today’s interview, we’ll talk to Wilson about the early days of online games and mobile games, and go behind the scenes of the abrupt ascent of Draw Something & the flurry of activity and dealmaking that led to its acquisition less than a month after its launch. We go into incredible detail about what it was like to live inside the perfect storm that Draw Something found itself in the midst of back in 2012 - and this is an incredibly exciting episode that I’m very stoked to bring to you today. 

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• How OMGPOP was on the verge of running out of cash when Draw Something’s mobile version came along. How OMGPOP’s CEO Dan Porter adjusted Draw Something’s gameplay to be much less competitive than its earlier versions used to be. The analogy that he used to describe this casual competitiveness.
• How the OMGPOP team’s focus on fundamentals and the foundational work for years was essential in supporting & amplifying Draw Something’s growth when it did blow up.
• Users’ having to set up a gamer tag to identify themselves was a friction point in their onboarding process. However, this also resulted in massive virality and discovery when users decided to share these gamer tags to find opponents.
• OMGPOP had hired bankers hired to salvage what they could of the company as they expected to run out of money. The bankers had to switch gears from thinking about a distress sale to maximizing a sale price - as they engaged potential buyers. The 5-day bidding war that eventually culminated in OMGPOP’s acquisition.
• How a virtuous cycle of growth can also turn against a product whose growth begins to slow down. The lull in the social gaming space at the time that resulted in OMGPOP and Zynga bearing the brunt of the slowdown - even though Draw Something continued to show strong engagement & financials. How this lull culminated in the OMGPOP office being shut down. How this rise and fall is often a natural cycle in business and technology that affects many well-known companies.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/draw-something-zynga-50-million-wilson-kriegel-picsart/

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