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The Gaming Founders Podcast
Eden Chen and Kevin Zhang
18 episodes
4 days ago
Welcome to The Gaming Founders Podcast, where we interview founders that have shaped the gaming industry. You’ll hear origin stories, tactics that helped founders and companies survive and thrive, and key lessons for anyone building the next generation of gaming companies. Your hosts are Eden Chen, CEO of Pragma Platform and Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures.
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Entrepreneurship
Business
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All content for The Gaming Founders Podcast is the property of Eden Chen and Kevin Zhang and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Welcome to The Gaming Founders Podcast, where we interview founders that have shaped the gaming industry. You’ll hear origin stories, tactics that helped founders and companies survive and thrive, and key lessons for anyone building the next generation of gaming companies. Your hosts are Eden Chen, CEO of Pragma Platform and Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures.
Show more...
Entrepreneurship
Business
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The Rise of UGC: Uri Marchand, Founder of Overwolf
The Gaming Founders Podcast
44 minutes 11 seconds
2 years ago
The Rise of UGC: Uri Marchand, Founder of Overwolf

The Gaming Founders Podcast Episode 6: The Rise of UGC: Uri Marchand, Founder of Overwolf

Today’s guest is Uri Marchand, Co-Founder and CEO of Overwolf, one of the biggest platforms for creators to build, share and monetize mods, user-generated content, and companion apps for their favorite games. After 13 years, 98,000 creators, and 33 million players a month, Overwolf now functions across more than 1000 supported games.

In this episode, you’ll hear Uri discuss the early days solving problems like Skype freezing when a text came in, Overwolf’s many ups and downs raising and running out of money, the many necessary pivots until finding their lane as a platform for third-party creators, and the continual scaling challenges and pressure to grow the business.

Discussion points:

  • Overwolf’s origin story
  • Solving problems in the early days - Skype, Starcraft, World of Warcraft
  • Failed strategies early on, and challenges finding funding
  • Pinpointing problems that plague developers
  • 2015’s first app for League of Legends
  • Acquisitions and integrations - at the time, creators wanted people to stay out of their creations
  • Building a modding strategy, hiring more staff, and acquiring Curseforge
  • The five-year gap in fundraising from Series A to B, team growth driven by P&L
  • Careful, planned scaling and growth - avoiding toxic pressure to grow too quickly
  • The Tel Aviv tech space
  • Communication, core values, and target numbers changing over time
  • Lessons learned? You can’t plan one year ahead in startups. Detailed vision for 90 days is now the standard for Overwolf.
  • Overwolf is strictly tools and services for third-party creators - and will remain so

The Gaming Founders Podcast is brought to you by Pragma, a venture-backed backend game engine founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking, and player data for the world’s most ambitious live service games. CEO of Pragma Eden Chen was also the founder of Fisherman Labs and Lightmark Capital and was previously an investment banker at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers. Kevin Zhang leads the healthcare and gaming practices at Upfront Ventures. Upfront has backed standout teams across all technology sectors with a current focus in healthcare, fintech, consumerization of enterprise software, gaming, computer vision, and AgTech/ sustainability.

Resources:

  • Uri Marchand LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/urimarchand/?…inalSubdomain=il
  • Overwolf Website: www.overwolf.com/
  • Gaming Founders Podcast: pragma.gg/gamingfounders
  • Eden Chen LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/edechen/
  • Kevin Zhang LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyzhang/
  • Upfront Ventures: upfront.com/
  • Pragma: pragma.gg/
The Gaming Founders Podcast
Welcome to The Gaming Founders Podcast, where we interview founders that have shaped the gaming industry. You’ll hear origin stories, tactics that helped founders and companies survive and thrive, and key lessons for anyone building the next generation of gaming companies. Your hosts are Eden Chen, CEO of Pragma Platform and Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures.