Purpose-Driven Work
Sometimes in life you get glimpses of what work should be like, these moments of joy are something I like to call times of purpose-driven work. You come in each day with passion, knowing you are at the right place and doing the things you believe you were designed to do. During my life, I have been lucky enough to experience this at almost every place I have worked. However, most of the time that feeling is fleeting and isn’t consistent for months or years on end.
But those times in my career when I have been consistently in purpose driven work are special. That’s because at least for me, having purpose driven work isn’t something I achieve in a silo. It’s something that happens when I work with other team members to overcome huge obstacles or take on new challenges in order to achieve what no one thought we could. It’s about taking risks as a team. Taking risks bonds people like nothing else. I used to think that I would never experience anything like the type of team bond I had while playing and coaching football. In football, team members are putting their bodies on the line for the team, but at various times in my career, I have been lucky enough to work with people that are willing to risk even more. These team members, by chasing the impossible or what others call crazy, are putting their career stability and possibly even their consistent paycheck at risk to achieve something great. It is those teams that are the ones that are truly special and put me in a place of having purpose-driven work. It’s the teams that I have struggled with, laughed with, and even cried with that I look back at fondly and are the places in which I felt I was achieving my purpose.
Hyper Hippo has been one of those places for me. I will always remember the risk people took to accomplish the impossible, and the freedom the owners of the company gave me to go try some big new things. That said my time at Hippo will be coming to an end this Friday, as I feel the Lord calling me to another role I will talk more about next week.
This post is to honor the amazing team at Hippo because they deserve it and so much more. Before I joined Hyper Hippo almost 6 years ago, I was changing jobs every year or two as new challenges or industries would arise that drew my interest. Hippo and the game industry changed that pattern, and I never went there expecting that.
Almost 6 years ago when I first took the contract role at Hippo, I didn’t think it would be a long-term thing. Before Hippo, I was at a great agency with some outstanding people but was flying all over the world and just felt agency life wasn’t for me at that time. So I left and started exploring a startup opportunity with some friends and took a contract marketing role at Hippo to “pay the bills” and figure out my next step.
I should have realized something was different at Hippo as they hired me even though I had zero gaming experience, something I came to learn was very unusual in the game industry. But Hippo and its owners, Jen Kilback, Sam Fisher, and Lance Priebe are unique in the mobile game space and don’t do things the way everyone else does.
Yet, even though I took this job to figure out what I wanted to do next, it isn’t until now that I am leaving. So as I look back at why that is, I think it really comes down to three things. Those are that Hyper Hippo has a great purpose, a leadership team that empowered me, and a risk-taking team that made it truly special.
Let’s first talk about purpose. A lot of companies have a big vision, big goals, or want to change the world, yet I think very few actually believe it. At Hippo, they have a big purpose and that purpose is to change the world for good through entertainment. Not only is it a big goal, but it is all about making a positive impact in the world. They want to do this both through the products they make and by giving away a lot of the money the company makes. You can sense this purpose at the company and I think is a key reason working at Hippo is different. People aren’t simply trying to make money, they are trying to change the world for good and it just makes you feel part of something bigger, because you are. I even believe that everyone that plays a Hippo game or interacts with Hippo’s amazing customer service team can feel this purpose.
The next thing that made Hippo special was how I was empowered to try new things. They let this non-game industry guy try all sorts of crazy stuff, some worked and some didn’t. Heck, they even let me start up a publishing unit, something I had zero experience at. The leadership team never should have trusted me with this, as many companies try to develop in-house publishing and fail. Yet even knowing that they gave me the freedom to fail and I believe that put us in the best position to succeed. They also put me in charge of the game unit last year so I had around 95 people reporting to me, and many of those team members were in game production which I had no experience with as well. It was truly an honor to work with an entire team that trusted me to try so many new things.
Lastly and most importantly the biggest reason Hippo was special was the outstanding team that wasn’t scared to take a risk on new idea after new idea. Together we pushed into playable ads early and hard and built our own way before anyone else did. We also started a publishing unit from almost nothing, to one so strong I would put it against any in the industry. This team also let me try new ways to do well established things such as game planning, game production, many forms of marketing, setting goals, doing reviews, doing group meetings, and many ways of doing 1on1’s just to name a few. We tried a lot of stuff, some worked and some didn’t, but we learned and improved every time.
I will always remember the fearless team of Ryan Lorke, Jordan Chase, Lindsay Allen, and Tyler Black for supporting the idea of starting a publishing unit which was something none of us had experience at. They were 100% on board with the vision I had for what we were creating and would do anything to make it happen. Heck, I changed many of their roles and the change even impacted their bonus, yet they never complained. They just wanted to make the best mobile game publisher ever.
I will also always be thankful to Duncan Purcell, Chris Koziak, Sean Walter, Mike Gallagher, and Josh Smillie for their relentless dedication in the early days of building the publishing unit. That crew went through a lot together, but really came out the other side strong. But it wasn’t just the team that started the publishing group that is special. All the new hires in that group along with the entire games group, the workplace and tech team, the finance team and the HR team all worked relentlessly to make Hippo great and cared deeply for what we were trying to achieve. All of them had to deal with my crazy ideas, distracting laugh, and unusually loud voice (even on a video call somehow) on a regular basis but everyone viewed everything as possible and worked their asses off to be the best around. I am sure I probably took a few years off of Tyler, Sean, and Duncan’s life due to the stress brought on by my chaotic optimism, but I hope we all had fun along the way.
I could go on for days talking about each and every person at Hippo and the impact they have made in my life. But just as my time with Hippo has ended so must this long diatribe. That said I will forever be grateful for each and every Hippo I had the pleasure of working with.
I will look back at my time at Hyper Hippo with extreme fondness, thankfulness, and will always keep an eye on them to see what this team achieves next. So many life long friends that I trust with my life were made in my time there and will never be forgotten. Hyper Hippo may no longer be part of my future, but I will always consider myself a Hippo.
To Your Purpose-Driven Work,
Kevin Urie
