About a year ago, I left Riot Games after spending the previous nearly 9 years working there across multiple teams and offices. The timing felt right, as I had planned my departure around the birth of our second daughter Devon last September. This is not going to be a post about my experiences at Riot or comment on changes going on at Riot, but rather looking back at the year which has passed since I left the company.
I had two primary motivations for leaving a company I had seen grow from around 40 full-time employees in one office when I joined to over 3,000 across 20+ offices when I left. First, I wanted to spend more time with family. Our first daughter Bella was born in February 2016 and I honestly missed out on a lot of experiences I wish I could have shared with her during this time. Second, I had been itching to get back to working more directly with early stage startup companies, either as an investor or as an advisor, and see whether I could apply some of my experiences and learnings from Riot in helping new companies as they were starting out.
On the parenting side, there is no substitute for spending time with children. Ann and I know we are lucky to be able to devote our full attention to Bella and Devon, especially at their earliest stages of life. I recently read about Alexis Ohanian’s comments warning against the dangers of “Hustle Porn” at his session at the Web Summit, and it really resonated with me. It is really easy to get caught up in the everyday grind and responsibilities around work even without kids, but with young kids it can be really damaging both to one’s professional growth and personal happiness, not to mention mental health. To be clear, I believe that every family will have their own structure and setup around parenting which works for them, but for us it works to both have all hands on deck for the girls at this time. I think living and working in Europe has made me appreciate how European countries and especially Germany value the contributions of both parents when children are born, and create programs which encourage and support both parents taking time off to focus on newborn babies after birth. I aim to write a lot more going forward on things I’ve learned as a new dad, but it has been the greatest joy to be able to spend this time with family.
On the investing side, I began investing out of my personal seed fund called Leaf Ventures, and made 20 investments in the last year. My investment focus can be best described as scattered and at worst random, but the one common denominator tying the companies together is that I want to work with entrepreneurs building products for and around passionate communities. Working for nearly 9 years at Riot Games, a company striving to be the most player-focused game company in the world, showed to me the long-term value of focusing on your customers and their experiences first. In a time where the barriers to launch new products and services continues to decrease, I believe that it will be increasingly important for companies to differentiate by demonstrating how well they understand and value their customers. A few of the companies I am really excited to support include:
- 88 Rising: Building an entertainment brand and empire to represent Asian youth culture. I’m excited to see them bridge music, video, live experiences and fashion as they cultivate and entertain a rabid community of fans around the world.
- Avant Arte: Curating and creating art experiences for a new generation of art collectors. Around what was previously the very exclusive world of high art, this team is creating a gallery for the future while making art more accessible to anyone and everyone online.
- Highsnobiety: Creating a brand and company that sits at several unique intersections — Street culture & Luxury fashion, Content & Commerce, all while staying true to their original identity as a sneaker blog for sneakerheads. I’m really excited to join Frederic and the Felix Capital team in the first outside investment round into this local Berlin company I’ve followed and blog I’ve read since before I moved here.
- Juni Learning: Teaching kids to code in a more fun and personalized way. We live in a time where there are an infinite number of educational resources and content available at the touch of a browser or mobile phone. That said, how we generally approach education for kids hasn’t changed all that much in recent years. While change inside schools will take time to develop, companies like Juni Learning are looking to go directly to parents and kids to create engaging and fun ways to learn.
- SandboxVR: Delivering the most intense, fun and social VR experiences in the world. They currently only offer their experience in a couple of cities around the world (SF/LA/HK/SG/BKK), but if you happen to be in one of these cities, make a booking asap and try it out. They are on the bleeding edge of combining hardware and content to create an experience you will want to share with your closest friends.
It was a goal of mine in 2018 and post Riot to spend more time writing about my experiences both in parenting and in investing (and especially in cases where they overlapped). As you can all clearly see, I am about 10 months behind here. I look forward to sharing some thoughts on such exciting topics as Esports, theme parks and Supreme bots in the coming week(s)!
