Interview with Jean-Nicolas
The Founder of Porofessor and League of Graphs
Introduction
Jean-Nicolas is the founder of Porofessor and League of Graphs. Both are great tools that League of Legends players use to track live stats or to get a more comprehensive understanding of their progression and builds to improve their gameplay. Playfull was able to interview him and find out more about how he got to where he is today!
Tell us a little about yourself. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m a 31-year-old French software engineer. After I graduated in 2012, I did a 6 month internship at Criteo and then I worked for Microsoft as a backend developer for 4 years. Then spent ~2 years in a start-up founded by the founders of Criteo. When this startup got bought by the biggest carsharing company in Europe (BlaBlaCar), I decided to move on.
I went full-time on my websites and have been working on those projects for a little over a year now. I’m the only one working on those projects, just because I like being independent. And I guess it has worked out pretty well so far.
What’s the origin story of Porofessor and League of Graphs?
In 2009, for fun I created a World of Warcraft related website (World of Wargraphs) which is similar to League of Graphs. It kind of worked, but not on a big scale. In 2012, my friends and I switched to playing League of Legends, so, when in 2013 Riot released their public API, I decided to create a League of Legends website for fun. This was the birth of League of Graphs.
Then in 2017, I felt that there were no good “live stats” websites (LOLNexus was about to shut down), so I decided to create a new one, Porofessor. I actually booked the domain name far before even knowing what this website would be about, just because I liked the name. I currently have maybe 20 domain names booked just because I like the name, but I’m not sure if I will ever use them.
Then in January 2019, I decided to release a desktop app for Porofessor which is an in between of Porofessor and League of graphs. This app is working tremendously well, has an extremely high retention rate, and people are overwhelmingly happy about it!
How has your company vision evolved from day 1 to today?
Not much actually. My #1 goal is to make a good product that I will like, that my friends will like, and that people in general will like. I have tons of feedback from my close friends about my websites and apps. I care deeply about the feedback that I receive from my users and I spend a ton of time chatting in PM with some of them on Discord to improve my products.
Contrary to most people who start such projects, my goal has never been to make money. My goal is to have fun creating those websites and apps, and to make something that people will love. Eventually this will lead to making money, but that is not a priority for me.
I often think that I’m in the same state of mind as a lot of YouTubers when YouTube started. Most of them started their YouTube channel by passion. Eventually this led them to be able to do YouTube as a full-time job which was not even imaginable when they initially started.
Something that surprised me throughout this journey are all those daily discussions I have had with my users and also randomly meeting people who genuinely use my products. It’s really rewarding to meet IRL people who actually like what you’ve made. It’s even more rewarding when those people are highly-skilled and professional League of Legends players and personalities.
Why is gaming important to you?
I always played video games when I was younger. I grew up with video games and I made friends through video games. It’s a part of my daily life. I actually started coding when I was 11-years-old. I coded a very small video game which was a parody of the “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” TV show (I never released it to the public, and never will ^^)!
What are some of your favorite games to play?
LoL and Hearthstone. I’m actually far better at Hearthstone (Rank 4 in Wild) than I’m at LoL (Silver 2…)!
Has your experience at Microsoft, LESS and previous companies helped? If so, how?
I guess it improved my coding skills. It allowed me to be able to build a robust platform pretty quickly and easily. It also helped me a lot with pragmatism, which is a skill I didn’t initially have. It is a skill that is SUPER important, especially when you are a one-man company.
Tell us about a challenging time throughout your journey with Porofessor and League of Graphs?
Hmmm, every day is challenging. Every single day, there are new features to code, things to think about, and things to learn. Since I’m a one-man company, I basically have to do everything myself. This has been an amazing experience because this way I am forced to learn tons of new things on a lot of different domains every day.
Who are your biggest competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
It’s really hard to know exactly because the metrics to measure that are not public. Some competitive SEO analysis websites like Alexa.com try to estimate site visitors and other metrics, but I noticed that when I compare the figures I actually have, and the ones they estimate, they are incorrect.
If I were to say it would probably OP.GG, U.GG and Blitz.gg. It depends on the country as well.
The biggest differentiation is that I’m a one-man team and that I own 100% of my company. I never raised funding to make those projects. None of my big competitors have built their company in this way. Most of them went through funding and have dozens of employees.
What should we look forward to in 2020 with Porofessor and League of Graphs?
Hmmm, you’ll see 😉! Honestly, I have a pretty big backlog of things I want to do with those websites, and the prioritization of those tasks is constantly changing. Definitely be on the lookout for exciting things to come though!
What are some of your personal goals over the next year?
I would say to go out more and exercise more. I worked A LOT in 2019 and because of that I neglected parts of my social life. So I want to fix that in this new year!
If you want to learn more about Porofessor and League of Graphs follow them on Twitter or visit their websites:
https://twitter.com/PorofessorGG
https://twitter.com/leagueofgraphs
https://porofessor.gg/
https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/
