20VC: Unity 3D's David Helgason on Building a $bn Business, Getting Funded By Sequoia and Powering The Pokemon Revolution

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4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2016

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David Helgason is the Founder and Board Member @ Unity 3D. The company that recently announced a new $181m Series C, valuing the company at $1.5bn. Unity’s platform has revolutionized the game industry by allowing any size studio from Indie to Triple-A to create beautiful and compelling games and experiences and monetize them with their advertising and analytics services. As for David, he served as CEO of Unity from its founding in 2003 right up until 2014 taking the company through numerous funding rounds including from the one and only Sequoia Capital.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How David came to found Unity 3D?

2.) How pivotal was the rise of the App stores to the rise of Unity 3D? What does David make of Apple's recent announcement to add paid search and subscription pricing?

3.) How does David evaluate the current gaming landscape? What does he not like abou the industry and how the major players are operating?

4.) What are David's thoughts on the emerging platforms like AR and VR? How does he incorporate them into Unity's future product roadmap?

5.) How was the fundraising process for David with Unity? How did the Sequoia investment happen and what has it been like to work with them and Roelof Botha?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

David's Fave Book: Guns, Germs & Steel

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and David on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the 20-minute VC in this very special episode of Founders Friday with your host,
0:04.7	Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings on Snapchat. Now, today's show is immensely pertinent, as we
0:09.7	welcome David Helgeson, founder and now board member at Unity 3D. Now, the pertinence lies in the fact
0:15.6	that just last week, Unity raised $181 million in Series C funding, with the company's valuation reported to be $1.5
0:23.6	billion. So a huge congratulations to David for that. But for those that are unaware, Unity's
0:28.7	platform has revolutionized the game industry by allowing any size studio from indie to AAA to create
0:35.0	beautiful and compelling games and experiences and monetize them with their
0:39.0	advertising and analytic services. As for David, he served as CEO of Unity from its founding in 2003
0:45.0	right up until 2014, taking the company through numerous funding rounds, including from
0:50.3	the one and only Sequoia Capital. I have to also say what an incredible fun episode this
0:54.5	was to record and how grateful we asked David for giving up his time, especially with all the
0:59.0	recent news. But before we dive into the episode with David, everyone knows that UI and aesthetics
1:03.7	are a key element of will someone or won't someone check out your business card, site, logo design.
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1:17.6	that helps startups, entrepreneurs, web developers and agencies outsource design projects to over
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1:45.5	designcrowd.com forward slash VC and enter the promo code VC100 for an incredible $100 off. However,
1:52.7	it's now time for me to pass over the mic to the main man, David Helgeson, at Unity 3D.
1:57.6	3.2. 1.0.
	...

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