Rec Room Part II (with CEO Nick Fajt)
Acquired
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
4.7 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2021
⏱️ 115 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last Acquired left the plucky Rec Room crew in our 2018 "Part I" episode, they were a seed stage startup making a VR game that users loved but grew slowly and barely monetized. Fast forward to today, and they're now a multi-platform social "place" with millions of active users, 500%+ YoY growth and hosting a robust creator economy that's rivaled only by their oft-compared metaverse cousin Roblox in dynamics and efficiency. And oh yeah, they're now a $1B+ company after a new $100m fundraise from existing investors Sequoia and Index, which they're announcing today. We figured it was high time to revisit Nick & crew for a Part II...
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- Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
- Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
- WorkOS: https://acquired.fm/unplugged
- Playing Cards: https://bit.ly/workOSshop (Code: ACQDECK)
- Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26
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© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC
The Rec Room Playbook is available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/rec-room-part-ii-with-ceo-nick-fajt
Links:
- Our "Part I" episode with Nick on Rec Room's seed round: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-2-episode-2raising-a-seed-round-with-against-gravity-ceo-nick-fajt
- Rec Room! https://recroom.com
Carve Outs:
- Invent and Wander: https://www.amazon.com/Invent-Wander-Collected-Writings-Introduction-ebook/dp/B08BCCT6MW/
- Resonant Arc on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFzWAEPDGiY34bGpwM_DWmA
- How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ah, okay, good to know. |
| 0:01.8 | So we should not ship tomorrow then. |
| 0:04.0 | Don't do it tomorrow. |
| 0:05.2 | Please wait and say, good day, glad we asked. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm gonna send you the press release, |
| 0:10.8 | so you just, it has the embargo at the top. |
| 0:13.0 | [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ |
| 0:23.3 | Welcome to season eight, episode four of Acquired, |
| 0:26.9 | the podcast about great technology companies |
| 0:29.0 | and the stories and playbooks behind them. |
| 0:31.6 | I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder and managing director |
| 0:34.4 | of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs |
| 0:36.3 | and our venture fund, PSL Ventures. |
| 0:38.7 | And I'm David Rosenthal and I am an angel investor |
| 0:41.7 | based in San Francisco. |
| 0:43.3 | And we are your hosts. |
| 0:45.6 | In 2018, we did an episode on the early stage |
| 0:49.0 | Seattle startup, Rec Room. |
| 0:51.2 | Founder and CEO Nick Fight joined us at the time |
| 0:53.8 | to talk about their seed round that they had raised |
| 0:56.2 | from Sequoia. |
| 0:57.6 | At that time, they were a popular app |
... |
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