The Secret to GTM in Games: Mitch Lasky

Secret Stash

Welcome to Secret Stash's first-ever podcast episode, hosted by Justin Kan and Archie Stonehill. Today's guest - legendary investor Mitch Lasky!
Since the mid 1990s, Mitch Lasky has been building and investing in some of the biggest game companies in the world. He was one of the first, if not the first, investor to take game developers seriously as a venture-backable business. He helped build Activision, was CEO of Jamdat (one of the first mobile game studios, which he took public before selling to Electronic Arts for $680M), and was an early investor at Riot Games, helping turn League of Legends from a rough wireframe to the sensation it is today.
Suffice to say, Mitch has been around the block and has some secrets to share - specifically the importance of GTM and how to innovate in it. While the game industry is quick to attribute some of the biggest successes to groundbreaking product and design, Mitch says there’s more to the equation - that distribution and GTM is arguably the most important element.
Read the highlights here: dev.stash.gg/blog/secret-stash-ep-1-mitch-lasky-reveals-the-secret-to-gaming-gtm
0:00 - Meet Mitch Lasky
1:45 - Mitch reveals why he didn't invest in Twitch
5:56 - Some business models are gross
12:06 - How Riot innovated their GTM
17:37 - Mitch's practical advice on GTM
21:13 - Regulations are opening up mobile and Steam
26:04 - Is AAA bad at direct-to-consumer?
28:57 - There's room for innovation in funding
35:02 - How thatgamecompany and Jenova Chen innovated GTM
40:09 - The AAA business model is gross too
41:51 - Looking ahead
48:13 - Mitch's biggest secret from his Riot days

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Learn more about Stash here: https://dev.stash.gg/