Founder at Supersocial
Supersocial is a metaverse company that develops and publishes high-quality games and experiences on platforms like Roblox.
Supersocial emerged because of the circumstances that the world was in at the time. We started the company four years ago. That was right when COVID had hit.
I was working in the advertising industry for a really long time as a creative coming up with ads and concepts for different brands like Pantene and Gillette. I wanted to go into entertainment. I wanted to do something that was a little bit different than writing shampoo ads that gets old after a while, right? Nothing wrong with that. I loved it, but I wanted to do something a little bit more exciting.
So, I actually met Jan through a friend of mine and he was starting a company at the time called Kodo, which was around education. It was education and fun, trying to merge the two worlds, creating a learning environment for kids to learn how to code in a very immersive and exciting way. We were actually looking at Roblox as one of the tools to use in order to teach these kids how to code. There's a lot that people aren't realizing is going on here because Roblox for a really long time was just a game for kids. And nobody realized how much of a behemoth Roblox was actually starting to become and how many users were actually on that platform every single day.
And that actually became so much bigger during the pandemic because a lot of kids were at home. They weren't going to school, and they were actually using Roblox as a way to connect with each other and to play with each other, even though they couldn't see each other in real life. So we noticed that trend. This is really where the world is going and where all of these kids are spending their time, so what if we start a company that's focused on creating games and experiences for Roblox?
There's not really a lot of professional studios on the platform. A lot of the future gamers are actually starting their journey on Roblox as early as four or five, six years old. So why don't we create a company that creates games for this audience and think about professionalizing a lot of these things.
We initially wanted to bring those two worlds together and try to find a way to create all of these professional games for the Roblox platform, which was a huge opportunity at the time because there were not a lot of studios doing that.
Any time that you're beholden to another company or another platform, there's a lot of risks associated with that. Roblox can do whatever they want. They can change a policy or change the way something works and it dramatically affects the work that we're doing. And this happened time and time again. An example would be, people used to be able to give away avatar items in their games and that was a really, really strong user acquisition method for a really long time. That's how we got a lot of people to pay attention to our games. In a world of millions and millions of games, you have to have ways to get people to come even faster, check your game out, let alone stay there and play it, right?
And then one day Roblox was like, Ah, you know what? We can't do that anymore. No more giving away avatar items in the games. Now we have to completely change our user acquisition strategy for all of our games. Because Roblox decided to implement what seems like a minor thing, you have to be creative, you have to find ways around that. And we did, and we found other ways to do it, but it's about constantly having to adapt to what the powers that be are going to impose on you, whether you like it or not. So that's definitely a huge challenge working with a platform like that.
But one thing I will say is that when we set out to build Supersocial, it wasn't about creating a company to make Roblox games. It was games for the metaverse, starting with Roblox. So Roblox was our first entry into the metaverse with the idea of eventually expanding into Fortnite, expanding into Minecraft, expanding into all these other platforms that have metaverse games.
We wanted to be at the forefront of creating content for these emerging platforms. That being said, you gotta pick a focus when you start. We have to make ourselves experts on one. And that was not as easy as we thought it was gonna be. You can't just have the mentality of if you build it, they will come. You gotta understand what is true about that platform? What are those users looking for?
It's not just about making a beautiful, fun game. It's about making the beautiful, fun game they want to play and what they're interested in.
My role was very much centered around the ideation process, creating concepts, creating ideas and how to bring them to life, how to make them exciting, how to create those magical moments for players. How do you make them care? Obviously as a founder, you don't just have one job, ever. You have 17 different jobs, and there were times where I had to be the producer for the game, the project manager, the game designer, the writer... I had times where I had to learn how to look at game art and and give feedback, things that I had never done before. But that's also part of being a founder, doing these things that are not in your wheelhouse and just proving to yourself that you can do it. You have to have that mentality of adapting and going where you're needed.
So my role was always a lot of that, but I think the main thing of it was the concepts and the ideation and starting the creative team at Supersocial. And then eventually when we started working with partners, selling those ideas to the partners, making sure that we understand them, we understand their objectives as a business and also creatively, right? A lot of my job was adapting and trying to figure out how do we creatively bring this to life in a way that is going to be really fun for the players, also really exciting and interesting for the brands that are behind it.
Let's rewind back anywhere in July of 2020. We had just started the company. We came in with an approach of let's create this amazing, high budget, really cool, beautifully crafted game to go on the Roblox platform because it's gonna stand out from everything else, because everything else is not this level of polish.
So we created this game called Ghostopia, which was a haunted world and there were the zombies and vampires and ghosts and the haunted mansions and you could decorate your own haunted mansion. You could collect all the different ghosts in the game. It was a huge game and it took us almost a year to make it and we didn't complete it. We ended up spending so much time, energy and money in this project.
Obviously we did a bunch of things wrong. We didn't think, this is a game that works theoretically, but does it work for Roblox? It turns out it was a very niche audience, but not enough to make money with this game.
So it was really difficult to have spent a year putting my blood, sweat, and tears into this thing with a team of 10 people working specifically on this game, and then seeing how it didn't go the way we thought it was going to go. And that just building something beautiful and amazing is not enough to make it stand out.
So going back, what I would have done is create a very small version of it, a very small prototype to see if that would take off. And then if it does continuously add to it. We should have done a more iterative process. We should have tested multiple concepts. We should have launched it quickly, see what players are saying, see how people are reacting.
I think it's a lesson in understanding your consumer. Iterate, test early, put things out there as quickly as possible, and never lose sight of that kid you're making the game for and what they are actually looking for in a game. They don't care about art. They don't care about an insanely complicated narrative.
I'm really glad we went through it all and also, Ghostopia is incredible. It's so good. There's still a lot of players that love it and I constantly get on my Discord notifications from players being like I love this game, I'm collecting the ghosts. As a creative, that feeds my soul. We made an impact on a small amount of people. Sometimes it's just about touching a small amount of people.
The easiest way for you to think about Roblox is imagine a YouTube, but for games. YouTube was the first time anybody could make their own videos and upload it and then you get views and there's people engaging with your video. It's the same thing, but users are making their own games. A lot of people make games in two, three days and put them out there and they explode. As a user play any of these games for free, you can hop in and out of them. You have an avatar.
Games were made by these companies with a hundred million dollar budgets and took four or five years to make. And that's pretty much all that was out there. And I think this really democratized the gaming space in a lot of ways. Roblox allowed everyday people to create their own games and actually make money, make a living out of those games.
When we first started Supersocial four years ago in 2020, if you said the word metaverse to somebody they would be like what are you talking about? I don't know what that is. And then you have to be like, well, the metaverse is this thing where you have an avatar and you go into these virtual worlds. Because Roblox became such a huge deal and a lot of people had kids that are the age that are playing Roblox, it became a must have outlet for these brands to reach young users.
The metaverse implies the connectivity piece, the social piece, and the identity piece. The fact that you have a virtual version of yourself walking around in this world and interacting with it, and interacting with other people who are the virtual versions of themselves. What becomes the metaverse is this idea of this interconnected group of virtual worlds that you can go in and out of easily through your digital persona.
The real metaverse doesn't exist yet. We're not even close. When you think about the real metaverse, it's supposed to be fully immersive, almost indistinguishable from reality itself. Right now we have these very early metaverse platforms. It's almost like when the internet first came out and you could go to a couple of websites. That's kind of the stage we're at with the metaverse.
It's really hard to say in like five, 10 years where we're going to be. I think that it's going to definitely shift towards the VR, AR space, because as the hardware for that catches up with us, it's going to become really compelling for people to go into these virtual worlds and interact with other people through these headsets. Right now we're still dealing with 3D virtual worlds within a 2D flat screen. And I think pretty soon it's going to become more spatial. It's going to become more about the presence that you feel by actually being there or feeling like you're really there.
When we started, we didn't have any of any funding to start the company. But we had this idea to start something for the Roblox platform that we were so early, it was very difficult sometimes to even get investors to understand what we were talking about in the first place. It really took a lot of educating. A lot of the focus was spent on showing them that this is where the future of entertainment is going and proving that with hard numbers, with hard facts, and also mixing that in with the vision. Roblox now has more daily users than any platform. People spend way more time on Roblox than they do on TikTok. It was just about showing the potential of it and finding like-minded investors who were trying to look for these off the beaten path type of ventures to invest in. We talked to many, many, many investors. A lot of them were not interested. A lot of them were like, this is crazy. No one knows what the metaverse is. And a lot of them were like, wait, this is actually really intriguing. It's about bringing them into the fold and making them feel like they're part of the future with you, selling them on the dream, the vision.
Getting too much money at first kind of gets a little bit tricky. It's about balancing the fundraising with where you are as a company and the goals that you have right now and really trying to hit that. If you grow too much, too fast, then you have to start pairing back and you get into moments where you're like, maybe we bit off a little more than we could chew. Maybe because we had the funding, we went a little bit too aggressive with the hiring, when potentially the job could have been done a lot leaner. The crazy thing is, as a founder, you realize there's no people in the boardroom upstairs, telling you, Hey, do this, right? It's all up to you. You get to decide how you want to do it and how fast you want to grow. And obviously it's important to invest in fast growth at certain points. But it's about understanding the timing and understanding where you are and what your immediate goals are that you need to finance.
There were four of us total. We each had our own lanes. We were a very complimentary founding team. You have people who know different things and know how to do the things you don't know how to do. And people you trust to do those things and trust to do them well. I'm not going to say it's impossible to start a company by yourself without a founder. Plenty of people have done that really successfully. But it's about seeing who you are. I am somebody who does need a co founder. I don't want to take on all of the burdens by myself of fundraising and managing people and budgets. That is a lot for one person. I've always been somebody who loves to work in groups.
You have to make sure you find people who are compatible, not just with your skills, because that's easy. It's easy to find people with compatible skill sets. It's not easy to find people who are a personality match. When you start running into issues, one person thinks that they're doing too much and the other person's not doing enough. If there isn't that open communication and that transparency of what are the expectations, how are we going to work together.
What I would be looking for in a partner most of all is mutual admiration. You're a badass at what you do, and you think I'm a badass at what I do, and I trust you and you trust me. We need to work insanely well together and also people you have fun with, it's gonna be a huge part of your life.
Pace yourself. There's always going to be something to do. You can literally work 24 hours a day for like five years in a row and the work will still not be done. It's so important to preserve yourself and don't lose yourself in the company. You are not the company. These are separate entities. You have to preserve your own identity and your own sanity among it all. There are going to be times where you have to crunch a lot. You have to work on the weekend. You have to work super late night. But at the same time, it's very easy to fall into unhealthy habits. I definitely went ham for a long, long time, started letting my health fall by the wayside. All I did was be on the computer 24 hours a day, on calls doing stuff all day long. Even when I was having lunch, I'm having lunch in the computer and it's not stopping for anything. And then I stopped working out. I stopped doing all of these things that I was too tired to do social activities. I was constantly stressed. If I were able to talk to myself in the past, I would be like, working hard is different from working smart. You do not need to kill yourself to prove God knows what to God knows who.
Obviously there's grind and there's hustle, but also, in between the grind and hustle, there is life and that is going to make you a better business person if you don't just focus all on one thing and become obsessed with that thing and forget about everything else outside of it. It's going to be okay. Go to the dinner. Go to your grandma's birthday dinner.
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