作者：Dean Takahashi

Supercell的总部就坐落在前诺基亚研究大楼里，这座建筑本身就象征着一个教训。这家芬兰公司因《Clash of Clans》和《Hay Day》这两款手机游戏的成功而迎来辉煌。它把公司的51%股份以15.3亿美元的价格出售给日本的软银和GungHo Entertainment。这样，Supercell的市值就达到约30亿美元，超过另一家雇员人数达2200人的社交游戏巨头公司Zynga。（请点击此处阅读本文上篇）

这是游戏行业的历史上最有趣的收购生意之一。但正如二战时期的巴顿将军所说的，所有的荣耀都是稍纵即逝的。是什么东西让软银坚定地认为Supercell的下一款游戏能再次书写传奇？为了解答问题，我们在赫尔辛基的Slush大会上采访了Supercell首席执行官Ilkka Paananen。

Paananen表示，公司达成那笔生意不是为了换个圆满的结局，而是为了给继续在娱乐行业“创造历史”提供一个稳定的环境。Paananen希望Supercell能对游戏行业和这个超过12亿人玩游戏的时代产生持久的影响，就像迪士尼和任天堂所做的那样。

以下是我们整理出来的采访稿。

问：我们什么时候能看到Supercell的下一款游戏？

Paananen（以下简称P）：（笑）当它准备好的时候。在Supercell，开发团队有控制权。我们一直坚守的一条原则是：尽早测试游戏是合理的。你可能已经知道我们现在正在加拿大的应用商店测试游戏《Boom Beach》。我们的模式是管用的，正如我所说的，先由团队做决定，再于由玩家做决定。对于《Boom Beach》，如果玩家喜欢它，我们就全球发行；否则我们就放弃它。就这么简单。我们公司还有其他团队在做其他游戏，也采用了相同的原则。那些团队也快有一些东西要测试了。如果可行，那就太好了。他们就会把产品正式发布；如果测试结果不好，那就放弃然后转向下一个产品。

问：你是连续创业者吗？你管过多少公司？

P：我想我可以自称是连续创业者吧。2000年时我和我的朋友一起创办了我们的第一家游戏公司Sumea。2004年，雇员达到40人时我们把公司卖给了Digital Chocolate，我于2010年时离开公司。我休息了几个月后很幸运地成为后来的Supercell的创始人之一。

问：从一个公司转向另一个公司，从一种环境转向另一个环境，你学习到的最重要的经验是什么？

P：首先，人才是关键，我说的是创意人才。人才才是最重要的。如果你有了最优秀的人才，那么做出好游戏是迟早的事。

我的另一个教训是，尽量减少官僚主义。许多公司都有游戏审核会，也就是让团队把他们的游戏摆在委员会面前，然后由委员会反馈意见。这是很费时间的活儿。这可能导致恶梦般的情况——团队游说委员会和准备游说的时间比做游戏还多。而在Supercell是不会发生这种事的。那就是为什么甚至连我都不能叫停一款游戏。我的目标之一是，我要把自己变成世界上最没权力的CEO。我对自己以及管理层的定位是促成者，其作用是保证最优秀的人才能专注于他们的工作。我们努力为他们创造最好的环境。

游戏是一个看重人才的行业，人是关键。这是我学习到的最重要的一课。第二个重要的教训是保持“小”的价值。与我们的许多竞争者相比，我们仍然是一家非常小的公司，并且我们希望继续保持“小”。在小公司工作更有趣得多。当工作成为一件有趣的事时，你做出来的游戏就会更有趣。就是这么简单的道理。“小”的附加优势是，当公司很小时，你就不需要管理层、官僚主义和走程序这类人人都讨厌的东西。

问：你认为理想的团队规模是多少？你是如何计划和管理那些团队以及他们所做的游戏？

P：《Clash of Clans》的开发团队一开始是5个人。我们尽量保持团队小——大约5到7、8人吧。至于运营团队，因为我们每天服务于百万玩家，所以人数要多一些，但规模仍然控制在约10到15人之间。

问：对于小公司，芬兰的经济环境算是友好的吗？

P：是的，非常好。现在这里有非常适合小公司的生态系统。在芬兰，创立公司是很容易的。我们的企业税率非常有竞争力。从明年起，这个税率应该只有20%，是欧洲最低的税率之一了。从这一方面来说，芬兰的经济环境是非常有竞争力的，很容易吸引国外的创业者到这里来。另外，这里的官僚主义氛围很淡，治安好，非常适合居住。我们还有世界上最好的教育体系。在过去几年，芬兰在这些方面一直是榜样。总之，优势非常多。

我们有一个很大的优势是，政府提供财政支持。Supercell就是这么成立起来的：我们6个人组成团队，投了几千欧元创立了公司；然后我们向政府贷了大约40万欧元。如果没有这笔钱，Supercell可能不会存在了。政府给创业者提供这些贷款。即使你失败了，你个人也不会破产。这是一种非常好的模式。除了这些贷款，你还可以得到补助金。这一路走来我们已经拿了几百万的补助金了，这些钱帮助很大。在芬兰还很容易从国外融资。大风投公司如Accel、Index和Atomico等等都有投资芬兰的公司。

选择芬兰我还有一个个人原因，那就是，我坚信总有一天赫尔辛基会成为游戏业枢纽——欧洲的硅谷，你可以这么叫它。许多其他地区也在竞争这个地位，比如柏林、伦敦等，但我认为我们的环境好。我们有优势，至少在游戏方面。这里已经有很多很强的游戏公司了。

问：你刚提到，你们拿了创业贷款后又得到补助金。你能不能具体解释一下？

P：政府可以提供两种资助。第一种就是贷款。他们可以支助你最多70%的项目总成本。你最终是要偿还这些贷款的，但利息率很低，可能1%吧，还贷的时限是5年或7年。

第二种资助是补助金，是不需要你偿还的。最好的情况下，他们可能会提供占你的开支的50%的补助金。我们很早就拿到那笔资助了。

基本上，如果你投资商或者风投的角度看，这是一件好事。假设我是一个风投商，我投了100万欧元。除了那100万欧元，我已经知道那家公司会从政府那里拿到另一个100万欧元。资本没有被冲淡，所以不会消弱我的所有权。政府贷款使芬兰成为一个非常有吸引力的投资圣地。

问：我理解那对你们来说是一件天大的好事，但我很好奇这对芬兰的纳税人来说，意味着什么（笑）？

P：仅这一年，Supercell——我想创始人和公司一起支付了约2.7亿欧元的税吧。在此之前，纳税人在我们身上花了约500或600万欧元。所以我觉得从芬兰政府的角度来说，这是一笔很划算的投资。有人计算，仅Supercell一家公司就返还了政府投给其他小公司所有的钱。因为Supercell的成功，我们回报的比得到的更多。

在诺基亚崩溃之后，这个国家得重新改造自己了。我们需要新的公司，光有Rovio和Supercell还不够。我们需要更多更多公司。在这里的每个人都意识到这一点。从政府的角度看，这是一笔长远的投资。

问：你对整个游戏产业有什么看法？你希望它变得更像Supercell吗？你认为大发行商正在失去影响力吗？

P：我希望在这整个游戏行业中，更多的力量回归到创意人才手中。我玩过老LucasArts工作室的游戏和《模拟城市》，那都是好游戏，但都不是大团队开发的。那些游戏受硬盘空间等条件的限制，所以更专注于玩法，毕竟不可能靠图像吸引玩家。那些游戏就是有趣，正是当时的创意天才们留下的宝贵遗产。我希望游戏行业回到那个游戏的黄金时代—-充满创意能量和热情的小团队具有更多的控制权。

现在的游戏产为好像由营销人员掌管了。出于某些原因，游戏开始把电影当作它们的学习榜样。突然之间，你得花大量钱做游戏了。一切都是第一周的销量为指标，就像电影一样。游戏公司在发行前造势，这也像电影。我不确定这对游戏来说是否是正确的模式。

问：你能为什么是创新的关键因素？你们打算什么时候开发新游戏？

P：关键因素有二。第一，把权力交给创意人才。以这种方式组织公司，使创意人才成为前沿和中心。尽可能让他们自由。允许他们失败。你得消除失败的后顾之忧，否则。那些人才就不敢冒险。没有冒险，哪来的创新？没有创新，哪来的好游戏？你必须给这些创意人才创造一个友好的、温情的环境。

问：有没有一个决定什么是成功和什么是失败的规则或标准？

P：是的，有的。有时候人们会误解我们的文化。有些人认为我们的公司文化就是，团队可以爱干什么就干什么，结果不重要。这是弥天大误。在我们的团队开始做什么项目以前，我们要花相当的时间制定他们的项目测试时必须达到的指标。我们对那些目标是很严格的。如果他们达不到那些目标，那么项目就作废。就是这样。

我不会详细说明那些目标，但基本与留存率和沉浸感有关。30天后有多少人返回游戏？他们每天上线多少次？等等。我们很仔细地定义这些目标。那是团队和公司之间的约定。只要团队达到那些目标，就可以搞发布。否则，项目作废。

因为团队规模小，Supercell可能有比较高压的游戏开发环境。这并不适合每一个人。你必须非常积极主动，对游戏和自己的工作充满激情。否则，你就不能适应这里。但对于对的人，这就是一个理想的工作环境。

问：有人认为现在的人更加不注重工作-生活的平衡性，你怎么管理那些有家室的人或者必须弹性工作的人？你不想看到有人伏案工作到晚上10点吗？

P：我们当然不希望看到有人工作到深夜。如果你下午5点半来我们办公室，你会发现这里基本上空了。我没开玩笑。我们的工作时间是很灵活的。再者，我们信任我们自己的人。我们不用告诉他们什么时间工作。我们不用记录他们的工作小时。我们完全不管他们。我们只是信任他们。

我们只有一条简单的原则——做对团队和游戏最好的事。有些人有时候在办公室上班，有时候在家里工作，那也是允许的。我们关心的只有结果。我们不关心你到底花了多少小时工作。

游戏行业一直以从业人员过度劳累而招徕骂名。加班几乎是惯例。有些团队一整年都在加班赶进度。首先，这本来就是错误的。它是扼杀生命。但从商业的角度看，我也不认为是合理的。谁能够全年每天工作18个小时还保持高效率的？在这种情况下，你不可能有什么效率和创造力的。这对公司来说也不划算。我们坚持正常的工作日。但当我们工作时，我们就要非常努力非常专注地工作。

如果你想做出世界上最好的游戏，那当然需要付出更多努力和时间。但多付出的时间是有补偿的，你可以休假。我们对这方面非常重视。如果你在三年内就把你的人都累垮了，那你还谈什么“创造历史”？正如我说的，创造历史是要花几十年的时间的。

问：你们在理念上是否与GungHo合拍？

P：我们最大的共通之处是，我们对游戏的整体看法。GungHo的人可是运营着这个星球上最赚钱的游戏——《Puzzle & Dragons》。然而，你几乎听不到他们谈论赢利的事。他们认为游戏就应该有趣，如果你做的游戏有趣，你就能赚钱。这就是他们的理念。据我所知，他们也非常尊重创意人才。

在我看来，他们是这个行业中最好的人。有意思的是，我们与他们当中的大部分人甚至语言不通，但无论何时我们一起出去，我们总是玩得很开心。芬兰文化和日本文化居然有一些相当令人惊喜的共性。比如说，我们去别人家作客都要脱鞋才能进门。（笑）我们都知道怎么办好聚会。很多地方都很像。

我真的非常欣赏他们。所以我们很高兴他们决定与我们合作。那对我们来说意义重大。即使就投资的总金额来看，他们只占了20%。

问：你认为诺基亚的衰弱是必然的吗？还是说它做了一些错误的选择？

P：我不是诺基亚的分析师，但它显然是有一些失误的。说其他什么话都是说谎。他们没有抓住一些相当重要的趋势。那些后来者消灭了诺基亚。所以，我认为确实是有失误。但那也是商业生命的一部分。听起来有些可笑，但我认为它会好起来的——特别是与微软的最近合作，我想它会好好努力的。正如我所说的，它迫使这个国家改造自己。我们可以放下过去，继续做一些新的东西。

问：你所说的模式出自你的游戏行业经验，那么你认为公司可以把它运用于其他方面吗？

P：也许吧，但我也不肯定，因为除了游戏，我在其他行业都没有经验。给建议是危险的，特别是如果你曾经成功过的话。（笑）成功竟然会改变人们对你的看法，真有意思。两年以前我在游戏开发者大会上说过同样的事。当时大约有30个人在听我的演讲，其中有约25个人是我叫得出名字的。（笑）没有人是真的对我说的东西感兴趣。然而我现在仍然讲相同的故事相同的文化相同的价值观，却人人爱听。唯一的不同就是，现在我们成功了，而那时我们还没有成功。

我真的认为让我们成功的就是那种模式，但那并不意味着我们以同样的方法让别人也成功。大家应该找到最适合自己的模式。但作为经验法则，这种模式把更多的自主权交给真正干活的人。这通常来说是有益的。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Can Supercell keep the magic of its blockbuster Clash of Clans mobile game going? (interview part two)

by Dean Takahashi

HELSINKI — Housed in an abandoned Nokia research building, Supercell’s headquarters is a lesson in itself. The Finnish company has become rich off its Clash of Clans and Hay Day mobile games. It sold 51 percent of its Helsinki-based company to Japan’s SoftBank and GungHo Entertainment for $1.53 billion. That makes Supercell worth about $3 billion, or more than Zynga, the social gaming giant with 2,200 employees.

The deal was one of the most interesting in gaming history. But all glory is fleeting, as World War II general George Patton once said. What guarantee does SoftBank have that Supercell’s next game will be a hit? We caught up with Ilkka Paananen, the chief executive of Supercell, with a media group attending the Slush conference in Helsinki.

Paananen says the company did that deal not as its end game but to secure stability for good and to set about its quest of “making history” in the entertainment business. Paananen hopes Supercell will make a lasting impact on the game business in the same way that companies such as Disney and Nintendo have done – and in an environment in which more than 1.2 billion people play games.

Here’s an edited transcript of our group interview with Paananen. The pictures are from a tour of Supercell’s headquarters, and we’ve included a photo gallery at the end.

Question: When we can expect the next game from Supercell?

Paananen: [Laughs] When it’s ready. At Supercell the teams have control. One of the things we believe is that it makes sense to test a game as early as possible. You might have read that we’re testing a certain game right now in the Canadian App Store, Boom Beach. Our model works, as I said, that it’s up to the teams, and then it’s up to the players. In the case of Boom Beach, if the players like it, we’ll launch it globally. If they don’t, we’ll kill it. It’s that simple. There are other teams working on other games, and the same rules apply. At some point those teams will launch something to beta. If it works, great. They’ll proceed to a global launch. If it doesn’t work they’ll kill it and move on to the next thing.

Question: Are you a serial entrepreneur? How many companies have you worked with?

Paananen: I guess I could call myself that. A few of my friends and I founded our first games company back in 2000. The company was called Sumea. Then we grew to about 40 people and sold to a company called Digital Chocolate in 2004. I worked almost six years as the president of Digital Chocolate, and left in early 2010. I took a few months off and then was lucky enough to be one of the founders of Supercell a bit later on.

Question: What were the most important things you learned, going from company to company and environment to environment?

Paananen: The number one thing was that it’s all about the talent. It’s all about the creative talent. Unless you have the best talent—That’s all that counts. If you have the best talent, sooner or later the best games will follow.

The other thing I learned is to try to minimize the bureaucracy in the process. A lot of companies have these game review meetings, where teams bring their games in front of a committee that gives them feedback. It takes a lot of time. In the nightmare scenario the team spends more time pitching for the committee and preparing for the pitch than they spend on the game. There’s none of that at Supercell. That’s why even I can’t go kill a game. One of my explicit goals is to make myself the least powerful CEO in the world. I see my role and the role of the management is as an enabler so the best people can focus on their work. We try to create the best possible environment for them.

Games is a people business and only a people business. That’s the number one learning I found. The number two learning was the value of small, of keeping things simple. We’re still a very small company compared to many of our competitors, and we want to keep it that way. Working at a smaller company is just a lot more fun. When working is more fun you make better games. It’s as simple as that. As a side benefit, when you’re small you don’t need the layers of management and bureaucracy and process that everybody hates.

Question: What’s your optimal team size? What sort of planning and management do you use around each of those teams and the games they’re working on?

Paananen: Clash of Clans was developed from the start by five people. We try to keep the new game teams as small as possible – anywhere from five to perhaps seven or eight people per team. The live game teams, because we’re serving millions of users every day, for practical purposes they need to be bigger. But even then the size stays between about 10 and 15.

Question: Is the Finnish economic environment friendly to startups?

Paananen: Yes, very. We have a great ecosystem for startups here these days. It’s easy to set up a company. We have a very competitive corporate tax rate. Starting from next year it’s going to be only 20 percent. It’s one of the lowest in Europe. It’s super competitive from that perspective. It’s easy to get people from abroad to move here. The bureaucracy is very low in that respect. And the environment is a very safe environment to live in. We have the best school system in the world. Finland has been on the top of those studies for the last couple of years. There are a lot of benefits on that side.

One huge benefit is the public funding that we get from the government. How we started Supercell is that we formed a group and invested a few hundred thousand euros from the six of us into the company. Then we got a loan from the government for 400,000 euros or so. Without that loan, Supercell probably wouldn’t exist. They give these types of loans to entrepreneurs. Even if you fail, you don’t need to file personal bankruptcy. It’s a great model. On top of those loans, later on you get subsidies. We’ve gotten a couple of million in subsidies along the way, which have been quite helpful. It’s also quite easy to raise money from abroad into Finland. Leading venture capitalists like Accel, Index, Atomico, and others have invested in Finland.

One of the personal reasons I have, outside of Supercell, I truly believe that one day the Helsinki area can become a gaming hub – the Silicon Valley of Europe, if you want to call it that. A lot of other areas are trying to do the same, like Berlin and London and others, but I do think we have a great environment. We have a shot at it, at least on the gaming side. There are a lot of great gaming companies here.

Question: You mentioned the subsidies that you got after the initial loan. Could you elaborate on how that works?

Paananen: Basically, the government, from its organizations, can give two types of funding. There are loans. They can fund us with up to 70 percent of the total cost of a project. Those loans, eventually you need to pay them back, but they have a very low interest rate – like one percent, and maybe you have to pay them back in five or seven years’ time.

Then you have these subsidies, which you don’t have to pay back. At best guess, they might subsidize 50 percent of whatever expenses you have. We also got that type of funding very early on.

Basically, if you think from an investor’s perspective, or a venture capitalist’s perspective, it’s a beautiful thing. Say that I’m a VC and I invest one million euros. In relation to that one million, I already know that the company will get an additional one million from the government. That’s non-diluting money, so it won’t dilute my ownership stake. The public funding makes Finland a really attractive investment landscape.

Q: I understand that this is very good for you, but I’m curious about what it means for the Finnish taxpayer. [Laughs]

Paananen: This year alone, Supercell—I think the founders and the company together are paying something like [€270 million] in taxes. They spent maybe five or six million on us early on. So I think it’s a good investment from the Finnish government’s perspective. Somebody calculated that Supercell alone returns every single penny that the government has ever invested in any startup combined. Just with the success of Supercell, we’re paying it all back and more.

This country needs to reinvent itself after the collapse of Nokia. We need new companies. It won’t be enough to just have Rovio and Supercell. We need more and more. Everybody here realizes that. It’s a long-term investment from the government’s point of view.

Question: What’s your view of the game industry as a whole? Are you hoping that it becomes much more like Supercell? Do you see the large publishers losing influence?

Paananen: I wish that, in the games industry overall, more power would shift to the creative people. When I grew up, I played games like the old LucasArts games, or SimCity, all these great games. They weren’t made by big teams. Teams were quite small then. They were limited by disc space and all that stuff, but still—Because you couldn’t really impress people with graphics, there was more focus on gameplay. They were just fun. There were all these legendary creative geniuses working on games at the time. I would love to see the industry going back to that golden age of games, where small teams full of creative energy and passion would have more control.

It feels like the marketing people took over. For some reason, games started to use movies as their role models. All of a sudden you had to make a massive investment in a game. It was all about the first week’s sales, exactly like in the movies. Companies tried to create huge buzz before a launch, exactly like in the movies. I’m not sure it’s the right model for games.

Question: What do you think is the key factor behind innovation, when you think about the development of new games?

Paananen: It comes down to two things. One, give all the power to your creative geniuses. Organize your company so that you put the creative people front and center. Give them all the freedom possible. And then give them the permission to fail. You have eliminate the fear of failure completely, because if you don’t, those guys won’t take risks. Without risks, there’s no innovation. Without innovation, there’s no hit games. You need to create a friendly, warm environment for those creative folks.

Question: Is there a rule or any criteria for deciding what’s a success and what’s a failure?

Paananen: Yes, there is. Sometimes people misunderstand our culture. Some people think that this is just a culture where teams can do whatever they want and results don’t matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before the teams start to work on something, we do spend quite a bit of time with them to pre-define the metric goals that they need to reach when they go to beta. We’re really strict about those goals. If they don’t reach those goals, we’ll kill the game. That’s it.

I won’t specify those goals, but they mostly have to do with retention and engagement in the game. How many people come back after 30 days? How many times do they play per day? And so on. We define those very carefully. That’s the agreement between the team and the company. So long as the team reaches those goals, we’ll proceed to launch. If they don’t, we’ll kill it.

Because of the small size of the teams, Supercell can be a relatively high-pressure environment to work on games. It’s not for everyone. You need to be proactive and very passionate about games and what you do. If you’re not, you won’t do well here. But for the right kind of people, it seems to be quite a nice place to work.

Question: Some say work-life balance matters less now that we just accept that we have one big life. But what do you do to manage people who have families or need to work flexibly? Do you not like to see people at their desks at 10 at night?

Paananen: We absolutely don’t like to see people at their desks that late. If you come here at 5:30 p.m., you’ll see that the office is pretty much empty. I’m not kidding. We’re extremely flexible when it comes to hours. Again, we trust our people. We don’t tell them how much to work. We don’t track their hours. We don’t track them at all. We just trust them.

We have only one simple rule – do what’s best for the team and for the game. For some people that’s working certain hours at the office and then working certain hours at home. That’s fine. The only thing we care about is results. We don’t care about how many hours you invest.

The games industry has been guilty of burning out people. It’s almost the norm, that you have these crunch periods. Some teams can crunch for an entire year. First of all, it’s fundamentally the wrong thing to do. It ruins people’s lives. But I also don’t think it makes any sense from a business perspective. Who can be productive working 18-hour days for a year? You won’t be productive and creative. It just doesn’t make sense for the company. We believe in working normal work days. But when we come to work, we work really hard and very passionately.

If you want to make the best games in the world, it does require extra effort and extra hours too. But you compensate for that. You take time off. We try to be sensible about that. If you burn out all your people in three years, you won’t be able to make history. As I say, it takes decades to do that.

Question: Do you share some things in common with GungHo?

Paananen: The biggest thing we share is how we think about games overall. Those guys are running the most profitable game on the planet in Puzzle & Dragons. And yet you hardly hear them talk about monetization at all. They think that games should be about fun, and if you make fun games, you’ll figure out how to monetize them as well. That’s a big part of their philosophy. They respect the creative people, as far as I can tell.

In my opinion, they’re some of the best guys in the industry. It’s funny. We don’t even share the same language with most of them, but whenever we go out with those guys, we have loads of fun. There are some really surprising similarities between Finnish and Japanese culture that turn up. We take our shoes off when we go into somebody’s home. [Laughs] Both peoples seem to know how to have a good party. It goes to all sorts of things.

I just have a massive amount of respect for those guys. That’s why we’re so happy that they decided to partner with us. It meant a lot to us. Even if it’s only 20 percent, in terms of absolute sums it’s a significant amount of money that they put in.

Question: Do you think that Nokia’s demise was inevitable? Was that just a cyclical thing, or do you think it made some missteps?

Paananen: Well, I’m not a Nokia analyst or anything, but clearly there were some missteps. Saying anything else would be lying. Of course they missed a few really important trends. These guys really came on and killed them. So yeah, I think clearly there were missteps. But that’s part of the business life. This will sound funny, but eventually I think it will be—Especially with the latest deal with Microsoft, I think it’s going to be a very good fulfillment. As I said, it forces this country to reinvent itself. We can close that book, I hope, and start to work on some new stuff.

Question: The model that you talk about comes from your experiences in gaming, but do you think that this is something companies should be applying more widely to other industries?

Paananen: Maybe, but I don’t know, because I don’t have any experience with anything other than games. It’s dangerous to give advice, especially if you’ve been successful. [Laughs] It’s funny how success changes the way people look at you. I was talking about these same things at GDC two years ago. There were maybe 30 people listening to that talk, and I knew maybe 25 of them by name. [Laughter] Nobody was really interested. Yet it’s still the same story and the same culture and the same values. The only difference is that now we’re successful and before we weren’t.

I truly believe that this is the thing that’s made us a success, but that doesn’t mean that we could make somebody else a success. Everybody needs to figure out what’s the best model for their business. But as a general rule of thumb, this type of model gives a lot more ownership to the people who do real work. That must be beneficial in general.(source:venturebeat)