HTE 490: How We Made League of Legends the #1 Arena Game (in the World)

Jon Nastor's Hack the Entrepreneur

Check out the complete show notes: http://hacktheentrepreneur.com/marc-merrill/

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Marc Merrill is the co-founder of Riot Games, the company behind the worldwide gaming sensation League of Legends. As of the beginning of 2020, League of Legends has over 100 million monthly players.

In 2005, Marc and his now co-founder Brandon Beck were typical college roommates -- going to class, playing video games, and dreaming up ways to transform the gamin industry. Their idea was to develop a game that would only make money selling virtual goods within the game itself.

Both Marc and Brandon are non-technical co-founders, so they needed to put together a team who could make their dream a reality. They spent the next 12 months mapping out a business plan, overcoming every obstacle they could find, and finding funding to start building a team.

They official launched in 2006, and the marathon of building a successful game and business began. After 4 years of pushing the project forward, they sold off 94% of the company for $400 million -- and they kept on working on Riot Games and League of Legends. Today, both founders are still working on Riot Games as co-chairmen of the company.

In this conversation we discuss:

• Why you need to put your players and customers first (and trust that the revenue will follow)
• The value finding solutions to every problem before it becomes a problem
• How Riot Games overcame the massive credibility issue they had when first entering the gaming market

Now, let's hack...

Marc Merrill.