Chris Best

It got really big.

And then BlackBerry, who was a big player at the time, tried to kill us and almost succeeded.

And we built it back up from nothing.

got hundreds of millions of users, raised money from Tencent at a billion dollar valuation.

It was a crazy, wild experience.

I learned a lot about building things that matter.

I learned a lot about how much impact you can have making technology if you do it well.

And I also got this abiding belief that there's a lot of power and responsibility in building these kind of virtual places where people increasingly lead their lives online.

You know, you can't change human nature

It does exist.

People are a certain way, and you shouldn't really try, is maybe what I think.

But even so, you can take the exact same set of people with the same strengths, the same flaws, the same beliefs, and depending on how you set up the rules of the game, depending on how you set up the space they inhabit, how it gets communicated, how it all works, you can kind of create a heaven or a hell with the exact same people.

And so the act of sort of creating these online worlds, I think is kind of tremendously powerful.

And if you do it sort of with the conscious aim of making one that's good for the people that live in it, you can make something really great.

And that was probably, that was sloshing around in my head.

As I say, it wasn't after I left, I was taking some time off.

I was just doing all the things that you don't

normally do when you're running a high growth company, like see friends and family and read books and learn to fly airplanes and indulge hobbies.

And I've always been an avid reader.

My, you know, dad's an English teacher, grew up in a house full of books, and I've always believed that what you read matters and the media that you consume in general matters.