Jon Lee

And so based on the type of individual that was playing, we could provide a very different experience if you're a female from New York, age 35, versus a male from Brazil, age 30.

age 15.

And so it was all about being able to test things like the new user experience, the tutorial, the game balancing algorithm, the way that you merchandise products, and even in the content itself of the games.

And we basically be able to analyze these cohorts, show them different types of game experiences and identify the most optimal version that would drive the most lifetime value to the game

developer so john if you had to simplify all these metrics into one thing because you can measure millions of different data points is it really just time in the game i mean how do you measure stickiness what's the key thing yeah it's really engagement you know we called it day in return which is what was the likelihood that a customer would a player would come back to the game on the nth day

And that was usually the largest driver of the lifetime value of that customer.

But by understanding the lifetime value, we'd effectively be able to then help companies advertise more efficiently and more profitably.

So if they discovered that certain segments of their customer base spent more money, invited more users and spent more time in the game, we'd be able to give them the actual value that that customer is worth so that they could go out on Facebook

or on other channels and actually be able to purchase that media at profitability.

And so it would allow people to not just build a really fun game, but build the game for the right person and also make money in the process doing so to guarantee a way to acquire that traffic.

I think the industry had sort of taken a little bit of headwind right around the time that we sold.

Facebook had changed some of their policies and procedures as it related to games posting on the user's feeds and so forth.

So it made it actually a lot more difficult for our customers and ourselves as game developers to be able to advertise and grow profitably.

And so I think

You know, we really evaluated the business and looked at whether or not we could build something that was, you know, long term and sustainable and then decided to partner with someone that was larger that had an existing distribution base that had an engaged player base that we could leverage.

And so for the Zynga deal, we basically came in and we helped deploy the technology in the company.

And then at Zynga, I ran a studio called Chefville.

So I was like the founding general manager, a very small group of very talented, very tireless people.

And we built a game called Chefville.

That was the largest game in the world by daily active players in 2012.