The Secret Behind Blizzard's Success | Allen Adham, Co-Founder of Blizzard

Allen Adham, Co-Founder of Blizzard Entertainment, is credited as an Executive Producer on iconic gaming franchises including Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Hearthstone. In this interview, we learn more about what motivated Allen to start Blizzard and creating iconic game franchises, the process of scaling from 5 to 50, finding his source of inspiration, and his advice for the next generation of builders. The business of games is ever changing however the phrase “games are hard to make” seems constant. As a reaction to this sentiment, we wanted to sit down with battle-tested developers, entrepreneurs, and startups, to learn how they navigated their own choppy waters. What we found is that winning isn't defined by the hand dealt but the strategy and foresight of how to play it. This is Win Conditions. Host: Lester Chen -   / chen   Guest: Allen Adham -   / allen-adham   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:20 - Early Life 02:23 - How did your parents influence your early career? 04:10 - Early Mentorship: Brian Fargo 05:40 - Meeting Mike 07:00 - The inception of Blizzard 08:30 - What motivated Allen to start a company 09:50 - Blizzard’s Philosophy behind Game Development 12:15 - Approach to IP Development 15:24 - Hiring and Scaling 21:11 - Finding creative inspiration? 24:44 - New Adventures 26:35 - "Leaving Blizzard was the biggest mistake of my life" 28:53 - How did you go back to Blizzard? 30:42 - What were the biggest changes? 32:10 - Challenges from success 33:29 - Leaving Blizzard again, what excites you? 36:11 - Advice for a gaming company founder Stay Updated: Find us on Twitter:   / a16zgames   Find us on LinkedIn:   / a16z   #blizzardentertainment #allenadham #blizzard #a16z #winconditions