Inside Draw Something's perfect storm: from the brink to 50 million installs in 50 days: with Wilson Kriegel, CEO of HrtBeat Audio

My guest today is Wilson Kriegel - and he's going to tell us the story of a perfect storm that he lived through that in many ways shaped & pioneered the way we think about virality and breakout growth. Wilson is today the CEO at HrtBeat Audio, a wearable hardware and software company that could very well change the way we communicate and capture moments safely using handsfree devices . Wilson has been a leader in many companies in gaming and mobile since far before the first smartphones came on our radar. On today's episode, we will dive into the story of one of the earliest breakout hit games on mobile - OMGPOP's Draw Something, which Wilson was a huge part of. Draw Something was launched when its maker OMGPOP was less than a quarter away from running out of money. They'd let go of people - and were mentally gearing up to close shop when their new game Draw Something came out. Draw Something not only dragged its team back from the brink - but also saw some astronomical numbers and incredible viral growth that changed its team's fortunes literally overnight. Draw Something hit a million downloads 10 days after its launch in 2010, and 50 million downloads in the first 50 days after launch. Just as astonishingly, less than a month after Draw Something's launch, OMGPop was acquired for $210 million. In today's interview, we'll talk to Wilson about the early days of online games and mobile games, and go behind the scenes of the abrupt ascent of Draw Something & the flurry of activity and dealmaking that led to its acquisition less than a month after its launch. We go into incredible detail about what it was like to live inside the perfect storm that Draw Something found itself in the midst of back in 2012 - and this is an incredibly incredibly exciting episode that I'm very stoked to bring to you today.

You can listen to Inside Draw Something's perfect storm: from the brink to 50 million installs in 50 days: with Wilson Kriegel, CEO of HrtBeat Audio online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Inside Draw Something's perfect storm: from the brink to 50 million installs in 50 days: with Wilson Kriegel, CEO of HrtBeat Audio is an episode from The How Things Grow Podcast by Shamanth Rao.

This episode is 52:30 long.

This episode was published on Feb 4, 2019.

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