Ilkka Paananen, co-founder and CEO of Supercell, has written an article about what’s next for Supercell: Comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s a very good read, including thoughts on how to scale a successful company’s operations without losing the culture and becoming bureaucratic.
Another thing worth reading is Ilkka’s description of how great products make companies profitable, and how profits let companies build great products. That rings very true to me.
Before I get to the actual results from last year, I want to explain how we think about financial results in general. We see them as something that enables us to do more of what we’re passionate about. We have been lucky to be very profitable for years now, which is important because it enables us to take a very long term view on everything, including keeping the quality bar for our games very high and enabling us to try new risky things.
However, we don’t see financial results as the end goal but just means to the end, which is to create better games for our players. The financial results are an important signal, however, as to whether we are doing a good job for our players. If we’re not creating content and experiences that players feel are worth paying for, then bluntly put we’re not creating good enough content and experiences.
Ilkka Paananen
