Скачать или смотреть He Built Mafia Wars to $10M a Day and Now Makes Bets on 130+ Startups | Roger Dickey's Playbook

Roger Dickey is a serial entrepreneur and prolific angel investor with over 130 startup investments under his belt. From humble beginnings coding games as a kid to building Mafia Wars at Zynga—a game that reached a $300 million annual run rate—Roger has scaled multiple companies and exited to giants like Zynga, Home Depot, and private equity. He's also pioneered the "search lab" approach to company building, a structured yet high-velocity process for launching and validating startup ideas.

In this episode, we cover:
Roger’s early obsession with coding and games

How Dope Wars turned into a breakout Facebook game success

The origin and explosive growth of Mafia Wars at Zynga

Building a startup that scaled to $100K/day in revenue

The matrix method for startup idea generation

Why distribution, not code, is today’s biggest moat

Why he believes in going deep on one growth channel

Lessons learned from two successful search labs

The importance of knowing when a product isn't working

What he's exploring now across SaaS, games, and social

Much more

Brought to you by:
Fondo – Accounting for startups: https://www.tryfondo.com

Where to Find Roger Dickey
X: https://x.com/rogerdickey
LinkedIn:   / rogerdickey  
Essay – Lessons from 2 Search Labs:   / lessons-from-2-search-labs  

Where to Find David Phillips
X: https://x.com/davj
LinkedIn:   / davjphillips  

In This Episode, We Cover
(00:00) Intro and Roger's startup credentials
(01:04) Roger’s coding origin story and first “viral” product
(05:01) How Dope Wars exploded on Facebook
(10:45) Building and scaling Mafia Wars at Zynga
(16:00) Product-led growth mechanics and viral loops
(21:00) Inventing and reinventing distribution
(25:35) How Roger structured his “search lab” process
(31:00) Metrics and mindset for early-stage validation
(34:55) CAC, LTV, and cracking the S-curve of growth
(38:47) Scaling a $100K/day construction tech startup
(44:10) The role of deep focus vs. testing across channels
(48:05) What Roger’s building next and how he’s thinking about it

Referenced
Lessons from 2 Search Labs (Roger Dickey on Medium):   / lessons-from-2-search-labs  
Mafia Wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Wars
Dope Wars (original inspiration): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Wa...)
Y Combinator Demo Day: https://www.ycombinator.com
Dropbox Growth Story: https://www.dropbox.com/business/reso...
Stripe Founder Story: https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-series-a