David Perry – Bet on the Person, Not the Idea

BIO: David Perry was in the video game industry for over 30 years, making hits like The Matrix, Aladdin, The Terminator, and Earthworm Jim. He sold his last company to Sony PlayStation and the one before that to Atari. He’s now building a startup in e-Commerce called Carro.STORY: One of David’s top former employees started a VR company and invited him to invest. Though David believed in this employee, experiencing motion sickness while trying out the VR games made him not invest in what became a multi-billion dollar company.LEARNING: When you really believe in somebody, go ahead and support them. Bet on the person, not the idea. “When you get great people, incredible things tend to happen. So when you’re betting on a CEO, bet on someone who you think can attract talent.”David Perry Guest profileDavid Perry was in the video game industry for over 30 years, making hits like The Matrix, Aladdin, The Terminator, and Earthworm Jim. He sold his last company to Sony PlayStation and the one before that to Atari. He’s now building a startup in e-Commerce called Carro. If you email [email protected] and mention My Worst Investment Ever podcast, you’ll get VIP personal support.Worst investment everDavid firmly believed that someday, every game ever made would be available on every device everywhere in the world instantly. And so, if that will eventually exist, why not start building it now?With that thought in mind, David began to build that technology and had some massive breakthroughs. He demonstrated that you could play a game from the cloud with the same feeling as playing with a console on your table. That caused people’s heads to pop off. Samsung wanted to work with David to power its video game strategy, and Sony bought the company.David’s employees made significant amounts of money from the company’s success and eventual sale. One of the employees decided to leave and start his own company using the money he had just made from the exit to Sony. As a CEO, David was committed to working with PlayStation. So he was watching this former employee build his own company.The employee contacted David and asked if he’d be interested in investing in his new company. David decided to check out the company. The guy demonstrated what he was working on, which was virtual reality. The company was called Oculus. David sat down and put on the VR headset. Then he started getting motion sickness because he was moving all over the place. He couldn’t wait to finish the demo.David was initially very interested in investing in the company because he genuinely believed in his former employee. But after the motion sickness, he needed time to think about it. He researched and read some military papers on how the military had tried their hardest to stop motion sickness but had found no solution as it’s biological. David decided to pass on the opportunity to be a founding Oculus investor.The company was a huge success and was bought for billions of dollars. David would have made hundreds of millions of dollars had he invested in the company.Lessons learnedWhen you really believe in somebody, go ahead and support them.Bet on the person, not the idea.Andrew’s takeawaysWe get stuck into frames of reference, and sometimes we get beholden to those references, and we can’t think beyond them.Actionable adviceIf there’s...