He Built Mafia Wars to $10M a Day and Now Makes Bets on 130+ Startups
START · Fondo
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Show Notes
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
Find the transcript at: https://www.tryfondo.com/podcast (or wherever you're hosting it)
Where to Find Roger Dickey
- X: https://x.com/rogerdickey
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerdickey/
- Essay – Lessons from 2 Search Labs: https://medium.com/@rogerdickey/lessons-from-2-search-labs-fe07d0bc0fb4
Where to Find David Phillips
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): https://medium.com/@rogerdickey/lessons-from-2-search-labs-fe07d0bc0fb4
- Mafia Wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Wars
- Dope Wars (original inspiration): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Wars_(video_game)
- Y Combinator Demo Day: https://www.ycombinator.com
- Dropbox Growth Story: https://www.dropbox.com/business/resources/growth-story
- Stripe Founder Story: https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-series-a