Learn from Leaders Podcast

Game Production Leader Frank Fay stayed with us for another podcast episode, where we discussed the benefits of async work and building a remote team culture. Being forced to be “always online” and respond immediately to your distributed teams leads to undesired multitasking, decreased productivity, and increased stress, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Tune in to hear Frank’s take on meetings,...

In this episode, we look beyond game development and explore the ever-present issue of burnout with Frank Fay. Having worked in the video game industry for three decades, Frank understands the challenges of stress, crunch, and maintaining a work-life balance. “When someone has burnout, it’s already too late,” he says and shares his checklist of what employees and managers can do to avoid it.

In this episode, gaming industry executive and entrepreneur Brian Graham joined us to discuss best practices around game production. Having brought over 40 Game SKUs to market, he certainly knows the drill. He shares his tips on getting more productive, overcoming common frustrations, embracing failures, as well as managing investor expectations. "Make sure you're scheduling unscheduled time" and...

In this episode, Viktor Nyblom, CTO at Baby Journey and angel investor, talks about the current investment climate and the challenges startups face at each growth stage. He also shares his thoughts on what he looks for when choosing to invest in startups, especially in the B2B space. “I need to see that founders are enough of a 'hustler' to get something out in the world,” says Viktor. If you're a...

In this episode, we invited Hannah Meiton, Co-Founder & Partner at Ampli Ventures, to join us and share her insights both from an investor's and a team member's point of view. This time we talk about the trends in SaaS and what growing pains companies should be ready to face. Hannah also shares some good indicative metrics that she has found useful in her career and how to align objectives bet...

In this episode, we invited Christina Seelye, CEO of Zordix AB, as well as founder and CEO of video game publishers Maximum Games and Modus Games, and development team Modus Studios, to join us and share her views on changing teams' mindsets towards work and how to approach it with a "gamer's lens." If you're on a quest to find new ways to empower your team, tune in to the podcast!

Adrian is the co-founder and CEO of Black Forest Games, joined us to talk about team empowerment and how he discovered its best practices. “We’re on a journey now; we’re not there yet. But I would do this earlier next time.“

Ola Sars joined us for a great talk about his insights from the music-tech space. Ola shares how Soundtrack Your Brand helps customers do better business with their customers and why music is often undervalued. Our guest talks about the learnings and failures in his career and the best tips on scaling your organization: "all teams need to own customer-based KPIs as well. When you get all engineeri...

Patrick LaBine joined us for the fifth episode of Learn from Leaders. He talked about how working in small, achievable increments of value helps drive productivity. "We keep the metrics very light. We try to be outcome-based," says Patrick. Listen to the full episode and hear tips on how to challenge your team, engage with them and show the right kind of support.

Kasper has joined us to talk about the lessons he has learned when creating world-leading products. "You need to treat people the way they want to be treated, so you get the most out of them, " he says, mentioning that this perception has helped him when working in a team. Kasper also discusses the importance of trust, creating a safe space, and working with passionate people. Listen to the full e...

John Elvesjö, Managing Partner at node.vc shares his tips on picking the right investors for your company: “I see it more as choosing a partner than choosing an investor.” John talks about why it’s important to share the agenda with your investors but to keep in mind that you’re still going to do most of the work yourself. Listen for more tips! Visit 👉 https://favro.com and learn the best collabo...

In this episode of Learn from Leaders, Jenny Muhlwa has joined us to share her experience on how working remotely has changed her day-to-day life. As people are now working in many different ways, from many different places, it is essential to realize that there's no right way to do your job. We should use that to our advantage. How can introverts and extroverts work well together in the same spac...

For the first episode of season 3 we invited Markus Halttunen to join us and tell us more about his experience of building a successful culture. “The team members are the experts, so the decisions should be made by them, and not the managers. The processes should never get in the way of actually getting things done,” says Markus. Markus shares why having junior people on the team is beneficial for...

During the fifteenth episode of Season 2, Mark Kyle joins Patric Palm to discuss events, and how to organize them better, whether it's a company get-together or a global film festival. Mark talks about why digitalization is not only about being able to be more flexible and work from home but to increase productivity. Throughout his career, Mark has brought agility and creativity to an impressive r...

During this episode, Patric Palm together with Martin and Mind discuss the idea behind RHoK, a hackathon that helps non-profit organizations. Both Martin and Mind were voted as Best Collaborators, and in this podcast, they talk about what it means to be a collaborative team player and how to achieve it. There’s often a tendency to rush too quickly into the how, when there’s often more work thinkin...

During the thirteenth season 2 episode, Patric Palm together with Joe Nickolls share the secrets to building a company culture of fun while making fun customers’ experiences. Joe is committed to building Timbre into a new kind of studio for Vancouver, with a team of some of the best leaders in the industry. Timbre’s focus being diversity, inclusion, and equity for all. Learn from Leaders is a 30 m...

During the twelfth Season 2 episode, Patric Palm together with Brian Graham discuss the do’s and don’ts of building a sustainable foundation for developing great games, and how things in production management have changed over the last 15 years. Brian has been in the gaming industry for over 20 years and shares his experience of using agile methods and creating team autonomy. Learn from Leaders is...

During the eleventh Season 2 episode, Patric Palm interviews Tommy Palm, CEO and founder of Resolution Games, and discusses the fundamentals of scaling a VC-backed studio from 2 to 10 games in development. Listen to the tough realizations Tommy has come to while working in the industry and how it has helped him pick the right talent for his teams for maximum growth. Learn from Leaders is a 30 min...

During the tenth Season 2 episode, Patric Palm interviews Martina Johannesson, Co-Founder of Random Hacks of Kindness CPH, and Jarūnė Preikšaitė, Chairwoman at Women Go Tech and Chief Marketing Officer at Favro. With a passion for inclusion in tech, Martina Johannesson has been an active contributor to the Nordic tech startup scene since the age of 16. Commonly seen moderating discussions on acces...

During the ninth Season 2 episode, Patric Palm interviews Ryan Snyder, Head of Production at Kongregate Studio. Before joining Kongregate in the summer of 2021, he also held production and management positions at Iron Galaxy, Phosphor Games, and Disney - Wideload. Ryan has been in production and development for over 17 years, getting his start in audio engineering and TV production on the X-Games...

During the eighth Season 2 episode, Patric Palm interviews Kevin Johnson, Director of Development at Double Fine Productions. Kevin began his career in Production at Electronic Arts and has worked at Realtime Worlds, Pendulum Studios and Telltale Games. Process improvement has always been a strong motivator for him as well as dedication to enabling teams to become greater than the sum of their par...

During the seventh Season 2 episode, Patric Palm interviews Erik Werner, a Marketing professional with over 10 years of experience, working in the intersection of digital sales, marketing, and product development and leading agile teams in a wide variety of organizations and industries. Learn from Leaders 30 min Podcast series focus on SaaS & Game industry leaders. Challenges from real-world e...

During the sixth Season 2 episode, Patric Palm interviews Sam and Adam Coster, Co-Founding brothers at Butterscotch Shenanigans. Adam's love for science carried him through a PhD in Cellular & Molecular Biology. Turns out it wasn't science he was into, but solving hard problems in general. Building a company from scratch in the highly-competitive and rapidly-changing games industry certainly f...

Guest : Adrian Fiechter, Head of IT at Wolt. During the fifth episode of Season 2, Patric Palm interviews Adrian Fiechter. This is a conversation about IT in a cloud-native fast-growing company, and its role to empower people working from anywhere across multiple time zones. Adrian has more than 18 years of experience in various IT roles with the main focus to bring business and IT together to del...

Guest : Johan Crona, Founder & Managing Partner at Cloud Capital. During the fourth episode of Season 2, Patric Palm interviews Johan Crona and discusses the top trends in SaaS industry. Johan is an entrepreneur with a background within software companies since 1999. Started and developed several bootstrapped and venture-funded companies, exited several of them. Founded and raised a seed fund...