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Founders · 2 min · Nov 1, 2026
Lion Studios found high-output game teams outside the US
Rafael Vivas
Lion Studios partnered with overseas teams where labor cost less and developers could run more game tests.
In this episode
Full analysis- 30:14Lion Studios grew from a broken partnership into a $250 million businessPro pick 3 min
- 20:54AppLovin leaders stay hands-on to keep work focusedPro pick 3 min
- 44:01A falling stock price drew Vivas back to AppLovin3 min
- 16:07AppLovin beat better-funded ad rivals by prioritizing technology3 min
- 38:32He left Lion once the business could succeed without him6 min
- 1:00:47Mark Rosner taught Vivas that every contract detail matters4 min
- 48:11AppLovin automates and removes work before hiring3 min
- 34:00Lion Studios found high-output game teams outside the US2 min
“And they were so poor that they all lived in the same house and their house was also their office.”
Rafael Vivasat 35:12 · Founders
Takeaways
- Lower labor costs let studios run more game-development reps.
- The hypercasual approach emphasized how marketable a game was.
- A husband, wife and younger brother made Happy Glass.
About this segment
Lion Studios partnered with overseas teams where labor cost less and developers could run more game tests. One small studio’s Happy Glass became a hit after a make-or-break stretch.
Rafael Vivas is a founding team member of AppLovin and cofounder of Lion Studios.
Co-founded Lion Studios, which generated over $250 million in revenue in two years, after joining AppLovin's founding team.
David Senra, Host · Host, Founders
Has read an entrepreneur's biography every week for Founders since 2016.
From “High School Dropout to Multi-Billionaire: The Relentless Drive of Rafael Vivas”, Nov 1, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 34:06
You're working around the clock. And our best partners that we publish games with, they were not sitting in America. They were sitting in Europe. They were sitting in Asia, you know, all around the world. Why do you think they weren't in America? I think they weren't in America really for two reasons. One, the cost of labor is a lot higher here. And games, like the games that we were building at the time, you didn't need the best of the best, right?
- 34:30
It was just about getting the most amount of reps as possible. And a lot of the games that we built, there were these games called hypercasual, there were these methodologies we would use to determine what would be a hit game. And a lot of it was just based on like, how marketable was the game? What we saw was like, you could get more cost-efficient employees over there. And then also like, they would just work, they would out-hustle the hell out of the American studios.
- 34:54
So like, you know, we'd interview these people at some of these game studios and, you know, they'd be like, yeah, I worked nine to five. handle this like really small part of the equation at this, you know, for this game studio, they'd have these bloated teams versus like, I would go meet, like it was actually a perfect example. There was this team called Game 5 Mobile. We released a game that did, you know, close to a hundred million dollars in revenue together called Happy Glass.
- 35:15
It was a husband, wife, and little brother. And they were so poor that they all lived in the same house and their house was also their office. And I think at one point, and I, you know, I may be wrong or right here, I'm pretty sure they all slept in the same bed. I think this is literally how poor these guys were. So when you come from that, right? Like you can't compete against somebody like that, right?
- 35:35
They will die before they fail, right? And I think, you know, two things. One, those like partners, like they're incredible to work with, but also drove me to work harder, right? Because I saw what they came from and I know this was their big shot. I loved making people like that successful. They were the underdog. Nobody had believed in them. And actually it was funny, this company Game 5, these three people, they worked I think at HP they took this bet on this game studio and for them like if it didn't