That was a pretty inspiring moment because, yeah, at that point I did realize how easy it would be to try something different than corporate America. He curated the steps that I went through. He broke it down and said, “Hey, here are all the things I did. How did you get this to work?” What was great about that was he kind of demystified it for me. So, I actually sat down with him at a Happy Donuts in Palo Alto, and I said, “Hey, I’m really interested in Facebook. But the project was making an insane amount of money. I think he had some ads on it, or he was charging a dollar per animal, something like that. When your friends visited your zoo, they could see where your animals were. And you could put an animal in a spot on the grid. Basically, a web page with some divs on it, and essentially like a grid. I think he was making about $1,000 a day with this app that took him something like eight hours to build. At this time is when you met a friend that was making about 8,000 bucks a day, and perhaps this is a time where you realized that doing corporate America was maybe not the best for you. It was the time where Facebook was starting-I mean, already exploded, but it obviously has a little bit more to go.
When was this? Was it a year, or was this?Īlejandro: 2007. Who knows, but it ended up working itself out when I started the Facebook app company.Īlejandro: Right. I thought oh, they probably-I guess they don’t want to interview me. I didn’t really have the hustle at the time to bump the email again. So, I got his card and sent him my resume, and never heard back. He was actually the same guy who writes the interview puzzles that they used to have for engineers.
Then I saw various people coming out, and one of them stopped to talk to me. So, it was convenient because that’s when some people were leaving. When I went down for a conference, I took a little time off and went down to Palo Alto to University Avenue where their office was, and I happened to get there on the train around 5:00 or 5:30 pm. So, I wanted to be involved really in any way I could. I had been telling all my friends that they’re the next great company, and that the internet was going to be social, and that they’d kind of take over the whole thing. So, my company sent me to Silicon Valley, the company I worked at in Austin, for a conference, and I had believed very strongly in Facebook for a while. Roger Dickey: Yeah, that was interesting. You tried at one point to get a job in Facebook by literally showing up to their office. That’s how you got started with this entire entrepreneurial journey. Good to be here.Īlejandro: So, your background is pretty much as an engineer. So, today we have Roger Dickey, and he has been doing quite a lot here in the venture space right now with Gigster, so we’d love to hear more from Roger. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Dealmakers Show. Connect with Roger Dickey:Īlejandro: Alrighty. He received a 2012 Distinguished Achievement award from the Computer Science Department of University of Illinois (given to alumni who have brought distinction to themselves and the university). Dickey created the Facebook game Dope Wars at Curiosoft which became the foundation for the Facebook hit game Mafia Wars for Zynga.ĭickey worked on the Mafia Wars team at Zynga before going on to lead the team that made the Facebook game FishVille. Dickey is also known for founding Facebook game company Curiosoft and selling it to Zynga in 2008 (he left Zynga in 2011). The company has quickly become a Silicon Valley darling.īefore starting Gigster in 2014, Dickey was an angel investor. Gigster has raised over $32 Million from high profile investors including Redpoint Ventures, Andreessen Horowtiz, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former basketball player Michael Jordan, actor Ashton Kutcher, and “Super Angel” Ron Conway.
DOPEWARS HAPPY HACKERS SOFTWARE
Dickey is best known for founding Gigster, a venture-backed start-up that gives clients a way to systematically outsource software development to a large network of freelance coders. Roger Dickey is an American entrepreneur. Your email address is 100% safe from spam! About Roger Dickey:
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