Tabarak Paracha
Curious about the secrets behind YSO Corp’s 1 billion game downloads? Join us as we delve into the journey of Jean-Claud YALAP, Co-founder of YSO Corp, in the video below. Discover the captivating story of YSO Corp’s rise to becoming a renowned publisher, achieving a remarkable 1 billion downloads, and unraveling the genius behind the YSO Network.
[Roman from Tenjin]: A month ago you crossed the mark of 1 billion game downloads. Can we talk about that?
[Jean-Claud YALAP]: We started our first game in 2020, and 3 years after we got 1 billion downloads. We were able to build this because we automated everything and were able to push games out very fast. We’ve already published 180 games in 3 years. So it’s been a lot of hard work, and it would not have been possible if we hadn’t automated everything. So thanks to all the studios that trust us, and thanks to the teams at YSO Corp that made this possible.
[Roman from Tenjin]: How did it all start?
[Jean-Claud YALAP]: In 2010, my brother was already an IT student and I started as well. And we started to build tools to hack the system. In 2010 we hacked the Google Algorithm to put us in the top place anywhere in the world.
We started by creating an “ebay” website, but for friends. In less than 3-6 months as we hacked the Google algorithm, we got 1 million ads, and it was too much work for us. We then stopped it because we weren’t able to continue with our studies.
In 2013, when the school asked us to do an internship, instead of doing a normal internship we decided to create YSO Corp. At this time we developed a website where you could generate mobile applications by drag-and-drop. But it was too early at this time for people to understand the need for a mobile application. At this time it wasn’t really a company but more like an IT developer that wants to build things.
Then in 2017, we took back the company and wanted to make it profitable – like a real company. At this time we started as a service company so we developed tools for other companies to help them automate their processes.
After 1.5 years, we were able to release our first hit game. And then we launched 7 hit games within 9 months, with only 4 people in the team. It was funny and a lot of hard work at the same time.
We also became a publisher in 2021, where we allowed all the tools that we developed to be profitable for all our studios. And I think they are happy because they published multiple games with us.
And this is the story of how we created YSO Corp.
[Roman from Tenjin]: Let’s talk about the publishing business. You made this transition and it seems logical since you had all of the tools in-house. What was the most challenging part for you at that moment?
[Jean-Claud YALAP]: There were 2 moments of publishing. First when we were self-publishing. That was hard at the beginning. Because even if I was doing campaign user acquisition and monetization for a big branding company, when you are entering the hyper-casual industry – it’s completely different. And before that I had never heard of an MMP. Other companies use Google Ads, and that’s it. Also, in the hyper-casual or hybrid-casual industries, you should really care about the money you put into user acquisition and really care about the money you are getting per country. This means that you need to spend a lot of time on this.
The first game we launched was in 2019 and it was not a hit. But if you give me the same game, with the same KPI’s today – for sure I will make at least 10 times more than I did in 2019. This is the hard thing. At the beginning people think it’s just a campaign, you put the budget and that’s it. But you have to check everything.
[Roman from Tenjin]: So I guess this is where automation comes in. You keep saying you automated everything. What was the first thing you automated when you started doing self-publishing?
[Jean-Claud YALAP]: The first thing we automated when we started self-publishing was the analytics. Because the analytics we saw in the market – we were not happy with it. It was not in real-time, the data could not be trusted. And we thought they were making us less productive. I wanted to do an AB test for 5-10 weeks in 1 day, and be able to validate an AB test in 3 days. I didn’t want to spend 2 weeks validating an AB test. We were in the hyper-casual industry so in 3 days you already know. So this was really the first thing we automated. Then we automated the user acquisition, then the monetization, then the creatives.
[Roman from Tenjin]: But what was the hardest thing to automate?
[Jean-Claud YALAP]: I would characterize every one of them at different levels of complexity. But I would say that structurally the hardest one was for us to automate the user acquisition and monetization with an easy interface for our teams, to make things really easy and fast. For example, we have 2 people who manage the user acquisition and monetization and we have 180 games. So if we were in 2019, I would have said we need at least 30 people to make this happen. But this is possible because we automated everything.
[Roman from Tenjin]: Do you have advice on what people should do when they face all of these challenges?
[Jean-Claud YALAP]: So we started as a startup. And as a startup, you should be able to switch at any moment, be flexible and be able to remove all the things you have done and start a new one. So if you are not able to do that kind of thing, hyper-casual and hybrid-casual will be hard for you. You should go for hardcore games, which would take you multiple months or years to create one game then publish it.
But on our side, this is not the way we are doing things. Be flexible, push hard, and don’t be afraid to remove things that you have done because the new thing that you will do will be better.
[Roman from Tenjin]: How big are you guys now? How many people are in your team?
We are around 50 people. We don’t have a lot of people in our team because everything is automated. We try to do things out-of-the-box and remove unnecessary things. For example, at YSO corp, we don’t have meetings every day. Meetings happen when they are needed. We also don’t have managers that keep tabs on your work.
In the remainder of the discussion, we delve into the thought process driving YSO Network, its launch rationale, and more. Feel free to watch the complete video above for further insights.
