I wrote for Naavik about Lightheart Entertainment and the principles behind our early journey. Read the full article here.
Why I wrote about this
In the wake of our Series A, I was asked to write about Lightheart. So I took the opportunity to shill my own thing in the hopes of helping our recruitment effort.
The gist of it
Lightheart was founded with a clear intention: to build the kind of game company we ourselves would want to work at.
From day one, we chose a fully self-organized model. No traditional hierarchy, but not chaos either. The main goal was not idealistic as much as it was about enabling best decisions made as fast as possible.
Our second principle is an obsession with learning speed. We aggressively reduce scope to get games into players’ hands within weeks or months, not years. We optimize for honest feedback over “validation” and constantly challenge whether we’re building the right thing. Intellectual honesty and a willingness to confront red flags early are central to how we operate.
Finally, our product philosophy is simple: we build games that are instantly accessible but deep enough to become a hobby. We call this “hypercore.” The core loop must sell itself in seconds and feel so good that testers don’t want to put the device down. When accessibility, depth, and strong execution meet, retention and monetization follow.
Key takeaways
- Self-management works only with clear structures.
- Optimize for speed of learning, not perfection of execution: ship early, learn from real players, and be brutally honest about the results.
- Build games that are simple to start but deep enough to master.