Playing to Win

Author: Justin Petruccelli

Video games have come a long way since Pong and Pac-Man. But with high tech comes even higher price tags, a source of pain for plenty of passionate gamers. Enter Sean Spencer, who, in 2002, co-founded Gamefly, an online company that is to gamers what Netflix is to movie lovers. The company was venture-backed from the start--even on the heels of the dot-com bubble burst--and profitable within two years. Spencer, who now serves as Gamefly's senior vice president of business development and content, shares some of his secrets to online success.

We had a pretty good idea, but ideas are a dime a dozen. You've got to be willing and able to execute the idea, even though people are going to tell you you're making a mistake or you're wrong or you're crazy. You've got to be willing to fail if you're going to succeed. It sounds cliché, but it's true. Even if people are going to tell you you're going to fail--and they may be right--you're going to come out of it learning a lot, so the next time you do it, you're going to do things differently. You wouldn't have had that experience or that knowledge if you hadn't tried.