Story
He left the office assuming the company was dead, then woke up to $400K in a day
When the Family Guy game got a weak App Store feature, Ali concluded the company was over, went home and slept. The next morning the stats showed $400,000 in revenue the prior day — it was working.
“I immediately go to look at our stats and I'm like, oh. We just generated $400,000 in revenue yesterday. So this is working. Holy fuck, this is actually working. We're winning. I run to the office and like rally the team and say, wow, this is working. We did it, guys.”
Story
Put his last $1M into the company knowing he'd likely never see it again
Out of cash, Ali took a $1M windfall from his MoPub investment and put it into TinyCo behind $10M of SVB debt — financially the wrong call, but he needed to turn the card over and see if there was an ace in the hole.
“And financially, I felt like it was the wrong decision to make. But emotionally I just felt like I need to see this through. I have come this far. Just need to see if this game is successful when we launch it. And I can't give up. And if what it takes is me putting this money in and losing it to find, to turn that card over and find out whether there's an ace in the hole or not, I gotta do it.”