An Interview with Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg About Turnarounds

Summary

Good morning, This week’s Stratechery interview is with Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg. Bromberg took over Unity last year, and previously worked at Zynga, EA, Major League Gaming, and AOL. In this interview — which ended up being primarily about Bromberg, who I found fascinating — we discuss the lessons learned in a career centered around turnarounds. Bromberg helped rescue AOL’s relationship with EA, which led to him being hired by EA and turning around Star Wars: Knights of the Republic. After that he helped turnaround Zynga, and now his task is to turnaround Unity. We discuss each of these steps in his career, and how he is bringing lessons learned to bear to make Unity into a better business. As a reminder, all Stratechery content, including interviews, is available as a podcast; click the link at the top of this email to add Stratechery to your podcast player. On to the Interview: An Interview with Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg About Turnarounds This interview is lightly edited for content and clarity. Topics: Background | Lessons From AOL | Esports | Rescuing Knights of the Republic | Zynga | Taking Over Unity Background Matthew Bromberg, welcome to Stratechery. Matthew Bromberg: Thank you so much. It’s really a pleasure for me. So I think this might be a first for me wherein I interview the successor of a CEO that I interviewed previously. You are the CEO of Unity, having succeeded John Riccitiello about 18 months ago. I want to get into that transition, of course, but first I want to learn more about you, your background, how’d you get started in technology — and I want to go back, really back to the beginning. So where did you grow up and let’s go from there? MB: I was born in New York City, I grew up mostly in New Rochelle, which is a suburb of New York City and I suppose my upbringing was pretty straightforward and mainstream, I was really into athletics and other things. But I also had this sort of other side in which I would kind of play Dungeons & Dragons wi...