He retired at 28 to start a family, then learned Wednesdays are lonely
After building a games business with billions of downloads, Rafael Vivas missed purpose, and company, more than he expected.
David Senra · High School Dropout to Multi-Billionaire: The Relentless Drive of Rafael VivasOn a Wednesday afternoon in Miami, Rafael Vivas wanted to play video games. None of his friends were free.
Vivas is a high school dropout who had joined Adam Foroughi, an AppLovin co-founder, to build the mobile advertising company, and later created its game publishing arm, Lion Studios.
By 28, he had helped drive more than 20 games to number one and more than 3 billion downloads. The business, he realized, no longer needed him to succeed.
He had always known he wanted to be a father. So he called Foroughi on his birthday and asked for time off. What was supposed to be a six month transition ended with him kind of out within three months.
He thought he would enjoy life and never work again. He quickly found that life depressing, with no purpose.
He loves video games, but on a Wednesday afternoon he had no one to play with. His friends, as he put it, were all being productive, and it got lonely.
After stepping away, a weekend trip to Miami during the pandemic turned into a move. There he met his future wife and started the family he wanted, but after about three months he began building products for fun.
Those projects did not hold him. He felt no connection to the products, and one became a mobile dating competition called Love or Fame that required watching 12 hours of dating footage a day.
What he missed was the people. He said he deeply cared about Foroughi and the rest of the team, and wanted to help them succeed.
Still outside the company, he went to AppLovin's stock market debut celebration, saw the stock fall on the first day, and heard about flaws in the business. He told Foroughi he was back, and he has been there since.
Questions people ask
What does AppLovin actually do?
AppLovin is a mobile advertising technology company. It runs software that helps app makers find new users and earn money from ads, and advertisers pay it when those ads produce profitable results.
What was Lion Studios?
It was AppLovin's publishing division for simple, easy to learn mobile games. Vivas partnered with outside developers, used AppLovin's ad distribution to find players, and shared the revenue.
How did he prepare the business to run without him?
About a year before leaving, he wrote down everywhere he was a bottleneck and what had to change. He then worked through that list until new games were launching and revenue was growing without him.