세콰이어가 2,300억 투자한 유니콘 창업자가 본 AI 네이티브 회사 | Playco CPO Teddy Cross
관심사 유튜브 채널 전일 영상 번들로 수집한 YouTube 자료. 채널: Claude Bloom 클로드 블룸, 게시: 2026-06-21 17:01 KST.
핵심 메타데이터
- URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqqo7q0TMuA
- Video ID:
Zqqo7q0TMuA - Channel: Claude Bloom 클로드 블룸
- Raw: 2026-06-21-yt-zqqo7q0tmua-세콰이어가-2-300억-투자한-유니콘-창업자가-본-ai-네이티브-회사-playco-cpo-teddy-cross
기존 관련 문서 연결
설명
진짜 인사이트는 컨퍼런스장에 없다. 11년 지기이자 1조 4,000억 원 규모 유니콘 Playco의 공동창업자 Teddy Cross를 클로드블룸 무대로 모셨습니다. 14살에 만든 게임이 해커뉴스 1위에 오르고, 그걸 본 실리콘밸리 CEO의 콜드 메일 한 통으로 15살에 혼자 태평양을 건넌 미국인. 테네시 시골 소년에서 시작해 실리콘밸리, 도쿄를 거쳐 서울을 베이스로 Sequoia 등에서 누적 2,300억 원 투자를 유치한 게임
TRANSCRIPT
Teddy crossing. for moment. You got forchech. What do they have done? Let’s get started. Teddy. >> Oh, thanks for having me. >> Of course. So before starting uh we would like to have a short introduction of Teddy. So my first question is for anyone who doesn’t know you well uh can you explain what you’re building and also what’s your biggest thing in your mind and is there anything like a oneliner message that you would like to share for tonight? >> Sure. Um so I’m Teddy. I’m from the states was living in Silicon Valley before I moved to Seoul. Um, I spend 70% of my time here since I guess 10 years ago. Um, and the rest in Tokyo and uh, SF and uh, yeah, I’m co-founder of PlayCo. We’re building games and we’re building AI to build games now, which is super exciting and yeah, I’m just super excited to be here and all I think about every day when I wake up, when I go to bed, like for the last year, two years is just AI. So really excited to be here to talk about that. >> Exciting. Thank you so much. So uh that was a very good short intro and we would like to start from your childhood and then you know come back to this present time. So what I found genuinely interested about is you know your your life story. So you grew up in a very rural area in Tennessee. Does anyone know about Tennessee the state of Tennessee? So it’s a it’s I wouldn’t say rural but it’s it’s one of the comparely a countryside of in the states. So, uh, you you were growing up in Tennessee and also you have you went to homeschooling and also I would like to know what was your normal days back in when when you was a teenager and what were you dreaming about in your future? >> So, it was uh super boring. I mean on one hand I I lived in a city but on the other hand like a mile away from my home was like farms. Yeah. I was just really bored and I spent a lot of my time reading uh a lot of science fiction, a lot of Wikipedia. Um, Wikipedia like saved my life honestly. And uh, you know, my dream as a kid was to be an inventor. And I guess I didn’t really know the word like entrepreneur, but you know, that was my dream. I just wanted to build things. So I built like Legos. I built science experiments. I built um, just anything you I could get my hands on, I would build with it. And then that sort of like transition pretty quickly into coding. >> Exactly. I mean it does make sense like inventor nowadays we translate that into entrepreneur right so you were like a born entrepreneur or inventor and uh before getting into the main questions what was the inspiration that really got you into building things like since you >> building things it comes it came very naturally to me I mean I I was a huge fan of Legos I still am a huge fan of Legos Legos are great and like Duplo and Lincoln logs I don’t know if you ever have those like >> just building was always so much fun to me and uh I think that transession transitioned into like building things virtually, right? Like coding. >> Um I love Minecraft as a kid and so any kind of games I often liked the sort of more building type of games. >> Um so we would like to touch based on your first life project I would say. So when you were 14 years old you you you love playing games and you built one of one of his game right? but that has got to unexpectedly very viral on the internet back in the days and your game has went on number one on hacker news which is run by y combinator right so I would like to know for those who don’t know about your games uh what kind of game it was and how did it go viral and can you explain the moments that you seen that your game was going on viral on on X on on Twitter? Yeah. So, um, back in the day, Flash games were pretty big. Like I Tower Defense and all these other kinds of Flash games. So, I was super into Tower Defense. At the same time, we knew like Flash was dying. Steve Jobs had killed Flash, but it wasn’t dead yet, right? But um, you know, I just love playing these tower defense games. And, uh, there was this contest that Microsoft was sponsoring in 2010. Contest was like, build a web app using HTML 5. But this is 2010. The web apps were brand new, you know, nobody was even really doing like mobile web apps. It was all desktop. Like a lot of people were still using Firefox at the time. Chrome was pretty new. So all these people are building web apps for this contest. Why don’t I just build a game? Like nobody’s built a game using web technology before >> that I had seen. So I uh was like, okay, why don’t I just build like my favorite kind of game that’s like already running in Flash on the desktop but in using web technology. So I uh built that. It took like a week and a half, like 10 days, and uh submitted the contest. Um, it didn’t win anything, but like I wanted a leaderboard in my game, but I didn’t have like the contest didn’t allow for using like servers. So, I was like, “Okay, no server. How do I get a leaderboard?” Well, at the time, like Twitter was becoming really popular in Sil Valley. So, I was like, “Okay, Twitter has this like open API. Anyone can post to it. Anyone can search the API.” So, I just like created this hashtag for the game and it added this like leaderboard component into my my game. And so, you would play the game, you would lose, you would post your score to Twitter and then it would appear sort of in the leaderboard. And uh so I shipped it and uh it just instantly went viral because all the people playing on the uh the contest would then post to Twitter and then their friends on Twitter would see and then like play it and post and and so on and so forth. And eventually someone saw it and posted it to Hacker News. But at the time, no one had really created a game using web technology and so it just instantly went to number one on Hacker News. >> So your your project has unexpectedly going gone on viral on Hacker News. Um so awesome. And I also wanted to hear your story from contest itself and then going on on Hacker News and also going into Silicon Valley from Tennessee to Silicon Valley. So, so what happened is it went to the top of Hacker News and like a year later, which is a little crazy, a year later, this Silicon Valley CEO emailed me. He was like, “Hey, I saw your game last year. Uh, we’re building with games using web technology. Here’s our like tech crunch fundraising article.” I was like, “Can we have a call?” And so I got on this call and then >> Were you using Skype back then or what was >> Yeah, it must have been Skype. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point. What happened to Skype? Come on. But no, he didn’t actually email me. He messaged me on GitHub. That was so long ago that GitHub had this like messaging feature that eventually killed it. >> And so we got on this call and he was like talking through what they did and he asked me about my game. And then he was like, “Yeah, so would you be interested in working together?” >> And I was like, “Oh, but I’m 15.” I was like, “Okay.” Like sure. So I was like, “Okay.” And so I did another like a couple interviews with his co-founders and then they basically I put him in touch with my parents. Then like their lawyers talked to our lawyers and we figured out legally speaking, how does a 15-year-old work in California and it’s legal. We made it work, but it was a little complicated. >> And so, uh, two weeks later, I flew over to Silicon Valley and, you know, I never really looked back. >> Um, I also wanted to hear, uh, what was your thought process and also your parents as well because >> you couldn’t know what the guy is. You know, he could be like a kidnapper or he could be a freak, right? Well, so funny story. So, I was obviously a little nervous. I was living with my parents. I was 15. I’d never been to California. I’d never worked. I I was I had a job as a lifeguard at the local pool, but like, you know, it’s a little bit different, right? So, >> uh I was a little nervous and unsure of like, should I do this? Should I not do this? My my parents were like this is an amazing opportunity. You just you should take it. I was like, okay, I guess like why not? >> And so, uh I flew out with my mom. But what I didn’t learn until like several years later is that she like went and had meetings with all the like the startup accelerator and the CEO and the co-founders and she was like like what are you going to do with my son? Like who are you? And she like did all this due diligence to make sure they were not like kidnappers and >> for sure. For sure. >> Yeah. So you know >> I wouldn’t say that’s something conventional even in the states right that’s pretty unique. >> Yeah. I mean, I I met a lot of people um who had like dropped out of high school, for example, and certainly a lot of people who didn’t go to college or or whatever, but like I never met anyone who had never gone gone to any school and like you know that was >> which made you really unique. >> Yeah. Somehow even in Silicon Valley, I was like the weird one, right? >> So, uh you got the internship, right? Um and I assume that your first internship internship or your first experience really shapes your future. So I would like to know what the internship was and what kind of inspiration in a positive way or a negative way that you have gotten. >> Well, so I had already been super interested in in tech. I was following Hacker News super closely, you know, to this day. I’m just like addicted to Hacker News, right, as a lot of people are. Uh, so going to Silicon Valley was like a dream of mine and I just I didn’t expect to happen so quickly, right? But when I got there, I was just like it was even better than I ever imagined. I met so many people who, you know, had so much in common with me and, you know, going to like the Google campus for lunch and like walking down the street seeing all these like startups that you, you know, you only hear about in the news outside of Silicon Valley was like incredible. And so I was just like, okay, I got to stay here. So I figured out how to stay there. That was the first thing I did. Just like I didn’t leave, right? I think since then I’ve been in startups working with startups and you know made a ton of founder friends and then just like that has shaped every aspect of my life since then. I think you know the first thing I did when I got to Korea was meet you at Startup Grind because I was like okay I love living in Korea but where is the Silicon Valley? How how do I find that here? And so you know that’s just shaped everything I’ve done since then >> I guess. So you you you talked about your internships and can you also briefly tell living with other kids or other students in the house in the dorm and how expensive it is in living in in San Francisco? >> Yeah. So, I was living in um Palo Alto, like California Avenue, and uh it’s just that was like the heart of heart of Silicon Valley. And it was like the two weeks before I got there, it was like a scramble to find a place for me to stay because there was no housing, no availability, nothing. And like there still isn’t there wasn’t then, there wasn’t now. And it’s like it just it’s always been terrible, right? And so the my startup um who hired me like scrambled to find like a friend of a friend. And so I ended up living with like four Stanford PhD students. I just had like a little room almost like a closet. I paid like $800 a month for that. Um which was an amazing deal, right? Like in Silicon Valley. >> I think what Teddy has just said really illustrate how it is important to be surrounded by like-minded people. It really cuz as humans we are like influenced so much about our surroundings. So because Ted Tay went to Silicon Valley and was surrounded by other founders and tech giants that really shaped his vision, his dream. So you know that really makes sense and that was his transition from Tennessee to Silicon Valley. But also the other big one is coming all the way crossing Pacific oceans and coming into Korea. But you know back in the days Korea was like an unknown I would say you know less unknown um country back then right? So you would people could think about coming to maybe going to UK or maybe I don’t know Europe or Japan or China. But what really made you to come to you know Korea back in the days? >> Well, it was sort of an accident because I just did an Asia tour with like my friends from Silicon Valley cuz like nobody really takes time off in Silicon Valley except in December. December is like the dead month. Everyone goes back home cuz like everyone’s not from the Bay Area, right? So, I just went with my like Korean-American friends and Taiwanese American friends to visit Seoul and and Taipei and like all these other places for a few weeks. But like after a week in Seoul, like I spent Christmas 2013 here, I was just like, “Oh my god, this place is the future. I got to like try living here.” That’s what I did. >> I mean, you never know what’s what’s going to happen. Um, so you you have done your Asian tour. Um, can you kind of compare I would say the differences between San Francisco, Tokyo, maybe Taipei, Korea or >> So, you know, coming from Tennessee, landing in like soul is like a crazy thing like I’ve never seen anything like the energy, the like the 24-hour like bustling craziness, the buildings like my uh you know, as an American, my like Airbnb I stayed at was built built by Samsung, like the the apartment complex. I was like, I didn’t know Samsung makes buildings, like you know, um it was just such a futuristic modern city, like compared to what I’d ever experienced before. Um but it felt very like comfortable. >> It felt very like sort of very similar to what I like it just didn’t feel different. Whereas I I went to Taipei and that was like way more different, like way more foreign for me. I just I could see myself, you know, living in soul potentially. >> Got it. Got it. >> And so that’s why I wanted to try. >> Before talking about your startup journey, um you also worked in a Korean company back back in the days, right? So how was the transition from working in an American company? >> Uh yeah, it was a it was a shocker. I learned a ton. I learned so much. Um I think, you know, there was so many interesting I learned so much. I think one really interesting thing that I took away is like in Silicon Valley a lot of stuff was theoretical. Now it’s a little bit less with AI, but like at the time so many startups would just like have zero users, right? Like startups would get funding with no users. That was like very normal. And then you would like build a bunch of products and pivot a bunch and then maybe eventually get users. I mean, that’s like a little bit of an extreme version, but it was very normal to not have users but still be like building products and companies in Silicon Valley, right? And in like in Korea, the fundraising environment would never allow for that. And so I learned so much about having like a high volume of users like in Korea. So I learned a lot about like scaling high scale production engineering systems. That was really cool. So I also wanted to hear your thought about having the mindset of of global. I mean is that something valid valid? I I’ll say like do you think there’s a thing that we call it is a having a global mentality or global mindset? >> Yeah, I think sometimes Silicon Valley doesn’t have a global mindset if you think about it right like Silicon Valley is such a bubble and they sometimes forget that like anyone exists outside of Silicon Valley and that causes their own set of problems. So I think having a global mindset is great for for both sides, you know, whether it’s Korea or Japan or Silicon Valley. It’s really about like empathy and nuance, right, for people around the world. >> Um, but Silicon Valley is its own sort of little very strange place. >> Yeah. >> In a in a good way. >> So, Silicon Valley could be a little bit unique because uh as Teddy said, it’s it’s it’s quite in their own bubble, but it has been their it has been the center of innovations and technology. So, it’s an exception uh in cases, but you know, every every country is in its bubble. So >> yeah, I think I think just the the more global you are, the more empathy you’re able to have and for just different, you know, countries and cultures and cities and and types of people. So I think that’s super valuable, especially when you’re trying to target the whole world. Like if you’re building a product, hopefully not everyone of course, but in many products like they can be uh truly global and target a worldwide audience and that’s going to generate the most value as a from a business. So there’s so much value in being able to sort of work that way. >> Do you have any knowhows for those who wanted to kind of break out from their local bubbles and have more local international mindset? >> I mean I think the internet is really good for this. So I was in the same position in a way like towards Silicon Valley. I was in Tennessee. Tennessee is like compared to Silicon Valley that’s like the same as soul, right? Like it’s so far away. And so for me, you know, the internet, there’s just so much opportunity that the internet provides there in terms of like um you know, you have Twitter, you have blogs, you have podcasts, you have YouTube, there’s so many resources and if you can stay on top of the highest signal and the bleeding edge for those sources, then I think you can go a really long way. But ultimately, the best option is to just go visit and and and see these different places. meet the different people there. Like don’t meet the, you know, Koreans in Silicon Valley. Like that’s the last thing anyone should be doing, right? And and just like immerse yourself in a different into these different environments. >> So Playo for those who don’t know the uh the story behind PLCO. I wanted to know how you guys came into one group and started doing you know having one mission. >> So we were all basically colleagues. we had worked together or worked like uh near each other. We were all like we all knew each other and uh we were all sort of working on similar things or had similar experiences. Um T, Justin, Michael and I, we all had worked in web games in various different ways and we all happened to be in Tokyo and we were all like friends with the same groups of people and we’re hanging out together and we were just like, hey, you know, we have sort of shared experience. we see we all see the same opportunity like why don’t we come together bring our teams together and like build something uh to to capture this opportunity and that’s really how play cod came together >> so before meeting in Tokyo you guys have known each other on online but you guys hadn’t spoken to each other >> no no I mean we um so Michael and I had met in Silicon Valley I think Michael and Justin had met like many times at different conferences and events um Take and Justin you know they both knew all the same people in Tokyo. Um, we just all were living in Tokyo at the time actually and so it was very natural that uh, you know, we came together that way. >> The reason you guys have met in Tokyo in Japan is because Japan is one of the largest market for games. >> Yeah. Japan’s the second largest like non-China gaming market, right? After the US. >> Is this even bigger than the States? >> No, no, second. Second. So, states is the first, Japan second. China’s China. And now we wanted to talk about more about AI and and your works. So because Teddy, you are the founder of your company um and nowadays AI could really execute everything. So I wanted to know um your ideal type of like if you’re hiring people like how has your your your eyes of how you are hiring that before AI and nowadays has changed. It’s a really interesting question that I’m thinking a lot about right now because I’m doing hiring. Um I am hiring and >> in Korea >> in anywhere in the world. >> Yeah. >> Is there a specific uh job title that you’re looking for any any >> product engineer? >> Product engineer. >> Yeah. So >> um hiring I think it’s really like the era of hiring is like sometime in the last 6 months has completely changed. It’s like what would we look for before and after? It’s it’s like totally different in some ways. In other ways, like we’re still looking for like good people like like people who are easy to work with, people who are senior, stuff like that has not changed. But >> for an engineer, for example, like we’re not going to be uh testing them on their coding anymore because nobody’s coding. >> So, you know, goodbye the coding interview. Maybe we still uh you know interview for architecture maybe. Um but in terms of like what kind of person we’re looking for, I think first of all, uh management is dead or maybe nobody really knows, right? Like a lot of this is being figured out as we go. And so um certainly I think that handsoff management is completely dead. >> So PCO, we always uh liked to hire hands-on managers. I always preferred that. Um but there was always a good case to be made in certain organizations for like why you would want to hire a hands off manager. Sometimes you need that. >> Um I think post AI I think that’s that need is gone. Um except for very extreme situations. So basically everyone’s everyone’s building. If you’re an engineering manager, you’re also coding except you’re not using AI to code, right? But point is um we’re looking for people who can build and they can build in to end. So, we’re not just hiring engineers to code anymore because coding is now such a tiny part of the job. What’s um what they’re actually what my engineers are spending time on now is more like defining the product, you know, creating specs, doing research, talking to the customers um and then building it and then like shipping it, testing it. So, we’re really looking for people who can build. And you can see this in big tech. Like big tech is killing they’re they’re like literally getting rid of all their middle managers. like rip that position. Even I’m coding now. I had to take a break for a few years from coding. Uh and now like thanks to AI, I can code for like 15 minutes a day and like get, you know, a ton done. Um it’s incredible. And so that’s really changed how we’re looking at who to hire for. We are hiring much we’re building much smaller teams um where the individuals on that team can do far more both from like an output perspective and like a far wider range of tasks. And so the kind of person that can do that who’s good at that is like very different um in some cases from the kind of person who would thrive in like the previous preai environment. >> Can you kind of walk us through uh like an interview space like how because everything you’ve said like coding is very technical. You can see what’s right and wrong but what you just said the shipping building also you know finding the right customers some senses is hard to see right. So how how do you test that person really has the capability? >> Dude, that’s like the number that’s a if you can answer that question for me like you know come work with me. >> Like I think what you’re describing is basically taste uh specifically product taste. Like does this person have good taste >> and that is like incredibly hard to um to test for. I think one way is to see what have they built before. Um, ideally what have they built by themselves like their personal projects, their portfolio, stuff like that and that is that if they have a good portfolio that’s a pretty good indicator that they have good taste. A lot of people don’t have a portfolio and do have still good taste. And so that’s like this is the number one challenge I would say. I mean it does make sense because before AI is you would have to work in a company to build stuff because you have to work with other you know people from designers or marketers or you know or product managers but now with AI you can basically build your own product and so there is no >> well I mean I would say like >> it’s it’s not that hard to have a portfolio even pre AAI had a portfolio pre AI but like you’re right now with AI if you don’t have a portfolio it’s like zero excuse like what are you doing come on takes five minutes to build a website in AI now like >> right >> have a portfolio I guess it’s a really good point you can just I I think one one thing a lot of companies do do and something we’ve done in the past is have like a take-home assignment where it’s like you know build something that’s related to the business and um you know if it looks good and feels good then that can also be a good indicator but it’s not like the full story >> sure I mean there is a huge transition especially in the tech industries But I was just thinking we have you know young teenagers in in schools but we we’re still taking like SAP SATs or exams really test your aptitude but which is quite you know outdated right uh it’s very far from what we’re seeing in the interview for tech companies and I can clearly see that this is also impacting non- tech industries as well maybe it’ll take many years that would you know influence the academia size but you know we are seeing the future right now. Um so I have a a bold questions which is quite and linked to this is that if someone can build a great product using AI which which means that it’s getting more difficult to retain top talents right because in the old days you would have to stick with a top you know team together because you couldn’t really build a product by yourself but now we’re seeing small teams are making great great stuffs right so let’s say there’s a huge like there’s very smart teams but Now that team can make their own stuff, you know, by themselves, then maybe that could leave your team. So, what’s your strategy to have top talents not to leave your company? >> Um, there’s been a lot of talk about like when is the first single person unicorn going to be created? Like when’s the first solo unicorn? We’ve already seen the first, I think, two person unicorn be created. And so, the solo first solo unicorn is is going to be very was coming soon. And so you’re absolutely right like the amount someone can do by themselves now is like unlike anything anytime it’s ever been before, right? But at the same time, the job market is not great and stability uh of building your own like thing >> and the the stress and the time and the effort that that takes it I think it’s not necessarily that simple, right? >> It is. It is. Yeah. Obviously. and and so yeah I mean so I think there’s that part which is like the sort of downside there’s like definitely a downside to going out and building your own thing. Um and you know if you’re up for the challenge great but like a lot of people are not going to be >> um on the other hand like the upside like what how do we make sure like let’s say someone was in that position how do we keep them? Um, I think it’s just to make sure that what we’re building is really exciting >> and really interesting. And so at Playo, I think we’re working on really exciting interesting things. Um, but I also try to make sure that everyone knows that like Playo is the best place in the world for them to be like staying on the very frontier, the bleeding edge of AI. So they’re not just like working at PLCO, they’re working at PCO and they are making they’re like getting a better education and better experience in AI than they could get anywhere else. And you know people care about that. >> Something interesting about PLCO is that you have a team that is across the globe. So not just in Korea, Teddy is in um you know is in Korea and and Tokyo, but your team is is you know is all over the place. So um I would like know how that full remote team works and does AI really kind of accelerate that or made it more easy for that or >> the AI hasn’t changed the remote aspect very much. Um you know people just have to have flexible schedules and we try to group teams based on time zones. So like Asia works with Europe and Asia works with America and like we don’t we try to have like avoid three time zones, three regions on one call for example, but we do a lot of like synchronous communication, a lot of like >> humanto human communication. And so um AI just makes everything else a lot easier, right? And uh it just enables like things like Fireflies like um you know transcription that’s been really beneficial for us >> um communication and we just have like a lot of agents doing work for us and >> and there’s a lot of ways AI has affected us but maybe not the remote aspect. >> Um I wanted to hear how an AI native company uh actually looks like and how it runs. Uh can you kind of walk through your your daily um routine? Yeah, I mean I don’t even know if we’re like I mean I think we’re doing okay, but like there’s always I guess you first of all you wake up with the question every day is like how can we be a more AI native? Like it never stops. Okay. Like so um I think though like a few ways we can define it is like everything is AI first. When people have a problem or people have a task or people have like a routine or something, they go to AI first. And that’s like if if everyone’s doing that consistently, then that makes a huge difference and that means you’re going to be on the forefront. But a lot of it is just like hard work, making sure