Razer’s triple-headed snake trademark is one of the most recognizable logos in global gaming.
People tattoo logos on themselves. They get really passionate about it.
The brand’s success has catapulted the company’s CEO and co-founder Min Liang Tan to the top
of his country’s young billionaires list, earning him a cult-like following in the process.
And now, the gaming enthusiast is pivoting part of his tech business to help with the
coronavirus relief efforts.
We’re now producing face masks. We're donating up to a million globally.
All while more people than ever pile onto his platform as they attempt to stay entertained at home.
In recent times, with the whole Covid situation, we could see gamer activity just skyrocket.
Everyone’s stuck at home and we could see more gamers come online than ever before.
Singapore-born entrepreneur Min Liang first brought Razer to market with his co-founder
Robert Krakoff in 2005.
Today, the multimillion-dollar business covers the gaming ecosystem, from hardware such as
keyboards and laptops, to a global software network with 80 million registered users.
The company has even released limited edition products like a car and a toaster,
which is currently under development.
But when Min Liang Tan quit practicing the law at Singapore’s Supreme Court to embark
on a journey of entrepreneurship, his ambitions were hardly that great.
I did the whole go through law school, become a lawyer, practice for a little.
But I think all throughout I've always been a gamer, I’ve been playing games all the time.
And when you’re a gamer, you’re usually super competitive; it’s all about
how do I get that competitive advantage?
We said ‘is there a possibility for us to build a better mouse?’ All we wanted to
do was to be able to compete with the rest of the gamers out there.
So Min Liang and Robert, a fellow gamer, rallied their friends online to create what they dubbed
as the world’s first gaming mouse, focused on precision and speed.
I think we did this in the very early years of crowd sourcing.
I wouldn’t even call it crowd sourcing. But online, we would have friends
from a whole variety of different backgrounds.
We got together with industrial designers, mechanical engineers, electronic engineers.
From the humble beginnings of that first mouse was born a whole family of gaming products
named after snakes and spiders.
But the founders didn’t stop at hardware.
In the 15 years since, Razer, now headquartered in both Irvine, California and Singapore,
has also expanded into producing software and other gaming services.
Essentially our core business is an entire ecosystem. We’ve got the hardware piece,
where we’ve got peripherals and laptops. And we’ve got the software platform.
So on a software platform, we’ve got gamers everywhere using our free software.
After creating this hardware and software platform, we said ‘how do we monetize on top of it?’
So we created a virtual credit called Razer Gold, which is being used by game companies,
streaming services, and we provide them a platform to be able to monetize their digital content.
So that’s our services business.
It wasn’t a bad shout. The games industry has been growing rapidly over recent years
to represent the largest segment of the entertainment industry.
In 2019, the global games market was estimated to have generated revenues of $148.8 billion,
up 7.2% from 2018.
By 2022, it is forecast to grow to $189 billion.
That growth will be led by a rise in mobile
gaming, including tablets, which is set to account for almost half of the market.
Today when we realize that this entire thing is a multibillion-dollar industry we go like
wow, it’s kind of grown a bit.
A little bit.
Meanwhile, the recent coronavirus outbreak has seen a spike in the number of people going
online as they stay indoors, which Min-Liang said could speed up the growth of the industry.
So what would be your predictions for what entertainment could look like in five years or so?
Ourselves, we are a stay at home kind of company, where we are taking care of all the gamers
who are at home or on the mobile phones and stuff like that.
Covid has really accelerated this five-year plan to a much shorter timeline because everyone
right now who’s stuck at home is really looking at how do I be more productive
with the working from home? Over and above, how do I get entertained?
Min-Liang wants to capitalize on that by expanding into a range of entertainment services.
Even before the virus outbreak, Razer started acquiring a range of businesses to support
that drive, including director George Lucas’ audio company THX.
Now, Min-Liang is experimenting with cloud clubbing to entertain people stuck in their homes.
Now we’re going to be working with clubs to bring clubs streaming live to the masses.
That's what’s happening.
We see this ultimate potential convergence to be happening in the next couple of years,
probably accelerated with the whole Covid situation at this point of time.
Esports has been massive and I think especially with what’s happening at this juncture,
you’re seeing traditional sports become esports.
So we’ve been pushing this whole narrative of a holistic entertainment experience,
completely immersive, and with ourselves as that platform to deliver it.
Min Liang’s vision in e-sports has attracted numerous investors at a time when the industry
was still relatively nascent.
Over the years, Razer has raised an estimated $175 million from investors including Intel,
Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-Shing's Horizon Ventures, and Singapore’s state-owned funds GIC and Temasek.
In November 2017, the company went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,
raising $528 million and making Min Liang, then 40, Singapore’s youngest self-made billionaire.
I spoke to Sahiba Puri, a home and technology analyst at Euromonitor International, to find
out more about the industry’s rise.
Video gaming has been there in the industry, but the kind of viewership that they’ve
been able to garner in the past few years it's kind of what is making them go more mainstream.
Gaming and esports in itself is becoming an entertainment option.
A lot of brands and portals are understanding that, and just in the past few years the level
of investment that we see flowing in has increased drastically.
That growth is primarily split between North America and Asia,
home to Razer’s headquarters and retail stores.
In 2019, almost half of global gaming revenues were estimated to have been generated in Asia Pacific,
up nearly 7% from 2018.
Over a quarter were from North America, up about 8% from the year before.
The growth of the gaming industry has attracted major tech players.
Last year, Google unveiled a cloud gaming service called Stadia, while Samsung teamed up
with a subsidiary of Finnish gaming developer Rovio for a similar service.
Razer is a brand that’s synonymous in the esports world. It’s one of the pioneers in the field.
But we also see a lot of non-endemic brands, such as Coca Cola, Nike, State Farm, Adidas,
who are getting behind sponsoring such events and esports in particular.
I would say it’s quite a pivot from just a few years ago when video gaming was considered
to be quite a niche category.
Esports, or competitive video gaming, is forecast to become a $1.1 billion industry this year.
In 2019, it attracted a global audience of 443 million, of which 198 million
were considered enthusiasts.
By 2023, that audience is forecast to grow to 646 million, of which 295 million will
be considered enthusiasts.
We definitely see mobile gaming and video games, in particular, online gaming,
experiencing a spike during this time.
Min-Liang, known for his characteristic black tee and blue jeans combo, and army of loyal
fans, has drawn comparisons to Elon Musk and Steve Jobs.
However, his unrelenting work ethic has also given rise to criticisms over his management style.
To be able to make things happen, you tend to want to push everyone to their potential,
and oftentimes you realize that we are able to do a lot more than we think we are able to do.
That includes tapping into new industries, such as financial technology.
Min Liang now intends to expand its existing payments platform, Razer Pay.
It is competing with other giants including Alibaba’s Ant Financial and Grab
for one of five digital banking licenses in Singapore.
We see Singapore as a great location, I am Singaporean, to kick things off. But ultimately
the vast majority of the youth, and where our brand extends to, is global.
A lot of our digital payments initiatives are actually out of the emerging markets,
Southeast Asia, Middle East, Latin America, so from these areas, today, we actually have
one of the largest offline to online payment networks.
With an arsenal of products and services to its name, Razer today has moved well beyond
gaming, positioning itself as a multifunctional “youth and millennial brand.”
But, ultimately, Min Liang is proof you can take the man out of gaming, but you can’t
take gaming out of the man.
I kind of look at it like a gamer always. It's always about the next challenge,
what’s ahead. We very rarely look backwards.
But still, at the end of the day, it’s about fun. I mean we’re looking at building a bank!
Who’d have thought?
Like what next? But it’s this hyper-focus on a single group of users,
and that’s what we’re really good at.
We understand the youth, we understand the millennials really well, and we build everything
around that single user.