Michael Reichert, originally from Kassel, Germany, studied political science and economics before embarking on a career journey that led him to the gaming industry. After completing a year of work and travel in Canada and the U.S., he settled in Hamburg and worked in consulting. However, he was always interested in technology, and found an opportunity at Goodgame Studios – at the time, a newly founded free-to-play gaming studio. He acted as an in-house consultant and supported their transition from web to mobile gaming. After a steep learning curve, he learned a lot about the mobile gaming market during those years. Michael then went on to found Sviper, a mobile gaming studio, which was later sold to Sandbox Games.
Now the CPO at Exmox, he uses his ability to simplify complex topics and his passion for technology to lead the company’s product and data departments. Read on to learn more about his leadership role, daily tasks, and advice he’d give to those also wanting to become tech leaders.
How does your role as CPO differ from other leadership positions on the tech side, like tech lead or the CTO?
The CPO position fulfills multiple roles. You are leading a product, which means the product vision, what features we want to implement, and what the impact of those features will be.
But the CPO is not actually in control of the people who execute what you would like to implement. I work closely with the developers, which are typically very tech focused. And my job is to explain why we should do something to the product in the first place. One of the key responsibilities of a CPO is to find this balance between what you believe is best for the product and how you manage everyone involved in this process: developers, data engineers, data scientists, data analysts, customer support.
I create a feedback cycle of what I believe is right for the product, how we implement it, how users react, and then I close the loop by giving feedback into the team to create motivation and identification with the product.
What are some leadership values that you incorporate into your team?
It really depends on the style of the company – the general company culture and the mindset of the company. I still consider Exmox to be, to a certain degree, kind of a startup company even if we are in a scale-up phase.
Since we are in a startup culture, we require our colleagues to be independent and forward-thinking. So my leadership style is to give the power into the hands of the team and let them make decisions.
It’s a very trust-based process and everyone is responsible for a smaller or bigger part of the product. I take a very bottom-up leadership approach rather than top-down.
In your day-to-day work life, do you have a favorite task that you always look forward to?
My absolute most favorite task is to see something we developed as an idea, and how it enhanced our product. We are very user focused, so implementing an experiment and quantifying the impact is one of my favorite things. We can see which addition lets users have more fun, engage with our apps longer, and have a better user experience.
What also sparks a lot of joy is moderating agile team meetings. Moderating in a product management position is a challenging yet rewarding experience – it means that we have refinements where we meet as a team and look at tickets while discussing how to execute them.
When we reach the point where we’re all seeing on the same level, as I want to understand the processes and technical side of things, it really pushes the team forward a lot.
How has your role at exmox changed over time?
I’ve had three distinct phases in my role as CPO. When I first joined, we were focused on building up infrastructure and hiring great people to really set a good foundation. In the second phase, we had the resources but needed to distribute responsibilities and improve our products. And now, in the third phase, we are focusing on exciting new developments!
How do you spend a typical day?
It always starts with our daily standup with the whole development team. We give updates on what we’re focusing on, what is blocking us in our mission during the sprint, and how we can proceed. After our standup, it depends on what part of the sprint we’re in, but in general I then have meetings to discuss future implementations with designers or developers or the CTO. We think ahead to what comes next and how we need to prepare to implement it.
As this is a C-level position, I have some alignment with the management team on our in-office days to make sure we’re all caught up on developments. When there is some time between meetings and alignments, I spend the time in front of my PC actually writing the tickets we are going to implement in the future or outlining bigger redesigns of the product. Sometimes I’m even thinking about a year from now and working to break it down into every single piece, while thinking about expected impacts, hypotheses, and of course KPIs.
What’s been one of your favorite parts about working at exmox?
Absolutely the opportunity to work on new products with flexibility. Our CEO, Caglar, is not only one of my best friends but also a really good CEO because of his leadership style. Me and the CTO are given full responsibility, flexibility, and trust to decide what to do and how to do it. In today’s working world, it is rare to find this opportunity.
What makes exmox special?
We work at the intersection of two of the fastest growing industries in the world, which are gaming and advertising. Both of these are not as affected by general economic crises, and mobile gaming continues to grow tremendously – even bigger than the movie industry! The technology around performance marketing is also growing a lot, and so getting to combine these two industries is very unique.
I also enjoy working closely with some of the biggest game developers on the planet, and specifically helping them acquire really motivated and highly engaged users for their world-class mobile games.
What’s your favorite thing about coming to work?
I have never worked in a company where you stand in front of people and there isn’t a feeling of judgment – until exmox. People here are not judgemental, they are focused on your job and not your language skills, how you look, or how you express yourself. It’s a very open-minded and friendly environment.
Where do you see the future of exmox going?
I see exmox becoming a global player in the mobile gaming ad technology space, and I’m especially looking forward to the next 2 years – we have a great foundation to build off of!
If you could give advice to someone wanting to work their way up in tech leadership, what would you say?
If you have an opportunity in front of you that you would like to pursue, do it! Even if you’re taking a pay cut, it’s more important to work in an industry that is worth something to you. Take opportunities, even small ones in your daily life. If you are asked to present something, do it and get out of your comfort zone. You can’t lose, and in fact, you will actually always win.
Always taking the opportunities that come your way has been the biggest lesson in my career.