Second Life

• Bill Gurley, from Benchmark Capital cold calls me. “Hi John, this is Bill Gurley” to talk about joining Second Life
• Meeting Philip Rosedale – Programs we wrote on computers in 8th grade.
• Credit card database hacked on my first day (also a board meeting day)
• Raising prices on the day before my second board meeting – generating $30m in cash over the next 12 months
• Publishing data as a way to market and grow –
• Ginsu Yoon’s Permit and Proceed letter (here and here)
• $1m in credit card fraud
• Shutting down in-world gambling and a blog post to stabilize the economy afterward
• Get pre-qualified by the SEC for an IPO for the revenue recognition methodology for the sale of an infinitely transferable good. “I’ve never fist bumped an accounting decision before.”
• Path to Profitability formulaically achieved – we hired 1 person for every 130 islands sold creating a path to profitability in 18 months.

Key Metrics in Second Life

• Here’s an article I wrote in December of 2006 about the key metrics. (PDF preserved here.)
• User Hours and concurrent users were correlated with every other metric in the business.
• 60% of Linden Lab’s revenue came from profitable in-world businesses
• The LindeX facilitated the exchange of about $7m USD worth of Linden Dollars per month
• Linden Lab would stabilize the exchange rate by selling $300k to $700k USD worth of Linden Dollars

1. Second Life, wikipedia.org
2. Key metrics in Second Life
3. MIT Technology Review
4. Second Earth June 2007,
5. Making Money in Second Life, an Interview with John Zdanowski August 2017
6. CNN
7. How money works in Second Life CNN Interview of John Zdanowski in 2006
8. Is Second Life Over Hyped? November 2006
9. CFO Magazine October 2007
10. Cover of Business Week
11. Accountancy Age Magazine Profile of Second Life Chief Financial Officer
12. Second Life Currency Crisis, The Street

• #philiprosedale (See: Philip Rosedale)
• #citizensofone (See: Citizens of One)