From Player to Founder: How Oliver Löffler Turned a Love of Gaming into a Multi-Million Dollar Acquisition
How speed, focus, and staying aligned with cofounders turned five students into industry leaders after building a hit in just 8 weeks.
As the big sister of a younger brother, I’ve witnessed firsthand the chokehold a great game can have. My brother and I logged way too many late nights running one more match that somehow turns into five.
So I set out to get into the mind of someone who’s built the kinds of games that cause those all-nighters—Oliver Löffler, gamer-turned-founder of Kolibri Games.
As the co-founder of Kolibri Games (formerly Fluffy Fairy Games), Oli helped turn a scrappy student team into a hyper-profitable mobile gaming studio, best known for Idle Miner Tycoon, a genre-defining title developed in just eight weeks using lean startup principles. In 2020, Kolibri was acquired by Ubisoft. Ubisoft owns famous games like Rainbow Six Siege, Starwars Outlaws, Just DanceAvatar Fronteirs of Pandora, Assassins Creed Shadows, among others. Since exiting the company, Oli has launched new ventures like Angry Dynamites Lab, exploring the future of Web3 gaming, and founded BLN Capital to invest in the next wave of builders.
In this conversation, we talk about everything from scaling pains to leadership lessons, why alignment beats ego, and why mastering AI might just be the ultimate superpower for the next generation.
Let’s start at the beginning. Before Kolibri, before the first lines of code—what was your relationship with games? Were you the kind of kid who got lost in worlds, or were you more interested in how they were built?
I was the kid who got lost in worlds. I’ve always been a gamer, even while still in college. I was always a consumer of games, so it’s a coincidence that I got into developing games as well.
Take us back to 2016 when you co-founded what was then Fluffy Fairy Games. What was the vision, and what drove you and your co-founders to take the leap?
I knew one of my co-founders for quite some time. We grew up in the same small town in southern Germany and studied together. He was launching startups on the side, completely different from gaming, like a motivation app. I was on my way to the grocery store when he texted me, "What do you think about making games?" I responded, "Let's try it." His previous co-founder joined, and we had two more co-founders, so five initially. We came together at our university to figure out what we wanted to build.
Other than your own games, What are your favorite games?
It changes, but right now I'm playing on mobile Archero 2. I like it a lot. And I think I will definitely try out the new Civilization game, which is on PC. It's a very old game, which releases new episodes every few years. I'm a huge fan of the series.
What are your thoughts on some of the mainstream games, like Fortnite?
They managed to turn a game into a platform and community. People are not just logging in to play a game, but to hang out with their friends, to perform actions, and so on. It's pushing the boundaries of how a game can turn into something more. This is very inspiring for me.
I’ve got the The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Idle Miner Tycoon was developed in eight weeks using a lean startup methodology. How did this development process influence the game's success, and what challenges did you face with such an approach?
Before Idle Miner Tycoon, we wanted to create a complex multiplayer game on mobile. We developed for around four to six months, but it was never finished or playable. At a meetup, someone told us it was complete bulls**t, tearing it apart. That woke us up.
We quit that game and took learnings from it, setting a deadline before we started our next project. We scheduled a release party before even starting to create pressure. It forced us to focus on the essentials. After eight weeks, we had the game ready, held the release party, and released it on app stores a few days later.
How important is it to move fast in development and building products?
It's important to get early validation quickly. You need feedback early to ensure you're on the right path. You should optimize everything for speed, especially in early product development. Later, quality standards might slow you down, but speed allows you to make more mistakes and learn faster.
Kolibri grew from a small team to over 100 employees and millions of players. What were the biggest growing pains?
We grew quickly after releasing Idle Miner Tycoon in 2016, reaching 15-20 people fast, which was manageable. Moving to Berlin in 2018 marked our hypergrowth phase, tripling from 30 to 90 employees in a year. Our processes and tools became inefficient. Establishing middle management was challenging. Our culture shifted, and we hadn't defined clear cultural values. We had to restructure teams into smaller cross-functional units and remodel the company.
How would you distill a leadership principle or lesson from that experience?
Don't blindly implement management book strategies. We read a lot of management books during the time and they helped us. But sometimes we were overshooting into what the books told us. It's essential to trust your intuition and adapt knowledge to your unique environment. The best advice comes from understanding your situation, not just following books.
What made Kolibri Games attractive to Ubisoft, and what was the turning point when you realized it was time to sell?
We were a highly profitable, bootstrapped company with a successful title in mobile idle games. Ubisoft was strategically expanding into mobile. After hypergrowth, we entered a slower growth phase and decided it was time to explore opportunities. We wanted a partner to help us reach the next level, including entering challenging markets like China.
What is your creative capital that helped you succeed?
Alignment among co-founders on clear objectives was crucial. We had no ego clashes, stayed focused, and didn't get distracted by short-term wins. Our book title, "Mach Keinen Quatsch," reflects our approach: stay focused, avoid distractions, and never give up.
As someone who successfully built and sold a company, what do you look for in founders when investing?
Early-stage investing is all about the founding team. Vision often changes multiple times, so execution and adaptability are key. Being fast, driven, and avoiding distractions are critical.
Tell us about Angry Dynamites Lab. What problem are you solving?
After leaving Kolibri, I explored Web3 gaming. Blockchain enables true ownership of in-game assets, allowing players to trade, sell, or use items across games. It’s still early technology, with technical, regulatory, and product design challenges. We're pushing the boundaries to innovate and solve these issues.
I'm 20 years old right now. In 10 years, I'll be 30. What do you think is the most valuable skill that my generation should master?
Mastering AI will give you an incredible advantage. It enables individual creators to do what previously required entire teams.