PeopleFun announced it has appointed Carol Miu as chief executive officer. Miu will succeed Tony Goodman as CEO. As one of PeopleFun’s co-founders alongside Angelo Laudon and John Boog-Scott, Goodman has led the company since 2011 to its remarkable success today with more than 30 million monthly active users (MAU) across PeopleFun’s games in 248 geographies. In 2018, PeopleFun was acquired by AppLovin and became a leading studio to the company developers of popular casual mobile games including Wordscapes and Word Stacks.
“I couldn’t be more excited to see Carol appointed as Chief Executive Officer of PeopleFun. She brings an extensive knowledge of product, data, and analytics to the role, and also offers a critical understanding of the importance of mentorship alongside an individual’s personal and career growth. I am confident she will continue to build upon PeopleFun’s success and lead the company to exciting new heights,” said Goodman.
Miu was the first employee on the product team at PeopleFun when she joined the studio in 2018 as senior director of product management, quickly advancing to vice president of product and analytics and, subsequently, chief product and analytics officer before becoming CEO. Under her leadership, Miu built and grew a team of product managers, data analysts, and user researchers, while tripling annual revenue from $100 million in 2018 to over $300 million in 2021. Through taking the lead in developing product roadmaps and features, and training the now product owners of every one of PeopleFun’s live game titles, Miu has been instrumental to the success of PeopleFun’s hit games like Wordscapes, which has over 230 million players to date.
“I’m looking forward to leading PeopleFun as CEO in our next stage of growth. My vision for the company is twofold: first, to develop more hit games through excellence at data-driven product innovation, striking the right balance between finding the fun and confirming through rapid iteration and testing that there is broad market appetite for our game ideas, and second, to become best-in-class as a workplace that invests in the professional development of employees, providing unique opportunities to learn and innovate,” said Miu.
“Anyone who has worked with Carol would recognize why she was selected and fully entrusted as PeopleFun’s new CEO. I know that as CEO, she will encourage and challenge her teams to push the boundaries of creativity, while also continuing to prioritise people’s growth as she’s done so extraordinarily over the past four years,“ said Boog-Scott.
Prior to PeopleFun, Miu was chief data Scientist at Yvolver, a Dallas tech startup developing turnkey VIP and missions systems for mobile game developers, which was acquired by AdColony in 2015. From late 2015 onward, Miu has led diverse, distributed teams in free-to-play mobile gaming first at Boss Fight Entertainment on the hit mobile roleplaying game (RPG) Dungeon Boss, then at Scopely as Lead Product Manager on The Walking Dead: Road to Survival. Miu graduated Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 and started her career as an economics litigation consultant in antitrust, intellectual property, and consumer law. In 2007, she earned her Master of Science in Business Management from the University of Maryland, College Park.