A few days ago, Forbes published an article by Jodie Cook titled “Meet the Multi-Millionaire Who Made His Life a Video Game (Then Played It)”.

It’s a strange experience to see your life refracted through someone else’s words: part mirror, part caricature, part love letter to the absurdity of it all.

Jodie describes me as someone who “turned his life into a video game, complete with levels, upgrades, and side quests.”

She’s not wrong.

The Game of Life

I’ve long seen life as a vast open-world sandbox: equal parts Zelda, SimCity, and The Legend of Fabrice Trying Not to Take Himself Too Seriously.

In business, I’ve invested in more than a thousand companies and built several successful venture backed startups. In life, I’ve collected experiences: kiting in turquoise lagoons, heli-skiing in Revelstoke, falling in love, failing forward, building again.

To me, the “game” isn’t about scoreboards or leaderboards, it’s about freedom. The ability to choose your quests. To create your own story.

To step off the main road and follow the side path simply because it feels alive.

The Real Cheat Code

Forbes captured something I’ve been circling for years: you can design your life as consciously as a great game designer builds a world.

You can balance risk and reward, curiosity and rest, ambition and play.
You can even lose a few lives and respawn, wiser, if slightly more sunburnt.

But the real cheat code, the one I wish someone had handed me in my twenties — is this:
Don’t grind levels you don’t enjoy.

If you’re chasing status or validation, you’re playing someone else’s game.
The fun begins when you start listening to your own internal compass, when the quest becomes exploration itself.

Behind the Scenes

When Jodie reached out for the interview, we talked less about money and more about meaning, about how I see investing as world-building, and entrepreneurship as art.

We laughed about how absurdly meta it feels to “gamify” something as unquantifiable as happiness.

But perhaps that’s the point: the metrics aren’t points; they are presence.

So yes, I’ve built my life like a video game.
But the real win condition?

To play joyfully.
To love deeply.
To never forget you’re the one holding the controller.

Read the full Forbes article here: Meet the Multi-Millionaire Who Made His Life a Video Game (Then Played It)
(Published November 7, 2025; written by Jodie Cook for Forbes)