Three young Australian friends went ten days without sleep inventing a blockbuster game in the kitchen of a harbourside skyscraper before establishing a $3.5 billion crypto corporation.
Alex Connolly, together with his brothers Robbie and James Ferguson, ages 20, 21, and 26 at the time, labored night after night, all night, in the kitchen of a Barangaroo tower apartment in early summer of 2018.
Their objective was to create a game on Ethereum, the blockchain technology best known for the cryptocurrency Ether.
Five years later, Connolly is estimated to be worth $57 million and is the youngest member of the Australian Financial Review Young Rich List, while the Ferguson brothers are expected to be worth over $1 billion.
Alex Connolly (shown on the right) intended to become a lawyer, but his enthusiasm for video games led him to take a significant professional risk; he is now worth $57 million.
Three young Australian friends went without sleep for ten days while creating a blockbuster game in the kitchen of a harbourside building, and then went on to construct a $3.5 billion crypto corporation.
Connolly, who was a paralegal at Gilbert + Tobin when the three began all-night game development sessions, recalls that his daytime productivity plummeted since he was unaccustomed to having a “side hustle.”
He told the AFR, “I don’t have much of a hustle culture mentality.”
In addition, his primary concentration was an ambitious double degree in computer science and law at the University of Sydney, alongside classmate Robbie Ferguson.
In seven years, Alex Connolly went from a computer-obsessed high school student to the youngest person on AFR’s Young Rich List.
When he was unable to fit German, Greek, and Latin into his Year 11 schedule at Trinity Grammar, he substituted computer studies for German (Pictured, Connolly third from left)
In high school, Connolly, an exceptionally intelligent student from an accomplished family, acquired a fascination with playing computer games. Team Fortress 2 was a personal favorite, and it ultimately influenced the choice that made his fortune possible.
When he was unable to fit German, Greek, and Latin into his Year 11 schedule at Trinity Grammar, he substituted computer studies for German.
Using the knowledge he gained, he developed a program to convert the 2016 Federal election results into a feed so he wouldn’t need to constantly refresh the official election website.
In 2018, Alex Connolly and brothers Robbie and James Ferguson (shown second, third, and fourth from right) created games in the kitchen of a Barangaroo tower, which was the beginning of their path to create a billion-dollar technology company.
Connolly, Robbie Ferguson, and James Ferguson decided in 2018 to develop an Ethereum-based game that would allow players to own and exchange in-game things.
During his senior year at Sydney’s Trinity Grammar School, Connolly bought $1,000 for a virtual knife in the video game Counter-Strike. These assets were available for purchase, but there was no mechanism for trading them.
One of the first games created by the founders of Immutable X was Gods Unchained.
Guild of Guardians is another success story from the Immutable games studio.
Ferguson and Connolly abandoned their degrees in 2018 to work on a new project, as their new games Etherbots and Gods Unchained were gaining popularity rapidly.
It was Immutable X, which allowed players to own their non-fungible tokens (NFTS), and it would make them all wealthy.
Immutable X, which also makes video games, is the third most valuable private technology business in Australia, with a market value of $3.5 billion as of March 2022.
It has clients such as Disney and Marvel and employs over 300 individuals in 16 offices across the world. It is also riding the popularity wave of “web3” games, commonly known as “play-to-earn” games.
Connolly is the chief technology officer at Immutable, with a staff of 100 and an estimated net worth of $57 million.
He determines which goods Immutable X will produce next.
He is the youngest member of the Australian Financial Review’s Young Rich List for 2022 at age 24.
He added, “I believe one of the beautiful things about programming is that you can make things and have other people use them, and it’s incredibly scalable, so you can have a huge impact on many things at once.”
Based on their share in Immutable X, the Fergusons are believed to have a combined net worth of $1 billion.
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