SPEAKER_00: Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. We've got an awesome Friday for you. First up, I sit down with Frost Giant Studios CEO, Tim Morton to talk about the business of online gaming. He worked on one of my favorite games ever StarCraft two. And

SPEAKER_01: so we go deep into real time strategy. And it was just an amazing discussion that got me really interested Molly and potentially investing in video games.

SPEAKER_03: Maybe people should make a bubble. And of their video game pitch and send it to you because that's a very visual pitch that we'd want to see be great. Great. That is just an absolutely great conversation. And it's pretty darling, actually, to hear Jason like geek out on video games, which does not happen. That's very often. And then of course, we have another edition of everybody's favorite. Okay, Boomer with producer

SPEAKER_07: Rachel. It's gonna be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Policy Genius. You could save 50% or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with Policy Genius. Head to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC 2 report fast. Twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com slash twist. And Intercom. If you're an early stage high growth startup, you can get access to Intercom's early stage academy today at a 95% discount. Join the program today at bit.ly slash early stage 22 or email

SPEAKER_09: them at startups at intercom.io. Okay, everybody, I'm really excited about our

SPEAKER_11: next guest. We don't talk too much about video games here on this week in

SPEAKER_01: startups, because the video game industry has become a bit of a giant conglomerate business, right? You have these giant conglomerates, they make all

SPEAKER_12: these big games, the games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. And it's kind of left its startup roots. But our guest today is very much involved in a startup called Frost Giant Studios. He's the CEO, co founder, and the production director. But we had Nolan Bushnell on the show, the founder of Atari back on episode 282. That was 10 years ago in August of 2012. I met him when I was in LA. Really great guy. If you don't know Atari, that was sort of the beginning of not only, you know, the video game industry pong becoming a major cultural force in our lives as humans. But it also was the start of Sequoia Capital very famously Sequoia was the only company that backed Atari Atari was unbackable. But Sequoia Capital back in its early days, was able to back the crazy concepts that Nolan

SPEAKER_14: Bushnell was working on. And it was pretty radical. I mean, people were smoking pot, they were doing business and hot tubs. It's a pretty crazy story.

SPEAKER_12: You can go watch twist at 282. But Atari eventually got a deal with they're making arcade games, you know, basically put a quarter in them. And that's how I grew up. Our guest today also had the Atari 2600 like I did. And I actually had the first version of the Atari 2600, which came because Sequoia Capital pressured Nolan Bushnell to do a deal with Sears to make a Sears version of the 2600. And that became, you know, this one of the great investments of all time for Sequoia. I also put the video game industry on the map. Well, today's guest Tim Morton, he worked on one of my favorite video games of all time, Starcraft, specifically Starcraft two, which still has an amazing, amazing group of loyal fans, as people have moved to first person shooters, etc. The category of real time strategy, also the extension tower defense, which became very popular on iPads, and iPhones is, I think, one of the most beloved categories. And also, I believe the most sophisticated of all genres of video games, that's just me. But I'm super excited to have him here because he's got a new game coming out. And it's a startup that he's working at not just a studio, you know, working for some big giant EA. So welcome, Tim. Thank you so much for having me on. Hey, Tim. So you heard my little preamble there, my introduction of you, you, like myself, got your start in video games with the Atari 2600. When did you get your Atari 2600? And what was your first game? Because I know it

SPEAKER_17: came with tank, but I'm not sure if that was the first game you played. Oh, wow. Yeah, I actually I had, there, there was another pretty sure

David Friedberg: it was an Atari box, even before 2600 with breakout on it, that had a dial.

SPEAKER_20: Yes, the dial pad. It was just breakout.

David Friedberg: Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_23: I think it had Pong, too. I think it had those two. But yeah, so God only knows what year that was, though. It's been a long time.

SPEAKER_12: Probably 77, 78, right? And then you got into video games. Your first job was, Activision, if I, uh, if my research is correct, makers of, uh, what was the, um, great Raiders of the, uh, lost are pitfall. That was another seminal cultural touchstone, I guess, in video games, but, uh, you went to work and what did you work on at Activision when you, when you went there?

SPEAKER_23: The first thing I worked on there was return to Zork, which was a

David Friedberg: graphical version of the text adventure that had been so popular from infocom back in the day. Um, but yeah, then mech warrior two, which

SPEAKER_30: was kind of giant fighting robots, but a lot of fun memories for sure.

SPEAKER_32: Like, like transformers, uh, or, you know, max from Japanese culture.

SPEAKER_12: When did you first get exposed to the concept of real time strategy? Yeah. And why is this the most elegant and best genre of video games?

SPEAKER_36: It's a leading question. I think you and I feel this way. I'm not sure everybody does. I didn't start my video game experience with real time strategy. You know, we, we talked about breakout and Pong and pitfall and all of these simpler games. I

SPEAKER_38: remember when I was working at Activision, there was someone there, uh, in James

SPEAKER_39: Van Holt, who I actually work with now at Frost Giant, but he was at Activision with me at that point in time. And he had worked on a real time strategy game and he was showing me a real time strategy game on his PC. And it just looked so intimidating to me. There

SPEAKER_38: are all these buttons on the screen or, you know, multiple units instead of just the single character that you're used to in most video games. And so I, I was a little scared to try it, but once I finally got sucked in and understood the strategic aspects of the game, um, that it's as much about thinking as it is about reflexes, um, I just got hooked. It's really fantastic.

SPEAKER_12: What game was that? And maybe you could explain to people what the core device of real time strategy is.

SPEAKER_23: That game was an early build, I guess, of, of Warcraft two. So Warcraft two was, uh,

SPEAKER_39: just launching at the same time that James and I were working together and real time strategy, you collect resources, use those resources to build a base on a map, use that base to build an army, and then you field that army against your opponent. And your objective is

SPEAKER_36: to destroy their base and destroy their army so that you can conquer the map base.

SPEAKER_43: Yes. And if you think about just from the, once you have the pieces and the map, that's kind of chess.

SPEAKER_14: But if you think about before that, what if chess included, you had to build your Queens or pawns and you had to upgrade them and you know, how many pawns should you make versus how many nights you could create, you could see this be changing the game forever. In fact, that would be kind of an interesting, uh, real time strategy diversion. If somebody made the real time, uh, version of chess,

SPEAKER_01: there were another, there were a couple of other moments along this trajectory. The one that the ones I remember from the nineties, when we started having land parties, because this is when games

SPEAKER_45: became very social, I believe, uh, was real time strategy, age of empires command and conquer with the next two, I remember, and I don't have the perfect history of this, but I remember the first land parties, even before people were really using the internet, you would just bring an ethernet hub,

SPEAKER_46: you connect four computers, people would bring their rigs, and we would just play command and

SPEAKER_01: conquer overnight, basically. Um, maybe you could speak to when these, you know, the impact of socialization and networking and teams had on these.

SPEAKER_39: Absolutely. Yeah, I guess we're in roughly 1995. At this point, where command and conquer one and and warcraft two came out and, uh, blizzard had this pretty cool feature with their games. Cause we were on CD rom by this point in time, um, that if you took the CD, um, you could play with friends who hadn't even bought the game yet in a network match. Uh, and they just supported that by default out of the box. So I think some of my first experiences were playing network games with friends after work. And that social aspect is something that we've come to take for granted in games today.

SPEAKER_38: It's just built into all games, but yeah, this was a moment in time where that social aspect was just

SPEAKER_14: coming into being, uh, in working at that period, 95, 2000, 2005 era in video games, there was,

SPEAKER_01: it had moved from being startup culture, I think, to becoming larger companies and then larger companies, I believe would then hire studios to build games for them. Maybe you could explain how the industry sort of changed from the startup culture of the early nineties to maybe the studio structure. Uh,

SPEAKER_46: I, I think as a neophyte in terms of how this industry has grown in the two thousands.

SPEAKER_23: Yeah, that's an accurate, uh, description. Um, there has always been a sense in the video game

SPEAKER_39: industry of platform holders. And in the simplest example, that would just be, you know, Apple has a platform, Microsoft has a platform, but also these days, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, uh, have console

SPEAKER_38: platforms as well. So there's that sense of first parties who control hardware, but also then, um, produce a certain amount of software for that hardware. Uh, and then third-party publishers like

SPEAKER_39: Activision, Electronic Arts, or today Ubisoft take two, uh, who are these bigger companies who, as you,

SPEAKER_38: uh, referenced do often hire outside companies to develop for them, but then they'll also have some internally owned studios that produce software. Uh, and then last but not least are the independent

SPEAKER_53: studios, uh, who traditionally were published by those bigger companies, either first party or third party. Uh, these days it's now possible to also self publish. Trust me, getting life insurance can

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SPEAKER_59: point as a startup before frost giant, which we'll get into in a moment with all the exciting new stuff

SPEAKER_14: you have coming. What was that experience life? Cause it always seemed to me that that was a somewhere between a tough and a horrible business to run because you were at basically the mercy of giant studios who would, you know, could change their minds on a whim. And you were basically doing work for higher work. You don't own the IP you're building stuff for them. And you're kind of just on a treadmill, if you will. So maybe you could tell me your experience as a startup the first time around.

David Friedberg: That's a great question. I went into that startup very naively having only worked at Activision,

SPEAKER_39: you know, a big publisher prior to that. And, uh, I think didn't understand at that point, exactly how

SPEAKER_38: much leverage publishers had over developers who were working for them. And, uh, that startup ran for a dozen years. So it wasn't, um, you know, an overnight learning experience. There definitely was

SPEAKER_39: time invested, but it was during that whole time, a struggle to keep the company cashflow positive. It relied on work for hire deals from bigger publishers that generally on a month to month

SPEAKER_38: basis have milestones and they get to exert a lot of editorial control over those milestones,

SPEAKER_39: but also a lot of financial control on the company by deciding to pay or withhold payment,

SPEAKER_61: um, for milestones. So it's a very insecure business model, uh, for game studios.

SPEAKER_12: And really no upside. I mean, you don't own the IP. It's not like you can hit a home run. So you're

SPEAKER_00: essentially a startup that doesn't get the benefit of the outsized return that a startup can get. So you're independent, but you're on this very short leash. It's just sounds like an incredibly, uh, anxiety producing, uh, proposition.

SPEAKER_23: Definitely anxiety producing. There are success stories though. I think, um, you know, the lure that keeps you

SPEAKER_39: going is the hope that you can create original intellectual property, um, your own game that gets picked up by a publisher. Uh, and certainly there are examples of developers during that period. Bungie, for example, uh, was one who were able to successfully create original intellectual property

SPEAKER_38: and, and go big. There were also examples of working on licensed products, um, that sold very well

SPEAKER_39: and generated royalty. Um, so kind of like Vegas where everybody knows a winner, but most of the

SPEAKER_53: companies in this space are, uh, just struggling to put in the next quarter.

SPEAKER_67: Uh, so at some point you wind up going to, uh, Blizzard, which owns Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2

SPEAKER_46: was the business model was you, you buy the product, right? You spend 50, 60 bucks to buy

SPEAKER_45: Starcraft. You can play it, but they decided, uh, to shift it to free, uh, to play. Uh, I think that was under your direction and upselling people on all kinds of cosmetic stuff and chess and, and other,

SPEAKER_14: you know, in game stuff. Talk to me a little bit about Starcraft to the extent you can,

SPEAKER_12: because obviously it's not your company, but it seemed to me, uh, being a Starcraft player,

SPEAKER_14: Protoss, uh, Protoss, Protoss, uh, for a long time. I just love playing that. Even as an adult into my forties, I would just, you know, if I want to blow off a little steam, just play some heads up matches, play some two V two, whatever. Um, the game didn't change all that much, but still super compelling. And then I would try other games. And I just always come back to Starcraft 2 or some age of empires old title I had on my computer, which looked terrible. They just came out with age of empires four and they redid it. And it's fricking fantastic.

SPEAKER_70: Alexis Ohanian. Um, you know, the Reddit co-founder, he also plays it. We're supposed to get on some

SPEAKER_01: heads up matches, but it is incredible that these titles have not changed dramatically, but still have this incredible base of loyal users. Maybe you speak to why that is.

SPEAKER_39: Over the years in video games, there are some genres, um, that have just remained seminal and

SPEAKER_38: first person shooters would certainly be in their, um, platformer games, often console games, but I, I think it's fair to say that real-time strategy is one of those genres that remains seminal. There's something so fundamental about the mechanics of real-time strategy that it inspires great passion, certainly in me as a player, but also as a developer. Um, and there's an audience of people who have just stuck with it over the years. Alexis actually came to speak at, uh,

SPEAKER_72: Blizzard at one point as well. So I know he's an avid, uh, gamer for sure.

SPEAKER_50: There are tens of millions of people playing these type of games, millions of people playing

SPEAKER_00: real-time strategy every day. What, what does the recent market research say? Because you must have

SPEAKER_75: done some research to then go start frost giant. And we'll talk about your new game that you just announced in a moment.

SPEAKER_39: The size of market, it's tough because it's fragmented between different games, command and conquer, age of empires, and Blizzard's got Warcraft and Starcraft RTSs. Blizzard certainly

SPEAKER_53: had tens of millions of RTS players that believe Microsoft also does with, uh, age of empires franchise, uh, command and conquer. Likewise, how much Venn diagram overlap there is between all of those players, hard to say, but what's really fascinating about genres like this is the potential

SPEAKER_39: to reach a broader audience. And so you look at other examples, uh, recently there was a game called Elden Ring, um, that took a much more narrow audience, um, from the Dark Souls series and expanded it, um, to a more mainstream audience. Another great example would be MOBA as a genre, um, which actually came out of real-time strategy, but it was sort of a mod of a real-time strategy game. Explain what that is. Yeah. Uh, so MOBA games are team versus team games and they have a similar, similar camera perspective to

SPEAKER_79: real-time strategy. Um, MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. And so...

SPEAKER_23: Like League of Legends falls into this, I think? This, this is exactly the example I was going to. League of Legends, uh, you know, publicly said they

SPEAKER_38: hit over a hundred million monthly active players. And so this is an example of something that came from a much smaller audience, like real-time strategy. Literally the genre came from real-time strategy and expanded it in a way that reached a hundred million monthly active players. So, uh, I think a lot of potential exists for genres with passionate fan bases like this to, to go big. And that's what we're hoping to do. Mm-hmm .

SPEAKER_83: So tell me a little bit about, um, starting your company. And before we get there, Starcraft 2

SPEAKER_14: became incredibly popular in Korea, South Korea, of course, um, for some reason, uh, I don't know the history of that or why, but I do know I went to Korea 15 years ago to meet with Daum and Naver and was doing some business development there. And I went to my hotel and I'm flipping through the

SPEAKER_01: channels and I see Starcraft on TV. And then I flip the channel again and there's a second Starcraft channel. And then I flip it again. There's a, there were like three channels of people watching Starcraft and I think one of them was live and the other ones were replays. Esports seems to have, correct me if I'm wrong, was Starcraft the birth of Esports and why does real-time strategy work so

SPEAKER_67: well for watching as a, you know, person watching this, uh, unfold?

SPEAKER_39: Yeah, I, I, so real-time strategy played a very important role in, in the birth of Esports. And certainly there are other games that also played a role, but Starcraft was a very important part of, of the formation of Esports. Um, originally I, my theory is that, uh, being a top-down camera perspective and I think being visually intuitive, meaning that you see a big army, you kind of understand that's powerful. You see units in that army that are large shooting scary weapons. Like you don't have to play the game to understand what's going on when you watch a real-time strategy game. And obviously if you do play the game, there's a lot of nuance that you appreciate that a casual observer might not, but my wife who is completely not a gamer, uh, comes to Esports matches with me and still has a really good time because she can just look at it and intuitively understand what's going on. Uh, so I think that's a big part of it. Korea in particular, and this goes back to Starcraft Brood War, um, there was something about the game and about the universe that resonated culturally in Korea that was not planned. Um, and, uh, you know, if we could kind of bottle the magic that caused that to happen, um, of course, it would be amazing to reproduce with another game, but something about Starcraft struck a chord in Korea that, you know, even people who don't play games because it was on television are familiar with the characters in Starcraft and just, you know,

SPEAKER_38: come to Esports matches in huge crowds. There are these shots of Busan Esports matches where, uh, the crowd is just a sea of people. It's incredible to watch.

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SPEAKER_14: was such a great opportunity. I invested in that round. So here is the best part. Vanta is going to give you $1,000 off. I kid you not. They're going to give you $1,000 off at Vanta.com slash twist. That's Vanta, V-A-N-T-A dot com slash T-W-I-S-T for $1,000 off your SOC 2. And there seems to be a coinciding with this was a massive change in the business model from buy the CD for 60 bucks to just download it and start playing and we'll figure out how to make money off you later. You'll want to buy a better gun. You'll want to buy some skins. How big of an impact

SPEAKER_23: has that had on the gaming industry? There was this phenomenon even in the days of

SPEAKER_39: CD-ROM releases where players didn't want the game to just stop being developed when the disc came out. And as developers, certainly when the business model is get whatever it is, $50, $60 for a disc and then move on to the next one, your incentive is as soon as you ship this one, stop working on it and focus on the next $50 or $60 disc that you're going to be able to sell. So it took a while for the industry to understand what players wanted, which was they found a game they love. They wanted more content for that game. And so things like downloadable content DLC started happening where there was a smaller pack of content post release for a game. And slowly we moved towards distribution of content through the internet, which meant that people didn't even have to go to a store. Now they could download content updates online. And this opened the door to smaller and smaller, more granular pieces of content getting delivered. And so really, even from the CD days, there was this idea of continuing content, but it's become fundamental. And we now talk about games as a

SPEAKER_53: service instead of games as an individual product. Which is essentially what happened in software,

SPEAKER_95: right? People said just instead of buying Photoshop for or Salesforce really was the start of this,

SPEAKER_45: hey, just give us whatever 100 bucks a month per salesperson 1200 bucks a year per salesperson,

SPEAKER_00: and we'll just keep updating the software. You buy Photoshop, you'd have Photoshop from whatever edition whatever year. And if you didn't want the new features, you could just use the old version, but you get FOMO, your friends would have these new features, you got to upgrade the desk for 900

SPEAKER_14: bucks. So it's a really considered purchase, you'd have to think, do I want to upgrade or not, and it's going to take time and I got to learn the new interface. Whereas organically, if you're

SPEAKER_01: paying a monthly fee, or you're paying for in app games, games as a service, gas makes much more sense for everybody involved, because it makes it easier from what you're saying for the studio to justify putting a 10 person or 20 person team on continuing to make new seasons, new challenges, etc.

SPEAKER_39: That's basically what happened. Yeah, and it was almost an incremental step, then at the point where now we've got this catalog of smaller pieces of content, to let players a la carte, just getting the content that they're interested in playing. So if I'm a campaign player, and I'm not interested in multiplayer, or vice versa, or, you know, cosmetics don't appeal to me. And so for Starcraft 2, that was how we arrived at the moment of saying, all right, we're not going to charge you for the initial download anymore. In fact, we think it's beneficial if more people can get into the ecosystem for free. And then players can just choose what kind of content appeals to them and buy just that content. And it definitely requires a shift in thinking a shift in the financial model to make sure that

SPEAKER_38: it still works. But we were able to make that transition. And it seemed to be received well by

SPEAKER_01: players, the population doubled, basically. Yeah. Oh, wow. So you double the population, you lower the spike of just the spiky revenue when the game comes out. But you have ongoing revenue coming in every month. And I would think that then get you closer to what the customers want, because you can run more experiments as a startup. Hey, we did these new skins, they fell flat on their faces. Oh, we did this new campaign. And oh, people loved it, we should do more campaigns, do less skins, or vice versa. Your development team actually gets some feedback loop that lets them

Chamath Palihapitiya: match the customer need to the products you're making. That's right. Yeah. And that feedback loop

SPEAKER_39: is such a beneficial thing for us as developers, because it brings new ideas that we're able to respond to more quickly. And it also lets us course correct when we've gone down a path that's just not

SPEAKER_108: striking the right chord. What about subscriptions? Just you know, we had world I'm sorry, what was the

SPEAKER_14: um, Wow, world was it World of Warcraft where people pay 15 bucks a month? And like you get your character now your level, whatever, you kind of have no choice but to keep paying. Did that model

SPEAKER_00: fizzle out because it was too expensive? Or it felt predatory? Or what happened to that one? Because

SPEAKER_14: if I could subscribe to Starcraft for five bucks a month, I would do it or Age of Empires for five

SPEAKER_110: bucks a month, I would do it. But I've never bought skins. It doesn't appeal to me or campaigns.

SPEAKER_39: I just like to play heads up match. It feels to me. And so by the way, World of Warcraft is still going great. And, you know, continues to support subscription model. But it feels like many games have implemented season passes or similar mechanics like that, where it's sort of like a subscription, there's a regular amount that you're paying in exchange for access to a certain amount of regular

SPEAKER_38: content from the developers. But it's not quite the same as a subscription in as much as you know, you can still play the game without it. And there are usually ways to a la carte purchase that content

SPEAKER_45: if you don't want to pay regularly. Do you look at the monthly fee as something you want to do with stormgate your new title? Or do you just look at it as upselling people for campaigns and stuff in the game? Or are you going to sell the initial version? I'd love to give you 50 bucks for the initial version. I feel bad not paying. So I want to pay you. But I you know, generally, the free

SPEAKER_46: version is enough for me as a, you know, I'll call myself like a medium caliber player.

SPEAKER_38: Well, good. We're trying to take a lot of learnings from our experience on Starcraft to which did seem to be well received by players for Starcraft to there are certain content purchases

SPEAKER_39: that you can make straight up a campaign pack, for example, or a new hero for the cooperative mode. We did have some seasonal events that for Starcraft to work called war chests where players could pay to participate and unlock contents portion of the proceeds went to esports. So something like that we will consider for frost giant as well. And when we launch, we'll probably do some kind of a bundle offer for players who are more used to doing premium style purchases. But we're so far away from that, we've got a year till beta. And I should mention, anybody interested in signing up for the beta can go to playstormgate.com and register today. But the beta is going to start in about a year. And then a year after that is where we're hoping to land in terms of launching the game. But it's

SPEAKER_115: really going to depend on the feedback that we get during that beta period. So we're not setting a

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SPEAKER_12: So as a startup, you chose to do this as a startup, you raised money from a Korean internet company.

SPEAKER_123: Is it cow? You've got a cow. Yeah, cow. So you obviously Starcraft being popular in Korea.

SPEAKER_125: I'm sure the Koreans are chomping on the bit to have essentially, you know, some new RTS IP. There

Chamath Palihapitiya: hasn't really been new RTS IP has there? There have been some indie games. But there there hasn't been

SPEAKER_01: anything really high profile. That's fair. Okay, so you raise over $30 million to do this. And you decide to start your own independent company. Venture capitalists in United States are not interested in backing companies like this. It has to be strategics who have an interest in it.

SPEAKER_39: Great question. We actually did an initial seed round with a number of game funds and including some US funds. But I think for the big dollar amounts in our series A was $25 million rounds.

SPEAKER_38: Typically, those are either strategics or generalist VCs who are starting to get some exposure to games. But yeah, I think it's fair to say Korea has a love for RTS and a history with RTS

SPEAKER_72: that made cacao a good partner for us. But there are certainly some US companies and European companies

SPEAKER_12: involved as well. And it's because it's a hits based business, right? It's hard to bet on one title. So was your pitch to them? Hey, we're going to build one title or a frost giants going to have eventually five titles, and you're going to be buying into a company that will have five different

SPEAKER_45: titles over 10 years, etc. How do you pitch that to the investors?

SPEAKER_132: We did pitch frost giant on the strength of one title initially, but you're right.

SPEAKER_39: There is very much a perception of games being a hit driven business. And for a long time, that meant that venture capital was reluctant to back game studios. There were some investors, particularly Mitch Lasky at Benchmark, who were making game investments, game investments, and were realizing some big successes. Mitch was in Riot early. And I think this is me speculating, but my

SPEAKER_38: sense is that VCs have come to think about games as a sector as a portfolio play rather than each company necessarily needing to be its own portfolio play across multiple games.

SPEAKER_134: How many people does it take to make like a great game like StarCraft in today's world?

SPEAKER_14: And how many years does it take? You know, the team, there must be an optimal size team, right? You can't just throw a bunch of people at this. Because it seems to me like building a magazine,

SPEAKER_01: or running an orchestra. It's not just about how much money you throw at it. It's about talent coming together over some period of time in sync. Because if the orchestra is not in sync, it sounds horrible, and your ears bleed, you know, with a magazine, this old art form of, you know, writers, graphic designers and photographers coming together to put something together, it seems to me or like a movie, you know, you have to get everybody in sync, you can't just throw bodies at it. So educate us on what

SPEAKER_46: it takes in terms of time and team composure to make something extraordinary in this space.

SPEAKER_39: Yeah, across games in general, there's such a variety of team sizes, I talked to a team of two that is starting to test their game on Steam right now. And it's a really cool game. Obviously, the scope is more focused, but I mean, two people made made a pretty solid game. You know, on the other end of the spectrum, you look at some of these games like Red Dead Redemption, or Assassin's Creed that

SPEAKER_38: involve multiple studios, and I believe in excess of 1000 contributors in some cases to these. Yeah,

SPEAKER_39: it's, it's incredible scope. RTS games, having been around for a long time, you know, I haven't heard of anybody applying 1000 people to an RTS game. You really, our team size is around 50 right now, between full time and contract will grow a bit before we launch the game, but we expect to stay under 100 in terms of core development. When you factor in the companies that we work with, who are helping us build cinematic, or who will ultimately help us do quality assurance for the game,

SPEAKER_38: you know, who contribute important pieces to the overall development, but who don't sit here in the studio with us. Obviously, the numbers do go up, but we'll be in that sort of 50 to 70 range as team

SPEAKER_45: size to ship this game. And then how much time does it take a team of 50 to, you know, get the product

SPEAKER_01: to launch? Because I found out about you a friend of mine who's in the music business who knows I was obsessed with StarCraft and Age of Empires, like, you know, about frost giant, it's like, it's the dudes from StarCraft, and they're going to do like this new, you know, real time strategy. I was like, Oh, my God, no. And I literally started following at your every move on social media and like, investigating, like, you know, what is this going to be from start to finish to, you know, to me playing from when you get the money in

SPEAKER_45: the bank from your investors? How many months? How many years is the is the journey?

SPEAKER_39: Without knowing exactly when we're gonna feel like the game is ready to launch. It's hard to put a precise number on it. But my expectation is that we will spend about four years in development to put a first version out there. And again, games as a service will continue to update and add to it for potentially a decade or more after that. And, you know, for StarCraft, I wasn't there for the original development. But my understanding is, they spent over seven years, but in part because of some

SPEAKER_38: interruptions, like the team went off to help Diablo three along the way and some other things like that, but still multiple year journey, to build something that's really polished and really high quality.

SPEAKER_139: So you're in year two or three right now at this moment,

SPEAKER_14: year two, year two, 50 people, you're spending about six, $7 million a year, about half a million dollars a month based on my experience. So you're basically talking about if over four years, you have to basically spend $25 million to get something like this out the door, ballpark.

SPEAKER_39: Yeah, there are other expenses like creating cinematics, localization, you know, things that you spend on externally, marketing costs, server costs, all of these things add up. So add another

SPEAKER_146: five 10 million. Yeah, yeah. And so in order to make that work, you have to have, I don't know,

SPEAKER_45: hundreds of thousands, a million people participate in the game. If the average user spends 25 a year, 50 a year, I'm coming up with a number here. What does the average work out to you? If you have

SPEAKER_46: half the people don't pay half do pay, you need to get to what kind of numbers to make this successful? In other words, you know, break even to profitable, which would be the first benchmark for any company to be successful. You know, in a sustained state, you're probably spending a million a month keeping something like this up and running. So a million a month, if you've got 100,000 people paying 10 bucks a month seems completely doable. Yeah, it's interesting how much this has changed

SPEAKER_38: on the business front. So obviously, in the days where we were selling CDs for 50, 60, now $70, you can take the total amount you spend, divide by what you're selling the CDs for,

SPEAKER_39: subtract cost of goods, and you know how many units you need to sell. Today, the way that players spend in games varies incredibly. So the majority of players will spend nothing, even though they're

SPEAKER_38: playing the game in a free to play game, they're part of the ecosystem, and they're providing benefit in terms of excitement and other players to play against. But it's really a minority

SPEAKER_39: percentage of players who will spend anything. Of that minority percentage, there's another even smaller minority percentage who really get into the game, and who potentially purchase every piece of content that becomes available, or you know, it's their primary hobby, they spend a lot against it.

SPEAKER_151: These would be referred to as whales in the system?

SPEAKER_23: In mobile games, that's, that's the terminology that they use in PC and core games. I don't know,

SPEAKER_153: we sort of find that term pejorative. But anyhow, you know,

SPEAKER_01: Because it feels like you're taking advantage of them. Well, in gambling is like a sucker.

SPEAKER_83: So it is a it is sort of Yeah, these would be passionate users like the top 1%. And what do they

SPEAKER_45: spend when they you know, they'll spend a couple hundred bucks a year on the on a game they love?

SPEAKER_23: Potentially, yeah. You know, you look at some games, World of Tanks as an example. I, I don't know

SPEAKER_39: their numbers, but it's possible to spend 1000s a year in a game like World of Tanks. We don't actually

SPEAKER_38: have the same volume of content that a game like that does. So yeah, that the cap for us is much

SPEAKER_72: lower. But yeah, passionate players spend a lot for sure.

SPEAKER_14: And is there some feeling of predatoriness for you as somebody who loves these games loves what

SPEAKER_01: they represent in the industry where you think, you know, we don't want to be abusive to the players, but we do want to build a viable business. So what number do you feel comfortable as the CEO and

SPEAKER_45: the founder of this company, extracting from the top users, because I have a theory on this, which is, I can't believe that I get, you know, whatever it winds up being if I play, you know, three nights a week for two hours each night, six times 50 weeks, 300 hours, 300 hours for free,

SPEAKER_01: 300 hours, even for $1 an hour, or 25 cents an hour. I mean, it's an extraordinary value video games are the best bang for the buck in the world that I can think of.

SPEAKER_39: Yeah, we, it's a great question. And I don't necessarily have a fixed number in mind. But I think there's a philosophy in terms of how we approach this, which is that we never want to frustrate players into spending what we only want them to feel like they're getting value for what they're spending money on. That's very important to us. And we never want players to pay to win the game. You know, giving one player an advantage over another player because they spent more

SPEAKER_70: doesn't feel good. And is there a term for that? Because that's the thing I hate about mobile

SPEAKER_14: games. Like I play tower defense. And I just hate the concept that if I don't buy mana and, you know, get addicted to this stuff, I can't get to the next level. And that's where I wind up throwing my iPad against the wall and say, I just don't want to play these anymore. Is there a term for that?

SPEAKER_159: That nefarious pay to win is typically the term. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14: It's so gross. I hate pay to win. And it just seems like the the iPad, the apps in the app store are the ones that really have made this into a science, especially if you have kids, which is why I subscribe to Apple Arcade, because they don't buy into this, I think largely they try to strip out that pay to win madness. You know, it seems like early access is a big deal. And when Elon came out

SPEAKER_00: with the Roadster, there was a signature series for the first 100 cars. And then when they did the

SPEAKER_14: Model S, there was a signature series for the first 1000 cars, I am your customer, I am probably going to play the free version. But for me to get early access would be a dream come true. Now I can use my

SPEAKER_70: influence, I got a podcast, you know, maybe I now we're friends, I could DM you, or friendly, hopefully. But I

SPEAKER_01: would love to be part of the signature equivalent for Frost Giant for Stormgate. Is there a way I could you could just give the first 10,000 people a number, and we pay you 100 bucks, and we get to be part of the beta and talk to y'all? Like that seems like a quick way to bring a million dollars of cash flow in.

SPEAKER_39: We've seen a number of other developers do founders packs or collectors editions or other ideas like that. So that's definitely something we'll be thinking about. But it's far enough away, our launch

SPEAKER_162: that we don't have any specific plans to announce yet there. Okay, all right. Well, that's, that's what

SPEAKER_14: I want. You buy into any of this like NFT in app, make money to play video games, concepts out there?

SPEAKER_167: Or do you think that's all just a little silly? I am so focused on delivering entertainment value.

SPEAKER_39: Yeah. And that being the primary reason for people to play our game, that we really have not explored tokens or NFTs, that feels like something else. It's almost a security, it's about investing. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with securities or investing. But if that's different than providing entertainment value to players. And I think we want our game to be fun, we want our players to be happy. Ultimately, those things are our focus rather than trying to create a financial system that

SPEAKER_72: people can make money off of, etc, etc. Yeah, I mean, it feels like a giant grift. Let's be honest, like

SPEAKER_45: people are kind of making crummy games, and then layering on top of them this like financial incentive. That's not why video gamers play the game. That's why people play like poker or something, or, you know, some other game that has finance built into it. But it does seem like it would kill

SPEAKER_39: the joy of the game. Yeah, I think so many of these economies that are token based also are susceptible to moving money from some players to other players so that, you know, players who are

SPEAKER_38: winning are doing so at the expense of people are losing money, which doesn't feel good. So there's that there's so much fraud, you know, actually, infinity got hacked. And yeah, there's just no real

SPEAKER_39: way to reverse those transactions or provide any sort of security to players. I think it'll be interesting to see how these technologies evolve and mature. But right now, we're just focused on

SPEAKER_75: making a good game. Yeah. And like kids having to go to their parents for 1000s of dollars or 10s of

SPEAKER_161: 1000s of dollars to play a game. It just seems morally corrupt to me. Like it just it's against the

SPEAKER_12: whole ethos of joy and fun and etc. So you are a producer of games and as well as being the CEO. And what was and I assume for Stormgate your title, you are the producer as well. That is true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_45: What was your inspiration for this game? You look at, you know, Starcraft, alien races,

SPEAKER_46: outer space, you know, and age of empires, obviously historical, you know, and everything in between elves and dwarves and other games, and Lord of the Rings fantasy. What did you come to with stormgate as

SPEAKER_12: your aesthetic? And why? And then in terms of gameplay, let's get into that. And what your

SPEAKER_23: thoughts are on modern day RTS gameplay? For sure. Frost giant as a team has a mix of team members

SPEAKER_39: who were involved, not just in blizzards, science fiction, RTS, Starcraft, but also blizzards, high fantasy RTS, Warcraft. And so just as a team, we're fans of both settings. And as we were coming up with the ideas for our new universe, Stormgate, we incorporated both sets of ideas. We incorporated both science fiction and fantasy into a world that is near future Earth, there is an experiment gone wrong that unleashes horrific aliens onto our planet. And so those aliens bring the fantasy aspect. But being near future Earth, science is advanced to the point that we have mechs, we have all kinds of

SPEAKER_72: advanced technology that doesn't exist today. So yeah, the kind of that melding of both sci-fi

SPEAKER_125: and fantasy both into one world. What was that great, um, series, uh, that movie

SPEAKER_16: where they're fighting the bugs? Uh, Oh God, it was such a great cultural starship troopers.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Starship troopers. I'm getting a little starship trooper vibes. I'm in the zone. Yeah, that I, I think that's such a great story. And certainly I would imagine that story influenced,

SPEAKER_39: uh, Starcraft to a certain extent too, but yeah. People don't remember starship troopers. If you're

SPEAKER_70: a young person and you haven't watched this, it really does hit on a lot of very interesting themes around fascism and like going to war for your country and, you know, risking your life for your country. It, it's got some really great social commentary in it. I think it's, I watched it recently. I was going to watch it with my kids, but it has aged incredibly well. The same director, I think Paul, uh, Verhoeven, I think he did Robocop as well. It's just, yeah, it's just such a great

SPEAKER_161: film. What films, uh, inspire you and other source material inspire you in terms of your pursuit in video games. Do you have a genre or a series of favorite movies? I, I am a fan of, uh, so many great

SPEAKER_39: films, but I, I would say for this, a lot of the team are star Wars fans. Not surprisingly, uh, we

SPEAKER_38: certainly have the rings fans, uh, matrix fan. I mean, just there, there's so many great film series out there that have influenced us as people growing up through the years, but.

SPEAKER_11: So when you release a game, there were cinematics and there's gameplay explain to the audience,

SPEAKER_01: the difference between those two things, why they're both important. Um, and then, you know,

SPEAKER_46: why you chose to release them now with a game coming out a year from now. How does the marketing of a game work in, in relation to cinematics and gameplay? There are different schools of thought

SPEAKER_39: and this too has evolved as, as games themselves evolved, but for us coming out of blizzards story and setting are very important to us. We want to create a rich game world that people are excited to be immersed in and to have a story unfold in. Um, so we've put a lot of effort into world building. And so we launched, or I should say announced storm gate with a cinematic at the summer games fest on June 9th. That cinematic tells the story of a member of the human resistance who is seeking a relic and who encounters some of these monstrous aliens, uh, the inferno from the infernal host. And so there's some conflict that ensues their gameplay is something that we plan to share when we're further along. Uh, we want some more development time before we show that off, but we did show some clips just to give people an early glimpse of what our world looks like, at least at this stage in development, which is still pre alpha. Um, but some games, um, you know, do a much shorter, like announce that they're coming and then almost instantaneously, you can get in and play the game or, uh, experience the beta. We really want to take the community along with us on this journey and have them give us input as we're developing the game. Um,

SPEAKER_72: so we elected to announce much earlier at a stage where we're really just world building and developing the technology that we're going to use to deliver the game to players. Uh, yeah, I mean, it does

SPEAKER_161: look beautiful off you again, if you're on Twitter, follow, uh, play storm gate and, uh, we'll show you

SPEAKER_14: a clip of that in talk about in terms of RTS is, is there some new concepts you have in terms of

SPEAKER_70: gameplay or will we, as, um, star craft fans, age of empires fans just intuitively understand what's

SPEAKER_39: going on here. Yeah. Great question. Going back to the earlier conversation we had around the first time I saw RTS, it can be an intimidating genre and we want to reduce that intimidation for new players who are coming into the game, but at the same time, it is super important to us that we don't dumb down the genre so that players of games like star craft or age of empires or command and conquer come into this game and feel like it's delivering everything they expect in terms of high skill

SPEAKER_38: and ability to collect resources, build a base, build troops, you know, just all of those core mechanics that you expect. So reconciling those two things is our biggest challenge as developers on

SPEAKER_39: this game. And we talk about it in try to frame it as we're leaving the skill ceiling where it's always been that it's a high skill ceiling for real-time strategy games, but where the floor, like the

SPEAKER_38: barrier to entry used to be up here, we're trying to bring the floor down so that it's easier for new players to get in, but all of the depth is still there. Once they do a lot of that is about

SPEAKER_39: the on-ramp that first experience that you have getting into the game. Um, but there are also just a lot of usability improvements that we're making to the interface for the game, um, or to the rules

SPEAKER_51: for the game to make it more accessible for new players coming in. Yeah. Whenever you get one of

SPEAKER_12: these games, they do a kind of like a walkthrough where it's like, Hey, build your base. Okay. Now

SPEAKER_14: do this. And they send you on a little mission to teach you how to move units around. You do need how to understand how to group units and move them around and the resource collection. It does take

SPEAKER_01: whatever an hour or two to kind of get your legs under you. It's kind of like golfing, skiing,

SPEAKER_14: uh, kiteboarding, any of these really rewarding sports, snowboarding, the first day or two kind of sucks. You're on your ass a lot. You're trying to figure things out. You feel like an idiot. And then all of a sudden, you know, you catch a vibe and you get up on the board, kiteboarding on if you ever done that, or if you ski or snowboard, you know, you go down a mountain without falling and you

SPEAKER_70: catch a couple of curves and you're like, Oh my God, I'm in this for life. I guess I would suppose hitting a golf ball. This hadn't happened to me hitting the green, you know, or hitting a perfect

SPEAKER_188: drive. You're all of a sudden, like your brain dopamine goes, Whoa, this is like a legit pursuit.

SPEAKER_39: Yeah. You touched on something in that, that I think is really key for us to learn from as well, that so many of these activities that we get into that are deep skill sets, we get brought in through a friend who's already good at the thing. And so I think in the past, real time strategy games have been a very solitary experience. We are trying, even from the beginning, like your first experience with the game, to think about ways to enable it to be a social experience and for you to perhaps come in with somebody who's already good at RTS and still have a good time, even though they're more

SPEAKER_12: expert than you are. That guide on the side concept is the key to skiing. If you're going to learn to ski, you need an instructor. And, you know, it's it when I played, I remember command and conquer,

SPEAKER_14: we set up for computers, you know, it's eight o'clock at night. And I just watched other people play and they just sportscast. They just said to me, like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. Now I'm doing this. Here's why I'm doing this. And then it was like, give me a keyboard. I'm in, let's go. And then you start learning different strategies, the rush strategy, the fortification strategy, whatever it is. But there is something different today where YouTube exists. And Twitch

SPEAKER_01: exists, this didn't exist in that era. So it had to be the guide on the side, it had to be what we

SPEAKER_45: call in, you know, the venture business, like over the shoulder virality, somebody showed you Uber, they showed you calm.com, they showed you Robin Hood or Coinbase, and then you downloaded it, and they just walked you through it. They were your walkthrough. How much has Twitch and YouTube

SPEAKER_189: changed all this? Twitch, in many ways came into existence from Starcraft, interestingly, that,

SPEAKER_38: you know, just just in TV, the precursor to Twitch, really was part and parcel with

SPEAKER_39: early Starcraft days. So it's so cool to have seen this other aspect, this other vector for people to get exposed to games evolve in tandem with games. And yeah, these days, Twitch and YouTube have become important parts of game marketing, but also learning how to play games, as you said, watching other people play before you come in. We are definitely thinking about ways to try to be synergistic with that. And, you know, the folks at Amazon who on Twitch have been very supportive as

SPEAKER_83: well. It would seem like a very easy solution to this would be to have a webinar equivalent inside

SPEAKER_01: of the game, where if I loaded the game, I've never seen anybody do this. So you tell me if it exists, if every night or every two hours, there was a tutorial, and you can watch live and then just like the Apple Store did this right there in the back, you see people who are never had a phone before,

SPEAKER_45: and they have like a smartphone, or you know, an iMovie and they just teach people the basics, like just doing a nightly thing where somebody picture in a picture, just watch it through the

SPEAKER_46: game. And anybody could watch it would be incredible for teaching people how to play

SPEAKER_01: these games. Have you thought about that and incorporating picture in a picture video of people because video is such a new component. And you see people streaming the game to Twitch, but I've never seen inside of games, people use headsets and talk, but I've never seen like

SPEAKER_46: picture in a picture video, I would love to play Starcraft, and have my video on the screen, while I'm playing somebody. Is that existing gaming?

SPEAKER_39: We've brainstormed a lot about ways to provide access to content on Twitch or on YouTube from within the game. And so we're not at a point where we've developed anything that I can talk about there yet. But I think that is super valuable. And there are so many personalities from day nine and husky back in the early Starcraft days. These days, you see five for winter router dam like streamers who are helping players experience the game for the first time and understand what they're seeing.

SPEAKER_38: And yeah, providing that connection within the game is just a natural next step. So that's something

SPEAKER_75: for us to figure out. All right, we're going to play the clip right now. Here's just a quick clip,

SPEAKER_39: and you can talk over and sportscast what we're seeing. All right, this is in antigen footage on Unreal Engine five, you can see some of the human resistance and mechs up against the infernal host coming in. And that was just a very short clip to give you a sense for what the world's going to look

SPEAKER_38: like kind of a tech level of the human resistance and first taste of some of the units that belong to

SPEAKER_75: the infernal host. I love it. I love it. I got some Zerg vibes in there. And, you know, some some

SPEAKER_12: Starship Trooper vibes in there for sure. How do you think about wagering? Wagering in the United States has become demystified the NBA, which was against gambling for decades. And now they are doing not

SPEAKER_14: only fantasy sports, but wagering as part of their telecasts. So they're given the point spreads, they're talking, they have the host talking about what bets they made, what parlays they're doing, what over unders they're doing, it seems to be have become completely acceptable to wager now. You must have these debates as a company about wagering. How do you think about wagering as, you know, something to put into esports in the future?

SPEAKER_39: Yeah, it's tough for us because our audience spans such a broad age range, age range. So really think in the near term about specifically wagering, I think paying into a prize pool for an esport that is skill based, where, you know, the winner takes that prize pool, there are probably some models like that, that make more sense for games like Stormgate, but we're very sensitive to wanting to be

SPEAKER_72: friendly to a broad age range. And I think that's delicate when it comes to wagering.

SPEAKER_12: Yeah, introducing 16 and 17 year olds, 15 year olds into gambling seems really dangerous,

SPEAKER_161: just like any other adult pursuit. And so how you would separate those, maybe it's better a third party

SPEAKER_01: do that. What are the rules around IP and usage of your game, or just games in general, or competitions,

SPEAKER_45: I've always wondered this. So if I wanted to create a sports league around Stormgate, do I need your permission? Do I need to, you know, make sure it's copacetic with you? Or could I just offer a prize pool of $100,000, you know, across whatever number of games, and then just throw my own little Stormgate

SPEAKER_46: party, you know, competition? How does it work today with other games?

SPEAKER_39: Most publishers set a prize pool threshold, above which you need a direct license from them to run

David Friedberg: the tournament. But oftentimes, beneath that threshold, it's okay. So, you know, not have a direct

SPEAKER_12: place. It seems completely reasonable. Now, what about IP? If I am making a living off of this Twitch is obviously making a living, a bunch of streamers are making a living. Do is there a point at which

SPEAKER_14: they should be paying back to the game? I mean, I know, they're doing a service in some ways of making

SPEAKER_45: the game popular. But they're also using your IP and making millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars a year off of it. How do you think about that? And how does the industry think about it writ large,

SPEAKER_36: to the extent that streaming, for example, you brought up Twitch, really helps promote the game. I think most

SPEAKER_39: publishers are just grateful to see streamers exposing the game to new people live. You know, when it comes down to actually taking the IP and selling something with it, maybe you're making plush toys, or, you know,

SPEAKER_38: clearly, there's a point at which the creator of the ideas, it makes sense that they should participate or have some control over what gets sold and how their brand gets represented. But yeah, streaming specifically, I think Frost Giant, like most publishers, we're taking a very open-minded, just sense of gratitude towards anyone who helps us promote our game to other people.

SPEAKER_45: It would seem that some of these gaming studios would be able to create a competitor to Twitch and just say, Hey, you know, if you want to stream our game, you're welcome to do it, but please do it at our service. Why haven't the, you know, the people who own these titles just done that,

SPEAKER_75: where they make their own Twitch competitor?

SPEAKER_189: The biggest benefit to getting exposure is getting exposed to new eyeballs. And so if it's

SPEAKER_38: an owned platform where the eyeballs already know about like, you've completely negated that cross-pollination benefit. So that's the main reason I would say.

SPEAKER_45: Awesome. Well, listen, Tim, you've been very generous with your time. I wish you continued success with this. I cannot wait to give you $100 to be one of the first people in the beta. If you choose to do that, everybody can sign up for the service at PlayStormGate.com. PlayStormGate.com. Go sign up, give me your email address and follow PlayStormGate on Twitter, rooting for you. I know this is a really hard business and it takes a lot of bold, you know, hootspa to get out there and to

SPEAKER_46: make your own company to do it. So on behalf of the RTS community, which is incredibly loyal to these games, we're just really excited. I know I talked to a lot of other people who love these games. It just seems to be like genuine excitement that somebody's making like a really high quality title for us. Um, so thanks and to the team over there, like, we really appreciate you doing it. And, uh, it's gonna bring a lot of joy to the world. If you're not into RTS yet, what are you doing? Go download StarCraft 2, get the new Age of Empires, 4, Redux, whatever they're calling it, and just play some. I think it's a great thing to play with kids. I think it's incredible for strategic thinking. Um, like poker, I consider this like chess and poker and real-time strategy

SPEAKER_12: are all for me in a way to just be good at decision making and, and to play through strategies in your mind, different strategies. I, I don't know how you look at it philosophically for kids and, and, and, you know, for, for people looking to become good strategists. Uh, but maybe

SPEAKER_75: you could speak a little to that of the value of this specific genre of games.

SPEAKER_39: Yeah, I think games that cause you to work your mind and be strategic, um, really can benefit long-term thinking. And you look at so many folks, you mentioned Alexis Ohanian, uh, Elon Musk is an RTS

SPEAKER_53: player. Um, uh, Toby, the CEO of Shopify is another RTS player. So both friends, the bot.

SPEAKER_39: Well, three friends, the bot. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So I, I, you know, I think good correlation, um, to thinking games, having cerebral benefits long-term.

SPEAKER_70: Yeah. I think we have to have the return to land parties. I think that's going to be like, uh, would be a lot of fun. Poker's become incredibly popular in the entrepreneurial community. I don't know if you play cards, you play cards at all.

SPEAKER_14: Absolutely. Oh, you're in Austin, right? Uh, no, actually Irvine, California.

SPEAKER_75: Oh, you, oh, you're, oh, so you got some good card rooms down there. Uh, you can play in or, uh, but is, is poker a big, uh, popular thing in the gaming, uh, entrepreneurial community as well?

SPEAKER_39: Yeah. And it's interesting how many professional real-time strategy players. So the guys who

SPEAKER_162: compete at tournaments are also Texas Hold'em players. So, uh, yeah, there's some, some correlation

SPEAKER_45: there, but it, it definitely is, you know, trying to make the best decision possible in real time

SPEAKER_01: is a big part of poker, right? You're, you don't get to go back and study and then say,

SPEAKER_45: okay, here's my decision. You're on the clock and there's money on the line. There's wagering, there's multiple players, there's information, you know, this information you don't know, you might not be, you know, what's going on at the base, you know, how many troops they built up yet. You may not know the person, you know, has a set bomb or something. So it's, it's really interesting. Where do you, where do you start? Have you started playing PLO yet? Have you gotten that bug? No, no, be careful. Yeah. I mean, if you want, it's sort of like, I'm trying to think of an equivalent for real time strategy, that would make sense. But,

SPEAKER_01: you know, when you get four cards, you think of the permutations of two card possibilities, right? And how they all work together. And the variance becomes just incredible, you know, with aces being cracked, you know, whatever, you're 70, 80%,

SPEAKER_161: depending on how many players you're up against and hold them. You know, now you've got aces,

SPEAKER_12: you know, and I don't know, two other random cards in PLL when you're starting with four. Oh, my Lord, you know, somebody else has what's called a rap four, five, six, seven, seven, eight, nine, 10. They've got some suited cards, whatever's good on the flop, Tim,

SPEAKER_125: is going to lose by the river. It's kind of the opposite of hold them in many ways. It's really go to a casino, play pot limit Omaha at the lowest possible, you know, stakes, if you can find a $1, $2 game, and it will, it'll blow your mind.

SPEAKER_224: You make me feel like I need to watch this on Twitch first, so I get my confidence up.

SPEAKER_12: I don't know. Poker Go is really good. You pay $100 a year for Poker Go. I'm good friends with Phil Hellmuth and I played on Poker Go before live, high stakes poker. And it's really fun because, you know, you get to see the hands and you get to see how people are playing them. But for something like PLL, watching a little bit of streaming would be very beneficial because it is a

SPEAKER_125: non, it's not intuitive for Hold'em players when they first get into it, which is why they love when Hold'em fish switch gears and go to PLL, because what served you well in Hold'em will not serve you well in this game could work against you. In fact, you know, you think you hit top pair and you know, like, this is a good hand or you hit two pair, you know, you hit two pair on the flop. You think there's a great hand. It's like, nope, somebody's got a set. Somebody's got, you know,

SPEAKER_14: seven different flush draws and, you know, or whatever. They've got flush draws and straight draws. It's really about hitting two hands in a way you hit some pair or two pair on the board,

SPEAKER_70: on the flop. And then you also have some flush possibilities and you might also have a straight

SPEAKER_76: possibilities. It really is mind blowing game. Um, but continued success, Tim, if you're ever up in

SPEAKER_75: the bay and you want to play poker, we've got some fun games up in the bay. Uh, much appreciated. Yeah. Continued success. And we'll see you all next time on this week in startups. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_233: All right, everybody. It's Friday. You know what that means? It's another segment of okay. Boomer.

SPEAKER_03: Okay. Boomer. Yeah. We got, uh, producer Rachel right here to tell us about Richard Mensah, co-founder of Sally S A L L E Y. Sally fourth, a thing a boomer would say.

SPEAKER_236: What is this company all about? So Sally is building tools and community for content creators,

SPEAKER_238: but honestly, we didn't touch too much on Sally. We mostly talked to Richard about his experience

SPEAKER_240: as an international founder and how we got into the space. Ah, very good. So talking a little bit

SPEAKER_118: about what it's like an international for an international founder to work with maybe American VCs or employees or customers. Uh, we get that question a lot. Was there any notation or did you,

SPEAKER_116: did you delve into the oppressive emotional labor that Gen Z's are going through during this incredibly challenging, you know, summer? Um, I see a lot of folks really suffering with delays at airports and, you know, music festivals, uh, you know, being overcrowded. So any of that come up.

SPEAKER_238: It's probably a bad time to mention that I was just talking to Molly about how I couldn't go to a concert this weekend. Cause one of my friends got COVID and it was a big bummer, but no, Richard was actually incredibly positive. He came here all the way from Ghana. He's incredibly thankful for this opportunity really enjoys being a founder here. He was also a founder in Ghana. So it was cool hearing

Jason Calacanis: about his experience in the two different spaces. Yeah. And what a fascinating, like what a work ethic, right? He founded two startups while getting a degree in computer science. Awesome. And you know,

SPEAKER_116: just to just touch on, you know, how crushing it was to miss that concert. We now at launch in order to have more Gen Z's here, I'm starting a new program. This is also to keep people working here because I know how challenging it is sometimes with these concerts getting missed and you know, bars closing early, whatever it is. Uh, we're now having a two, instead of sick days, we're adding two catch a vibe days here at launch. So anytime you need to catch a vibe, you just press the button, you get two of those a year. If you need to catch a vibe, Rachel, just let us know. Gen Z heaven.

SPEAKER_247: It's Gen Z heaven. I'm not kidding. I'm adding two catch a vibe days, but if you catch a vibe day at

SPEAKER_116: launch, I'm like a sick day where you pretend and you don't share on social. I'm getting rid of the sick days and replace it with catch a vibe days. Cause we all know what you do on sick days. You go catch a vibe. So if you catch a vibe day, you have to be active on social all day and share it into

SPEAKER_236: the corporate slack. Is that fair enough, Rachel? I think I, as long as Nick takes some catch a vibe

SPEAKER_233: days too. Yes. Nick's going to get 0.5 catch a vibe days for his three years of service, which is actually more like in dog years 21. I mean, it really is. Please catch a vibe, Nick. And please

Jason Calacanis: enjoy this interview with this incredible cool founder, Richard Menza, co-founder of Sally.

SPEAKER_253: Awesome. Thanks guys. Okay. Boomer. I understood the assignment.

SPEAKER_256: Thank you so much, Richard, for joining this segment of okay. Boomer. So Richard Menza, you're the co-founder of Sally and Sally is building business tools and community for content creators. I think

SPEAKER_258: Sally is really cool, but I actually want to hear more about your founder story. I think it's really unique. You're originally from Ghana, your entire path to where you are today. We got to speak about a few weeks ago and I just knew I really had to have you on the pod. So thank you so much for joining

SPEAKER_260: us. Awesome. Rachel, thanks for the invite. I'm looking forward to sharing a bit more about my background all the way through to Sally. It's quite a bit of a background there. So yeah, I don't know how long we have, but we'll be here for a bit.

SPEAKER_256: Just as long as it'll take for you to, for you to walk us from start to finish. So I guess I want to start off with you originally being from Ghana. I don't know if I've met that many international founders lately. And if I have, they've moved to the States, um, quite a few years ago and you

SPEAKER_260: actually just moved here for college, correct? So I came here for actually a master's that was four years ago. Um, so 2018 actually, um, I could give you the whole speed, but basically I did an undergrad in computer science in Ghana and I was looking to, um, so like go to a different school and try a different culture and be able to immerse myself in, um, new people and new ideas and new experiences. And I was like, you know what, the best way to do that is go to a different country in the U S and as I also like the U S particularly because of the fact that I'm able to, um, I mean, move faster with whatever I'm working on. So I'm a huge tech startup person. So I did three

SPEAKER_263: startups before coming to the U S. So I was like, what if I moved to U S and what does that setup ecosystem look like? Cause I know that's the best place for VC or the best place for getting the best people like around the world to join the team. And, um, yeah, I was like super excited to come to the U S meet cool people and hopefully build something truly amazing that impacts the world globally.

SPEAKER_270: That's so awesome. So you said you got your master's degree here in the U S. What did you

SPEAKER_260: study before coming here? Study computer science. So, um, your master's in computer science too. No, it was in business, just a regular, regular business.

SPEAKER_256: You told me too, when we were speaking, sorry, I mixed those up. Yeah. But you told me that you've always known that you wanted to be a founder, really supported entrepreneurially. Is that

SPEAKER_258: because Ghana is a place where entrepreneurs are like, everybody wants to be one, or is it your family? Like, where did this inspiration come from? I think it has to do with my mom to some extent,

SPEAKER_260: because she was always trying to find, um, like create new businesses beyond what she was doing. Right. So she was supposed to be a teacher. She was a teacher. Um, she finished, um, college and was about to pretty much go into the working force and work in like company. But then, um, she had us, I was the first kid. So she was like, she had us and she had to like stay home and take care of us. So along the line, I could see her like starting other things. So she's super excited about, um, hospitality. She started like a guest house. And I mean, she gave me the first book she gave me to read that was her full recommendation was rich dad, poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And as a kid, you're like, what is this book about? Like, why would I read this book? But then when you read it,

SPEAKER_263: it's like, okay, so it's like change your mindset slightly about the way to see the world. And so in terms of assets and liabilities, so for example, like if I go by, I don't know, a huge box of candy, like that is a liability because I'm just going to keep eating it and it's just going to finish. But if I use that money instead to, to like invest in something that I am passionate about, I don't know, for some example, let's say like a book that's going to teach me something or like a course or something like that to upskill myself, that becomes an asset. And, um, I should spend more

SPEAKER_260: my time and energy and money investing more in assets. So that was like, I got that book when I was like a teenager, like 13, 14, I was like, this is pretty cool. It's like, I kept reading it all the way to the end. And I was like, wow. So then I just got stuck in that whole kind of cycle of books. I read all the books, zero to one, um, all the books, like pretty much everything across

SPEAKER_256: board. We're going to forget a whole list of book recommendations that were that inspirational. I think that's awesome. And like you said, before you moved here for your master's degree,

SPEAKER_279: you had startups before that though, like Sally's your first startup. So what was your first startup

SPEAKER_260: ever? So it's called Swiper. Um, so that was during my first year of college, I was actually hoping to get into college for aerospace engineering. Um, cause I had to think for planes, I still do. Um, but in Ghana, you choose your major and I got my second option, which was computer science, which I was actually pretty bummed out about. I was like, what is this computer science thing? Why I can't build an actual plane with this thing. Um, so, but then after the first semester, I was like, and I just saw the possibilities of being able to like, build something that

SPEAKER_263: millions of people can use with just a computer and internet connection. Like you don't really need to get any hardware. You don't need to get any huge like factory or anything. I was like, this is pretty cool. Um, and you look at other companies that did like Facebook was pretty much doing a lot of times on the same time, WhatsApp was coming to Ghana. And I was like, maybe I should build my own thing. So, um, the first startup was a year later after that, but what we built was like, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter into one app. Um, so instead of using the native apps, use our app because our app use much less memory on your phone. And that app was like, sort of like, which made it much more seamless to switch between apps without having to use the download of the three apps. We had like a compression algorithm behind it, um, that would use all these apps to like 1.7 megabytes. And it was pretty lightweight for what they can, what it could actually be. So that was pretty fun. I got my classmates using it. Everyone's using it. My dad even downloaded the app. That was pretty fun. He was talking about, oh, I have your app on my phone. I'm using it. That was cool. Um, but yeah, that was my first founder experience. We had an investor even come in a long, a long while building it. And, um, it was a huge eye opener,

SPEAKER_260: like from something we just thought about like randomly to like go in, I think one summer we just, I built it out in like two months. Then it was pretty much out there in the play store.

SPEAKER_256: That's incredible. So that is a huge pivot though. Um, from what like Sally does, what made you decide to like jump around the space?

SPEAKER_260: So, um, based on that previous thing I was working on, um, I got my classmates and everyone using it, but then I got to this point where I, I couldn't get a lot more people hearing about people using it. So it was like, there was this moment where I was like, we have a cool product. People like it, but then how do I get the rest of the world using it? And that was around the same time. I was like, I mean, I got hit to the realization that like distribution is really

SPEAKER_263: important. Even though you have a good product, you need to figure out a way to get it from people. So I was a technical guy back then. I was like, oh, build it and they will come and you have all

SPEAKER_260: these people just running towards your product because it's cool. Um, but so based on that one, I, um, the next setup I did, I actually was quite intentional about that. So I had a YouTube channel, um, where I was trying to document my journey as a founder in Ghana and just build some following with that one. Um, but I realized how hard it was actually to create content, um, on YouTube more consistently. And I was like, you have to do all these pieces that I've got to put into it from ideation to editing, to putting it out there. And within like two, three months, I was like, yeah, this is pretty hard. And I, I just decided to just, I just stopped like without been trying. Cause it was like, I was like, wow, this is actually a full-time job when it's on. Um, so I just, that was like the aha moment. But even though I was trying to build distribution for myself, so I don't have to rely on ads or like random people somehow. Um, it was really, really hard

SPEAKER_263: to build that like content flag hole around myself, which I knew so many people would do the same thing.

SPEAKER_260: Cause you talk to so many creators, um, they're struggling every day and day out, like stay consistent. And some of them are burning out and not creating anymore because of the fact

SPEAKER_263: that it's super hard to remain consistent. So, um, that's pretty much what inspired Sally. My co-founder actually was a blogger where she previously you would like a startup in tech newsletter. And she also came to understand the problem. We're like, you know what, there's something here when you like focus on this and, um, unlock, um, a new way for creating content that doesn't involve burnout. And it's much, much more fun than it actually is right now.

SPEAKER_270: Awesome. And you guys met each other, you and your co-founder, you met each other in school, correct?

SPEAKER_263: Uh, so we met in Boston, but she was not in the same school. Like she was even in school at then.

SPEAKER_260: She was like graduated. She was working in like, um, a marketing role in like a mid-sized tech company

SPEAKER_263: in Boston. And we, we happened to meet at a, um, there was a Forbes on our 30 conference in 2018. So we both got invited as like Forbes fellows for that event. Yes. And then that's where we matched on some app and we said, okay, let's just sit down and get to

SPEAKER_260: know each other for like 30 minutes. Maybe some, we don't know what is going to happen. What's going to happen here. And we actually ended up talking for three hours straight and actually closing down

SPEAKER_263: the entire restaurant. And it was like, okay, we need to be in touch. Let's, let's, let's keep in touch. There's something here.

SPEAKER_291: So for you guys met in 2018, when did Sally actually start then? How, like how long after that conversation?

SPEAKER_292: So Sally, as it is right now, um, is, I mean, with the focus on creators and everything is more

SPEAKER_260: started in January. Um, but initially what we had was something that was connecting, we called it LSX.

SPEAKER_263: So the purest name of the product was matching startup teams with creators and media. So the goal

SPEAKER_260: there was how do we help these startups get authentic, um, distribution without having to push for it. Um, so as a marketplace, we had a huge wait list of like 400 plus startups who've raised, um,

SPEAKER_263: not of $300 million who wanted to use the product. And we also had creators from across boards, some huge newsletter writers, um, and also some huge podcasters using it.

SPEAKER_260: Um, so we're, we're going to be ramping up with that one, but we always kept seeing that creators were actually like not, I mean, they say they create content every week or every month, but then from our data, we could tell that it was not true because you could see how hard it was for them to keep going and be like, so we're talking to so many creators. We're like, okay, there's something you really like focus on because these creators are, um, like are not as constant as they want to be. And also like with my past experience, I was like, yeah, of course, this is quite hard to do. So why wouldn't we just focus on making sure these guys are, um, creating more content and actually having more fun creating content and not like struggling with all the small pieces they have to take care of. So that's why we started zero in on creators. So we killed the other product. We had revenue and everything. We just killed it and everything. And we're like, you know what, let's focus on creators and because this is where we think the future is going. So it's pretty fun.

SPEAKER_256: You've really hit the ground running since you've moved from this, from Ghana to the States. Do you have good advice for other international founders?

SPEAKER_260: There's so much advice out there. Um, but I think for me, it will be like, I mean, what I've seen particularly with most international founders is that they tend to, um, not like just play it somehow small sometimes because they're just trying to like

SPEAKER_263: get into the whole system and like being able to adapt into that. So I think my thing is just

SPEAKER_260: have that big vision. If you're going to start a startup, you might as well just shoot for the moon, do something really impactful. Um, so that's one advice I would give. And I want to just like, your network is super important because I came to the US with zero network. Um, no one, and I had to literally build it up from scratch, getting to know so many new people, um, just to be able to build something truly remarkable what we're doing now. Um, I mean, I met cool people like you because of, um, like meeting other people. So definitely network is important. And, um, I mean, you can build something pretty remarkable because if you think about it, like someone like Elon is pretty much international. He came from SA to, um, Canada, then to the US. And we're talking about Tesla and

SPEAKER_263: SpaceX now. So I think the, the capability of international founders is quite huge and we should get more international founders, like starting companies. And you should probably think of

SPEAKER_256: leaving FANG because FANG is not the best place to be. Yeah. And how can we, um, the ecosystem in

SPEAKER_258: venture capital that is mostly people in the United States, they're normally from here, right? How can they be better at supporting international founders? I think it starts, it starts with getting to,

SPEAKER_292: to have a lot more international friends, right? Because I think, um, usually when you're wrapped

SPEAKER_260: out with a particular circle, you don't really get to experience what it feels like to see life from a different point of view. Um, so let's say you had, you were born and raised in the Bay Area, you grew up and your dad was working in FANG and your whole life is around tech companies and someone from a different country comes in, you don't probably get their point of view. And if you're building products for, I mean, the world from somewhere in the Bay Area or something like that, um, you're not really accounting for like multiple cultures around the world because the water is very diverse, very vast. And I mean, the SF culture is not equal to the culture in, I don't know, like India somewhere or somewhere in Africa or somewhere in Asia. And so I think you should try and immerse

SPEAKER_263: yourself, especially if you're building a global company or you want to invest in global teams that are disrupting industries. The best thing for you to do is like, get out of your comfort zone, meet other people from different parts of the world. And, um, yeah. And when it comes to international founders, sometimes it's hard for people to take early bets on them because they're new, I don't know how like the network yet and everything, but, um, I mean, we know a huge percentage of the current unicorns are pretty much funded by international founders, more than like 50%. Yeah. So that is not, I mean, that is, shouldn't be a reason for you to not say no to someone because that shouldn't be reason for you to want to bet on them. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_256: Is there something that was a lot harder for you starting Sally that you didn't necessarily expect?

SPEAKER_301: Let me think about that one. Yeah. After starting, you know,

SPEAKER_307: a company in Ghana versus the U S I'd love to hear like the differences between the two.

SPEAKER_260: I think, I think with the U S there's, I, I see the, um, the business environment, the U S as more like cooperative, that is quite different. I mean, Ghana is more like, okay,

SPEAKER_263: so we're competing with these guys and you're just trying to like build software and like trying to make the most amount of money, but the U S fuse, I mean, particularly tech scene, it feels more collaborative in some sense. So sometimes like, for example, like in Ghana, before you tell someone an idea, you'd be like, oh, you want to like sign an NDA or like, you don't want to share too much information. But then you, it's like, particularly in the tech sector, you just talk about ideas and share ideas freely, which is quite different from what I'm used to. Um, and I think that actually is a huge unlock for me to think about it from an innovation point of view, because of the fact that, um, you can see all the loopholes in the idea. You can also see all the possibilities in the idea, but just talking about it. I mean, there's also a risk factor, there's a huge risk factor, right? Because I mean, yeah, people who have experienced where the ideas,

SPEAKER_260: the ideas have been like taken up, there are stories like that. Um, but yeah, very rare, um, particularly in the U S. So, um, yeah, I think that's one thing that I didn't really expect how open everything is. And like, and also like the fact, I like how founders here are much more helpful to each other. Um, because like, again, it's, it's a much more open, like it's like a big

SPEAKER_263: picture kind of thinking. So they don't like see the pie as like very small and they're competing for it, but you have like a bigger pie that you're expanding together to create something, um, truly

SPEAKER_270: remarkable. Yeah. And in a world of like this violent push for remote work, it seems everybody

SPEAKER_256: our age absolutely loves remote work. Um, you decided to move to New York city from Boston. Why did you decide to move here? And I, if I'm correct, your co-founder, I believe it also recently

SPEAKER_312: moved here. Why did you decide to move to New York city? Do you see like, this is like a tech hub rather

SPEAKER_260: than Boston and are you guys remote? Yeah. So, I mean, to give you some context, um, I used, my first city was Boston. I also lived in San Francisco and Denver, then Raleigh and now New York. Um, I feel like New York is the best positioned city, particularly because of how much less time I've spent commuting, um, how much talent is in the city. Um, I mean, cost of rent and everything

SPEAKER_263: is quite high that I'll give it, but so, but then food is very diverse. I'm a very diverse person. So I think what we're trying to go for is like, what is the best city? Um, particularly what we're working with, we have a bunch of creators here in New York and a bunch of creators and media folks in LA too. So these are the two main cities that I see, um, could be huge, um, value add for what we're building and being in New York, um, I've actually met so many content creators. In fact, we just hired

SPEAKER_260: one of them who will be joining the team tomorrow for this first day. And he has like 1.7 million people on TikTok. And, um, I met up with him in New York and we became buddies and we just saw synergies in there. We're like, yeah, come join the team as a creator in residence. So, um, yeah, Boston is a cool city. I don't have anything against the city of Boston. Um, but I think, I think you're setting industries that thrive much better in Boston, um, than they would in other cities. New York seems like the melting pot for like so many different industries and so many different backgrounds and so many different protocols. And it's, I feel like everyone in

SPEAKER_263: New York is an outsider. So you actually feel very homey when you're in New York because everyone is from somewhere, which is something I really love about the city.

SPEAKER_270: So you mentioned New York and LA, but you didn't mention SF.

SPEAKER_260: Yeah. Um, we have my reservations or SF. I, I, I used to live there for quite a bit. I was actually there recently about two, three months ago. Um, I, I feel like the culture is a bit risk adverse for me because I feel like I'm very, I like to take on risk and do something pretty remarkable and push the limits. But I feel like when I was in SF and people I know in SF seemed like they just want to not push as much. Did they feel like, you know, the plate, we don't want to keep going with that. I don't know what it is, but, um, cause when I was there, I mean, New York was like open and everything that was some of February and March, February, March, and like COVID is over and everything in New York and was like living your lives. And as I was like, oh, like, are you sure COVID is over? Um, like, I don't want to get cold. So it was like very just cautious. I know it's important to like, we're all vaccinated and everything, but it's important to, um, have a culture where people like are willing to take some setting of risk. I mean, technological risk and it was like personal risk to learn new things. Um, which I think it's New York is like, yeah, there's so much hustle. People are like, yeah, I'm just whatever happens. If something happens,

SPEAKER_263: you just wake up the next morning and New York is alive again, which is something I think it's pretty

SPEAKER_256: cool. New York is a great, I've been thinking about this a lot because I have a lot of friends that are, you know, um, right now in particular, a lot of friends are out in SF getting a little bit of the cooler weather as New York gets crazy hot. And in January, I have some friends also go to SF to avoid New York's crazy cold weather. And I was thinking about it and I was like, I don't know if I even like leaving the city that much in the summer, because it really comes alive. And our paths even crossed during there's like a little creator economy, um, meet up at a bar. And that's how we met. And there are those kinds of meetups happening all over New York City all the time. And I'm not even a founder, I'm working here, I work at a podcast, you know what I mean? And people are still super willing to meet with you in person. And I feel like coming from the Baltimore area before this, and doing short term Airbnbs for a while, I was like really searching for the sense of community that New York seems to offer not only personally, but on a professional level, you know, working at smart startups, you tend to have a fairly small team. So being able to do things like meet other founders in this space, meet other people that are in podcasting, it makes

SPEAKER_258: the world feel a little bit a little bit less massive and helps you, you know, just have that have that face to face interaction that a lot of us are missing out on.

SPEAKER_260: Yeah, I totally agree with you on that one. I think I mean, one thing I said about New York, particularly I keep repeating is in New York is the only city where you can do like three events in

SPEAKER_263: the same night, because you have subways. If you cannot do that in SF as much you cannot do that in LA. It's like everything is close by in your times pretty much goes much further in New York than it can. And I think in other cities when it comes to commuting in stuff. So yeah, I love that. I think

SPEAKER_256: that's, that's a huge reason why I moved here. Mostly because honestly, a huge reason was I didn't have to have a car. I have a car back home that I share with a bunch of my siblings. And if I moved out, I either would have had to buy my car off my parents or buy a new car. And I was like, Oh, like, I rather stuck it up, move to a really expensive city and have an excellent form of public transportation, live in an area where I can walk to get my groceries and such. The lack of, I also find that the lack of difficulties commuting and being able to take public transport makes me feel more social, like at default, although as talkative as I am, like on the internet, I think that if I was somewhere or if I lived somewhere where I had to drive and wasn't able to walk to

SPEAKER_258: see people, it would really hold me back. Like when I was living out in the suburbs of Baltimore, I lived really close to the city. I'm like, I'm not kidding. It might have been like between the 12 and 20 minute drive to get into the city. And I almost never went. I went maybe twice a month, just because there was that factor of that commuting. It's like, well, I already work from home. At the end of the day, I want to, you know, like work out, have dinner. And by that time, I'm like, you know, I haven't had to step foot in the car yet. Why? Why go now? And so by being able to have all this really good public transportation and things that are really close and compact, I find that engaging

SPEAKER_256: much more the community, especially the tech community, which is a group of people that are more than willing, like you said, to connect at any time, I'm constantly going into WeWorks, going seeing, checking out people's offices and things like that, just to see what's up. Like, I feel very, very thankful that we're able to live in New York during this time in particular, where people are so willing to share their advice and what they're building. I totally agree with you on that one.

SPEAKER_260: Um, so I mean, just something else I realized pretty recently was that over the last three to six

SPEAKER_263: months, everyone I've met pretty recently has been either coming from LA or SF and moving to New York. So I was like, yeah, like literally I've met so many tech people moving to New York.

SPEAKER_317: Yeah. It's so interesting.

SPEAKER_263: Yeah.

SPEAKER_317: I wonder why.

SPEAKER_296: I don't know. I mean, it has something special, I suppose.

SPEAKER_256: Yeah, seriously. It's something like that. Do you have, do you have any more advice for people looking to either move to a new, new city, move to a new country and start a company here?

SPEAKER_260: Yeah. Just take their, I mean, I know it's coming quite daunting because it was quite daunting for me. Cause I remember that day I was getting on the plane was an evening with my friends, like the gate and everything. And I was like, leaving was quite like, Oh my God, I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm going to your country, but came over here. Like now we have four years in and I'm loving

SPEAKER_263: it. Um, so I think, yeah, so I think what the lesson there is, uh, it's going to take a lot of discomfort. And again, as a founder, I mean, you should be really comfortable with discomfort and adapting because again, markets change, um, people leave, things happen in companies and you should be able to adapt really fast. So I think even the sheer fact that you're switching countries shows that you have a lot of grit, which is extremely important when it comes to starting a company. So just, I mean, just do it. Um, it's going to be hard, but then do it. And it is eventually going to pay off if you also meet the right people and network with the right people, because if you just move to a different new country and just like in your bubble of people from your country and just like a small set of people, you already know, like that's not likely to help out as much, but you want to like expand your network and meet other people from other backgrounds. And, um, yeah, just be able to help other people too. So that's amazing advice. I'm

SPEAKER_330: really, really excited to see how Sally does in the future. Um, where can people find Sally?

SPEAKER_260: You can find us on Twitter and LinkedIn. We're just starting up at TikTok soon, but, um,

SPEAKER_263: on, on Twitter, we're at Sally Inc. S-A-L-L-E-Y-I-N-C. On LinkedIn, you could just search Sally in the search bar. Um, there's a company account for that one. And yeah,

SPEAKER_260: feel free to like, give us your feedback, your comments, and we have a newsletter actually called Story Alley. So if you have, if you want to get into what's happening in the critter economy, just subscribe to that. And yeah, we're happy to like, keep you posted.

SPEAKER_334: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for, for joining today, uh, Richard. I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_256: Like I said, to see where Sally goes and I'll have to check it, check up on you in, uh, in the

SPEAKER_263: next few months. Awesome. Great chatting, Rachel, and looking forward to seeing you in real life

SPEAKER_336: again. Right. I'll see. I'm sure we'll make time next week. All right. Thanks for listening,

SPEAKER_03: everybody. It is the weekend, but our shows are not over. No, no, no, no, no, no. Tons of show

SPEAKER_116: coming to you this Sunday. We'll have another great edition of This Week in Climate Startups, and VC Sunday School, which you all love, especially if you're on the other side of the table. What I'm hearing from people, Molly is, Hey, I'm a founder. I like to listen to VC Sunday School because I then understand the person across from the table. I can negotiate better and I can have a little empathy

SPEAKER_04: for their position. So it's really helping both sides of the table.

SPEAKER_03: A hundred percent. I keep getting emails from founders that are like, I heard you talk about this and I just wanted to address it specifically. And I'm like, it's working. Um, we also are excited to spend the weekend hanging out with you on the internet. Follow Jason and I on Twitter at Jason

SPEAKER_344: and at Mollywood. We're doing co-tweets. Yes, we will be doing co-tweets and I get to see all of the

SPEAKER_116: bruhs and spam and bot accounts brigading Molly. And so big brother is now here. And anybody who says something to my, my, my little sister is going to get tossed. So be careful in our co-tweet replies.

SPEAKER_03: I love the idea that the co-tweet could cause all of this social change where all of a sudden, all these people are like, wait, you get treated like crap on the internet.

SPEAKER_233: Well, you know, awesome. I have to say I am in a mixed race marriage. And when I was married to

SPEAKER_116: somebody who was not a Caucasian, I did see Asian hate up close and personal where my wife and I would go and I don't know, she'd be talking to somebody in the service industry or whatever. They treat her one way. And I'd be like, they would never speak to me that way. They would just diminish her. And then I go down to the front desk. I need a late checkout. Oh, Mr. Calacanis, of course.

SPEAKER_348: She's like, you need to let check out. I'm sorry, I'm busy. So I think it is actually for empathy.

SPEAKER_350: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm seeing in these co-tweets, different eyes. And there are some weird dudes replying to you about some really weird, all right stuff. And I'm coming at you guys. So be careful out there. Also, I just want to say thanks to all the sponsors who make this show

SPEAKER_116: happen. Notion. We use it every day. We love it. Squarespace, the most beautiful websites in the world. Masterclass, making me smarter every day. I'm going to start taking the Steph Curry three-pointing shooting class because I got a basketball court here in Tahoe. And I want to get some old man runs in, in broker, keeping the insurance tight and right for all my startups. Thorne, keeping us healthy. I got a couple of people in the company and I gifted them a Thorne gift card because I just wanted to do something nice for employees. You should do that for your employees as well. Indochino. For all my great suits and shirts, doing a great job there. Microsoft, they support startups like you wouldn't believe. Masterworks, I'm buying my second fractional

SPEAKER_350: ownership of art there, Molly. And of course, Lemon.io. Molly, which one of our startups needs

SPEAKER_357: a developer? All of our startups need another developer. Lemon.io is going to help you get

SPEAKER_116: that developer. Policy Genius, so you can have life insurance. Vanta, get your SOC 2. Intercom, so you understand your customers and you reply to them in those little chat boxes and you get segmentation, all that good stuff. Bubbles. Bubbles. Bubbles, Molly, so you can then. People are pitching on bubbles now. They're pitching us on bubbles. Do it. It's a movement. Brave, the greatest browser ever. And of course, iTrust, which gets your crypto IRA tight and right. I'm going to start investing for my IRA and I'm going to put a little crypto in there. You know, I still believe in Bitcoin and Ethereum. I think there's some good stuff out there. All right, everybody. Thanks to those partners. It really means a lot that you're supporting the show.

Jason Calacanis: Absolutely. Thanks, everybody. And we will be back on Sunday.