Our buddy sold his app for $200M in just 6 weeks?!

0:00:01 I tweeted this out a long time ago.
0:00:04 I said, I have a new hero and his name is Dan Porter.
0:00:05 Nobody knew who the hell I was talking about.
0:00:08 Nobody knew why I was saying that I didn’t give any context, but you’re here.
0:00:13 And today you’re going to explain to the people you’re going to show people why that is true.
0:00:24 I’ll start with a few facts.
0:00:29 Number one, this is a guest I have been waiting for to come on the podcast for years.
0:00:34 And the reason why is because I have, Dan, you don’t know this,
0:00:37 but I’ve had all these fantasies, these entrepreneurial fantasies in my life.
0:00:39 There’s a part of me that’s like, you know what?
0:00:44 One day I’m going to make a hit social app and a hundred million people are going to use it.
0:00:46 I’m going to sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:00:48 You’ve done that.
0:00:50 I have this other fantasy that, no, no, no, I’m going to go change education.
0:00:52 I’m going to start a big nonprofit.
0:00:53 I’m going to be the leader of that.
0:00:54 I’m going to help grow that thing.
0:00:57 I’m going to help change the way that education works in America.
0:00:58 You’ve done that.
0:01:01 Part of me wants to go to Hollywood and work with the power brokers,
0:01:03 the people who are in that world.
0:01:04 You’ve done that.
0:01:07 Part of me wants to create a brand that’s like, you know, part of the culture
0:01:12 that, you know, in the world of sports takes off.
0:01:14 You’ve done that.
0:01:15 Part of me wants to own a sports league.
0:01:16 You’ve done that.
0:01:19 You have done basically all the things that I’ve ever wanted to do.
0:01:24 That’s an amazing intro, especially for somebody whose Twitter game is as lame as mine.
0:01:30 I appreciate that. I would some text that with clearly Jack of all trades, master of not.
0:01:34 Well, I want to start with the story because your stories are legendary.
0:01:38 You came to our basketball camp, camp FM and you didn’t even play basketball,
0:01:39 which is the best part.
0:01:41 You were my favorite person there and you didn’t even play basketball,
0:01:42 which is the funniest part.
0:01:45 Can you tell the story of OMG pop and what happened there?
0:01:47 Yeah.
0:01:52 So OMG pop was a gaming website built entirely in flash.
0:01:57 Started with this incredibly creative guy, Charles Foreman,
0:02:01 who grew up playing gameboys in his garage and was like,
0:02:03 I wish the internet could connect us to play together.
0:02:10 And we made a ton of really fun games and we actually had success.
0:02:14 And it’s a weird story because in some ways,
0:02:18 like we imagine that businesses either succeed or fail.
0:02:22 But what happens like if you’re in the middle and we had millions of people
0:02:26 who played our games, the problem is that Farmville came out
0:02:28 and they had 100 million people who played their games.
0:02:31 And all of a sudden, millions of people who played your games
0:02:35 was kind of way lamer than 100 million people who played your game on Facebook.
0:02:39 And we did our thing, but then the world changed.
0:02:42 And it was Facebook games and it was all of these other things.
0:02:46 And so at what point do you come back to the board and you’re just like,
0:02:49 well, we’re, you know, we’re kind of running out of money.
0:02:54 And they’re like, well, why do we want to invest in something that is good but not great?
0:03:01 And so I remember we went back and we were like, OK, so let’s say that we cut all the snacks.
0:03:04 Like how much runway would that increase for us?
0:03:08 And the answer was one day.
0:03:12 And at some point, you’re just like, well, am I in the runway extending business?
0:03:17 Am I in the business of taking something that is good but not great
0:03:22 and just continually taking money over and over over time?
0:03:26 And so I think at that point, you kind of have that realization
0:03:27 and the board is sitting around.
0:03:30 They’re like, oh, we can take, we can raise money, we can borrow money.
0:03:35 And you’re just like, well, what happens if like we did some cool shit?
0:03:36 It just wasn’t cool enough.
0:03:41 And so, yeah, we’re kind of, I just said, like, maybe this is just kind of the end.
0:03:45 And we’re just going to make some more games and see what happens.
0:03:49 And maybe we’re going to go out of business and a couple of million people will be sad.
0:03:51 But, you know, not 100 million.
0:03:55 And so that’s kind of what we did.
0:04:01 And in that process, I just thought, like, let’s make one or two more games.
0:04:04 And we had this one very big game that everybody in the company
0:04:08 that was was working on a more kind of complicated game.
0:04:14 And so I said, I’d like to at least try to make the last game that we make,
0:04:15 even though I’m not a game designer.
0:04:20 I think I’ve worked here and I’ve kind of like internalized it.
0:04:24 And I think that the cool as a sidebar, one of the cool things about working
0:04:29 in the gaming space is it changed your mindset so that you’re kind of one game.
0:04:34 Always there’s always one game away from something changing the trajectory of the company.
0:04:38 And if you’re in a website or an app or a product business, that’s dangerous
0:04:41 because you always believe like, oh, my God, I’m just one feature away.
0:04:45 If I just enable push notives, if I just had this other thing,
0:04:46 then my app is going to be gigantic.
0:04:50 And that can be an illusion, which is which is challenging.
0:04:56 But in a portfolio theory, kind of a games company is almost like a portfolio
0:04:58 of a bunch of smaller startups in some ways.
0:05:02 And and even if you look at overtime, you know, we have basketball, we have football,
0:05:06 we have a media media company and they all kind of roll up to some big vision.
0:05:10 But they’re also a portfolio of different types of bets in some way.
0:05:12 And so I think that definitely impacted my thinking.
0:05:16 But I was just thinking, OK, like, we’re going to make one or two more games.
0:05:17 Let’s see what happens.
0:05:22 All right, let’s take a quick break because I want to talk to you about
0:05:26 some new stuff that HubSpot has. Now, they let me freestyle this ad here.
0:05:28 So I’m going to actually tell you what I think is interesting.
0:05:31 So they have this thing called the fall spotlight showing all the new features
0:05:33 that they released in the last few months.
0:05:36 And the ones that stood out to me were breeze intelligence.
0:05:39 I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but if you’re in HubSpot and you have,
0:05:43 let’s say, a customer there, you can just basically add intelligence to that customer.
0:05:46 They estimate a revenue for that company, how many employees it has,
0:05:50 maybe their email address or their location, if they’ve ever visited your page or not.
0:05:54 And so you can enrich all of your data automatically with one click
0:05:56 using this thing called breeze intelligence.
0:05:59 They actually acquired a really cool company called Clearbit and it’s become
0:06:01 breeze, which is great because now it’s built in.
0:06:03 I always hated using two different tools to try to do this.
0:06:04 Now it’s all in one place.
0:06:08 And so all the data you had about your customers now just got smarter.
0:06:09 So check it out.
0:06:11 You can actually see all the stuff they released.
0:06:12 It’s a really cool website.
0:06:16 Go to hubspot.com/spotlight to see them all and get the demos yourself.
0:06:18 Back to this episode.
0:06:20 How much time did you have?
0:06:22 Four months, five months left.
0:06:23 Damn.
0:06:25 And did you believe or where was the belief?
0:06:27 Because, you know, startups are a roller coaster.
0:06:30 You have the initial surge where this is going to be awesome.
0:06:34 You have the trough of despair, the trough of sorrow, where you’re
0:06:37 it feels like nothing’s working and then sounds like you were at the end.
0:06:38 Where was the morale at the time?
0:06:42 I didn’t get up on a podium and say, Hey, y’all, we’re going to be out of
0:06:45 business in five months, so polish up that resume.
0:06:47 And we had millions of users.
0:06:50 I mean, our average time on site was like four and a half hours.
0:06:53 And people loved us.
0:06:58 It’s just that the scale at which they loved us was not the scale at which
0:07:02 was happening when Facebook transformed the gaming business.
0:07:05 And of course, like all the money is focused on you.
0:07:09 And then they’re like, Oh, shit, bright, shiny objects, Zynga Farmville,
0:07:10 anything that ends in Ville.
0:07:13 And they all ran over there and you’re like, Hey, what’s up?
0:07:16 A couple of million users and they’re like, cool, cool.
0:07:20 And so we’re like, wow, we made these web based games, but it’s about social
0:07:23 games and it’s about, you know, mobile games.
0:07:25 And so, you know, you have four to six months left.
0:07:28 And at some point, I think you hit this point where you’re just like,
0:07:31 maybe it is just going to go out of business like, you know,
0:07:33 whatever they say on Wall Street, don’t fight the tape.
0:07:37 And like, all we’re going to do is do our best.
0:07:41 Like, we’re not going to mortgage the house and do all these other things
0:07:44 like that to stay in the business for the sake of staying in business.
0:07:47 And, you know, we got a we got a couple of shots.
0:07:49 So we have this big game everyone’s working on.
0:07:55 And I think I’m just like, I’d like to make a game and maybe I can make a game.
0:08:00 And maybe I’m like super arrogant or really deluded or completely out of touch.
0:08:05 But like, we have this kind of fun drawing and guessing game
0:08:06 that we’ve been making on the Internet.
0:08:09 And like, maybe we could make it as a social game off in the corner.
0:08:13 So everybody in this 50 person company is making a game.
0:08:18 And I’m in the corner with like an outsourced dev and two people on my team.
0:08:24 And I don’t know a ton about making games, but the game seems fun.
0:08:29 And I just have this instinct that like, wow, the phone is a communications device.
0:08:35 And yet every game that’s popular on the phone is basically a single player game.
0:08:38 And so we’re back in this like, OK, everybody is a game boy,
0:08:41 but they’re actually connected in some way.
0:08:43 So could we do something social?
0:08:46 And so I start trying to make like a version of this game,
0:08:49 which was called Draw My Thing at that time,
0:08:52 which I think might have been a little intentionally racy.
0:08:56 And basically like every Friday, we would make a version of it
0:08:57 and I would try to play it.
0:08:59 And I’m really dumb and I’m not good at games.
0:09:05 And I can’t read instructions and I have a lot of limitations in that space.
0:09:08 Obviously, I clearly can’t even hoop really.
0:09:12 And so I just play the game and I just be like, how can this game be simpler?
0:09:14 I don’t really understand it.
0:09:18 And I’d recognize every Friday when I played it on the subway home,
0:09:21 like, wow, this is really fun and I get it and this isn’t.
0:09:25 And so we kind of get to that point, we rename it, draw something.
0:09:28 And we’re like kind of last gasp of the company.
0:09:31 And we try to promote it to our audience, you know,
0:09:34 to our couple of million people we have, hey, we got this new game.
0:09:36 It’s based on this other thing.
0:09:40 And it’s in my mind, it is kind of this Hail Mary,
0:09:43 but you can’t run a company and go like, hey, guys,
0:09:45 we’re going to be out of business in four months.
0:09:48 And by the way, this is our Hail Mary or else literally everybody
0:09:50 in the entire company would have a psychic breakdown.
0:09:54 So they’re working on this other game with fighting and all this other stuff.
0:09:56 And we kind of like release this game.
0:09:58 We give a lot of promotion so everybody knows about it.
0:10:03 And the game kind of like climbs the chart, right?
0:10:06 Because on day one, like 30 or 40,000 people download it
0:10:09 because we’ve given them free coins on our website to do that.
0:10:13 And it blips up a little bit and it blips up a little bit more.
0:10:15 And then it kind of crashes down.
0:10:18 And you’re just like, OK, so what have we learned?
0:10:20 Dan Porter, definitely not as smart as he thought he was.
0:10:22 Probably not a real game designer.
0:10:25 And looks like it’s not going to save the company.
0:10:30 And that’s the nature and we try some other promotion.
0:10:33 And before the weekend, like a week out,
0:10:36 one of the back end developers comes to me and he says,
0:10:39 I think there’s something broken in the game because, like,
0:10:43 there are all of these calls being made in the game and, like,
0:10:45 they’re not going through.
0:10:48 And he’s like, I think Chris and I, his name was Jason,
0:10:52 are going to say all weekend, we’re going to try to fix the back end of the game.
0:10:56 And I’m like, cool, like, what’s the downside of that?
0:10:59 So they stay and they rewrite the entire back end of the game over the weekend.
0:11:01 But then we have to submit it to the app store.
0:11:03 And at that time, you submit it to the app store
0:11:06 and it might take a week or two for it to get approved.
0:11:10 And so I call a famous investor who
0:11:15 everybody knows who had written a seed check in us
0:11:17 and wrote a lot, a lot of seed checks.
0:11:19 And I said, listen, I just need this one favor.
0:11:23 Like if they could actually review the game and put it up in a day or two,
0:11:25 it might be huge for us.
0:11:27 And he says, I can help you.
0:11:29 But A, you never get to ask me another favor.
0:11:34 B, one day in 12 years when you’re on Sam and Sean’s podcast,
0:11:37 you can’t use my name so that other people don’t ask me.
0:11:40 So blank, blank, I’m not using your name.
0:11:43 And I’ll see what I can do.
0:11:45 He does it. It goes in the app store.
0:11:49 He uses his cloud and all of a sudden it’s updated.
0:11:53 And what had been happening was that the game was actually
0:11:55 spreading like wildfire, but nobody could download it
0:11:58 and they couldn’t play it once they had downloaded or they downloaded.
0:12:00 It didn’t work. So they fix it, whatever.
0:12:04 And the thing just f-ing just like blows up.
0:12:05 It just like goes through the roof.
0:12:08 And all of a sudden, it’s the number one game in Sweden.
0:12:11 And the colors were blue and yellow.
0:12:14 So people are like, oh, they must be confused about the Swedish flag.
0:12:16 I was like, I think they’re a smart people.
0:12:21 Maybe they just like the game and it started getting really big there.
0:12:25 And then weirdly, it started getting really big in small liberal arts colleges
0:12:29 and in Minnesota and all these other places.
0:12:35 I think what happened was that we were really successful at two things,
0:12:39 making a game that was really simple to understand and play.
0:12:42 And ultimately, like grandma’s played like it was super broad.
0:12:47 And the second thing was making a game that really had just insanely powerful
0:12:51 word of mouth, but word of mouth works in a very small, tight knit community.
0:12:54 So it works in a liberal arts college of 5,000 people.
0:12:59 It works in a country like Sweden, you know, at a giant university
0:13:00 or somewhere else it doesn’t.
0:13:02 And so it just starts to grow and.
0:13:04 Well, what’s the time frame of this?
0:13:07 I would say literally day by day, like in the first nine days,
0:13:09 we got to a million downloads.
0:13:12 And then in the first 50 days, we got to 50 million downloads.
0:13:16 The only app that was in front of us was fucking flashlight.
0:13:20 Because at that time, the iPhone didn’t have a flashlight and somebody make a minute.
0:13:22 Every day I came in, I was like, a fucking kill flashlight.
0:13:25 We got to be more popular than the flashlight is.
0:13:30 And this is like in 10 2010 or something is 2012.
0:13:32 Twelve. Yeah, of course I played.
0:13:34 I mean, everyone played that game, right?
0:13:37 I mean, how many users did you end up having?
0:13:39 So it just blows up.
0:13:43 It just becomes the number one game in like every country in the world
0:13:44 for six months straight.
0:13:49 So I would say on a DAU basis, we had at least 25 million people playing every day,
0:13:52 which was gigantic at that time.
0:13:56 We ultimately were downloaded 250 million times.
0:14:00 And all of a sudden it was just everywhere.
0:14:04 And then everyone came to me and they’re like, we need influencers to make this big.
0:14:08 And someone’s like, I know Cristiano Ronaldo’s manager.
0:14:11 And I was like, that’s really fucking random, but like, I’ll do whatever.
0:14:14 And then a week later, they come in and they’re like,
0:14:19 Miley Cyrus is tweeting about it and like all these celebrities are tweeting about it.
0:14:20 It has nothing to do with me.
0:14:25 It’s like if you make something that’s popular in culture, like everybody does it.
0:14:31 And I remember I end up making a game show with with Ryan Seacrest.
0:14:33 And I was like, how did you find out about this game?
0:14:37 He’s like all the all the people who sat in the front of the studio,
0:14:40 like secretaries and the assistants and the bookers,
0:14:43 they were just playing it all day and they were laughing their ass off.
0:14:45 And I keep coming over and I was like, what are you guys laughing at?
0:14:47 And they’re like this game.
0:14:51 And so in this weird way, especially in this influencer world,
0:14:55 like there’s this level of traction that you get
0:14:59 where people just participate in it because it’s part of culture.
0:15:02 You were like the Haktua girl before before she was around.
0:15:07 Exactly. I just managed to stay around for six months as opposed to like three days on Twitter.
0:15:10 But you can tell by watching on Twitter,
0:15:13 I actually think that we were one of the first games
0:15:17 that ever kind of broke on Instagram because it was so visual.
0:15:21 If you Google, draw something and look at Google images,
0:15:24 there’s billions and billions of of images around it.
0:15:26 And there were all these funny things about it.
0:15:30 Number one, like we didn’t put any sharing capability in it.
0:15:32 So there was just no way to share.
0:15:36 And that was like the antithesis of what everyone did.
0:15:40 And so what happened was people just took screenshots of their drawings
0:15:41 and they just texted and posted.
0:15:46 And in this weird way, because you didn’t ask celebrities to talk about it.
0:15:49 They talked about it because you didn’t ask people to share.
0:15:50 They shared it.
0:15:56 And I remember at some point like I was walking through Zynga’s headquarters
0:16:00 and they eventually bought the game and there were a bunch of developers
0:16:03 and they were trying to figure out the game and trying to like map it
0:16:05 so they could copy it.
0:16:08 And one of them said to me, why didn’t you put XP in this game?
0:16:10 I mean, every good game has XP.
0:16:12 And I thought, oh, fuck, you’re right.
0:16:14 I meant to do that, but I hadn’t done it.
0:16:18 And so it was it ended up just being this kind of organic game
0:16:23 that we knew a lot about, but that was built by kind of a regular person
0:16:25 and then just played by regular people.
0:16:28 And I’ll tell you one kind of like geeky game thing about it
0:16:31 is that I understood from our site that if you came on to our site
0:16:35 and you played a game, if you and Sam played and Sam won,
0:16:38 50 percent of the time you would never come back to the site again.
0:16:39 So let’s say it was even checkers.
0:16:42 The first time you lose at checkers, you’re like, F this site,
0:16:44 this isn’t fun and you lose.
0:16:47 So what does that say to you about running a gaming site
0:16:50 where literally somebody’s going to lose and then you’re going to lose them
0:16:53 as as basically as a customer?
0:16:56 And so in my head, I was like, I need to figure out this way
0:17:00 that you could have a game where nobody loses.
0:17:03 And that’s like some like that’s like one of those riddles like,
0:17:08 which is the door you knock on to get into heaven or hell or other things like that?
0:17:10 What is the game that has no winners and losers?
0:17:13 And so one day I was in Prospect Park
0:17:16 with my son, my younger son Miles and his friend,
0:17:20 and they were throwing the football and I was like, listen,
0:17:24 if you guys can throw and catch it 50 times in a row, I’ll take you for ice cream.
0:17:27 Because basically I’m just trying to get them to collaborate.
0:17:29 And they were like, oh, it’s like a streak.
0:17:30 We’re going to keep doing it.
0:17:33 And I was like, oh, my God, there’s no winner and loser.
0:17:35 Like they’re both winners in this game.
0:17:39 And so I’m just like, oh, you’re going to have streaks
0:17:42 in draw something like the more you can go back and forth
0:17:45 and everybody’s a winner and all this other stuff.
0:17:46 So it’s fun for everyone involved.
0:17:50 So there are all these kind of non game moments in life.
0:17:53 And subsequently, somebody at Snap told me, oh, yeah,
0:17:56 we took that idea of streaks from what you guys had done in that game.
0:17:59 And it’s not like I was like in some lab,
0:18:04 cooking up amazing like ideas about Internet and the future of gaming.
0:18:08 It was just kind of like I was just this regular person observing,
0:18:12 trying to answer some of these existential questions and looking around me.
0:18:15 And I wasn’t a gamer, so I didn’t really use XP.
0:18:18 And I was like looking for the ways that what made people laugh
0:18:20 and what made them smile.
0:18:24 And the biggest thing is, listen, if the first game was called Draw My Thing,
0:18:26 what do you think people draw on the game?
0:18:28 Like this is not hard.
0:18:31 Well, well, that’s something you and Sean actually have that in common.
0:18:35 You have both owned social apps where drawing penises
0:18:37 where was one of the main features.
0:18:41 Yeah, and I remember this like very long board meeting where they were like,
0:18:45 you know, we’re going to use optical character recognition
0:18:47 and we’re going to recognize every dick in the game.
0:18:51 And then we’re going to blank it out and this other board members
0:18:53 like it doesn’t matter whether it goes to the left or the right.
0:18:56 We’re going to figure it out and we’re going to just get it out.
0:18:59 I just thought like, wow, this was really hard.
0:19:01 And it’s like here lies Dan Porter.
0:19:03 He he figured on his grave.
0:19:07 He figured out how to use like early artificial intelligence
0:19:10 to spot, you know, DICKS and games and stuff like that.
0:19:13 And so ultimately, I just made this change
0:19:16 where it’s like you could only play with your friends because I just figured like,
0:19:21 OK, so like whatever, you send your friends something like that.
0:19:25 They either laugh or they’re like, dude, come on, just send me a real drawing.
0:19:27 And it’s just kind of like one of these moments
0:19:29 where it’s like you’re trying to solve this problem.
0:19:33 And the reality is, is the solution for the problem
0:19:37 is actually something that’s like bigger in a way like that.
0:19:39 Like I’ll tell you a really dumb story.
0:19:42 I had like terrible knee pain and it’s like at some point
0:19:46 I was climbing stairs and I started wearing like pads on my knees
0:19:48 and I finally went to a doctor.
0:19:50 I went to like an NFL doctor and I’m thinking,
0:19:52 tell me I need knee surgery.
0:19:53 It does all these things to me.
0:19:55 And he says, listen, lie on the table.
0:19:57 It’s like, I’m going to touch your heels to your butt.
0:19:59 And I’m like, ah, it really hurts.
0:20:01 He’s like, yeah, your quads are so freaking tight.
0:20:03 It’s got nothing to do with your knee.
0:20:06 What you think is the problem is completely not the problem.
0:20:08 You just need to stretch out your quads.
0:20:12 And I was like, oh, my God, I just, A, avoided knee surgery.
0:20:14 And B, learned one of the greater lessons in life,
0:20:16 which is you think it’s this input output,
0:20:18 but there are all of these things that are around it.
0:20:23 It’s like not about recognizing, you know, the dicks in your game.
0:20:26 It’s about changing some other structure around you.
0:20:29 It’s about figure out a stretch out your quads.
0:20:31 I think we found your your biography title.
0:20:33 It’s not about the dicks of the game.
0:20:37 Hey, were you, I know you had a business before this,
0:20:41 but were you financially successful before starting this company?
0:20:42 Or was it like this has to work?
0:20:45 Otherwise I’m broke and I got to start over.
0:20:46 I was kind of like us.
0:20:50 I wasn’t like in, I mean, my parents were college professors,
0:20:52 so I didn’t have a ton of money.
0:20:54 I hadn’t been a public school teacher
0:20:57 and worked in nonprofit education before this.
0:21:01 So I didn’t really have a massively lucrative career.
0:21:02 I was average.
0:21:06 I mean, I couldn’t stop working, but, you know,
0:21:08 I didn’t have to eat ramen every day.
0:21:12 But yeah, this this game and this company was the chance
0:21:17 to completely change the trajectory of my life and my family’s life
0:21:20 from a financial perspective without a doubt.
0:21:24 I think the the insight about, you know, people,
0:21:25 why do people stop playing my game?
0:21:28 You sort of invert and somehow don’t make everyone play my game.
0:21:30 It’s why would somebody not play a game?
0:21:31 Well, because they lose and they feel bad.
0:21:33 And so you’re like, can you make a game
0:21:34 where people don’t lose and feel bad?
0:21:37 And the beautiful thing about the streak is let’s say we lost.
0:21:38 Well, we’re playing together.
0:21:39 We’re collaborating.
0:21:41 I almost feel like I owe you to play again.
0:21:43 So instead of churning out because I lost, I’m like, no, no,
0:21:45 I got to make up for that. My bad. I dropped the ball.
0:21:46 Let’s start the streak again.
0:21:49 And I have I definitely have to play
0:21:51 because I’m the one who cost us the streak.
0:21:53 That was the first thing I also loved.
0:21:54 I mean, this game was amazing, dude.
0:21:56 This was like my flirt game.
0:21:57 You’re you’re basically my wingman.
0:21:58 I didn’t even know you at the time.
0:21:59 I got a girlfriend through draw something
0:22:02 because it was such a simple game.
0:22:04 You download it and immediately that’s like draw this.
0:22:07 The beauty of it was it would show the other person
0:22:10 a like almost like a playback of you drawing it.
0:22:12 For those who didn’t play this game, it’s like,
0:22:13 I don’t remember the exact mechanics.
0:22:14 It’s like, you have to draw.
0:22:15 It’ll tell you what to draw.
0:22:16 You start to draw it.
0:22:18 The other person doesn’t know what you had to draw.
0:22:19 They have to guess.
0:22:23 And it would show you like kind of start stopping erasing.
0:22:26 It was really funny to see people’s kind of like
0:22:28 mistakes as they were drawing the thing.
0:22:29 And you could only be so good.
0:22:32 Like nobody could really be that great
0:22:34 unless you’re really, really talented
0:22:37 because it’s a finger on a little iPhone screen.
0:22:39 So the expectations were low, too.
0:22:42 And I just thought like, I remember the first time I saw that,
0:22:44 oh, it lets you watch the other person draw the thing.
0:22:46 And that makes you laugh.
0:22:48 And then that makes you feel connected with this person
0:22:50 because it’s like almost like both sides
0:22:52 are like a little vulnerable in a way, right?
0:22:53 You’re embarrassing yourself.
0:22:54 It’s like playing charades.
0:22:56 It makes you like each other more.
0:22:58 And I remember thinking, this is genius.
0:23:00 And this game is so simple.
0:23:01 There’s been so many people come on this podcast
0:23:02 to say the same thing.
0:23:04 It’s like, well, my back was against the wall.
0:23:06 Like we didn’t really have another choice.
0:23:08 I wasn’t an expert at this thing,
0:23:10 but I just wanted to make a game that would be really fun to play.
0:23:11 And every week we would make it.
0:23:13 And every Friday I would play test it.
0:23:15 And then I just try to figure out what I could do
0:23:18 to make it a little bit better than it was just that Friday.
0:23:19 I’ll try to make one tweak.
0:23:21 And I just did that one tweak at a time.
0:23:24 And sure enough, that actually resulted in a great product.
0:23:26 It’s not this like highly complex,
0:23:31 convoluted grand theory approach to making things successful.
0:23:32 No, totally.
0:23:35 I mean, people used to say to me, I love that game,
0:23:36 but I’m not really that good at drawing.
0:23:38 And I was like, that’s the kind of the point of the game.
0:23:41 Like there were people who had pens and iPads
0:23:43 who could draw great things,
0:23:45 but it should be accessible to everyone.
0:23:48 Weirdly, we released a game and within a week,
0:23:52 there were five games that were released that were similar.
0:23:54 But we were the only game that had the playback.
0:23:57 And you know how people always say like the greatest thing
0:24:01 about the iPhone is is when they text you that code
0:24:04 and it lets you hit that little thing and it puts the code
0:24:05 and anything you’re filling out.
0:24:09 Like it’s just like sometimes there’s some aspect of the product
0:24:14 that doesn’t seem like the core aspect, but it’s so great.
0:24:17 And to your point, it wasn’t just the drawing, it was the erasing.
0:24:21 It made you feel like there was a live person on the other side of it.
0:24:23 And that that really was the point of it.
0:24:29 And then there were a lot of other just like really totally random, goofy things.
0:24:32 Like I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but like in the beginning,
0:24:35 there’d be a little screen and these letters would make a word.
0:24:39 And the word it made was Manchul, M-A-N-C-H-U-L.
0:24:43 Manchul, a.k.a. Chul was one of our developers.
0:24:47 And we just punt him and just put his name in the beginning of the thing.
0:24:49 And nobody ever said anything.
0:24:52 And after Zynga bought it for like two years, they left it up there
0:24:55 and you’d open it and it wouldn’t say like draw something or whatever.
0:24:57 It would just say Manchul was like this.
0:25:00 Just like just put these weird things in there just because
0:25:05 because you can and because listen, you could say from a strategy,
0:25:08 look, if I’m not having fun, how can I make sure that the people
0:25:10 who are doing the drawings are having fun?
0:25:14 And you sold it for you sold it for like what, two hundred million dollars to Zynga?
0:25:17 Yes. And that was when Zynga was at its peak.
0:25:21 I was like five to six weeks after the game really kind of came out and burst.
0:25:23 Like we sold that happened so fast.
0:25:26 No way. Six weeks.
0:25:28 Yeah. So that was like the crazy turnaround.
0:25:30 So they hired two law firms.
0:25:33 One worked the first twelve hours of the day on the deal.
0:25:36 And the other one worked the second twelve hours of the day of the deal.
0:25:38 And the whole deal got done in nine days.
0:25:43 And I’m like, how like all this paperwork and I’m trying to run around and figure out how did it happen?
0:25:46 So the game’s blowing up in what you get an email from Mark Pincus or how does that?
0:25:50 It’s going up and not only is it so big,
0:25:55 it’s literally sucking the user base out of every single other game on the market.
0:26:00 And so that Zynga, that’s EA, that’s like everybody else who’s about to
0:26:03 report earnings and talk about their DAU and MAU.
0:26:08 And, you know, I have these videos of the download numbers and the counter is just broken
0:26:12 because there’s, you know, there’s a million drawings happening every five seconds.
0:26:16 And so, you know, Mark knew somebody on my board.
0:26:18 They invited me to the headquarters.
0:26:21 I was a joker, so I entered.
0:26:24 My name is Dr. Dre from the company NWA coming in.
0:26:27 I thought maybe somebody would know I was there or whatever.
0:26:31 Ultimately, there were five or six companies that were really interested
0:26:35 in buying it because it was just the trajectory was so big.
0:26:37 And I think they were playing offense.
0:26:40 Like they clearly was like, these guys are some mobile game savants.
0:26:46 And I think they were playing defense because they were bleeding all of their users across everywhere.
0:26:50 And the deal closed six weeks after the after draw something went live.
0:26:51 That’s got to be one of the fastest.
0:26:55 That’s got to be one of the fastest clothes like launch to close times ever.
0:26:57 It was insanely fast.
0:27:02 And the funny thing is that I went to GDC, which is a game developer conference.
0:27:05 And the year before I went and like nobody knew who I was.
0:27:10 And it just so happened that it happened at the peak moment of the game.
0:27:12 And I went and like everybody knew who I was.
0:27:16 But then I could meet with like seriously like every buyer, like in two days
0:27:18 because everybody was in San Francisco for that conference.
0:27:24 And we also got a term sheet for $50 million, which I had folded up
0:27:27 and put in my pocket and went to a event and I dropped it and I couldn’t find it.
0:27:29 And I only had the print out.
0:27:33 So I had a rough idea of what the terms were, but it was on the floor of some party somewhere.
0:27:39 And I came back and I asked kind of like the OGs who had been there for four or five years
0:27:44 and there are only seven of us and we were working above like a combination
0:27:48 Taco Bell, Dunkin Donuts where the smell was different on which side of the room you were on.
0:27:52 And I was like, do you guys want to raise money and like build something really big?
0:27:53 Or do you want to sell the company?
0:27:56 And they were like, sell the company and I get it.
0:27:58 They had put five years of their life.
0:28:01 They were at a pivotal time in their life and it was life changing for them.
0:28:04 So I think that was a decision.
0:28:09 And I think people asked me a lot of times also, listen, we were really, really good at making games.
0:28:13 And we made a really popular game and we were good at the community management
0:28:15 and the social media around it.
0:28:20 But you take $50 million and you spend a lot of that on building a legal team,
0:28:23 building a sales team, building all these commodity things
0:28:26 that I didn’t think we were necessarily going to be better than anyone else at.
0:28:29 So we just wanted to be in a place where we could make games.
0:28:32 How did you negotiate the price?
0:28:38 They, the buyers came back and they were like
0:28:41 $120, $150 million.
0:28:44 The board was ecstatic.
0:28:45 Well, where did they come up with that number?
0:28:52 I think they were looking at probably, we were making a ton of money because
0:28:57 we had so many screens in the game when you go back and forth and back and forth.
0:28:59 So we’re treading out of advertising revenue.
0:29:05 You’re looking at, you know, roughly kind of how much is an MAU or a DAU interesting to you.
0:29:10 And so we bring it to the board and the board is ecstatic because we go from being like,
0:29:16 oh, should we essentially wind this thing down to now we have this thing that’s popular and somebody wants to buy it.
0:29:19 And so they’re like, great, like $120 million.
0:29:22 I was like, this thing is worth $250 million.
0:29:26 Because like anyone, I’m extremely high on my own supply at that time.
0:29:30 And, you know, there’s this moment where basically the message they’re saying to me is like,
0:29:33 you’re the CEO, but it’s not your company, it’s our company.
0:29:35 Like, you don’t control this thing.
0:29:39 And there’s kind of a subtle message from me to them being like, well, fine,
0:29:42 fucking sell this thing without me because this thing is worth so much money.
0:29:51 And that’s 50 percent complete delusion and arrogance and adrenaline and all the other things that happen.
0:29:56 You know, when you’re in the desert and you have a couple of million users and now you’re hundreds of millions of users.
0:30:00 And part of me thinking like, maybe I actually am right.
0:30:02 And like, maybe it is worth more.
0:30:08 And so they give me the small window and I go back, luster, draw something’s the greatest thing.
0:30:14 Somebody tweets like, you know, Y Combinator pitch, the draw something of X.
0:30:18 And, you know, that matters to all of those people.
0:30:22 And so I go back and I’m like, I need this and I need that and I need this.
0:30:26 And, you know, it’s a it’s a gamble, but it was right.
0:30:32 Like we got way more money and a way better deal because a segment of the buyers
0:30:38 really, really needed it because they were, you know, they were telling results.
0:30:40 The hit to their stock was bad.
0:30:44 You know, somebody like EA was invested in sports games.
0:30:48 Somebody like a Zingo was over invested in Farmville.
0:30:50 You know, you have strategic imperative to people.
0:30:54 So sure, you’re super valuable, but they’re all playing a much bigger game.
0:30:57 And if you can understand that, that’s where your leverage is.
0:31:00 And then, boom, all of a sudden we do that.
0:31:02 I come back, I’m like the company sold.
0:31:06 And it’s, you know, this this whole crazy kind of episode.
0:31:11 And the funniest thing to me is like, I start reading all of these things.
0:31:13 Like, why draw something succeeded?
0:31:16 And then these other articles, why draw something failed?
0:31:19 And, you know, when you’re an entrepreneur, you read a ton of these
0:31:21 and you come back and you’re like, did you see these?
0:31:25 You tell your team, you see this article, we need to be doing this.
0:31:28 And the reality was is that every single article was wrong.
0:31:32 Like it was completely the wrong like their analysis was wrong.
0:31:34 Like there was this whole thing about why we failed.
0:31:38 But they were analyzing our iPad app and we didn’t have an iPad app.
0:31:41 We just had a stretched out mobile app for iPad.
0:31:46 And then all of a sudden you just realize, oh, shit, I’ve been reading these articles
0:31:48 as an entrepreneur about why things succeeded and failed.
0:31:51 I’ve been making decisions and they were probably wrong there.
0:31:54 And now when it’s happening to me, they’re really fucking wrong.
0:31:57 But it was this like crazy ride.
0:31:59 And then all of a sudden, you know, we’re part of Zynga.
0:32:02 And then all of a sudden a year later, I’m not working there.
0:32:06 So it was an amazing rise and fall totally turned around.
0:32:09 The company saved us and we did a whole bunch of things.
0:32:13 You know, there were a bunch of employees who I had to let go.
0:32:18 And I just made the decision on my own to rehire them like the day
0:32:21 before the deal closed, that their options would still vest.
0:32:27 There were people who had taken more cash than stock because they had little kids.
0:32:32 And I got a cash component that I could use at my discretion.
0:32:35 And so I just gave them the money that they would have made.
0:32:40 There’s just this chance to do like all this insanely non-capitalist
0:32:43 but like super cool shit to change people’s lives.
0:32:48 And after the deal closed, they had a debt free club where all the employees
0:32:51 who had college loans all paid off their college loans.
0:32:55 And there’s a moment when you have a little bit of money left in your bank account.
0:32:57 And that’s going to go to the other companies.
0:33:00 I ran to the Apple store in Soho, they used to love me.
0:33:03 And I bought a hundred thousand dollars worth of iPads and all this stuff.
0:33:06 And I just gave it out to everybody who worked at the company.
0:33:08 And every now and then somebody will text me.
0:33:10 They’re like, I still have that iPad from 2012.
0:33:15 And so all of a sudden you just do kind of all the cool, fun shit
0:33:17 that they would never teach you to do in business school.
0:33:19 They teach you to do the opposite.
0:33:22 But you can do it because you have this superpower, which is not only
0:33:26 does somebody want your company, but you have this ability to impact
0:33:29 the lives of all these people who’ve given you their all for the last five years.
0:33:32 And to me, that was the coolest part of it.
0:33:36 Sam, you know, one of the things I love about Dan is we meet a lot of founders
0:33:38 and entrepreneurs and almost all of them.
0:33:41 I would actually say 80, 90 percent of them will say it’s not about the money.
0:33:43 Money is not the biggest thing for me.
0:33:45 I would say most people want that to be true.
0:33:48 And then you go look at their actions and it’s like those people are the most
0:33:50 transactional. They’re the people that want the money the most.
0:33:53 And they they want to not want the money, but they want the money.
0:33:55 And I’m guilty of that, too.
0:33:59 Dan is one of the few people I met, I believe, who plays a game with money.
0:34:01 It’s not that money doesn’t matter to you.
0:34:06 But he’s told me a bunch of stories of it wasn’t about the money.
0:34:11 Like he made a decision that was actively not money driven or not even like logical.
0:34:14 But he just does it for the fun and for the kicks.
0:34:17 It’s like the Joker in Batman, right?
0:34:18 Like most people want to be Batman.
0:34:21 Dan, I feel like you want to be Joker where you’re just like,
0:34:23 I just want to see what happens if I do this.
0:34:25 What if I tie up this this person you love over here?
0:34:27 This was lovely. Who are you going to go get?
0:34:28 I can’t wait to find out.
0:34:29 Have you read his LinkedIn?
0:34:31 So his LinkedIn is pretty hilarious.
0:34:35 So it starts with I think you were the president of Teach for America.
0:34:38 When I when I think of Teach for America, I think of like kind of hippie-ish,
0:34:40 like do good for the world type of vibe.
0:34:43 Then you go to gaming, which is, in my opinion,
0:34:46 the gamers are typically like the hardest core capitalist there are.
0:34:49 It’s just like you’re practically working on an Excel sheet on how to change things.
0:34:52 But then so you got this like weird hippie side.
0:34:54 But then you’re also this capitalist.
0:34:56 But then his late did Sean.
0:34:58 So after selling draw something,
0:35:03 he goes to work for Ari Emanuel at Endeavor, who Sean and I love.
0:35:04 We love reading about Ari.
0:35:06 Listen, what he says, he goes,
0:35:09 I told Ari to pass on five companies for investing that he ignored me
0:35:11 and he invested in them anyway.
0:35:13 All of them are now out of business.
0:35:15 Know what you know, my guy.
0:35:19 He’s got this like shit head vibe that I love that I love.
0:35:22 And then he’s also like does good stuff for America.
0:35:24 And there’s also this like greedy capitalists.
0:35:28 He’s the perfect combination of like a being a holistic, balanced human being.
0:35:29 I love it.
0:35:32 I appreciate those nice words.
0:35:36 I will say I think like none of it is intentional or by design.
0:35:39 It’s just kind of instinct.
0:35:44 And I think I understand what it’s like to, you know,
0:35:50 be average or not have no money, but not have any spectacular upside
0:35:53 and also have that potential in front of you.
0:35:57 You know, I have a guy who worked for me at overtime for six years.
0:36:00 He left to take another job was the next step in his career.
0:36:03 I didn’t have enough money to exercise his options.
0:36:06 So that happens all the time.
0:36:07 And so he just left them.
0:36:11 So one of my investors is like, I want a bigger piece of overtime.
0:36:13 And I was like, you should buy his options.
0:36:15 Like there was no incentive for that.
0:36:18 He wasn’t even working in the company, but it was just the right thing to do.
0:36:20 Like the dude worked for us for six years.
0:36:23 Like if I could help him make some money based on that,
0:36:28 then I think that that part of it was was really cool.
0:36:32 And I would say like there’s two things that really motivated me.
0:36:38 One was somebody who once said to me he was kind of Oprah’s manager
0:36:39 and helped her be really big.
0:36:41 And when I was in my 20s, he once said to me,
0:36:45 the most powerful people are the people who know how to give up power.
0:36:51 And not a lot of people say things to me that I either remember or have an impact.
0:36:55 But I just always was like, wow, it’s so interesting.
0:36:59 It is like it’s not hard to be powerful and consolidate power.
0:37:03 It’s way harder to be powerful and somehow let go of power.
0:37:08 And I think there’s some aspect you could substitute money or anything else like that.
0:37:11 Sure, like Zynga said, here’s five million dollars in cash.
0:37:14 I could have put that whole thing in my own bank account if I wanted to.
0:37:17 And sure, do I wish I had that money today?
0:37:18 Sure, who doesn’t?
0:37:22 But like to be able to release that and give it to other people and change your
0:37:25 lives is just it’s just fucking cool.
0:37:29 And then I would say to me like and I told this to staff at the whole time,
0:37:34 the number one thing that motivated me was every day I wrote the subway
0:37:36 and every day people played games on their iPhone.
0:37:40 And I was just like, I want to make a game that people play on their life.
0:37:44 And I remember there was a point in which the game was so big.
0:37:47 It was like everybody I knew was playing and it was everywhere.
0:37:51 And I was walking my dog with one of my kids in Prospect Park.
0:37:54 And there was like this couple and they were like canoodling on a bench
0:37:58 and they were laughing and I’m thinking, oh, my God, I wonder if they’re playing draw something.
0:38:00 I’ve got to go check it out.
0:38:04 So I kind of like walk behind the bench and I look over and and they’re playing it.
0:38:07 And I think in that moment, I’m like, cool.
0:38:09 But of course, I can’t help myself.
0:38:12 I tapped them on the shoulder and I’m like, I made that game.
0:38:16 And they were like looked at me like I was like a stalker.
0:38:18 And they were like, oh, oh, cool.
0:38:21 And they went back to doing what they were doing.
0:38:22 But to me, it’s the same thing.
0:38:26 It’s like I walk through an airport and I see some kid wearing an overtime shirt.
0:38:29 And I just think like that’s fucking cool.
0:38:32 Like I made that everyone who I work with, we made that.
0:38:37 And like the fact that you can make something that’s out in the world that people love,
0:38:40 they don’t even know you have anything to do with.
0:38:43 I did a whole music festival when I was at Virgin.
0:38:46 And I remember standing on stage next to Richard Branson and like
0:38:50 Roger Daltrey and the who were screaming and like dads have their kids on their
0:38:52 shoulder. There’s like 80,000 people there.
0:38:56 And I’m thinking like I was a spark that like made this happen.
0:39:00 And I’m not interested in these people ever knowing who I am.
0:39:02 Like that’s not the point.
0:39:05 The point is you made something and it existed in the world and it touched
0:39:07 people who have no idea of who you are.
0:39:12 And I just can’t tell you how fucking existentially cool that is.
0:39:17 Can I ask you a little bit about Branson and Ari?
0:39:21 So Sean and I have been on this Ari Emmanuel kick because he’s not
0:39:25 probably like us at all in that he’s significantly more intense.
0:39:27 Go, go, go take over the world.
0:39:31 Sean and I care a little bit more about just having our ideal lifestyle.
0:39:33 But then you’ve got Branson.
0:39:36 So you talk you said the guy was like it’s more about who can release power.
0:39:38 So Branson seems like a guy where it’s like decentralized.
0:39:41 Ari is like a guy where it’s like he’s that he’s the boss
0:39:43 and it’s a little bit more dictatorship.
0:39:45 This is just an outsider’s observation.
0:39:48 But what can you say about the differences between the two of them
0:39:51 and what attributes each person had that made him kick ass?
0:39:55 Yeah, so let me say like Ari is an amazing guy
0:40:00 and I learned a ton working for him and Richard is also an amazing guy.
0:40:05 I would say in Ari’s case when I worked at WME before they bought
0:40:09 IMG before they bought UFC, three months into it, people were like,
0:40:11 what does it like to work there?
0:40:16 And I was like, it’s the greatest fucking Jewish family dinner you’ve ever been.
0:40:19 You just sit around the table and everybody’s screaming at each other
0:40:22 at the top of their lungs, but they actually love each other.
0:40:26 And I had just never worked in an environment like that.
0:40:28 Like, are you walking to somebody’s office?
0:40:32 He said, listen, you fucking shmuck, you know, what about this and that?
0:40:33 And they’re like, that’s not true.
0:40:35 And I’m like, wait, they’re yelling at each other.
0:40:37 But they love each other.
0:40:39 It was actually wild.
0:40:43 And I think that Ari is an example of somebody in a number of ways.
0:40:48 One is he’s relentlessly curious, like he reads, he consumes information.
0:40:51 There’s nothing he doesn’t want to learn about.
0:40:54 And I think that that is this incredible
0:40:59 spark for him and within the company to clearly like Richard.
0:41:03 But in a different way, he has an incredible amount of personal charisma.
0:41:06 But he uses his personality to his advantage.
0:41:09 And in a way, the person he actually reminded me the most
0:41:13 of what I worked with later was actually David Stern, the former MBA commissioner.
0:41:17 Because like I’d be in a room with David and we’d be talking about Basabon.
0:41:21 He’d look at me and say, listen, Dan, I get it, you’re good at raising money.
0:41:23 But are you fucking good at anything else?
0:41:26 Because clearly it doesn’t seem like you are.
0:41:29 And so it’s almost like this Catskill comedian
0:41:33 style of using humor and your personality that’s probably rooted
0:41:37 in some like Jewish humor and whatever that says to you, hey,
0:41:40 like maybe you should turn left instead of going straight here.
0:41:44 But I’m going to say it in a way that that is funny.
0:41:46 But but you you get what I’m saying.
0:41:50 And and that’s going to make you love me in the end, too.
0:41:55 And I think that Ari is very, very funny and was very good
0:41:59 at that by strength of personality and also
0:42:02 like he could he could call you every single day.
0:42:04 That that’s how he recruited you, right?
0:42:07 Well, what’s the story of how he recruited you when he wanted me to work there?
0:42:09 He just decided he wanted me to work there
0:42:11 and he called me every single day for four months.
0:42:12 And what did he say?
0:42:15 He would just be like, you know, we have all this IP.
0:42:17 We need to do this. We should come here.
0:42:20 And then I’d go to talk and I’d realize he wasn’t there anymore.
0:42:22 And that’s the problem with cell phones.
0:42:25 Wait, did he did he did he hang up with that same guy?
0:42:28 Yeah, that’s awesome.
0:42:29 That’s what the agents do.
0:42:31 They roll calls, you know, a list of 300 people.
0:42:32 Hey, hey, how are you doing?
0:42:34 Larry, David, good, but whatever.
0:42:36 And then he’s on to the next one and they understood it.
0:42:37 And I was an idiot.
0:42:40 I just wasn’t from that environment, so I didn’t really understand it.
0:42:43 So I’d be talking and I’d look and I just see the time on my phone
0:42:46 because he’d hung up and he’d on to the next call.
0:42:50 And I just think there’s this incredible
0:42:53 personal force and momentum that he has.
0:42:57 And sometimes I think for some people, they have that,
0:43:01 but it can lead to a really toxic work environment and they’re all kinds of exposures.
0:43:03 I think he loves life.
0:43:04 He enjoys everything.
0:43:05 He’s very funny.
0:43:08 And I think he could he could have both of those in a way.
0:43:14 And he was good at understanding what made you tick and connecting with that.
0:43:15 I think Richard is really different.
0:43:20 Richard is very laid back, but very cool.
0:43:25 And I remember going to this meeting at Virgin Mobile in Canada,
0:43:30 and he wanted to talk to all the people in the phone room, the customer support people.
0:43:31 And people just don’t do that.
0:43:35 And he basically just tells them this story about when he lost his virginity,
0:43:37 like no pun intended.
0:43:41 And this is a very funny story where he humanizes himself and he’s just this
0:43:44 regular guy and he’s not talking to the C-suite.
0:43:47 He’s talking to all people who answer the phone and they just leave that thing.
0:43:50 And they think, fucking love Richard Branson.
0:43:52 He is like the man.
0:43:54 And it’s just it’s just charisma.
0:43:56 It’s just different for each of them.
0:43:59 And it’s very rooted in what their brand is.
0:44:04 Their brand is extremely clear and articulated, but it’s clearly they’ve
0:44:05 understood how to make who they are.
0:44:10 They’re not trying to be anyone they aren’t, but they they’ve rooted that.
0:44:15 And I think in this world where people become very studied and they read
0:44:19 articles and they hire coaches and they do all these other things like that.
0:44:24 Both Richard and Ari had the superpower in that they just knew exactly who they
0:44:27 were and they tapped in who that was.
0:44:28 And and that was their brand.
0:44:30 And maybe you make some comment about my LinkedIn.
0:44:33 It’s not like I wake up in the day and I think I just want to fucking
0:44:36 troll everyone who reads my LinkedIn.
0:44:38 I just think like maybe this would be actually funny.
0:44:44 And so I think there’s some self-realization and it helps to be charismatic.
0:44:47 And that’s really hard to learn and and otherwise.
0:44:52 But I think in a way they both tap into it and they both are relentless, but
0:44:57 not in this grind set way in this way that like everybody reads on Reddit
0:45:00 about how they’re supposed to go and grind and grind and be relentless.
0:45:05 They just have this zest to do something that matters and something that’s bigger.
0:45:06 And where does that come from?
0:45:08 That’s for the psychiatrist couch.
0:45:12 But again, it’s it’s authentic and it’s unique to them.
0:45:13 It’s not studied.
0:45:15 And I think that’s part of what makes it so powerful.
0:45:19 The internet community or industry or whatever you want to call it.
0:45:20 We need more of that.
0:45:24 My father is a small business owner and he does all of his business via phone.
0:45:28 And I used to sit in his office and he’d be like, I remember he just like would
0:45:32 call someone be like, Hey, sweetheart, look, what’s money amongst friends?
0:45:34 Right. It’s just money.
0:45:36 We got to make some we got to make something work here.
0:45:39 Like just like like charm, sweet talk.
0:45:43 I remember hearing this or just just like little things like, look,
0:45:45 it’s a little early for you to be busting my balls this morning.
0:45:48 We go, let’s make something, you know, just like this like gift to gab.
0:45:51 Yeah, we don’t have that in our industry.
0:45:53 It’s significantly more formal.
0:45:55 It’s like calls are scheduled.
0:45:59 Every call is like the default calendar length of the Google calendar,
0:46:00 which is 30 minutes.
0:46:01 Like it’s just different.
0:46:04 And I actually love that that type of stuff.
0:46:07 It’s the in-between stuff that makes.
0:46:09 Those things happen.
0:46:14 Look, Ari was an agent, maybe like the most super, super agent of all time.
0:46:16 And he he definitely understood that.
0:46:19 David understood that he was not a basketball player.
0:46:21 He didn’t play basketball in college.
0:46:22 We’re sure stern.
0:46:26 And he came into a thing and he’s dealing with basketball players
0:46:28 and coaches in China and international.
0:46:32 And it’s just, you know, there’s there’s like a human connection.
0:46:34 There’s humor. There’s charisma.
0:46:36 There’s all those things that kind of fit into it.
0:46:42 And and I remember, you know, a thing that someone else said to me at some point,
0:46:46 this guy Dick Parsons, who had run a big bank and it was some point,
0:46:49 was the chairman of Time Warner and very, very influential.
0:46:53 And he said, listen, whenever I do a deal with somebody,
0:46:56 I always just leave a little bit extra on the table
0:46:58 because you never know when you’re going to come back.
0:46:59 I want to do another deal with them.
0:47:04 And like, you know, the internet is filled with here’s how do you extract
0:47:06 a maximum value from the other person?
0:47:09 Here’s how you fucking win in negotiation.
0:47:13 And the reality is it’s like maybe there is enough to go around.
0:47:15 And maybe I’m going to let you have a little wins
0:47:16 because I care about our relationship.
0:47:21 And maybe we’re going to do business in the future and and everything else like that.
0:47:24 So I think, you know, per your dad’s story and otherwise
0:47:26 that there there is a bunch of that.
0:47:28 And and sometimes it makes it easier.
0:47:29 You know, they just sent me this thing.
0:47:32 They’re like, what do you think about all these things we’re proposing?
0:47:35 And I just wrote back and I was like, these are seriously mid.
0:47:38 And that’s like in front of 15 people.
0:47:41 So we have this meeting and the guy says to me, listen,
0:47:45 my only goal in this meeting is how can we not be so mid?
0:47:47 So I’m like, OK, you get my point.
0:47:52 And yet I have a cross some crazy HR line and you’ve given it back to me.
0:47:53 And so what is the goal?
0:47:56 The goal is to actually make something that’s slightly better.
0:47:59 But it requires, you know, trust and humor.
0:48:03 And maybe there is a lost art in in cat skills, humor and business.
0:48:06 And maybe that’s going to be my next company after this.
0:48:07 How old are you?
0:48:09 I’m 58 years old.
0:48:13 So you started over time when you were what, 50 years old and your partner.
0:48:16 Did I read your partner is 24?
0:48:18 Yeah, when we started, Zach was 22.
0:48:20 That’s that’s some Leonardo DiCaprio.
0:48:24 I like it. So you would only doubt date founders under 25.
0:48:28 So you, by the way, the hilarious thing is I saw over time.
0:48:30 And I was like, man, this brand is awesome.
0:48:34 Sam, I don’t think your eyes into kind of like the hoops, mix, tape, culture.
0:48:36 Sam’s not about the culture.
0:48:38 Yeah, you know, like you are, so exactly.
0:48:41 I’ve been waiting for somebody to call Sam out more than you know.
0:48:43 More than you know. Come on.
0:48:44 Well, it’s all good.
0:48:48 So we see overtime and overtime just takes off amongst basically
0:48:50 like the young black market in America.
0:48:51 It’s the coolest brand.
0:48:52 It’s the shirt everybody’s wearing.
0:48:54 It’s the Instagram page.
0:48:55 People are following.
0:48:57 I’m looking for the founder of this thing.
0:48:59 I remember when I first saw it, I’m looking for the founder.
0:49:03 And I have an image in my head of what I think the founder of overtime looks like.
0:49:05 Well, what was the image in your head?
0:49:08 Oh, so some guy, maybe 28 years old.
0:49:10 I just got to have some business savvy to him.
0:49:13 But I figured it was like a 28 year old black guy who used to play basketball
0:49:16 or still playing basketball, maybe comes from the music scene
0:49:19 of some sort of music promoter or record label exec.
0:49:22 Because there was definitely like a culture crossover aspect of this
0:49:25 where it was not just prospect rankings or something like that.
0:49:29 Like not just like a database of athletes or it was not done that way.
0:49:32 And then I see it’s Dan Porter and I meet Dan.
0:49:34 And Dan actually really helped us out with Milk Road, Sam.
0:49:36 I don’t know if everybody told you this, but no, I didn’t know that he was.
0:49:37 I don’t know how we got connected.
0:49:39 He was reading the Milk Road early on.
0:49:40 We asked him, you know, big fan of what you did.
0:49:43 Can we just get on the phone for an hour?
0:49:45 And Dan’s like, you got to do this.
0:49:46 And he’s like, this is working.
0:49:48 And I think the instinct when something is working
0:49:50 is to kind of button it up and grow up.
0:49:53 And he’s like, no, no, no, that’s exactly the thing that’s great about this
0:49:56 is that it’s not as buttoned up because there I think there was
0:49:57 a big Bitcoin conference going on.
0:49:59 He’s like, you should host the anti conference.
0:50:02 It’s like, you know, just PBR is a people’s backyard or something like that.
0:50:06 Just like, what’s the counter program and you could do against the traditional thing?
0:50:09 And I started asking him about the brand that he built over time.
0:50:14 And Dan, you told me you studied soccer clubs and bands and cults.
0:50:17 And you wanted to figure out what they did differently.
0:50:20 And you shared with me two or three things that we used at the Milk Road
0:50:23 to help grow that brand.
0:50:26 So I definitely learned a lot about brand working for Richard.
0:50:31 You know, and he really understood the idea of challenger brand.
0:50:38 And I think for me, I was really interested in community, especially coming from gaming.
0:50:43 And I was like, what is the challenge around being in the media space
0:50:46 and, you know, being tangential to digital media space?
0:50:48 I’m like, it’s all content and views.
0:50:52 And it’s like you’re looking on your phone or somewhere else.
0:50:55 And it’s like, that’s funny, but it could come from anywhere.
0:51:00 And so I was like, you know, maybe what the audience wants is a sense of community,
0:51:04 a sense of being part of something, you know, belonging to something.
0:51:08 I think that was a clearly a growth hack for religion thousands of years ago.
0:51:11 Like, let’s get a place where people can get together
0:51:13 and make them feel part of something.
0:51:14 And I think people wanted that.
0:51:19 And so to me, it’s just like you start from that standpoint.
0:51:23 And you just start to observe the world around you.
0:51:26 So you go, you know, you go to a British soccer game
0:51:30 and you realize like they’re singing like sweet Caroline.
0:51:33 And you’re like, what does Neil Diamond have to do with soccer?
0:51:34 I never understood that.
0:51:37 And it’s just it’s such a good sing along song.
0:51:42 And then all of a sudden you’re just like, where else can grown men,
0:51:46 I guess, aside from church, go someplace and sing in the top of their lungs.
0:51:49 And like, why are people fandom and why do they paint their faces?
0:51:54 And I remember I went to like a little baby birthday concert at State Farm
0:51:58 and everyone was holding up their phone and I was trying to make a video
0:52:00 to put on my story to show that I was valid.
0:52:04 And all of a sudden I realized they were all filming themselves.
0:52:08 I was like one of the only people actually filmed in a concert.
0:52:10 Like they were all content creators.
0:52:16 They went to a concert as a platform for them to make content about themselves.
0:52:19 And I was like, I’m not that way.
0:52:21 But like to me, it was so fascinating.
0:52:25 There’s some anthropological understanding about, you know,
0:52:29 you ask people which way you point your camera at a certain age.
0:52:31 You’re, you know, you’re filming other people in a certain age.
0:52:33 You’re filming themselves.
0:52:38 And I just think I’ve had this relentless curiosity about that.
0:52:43 And to me, you can Google brand and you can read a lot of shit
0:52:48 that has a high ranking in, you know, in Google about how to do this and that.
0:52:53 But the passion of the soccer team or the passion that you feel for a sports team,
0:52:57 you think about things like the Grateful Dead that just gave away their music
0:53:00 and let people record it when all that would happen when I was a kid
0:53:03 is you’d go to a concert and they’d frisk you to make sure you don’t have
0:53:07 a recording device on you and how they understood like, well, shit,
0:53:12 I could let my fans be the distribution and it could grow 10X bigger
0:53:14 than anything else like that.
0:53:16 And then all of a sudden it’s not about your song.
0:53:20 It’s like, well, I have that song, you know, this show at Nassau Coliseum
0:53:23 and I have this show at Hampton and I have this song, this version of that.
0:53:28 And so I think in a way like all of those examples exist out there.
0:53:32 And I remember I watched the Travis Scott documentary that’s on Netflix.
0:53:38 And it’s so interesting to me that his audience is so much more passionate about him.
0:53:41 They literally cry when they’re coming out of the show
0:53:46 and he dives into the stage and you just ask, there are 100 rappers out there.
0:53:49 Why is Travis Scott over here and they’re all the way over there?
0:53:51 Like, why do people literally go?
0:53:55 Do people go to a Lil Uzi Vert show and cry?
0:53:58 I don’t know. Maybe they do, but I don’t think in the same way.
0:54:00 Well, what’s that answer?
0:54:04 I spend hours of brain power trying to figure out what that is
0:54:08 and reverse engineered because like, why is this person or this brand
0:54:11 so much more beloved than the other?
0:54:15 Why is Ari so much more effective in his business than other people are?
0:54:17 I think for Travis Scott, it’s something about the music,
0:54:22 but it is something about the fact that he cares so much more about his fans
0:54:26 that he is literally able to jump in the middle and be there with him.
0:54:30 And then when you magnify that, the symbolism around that, the storytelling.
0:54:35 I think even for me, it’s like, listen, I, you know, sure,
0:54:38 I’m a guy who is not the same as the people who put on my account,
0:54:43 but I am willing to get in there and answer DMs and talk to them
0:54:46 and connect them without music and ask them a hundred questions.
0:54:49 I have this like, you know, they always have this thing.
0:54:52 They say, if you can give respect, you can get respect.
0:54:56 I don’t walk into a room and think that anyone will ever respect me
0:55:01 or care about me based on who I am, unless I am the first one to give respect.
0:55:03 And I know that every single person in that room,
0:55:06 whether they’re a 16 year old Hooper or a talent agent
0:55:10 or a YouTuber has something incredibly deserving of respect.
0:55:15 And my job is to figure out what that is and honor that and learn about that.
0:55:18 So over times, Instagram has like, I don’t know, 11 million followers,
0:55:21 probably billions of views over the years.
0:55:26 And it’s one thing to say, you know, I learned a lot from Branson
0:55:29 or I’ve watched how other brands work.
0:55:31 And I’ve noticed these two or three things.
0:55:34 It’s like me watching Jiu Jitsu versus going in there and rolling with,
0:55:38 you know, Hoish Gracie, you’ve gone there and you’ve rolled with the Gracies,
0:55:42 which means you actually then went and did it with overtime.
0:55:46 Can you talk about a couple of the things that you did intentionally
0:55:48 that you think helped build the more of a cult brand?
0:55:52 So, you know, for example, the hand symbol.
0:55:54 Yeah, tell me, what’s the hand signal?
0:55:58 Every great gang in the world has a has a hand sign, you know.
0:56:03 And so like we need a hand sign and I was like, oh, oh, T.
0:56:07 And they were like, simplify it, make the oh, throw up the oh, which is hilarious.
0:56:10 Just imagine your CEO sitting in an office and he’s just throwing up symbols.
0:56:12 He’s like, I’m really working on something today, guys.
0:56:13 It’s going to be big. OK.
0:56:14 What do you guys think?
0:56:17 You think the O should be oval or more circular?
0:56:18 And it sounds silly.
0:56:21 But I think you even you told your people, you’re like, if you go to this
0:56:26 event and you record every video, you got to get them at the end to be like,
0:56:29 put up the oh and say, shout out to overtime.
0:56:30 The same thing.
0:56:33 Because I remember I saw once forgettable, saw twice forgettable.
0:56:39 Once you see it like 25 times and you got the like cool high school athletes to do it.
0:56:41 It was like, now it’s a thing.
0:56:43 I’ve had people do it to me at TSA.
0:56:49 Actually, when they see my shirt and stuff like that, I think it comes back to just
0:56:53 if you want there to be community and you care about community.
0:57:00 And that was a premise you have to give community a way to interact
0:57:03 and to share what makes that special with them, right?
0:57:06 So I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan.
0:57:09 I live in New York, which is clearly not Philadelphia.
0:57:12 I’m walking down the street and I see somebody in the Eagles baseball.
0:57:14 I say, go birds.
0:57:16 And they’re like, go birds.
0:57:20 You’ve given us this common language to say, I don’t know who you are.
0:57:24 We might have nothing in common, but we got one thing for sure in common.
0:57:30 And so being maybe nerdy or cerebral on that thing.
0:57:33 I’m like, what are those things that are going to give our community?
0:57:37 They’re not just going to be like, hey, my good fellow, I enjoy the content on overtime.
0:57:39 And he says, thus, I do too.
0:57:43 Do you prefer Tik Tok or Snapchat or Instagram?
0:57:48 And so instead, you give them this little shout out to overtime or this hand sign
0:57:52 as a way to say, yeah, we’re part of this community, you know, this kind of,
0:57:56 if you know, you know, not unlike the secrets, right?
0:57:59 It’s like somebody, it’s like my father-in-law is always like,
0:58:02 I’m going to tell you the secret handshake for our fraternity.
0:58:03 But he never gives you the secret handshake.
0:58:06 He just like tickles your figure or something like that.
0:58:07 Oh, sorry, I can’t really tell you.
0:58:08 I’m like, you’re a hundred years old.
0:58:10 Who cares about the secret handshake?
0:58:12 Oh, we’re sworn secrecy, right?
0:58:15 You know, and so you have these things, the secret handshake.
0:58:17 Knock on the door. What’s the password?
0:58:20 You know, I can’t tell you, I can’t let you in, you know?
0:58:24 And I think you create, you understand and consuming culture and even pop culture
0:58:29 that there are these things that bind people together.
0:58:32 And sometimes you’ve got to strong arm them into existence.
0:58:37 Using the superpower of social media as a customer relations platform,
0:58:41 like a CRM as opposed to a publisher, every single DM to overtime
0:58:43 and even to me starts out the same.
0:58:48 Yo, I don’t know why, but that is apparently a very popular thing
0:58:50 for people to DM large accounts.
0:58:54 Yo, and you you go back in there like, yo.
0:58:58 And the next thing is, oh, shit, I didn’t think overtime responded.
0:59:01 I mean, I was talking to this 20 year old kid who works for me.
0:59:03 And we were talking about going and doing something.
0:59:07 He’s like, listen, you all understand, like I was like 15.
0:59:09 I DM’d overtime.
0:59:12 I just was like, yo, and they DM’d me back.
0:59:15 And I’m thinking, not they, you work here, we, but he’s saying they.
0:59:19 And so I think just figuring out how to connect with people,
0:59:23 how to use those superpowers, what are the things that around religion,
0:59:28 around cults, their songs, their hand signs, there’s things that you wear.
0:59:30 You know, part of the reason that I created this like
0:59:34 shirt with the O that, you know, eventually all the towns
0:59:38 that people work for me made way better and bigger was that people
0:59:40 used to steal our content all the time.
0:59:44 So we’d go and we’d cover somebody and they’d just rip our video.
0:59:48 And then I’d make a watermark and then they zoom the video out of the watermark
0:59:51 to crop it. So I was like, you know, what if we just made a shirt with our O on it?
0:59:54 Then we’ve like a permanent watermark in our thing.
0:59:56 And if they rip our video, then that’s fine.
0:59:58 Then our O is actually everywhere.
1:00:02 We’ve turned our biggest challenge into our biggest opportunity.
1:00:06 And so all of a sudden there were people with shirts with O’s everywhere
1:00:10 because people were ripping those videos and, you know, everyone would say,
1:00:12 oh, shit, how do I get one of those?
1:00:13 Because it must mean you’re famous.
1:00:16 So the biggest thing we did is for two years we we refused to sell it.
1:00:20 Well, you can’t buy one of those shirts like you have to be on overtime to have that.
1:00:23 And then eventually you create so much pen up demand.
1:00:26 And I can’t say that was in the deck or the business plan.
1:00:31 But as you start to get into a dance and a romance with culture,
1:00:35 you start to observe what’s happening and you make some kind of audibles around that.
1:00:38 And you figure that out.
1:00:41 But like to be part of culture is to be part of community,
1:00:44 to be what’s relevant to happening around you.
1:00:47 And, you know, listen, we start a basketball league.
1:00:52 Every single startup sports league in America has failed pretty much, you know.
1:00:57 And by the way, the NBA, the NFL, these are 50, 75 years old.
1:00:59 And you can think about all these startup football leagues that have spent
1:01:01 hundreds of millions of dollars.
1:01:04 And it’s like, why is OTE overtime elite?
1:01:09 A startup basketball league in its fourth season and every other league has gone out of business.
1:01:11 Well, it’s because we’re focused on the audience.
1:01:14 We weren’t focused on just playing the sport.
1:01:15 It’s like, you know what people want?
1:01:18 They want more football. They want more basketball. They want more baseball.
1:01:20 So it’s another league.
1:01:23 And it’s like, well, they just they want to know, like, why should I care about this?
1:01:26 Why is this league about me? Who is playing?
1:01:28 What are the hopes and the dreams of the people who are playing there?
1:01:32 Instead, it’s like, well, we got a field and we had a bunch of city based teams.
1:01:34 And we said, you’re America, you like more football.
1:01:39 But like, if you can’t appeal to the aspects of culture and community
1:01:42 and emotion to them, why should they care?
1:01:46 And listen, me, I wasn’t a gamer and I made a pretty popular game.
1:01:50 I didn’t know a lot about ticketing and I started the first live event ticketing company.
1:01:54 I like sports. I’m not a sports wizard.
1:01:56 I would come in last on a sports quiz show.
1:02:01 But it’s like I am more like the consumer in that I don’t want to get sucked in.
1:02:04 So I’m so deep. So it’s like, what is resonating?
1:02:06 Oh, shit, there’s a simple story about that.
1:02:11 I’ll tell you one side thing that made overtime big when we started.
1:02:13 I was like, here’s Sean.
1:02:16 He’s like six to is an eight foot wingspan.
1:02:18 He plays for George Washington High School.
1:02:20 He’s a point guard.
1:02:23 He shoots 50 percent for three and like we put the video up there
1:02:26 because that’s what sports is about stats and all those things.
1:02:31 Every single time I removed one piece of metadata, it got bigger.
1:02:35 Down to the fact that it was like Sean is fucking dope.
1:02:38 Boom. Everyone can love that because as soon as you tell me,
1:02:40 Sean went to George Washington High School.
1:02:42 I’m like, I don’t know where that high school is. I don’t care anymore.
1:02:46 You know, as soon as you tell me he shoots X from three, I’m like,
1:02:48 is that good or is that bad? I don’t care anymore.
1:02:51 So in this weird way, similar to the draw something game,
1:02:55 the more you can simplify it, the more it’s available to everyone.
1:03:01 The more you tell me this wine is from this country with this that and its DOC
1:03:04 and its this grape or whatever, I just think like, fuck it,
1:03:06 maybe I’m just going to drink tequila.
1:03:11 Can you do this stuff with nerdy products or B2B products?
1:03:15 Or do you think that it’s much harder and only possible for pop culture
1:03:17 or consumer products?
1:03:23 I think everything has a story at its core.
1:03:28 I always think of this dumb example from like a business book that I read
1:03:32 30 years ago where, you know, they used to like do door to door selling
1:03:36 of vacuum cleaners and the guy would go around and would tell the person
1:03:41 who answers the door, you know, the suction is so strong and it’s got these things.
1:03:45 And they sold all the features of the product and he sold 10 vacuum cleaners.
1:03:48 And then the next guy comes around and knocks on the door
1:03:51 and he just fucking sells you the dream of a clean house.
1:03:57 And every time like you find your own salespeople
1:04:01 they’re in how many views we have and this is why our product is so great.
1:04:05 And I’m always thinking, just got to fucking sell them the dream of the clean house.
1:04:10 And so in a way, there is some abstract simplification of the core
1:04:12 of what makes everything great.
1:04:15 And the more you know about it, the worse you get.
1:04:18 And the further away you get at telling that story.
1:04:20 So it’s like, we have this basketball.
1:04:22 We had the number two pick in last week’s NBA draft.
1:04:23 We had the number eight pick.
1:04:26 We have four lottery picks in two years.
1:04:29 X number of people watched it on here.
1:04:31 You know, all these people are playing professionally.
1:04:35 And at the end of the day, like somebody from the NBA is like,
1:04:36 why do people care about your basketball league?
1:04:39 I’m like, because it’s their shit.
1:04:41 The NBA, that’s that’s your shit.
1:04:42 That’s old people’s shit.
1:04:44 Like this is their shit.
1:04:45 And I can never forget that.
1:04:48 I can’t be distracted by the fact that, you know,
1:04:51 Alex went number two and Rob went number eight.
1:04:54 And now they’re on these backs contracts and they went to OTE and whatever.
1:04:58 It’s like, if you can keep that fundamental core aspect
1:05:03 of why it matters in mind at all time and not get sucked down the vortex.
1:05:06 I think that that’s, you know, that’s the key.
1:05:10 All right, if you’re listening to this pod, I already know something about you.
1:05:13 You, my friend, are nosy.
1:05:17 You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking about.
1:05:19 How much money people make, how much money people spend,
1:05:21 how much money businesses make.
1:05:23 You want to know all of this people’s net worth, all of it.
1:05:25 Well, I’ve got good news for you.
1:05:28 So my company, Hampton, we’re a private community for CEOs.
1:05:32 We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of
1:05:34 information, like how much money they’re paying themselves,
1:05:37 how much money they’re paying a lot of their employees, what their team,
1:05:40 my bonuses are, what their net worth is, what their portfolio looks like.
1:05:43 We ask all these questions, but we do it anonymously.
1:05:46 And so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information.
1:05:48 So if you really cannot Google, you can’t find anywhere else.
1:05:51 And you could check it out at joinhampton.com,
1:05:55 click the report section on the menu, click the salary and compensation report.
1:05:58 It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff.
1:06:00 Check it out. Now, back to the pod.
1:06:03 It’s like nearly impossible, the bigger you get not to do that stuff.
1:06:05 Sean and I both love UFC.
1:06:08 And the reason we like Ari Emmanuel is in part because he owns the UFC
1:06:10 and what Dana White has done there.
1:06:13 We love because like when Sean Strickland fights, you’re like, well, this guy,
1:06:17 he’s a crazy person who just says wildly offensive stuff.
1:06:18 And it’s really fun because he’s insane.
1:06:21 Or this guy’s from Brazil and he’s really scary looking
1:06:25 and he doesn’t even speak English and he wears a red paint painting on his face.
1:06:26 And it’s really intimidating looking.
1:06:30 They do such a good job of telling a story, even though they’re a massive company now.
1:06:33 And they have, well, you know, you know, it’s like, I remember I was a fan
1:06:38 at the core of the UFC and the core of the UFC was every martial art against each other.
1:06:40 Right. This guy’s a stand up guy.
1:06:42 This guy’s going to take him to the ground.
1:06:45 This guy’s a college wrestler. This guy’s a judo guy.
1:06:48 Like that is the easiest fucking story to tell in the world.
1:06:52 You could even look at the NBA finals or the Super Bowl or whatever.
1:06:54 Ultimately, we’re in these rivalries.
1:06:58 This city versus that city, this boxer versus that boxer.
1:07:02 But if you could abstract to tell me this is actually a story
1:07:07 about passing versus running, or this is a story about something else like that.
1:07:10 Then you’re just like, oh, I want to know how that’s going to play out.
1:07:12 Like that’s so interesting.
1:07:15 I was trying to tell people I went to the Euro League Championship
1:07:20 with all these kind of young people and Greece was playing Turkey in the semifinals.
1:07:22 And they’re like, wow, these fans are really passionate.
1:07:26 And I was like, yeah, let’s talk about the history of two countries,
1:07:29 Greece and Turkey, and it’s not clear to them.
1:07:33 But I’m like, yeah, there’s something so elemental at the core of the passion.
1:07:36 I think the NBA finals are amazing.
1:07:41 I’m not quite sure that Boston and Dallas have existential beef against each other
1:07:43 that go back hundreds of years.
1:07:47 So you’ve got to find some other core elemental story in it.
1:07:51 Like these guys bought their team and these guys drafted their team.
1:07:56 Your master, he says your karate is better than my kung fu.
1:08:00 If you can say to that in all those stories, and that’s clearly a huge aspect
1:08:03 of I think what UFC had in the beginning that was so powerful.
1:08:09 And I think that’s part of our genius is he does understand at its core,
1:08:12 like what makes you like Mark Wahlberg when he signs up as an actor?
1:08:16 What makes these stories kind of simple in a way?
1:08:20 Because as soon as you find yourself having to oversell, you’ve lost the cause.
1:08:24 As soon as you’re talking about the third switch on the vacuum cleaner
1:08:28 that has seven HEPA air filters, you’ve lost the whole thing.
1:08:30 That’s a great story.
1:08:32 You’re fun as shit to talk to.
1:08:37 You got like I could hear stories that you say all day.
1:08:39 I’m just trying to figure out how all works.
1:08:42 Can I ask you like a life advice thing?
1:08:46 So, you know, if you were my dad, so you did a bunch of things, right?
1:08:50 You were a teacher in schools, then you did Teach for America.
1:08:53 You worked for these like high powered organizations like Virgin
1:08:56 and, you know, Endeavor with Ari Emanuel.
1:08:58 You started your own company in the gaming space.
1:09:00 You started your own company in the media space.
1:09:05 If you if you meet like a 24 year old, you know, ambitious person
1:09:07 who just wants to have an interesting life, want to have a great life,
1:09:09 don’t really know exactly what they want.
1:09:10 What’s your approach?
1:09:12 What does Dan think you should be doing in your 20s?
1:09:14 You know, what do you think you should be doing in your 30s?
1:09:17 How do you what is like the nutshell of your career advice?
1:09:21 First of all, there’s a lot of ways you can learn about the world.
1:09:24 I learned about the world by being a public school teacher.
1:09:29 I learned about the world by, you know, giving guitar lessons.
1:09:31 Like, there’s so many different ways.
1:09:36 And I think that so I have this thing where I just I really don’t like
1:09:40 to hire people went to business school and I’m kind of anti MBA
1:09:45 because to me, if there’s a funnel and it starts when you’re like five years old
1:09:47 and you ask, why is this guy blue?
1:09:50 Why do people walk on two legs?
1:09:53 That funnel goes through the education system
1:09:56 and then it gets to business school and then it narrows and it closes
1:09:58 and they’re just like, this is the way you do things.
1:10:02 And then you’ve lost all that like pie in the sky, whatever.
1:10:05 So I kind of say to young people like your 20s,
1:10:09 it’s like the time for you to get fired from a job.
1:10:12 The time for you to step way too late and go to a club.
1:10:15 Time for you to like take a Euro pass across England.
1:10:19 The time for you for your friend to say, I’m going to do this crazy thing.
1:10:24 And you’re like, yes, you know, the time to just say yes
1:10:30 and do all those things and ingest and experience as much of the world as possible.
1:10:35 A, because all of those experience come and form you in some way.
1:10:37 Like, if I didn’t go to the concert,
1:10:41 or I didn’t sing at a soccer show, or I didn’t do any of these other things like that,
1:10:43 I don’t think I would have ever understood these.
1:10:47 But also because the world is so big and so vast.
1:10:51 Like if you haven’t hitchhiked through some other country
1:10:55 or stayed on a hammock somewhere or done anything else like that,
1:10:58 you just have no context and appreciation for that.
1:11:03 And you think your job is to graduate and then to get the job
1:11:06 and then to be the analyst and then the associate and then this
1:11:09 and then the managing director and now you’re on this pipeline.
1:11:12 But you’ve you’ve failed to do all these other things.
1:11:15 I found master’s degree in 19th century Mexican history
1:11:17 that I did while I was working.
1:11:19 My focus was the cast war of the Yucatan.
1:11:21 People are like, why are you doing that?
1:11:23 How does that help you in your career?
1:11:24 And I’m like, it doesn’t.
1:11:26 It just seemed interesting.
1:11:30 And like, if you look on my LinkedIn, I’ll say it never had any impact.
1:11:31 Nobody ever asked me about it.
1:11:34 I never got ahead by having a master’s degree.
1:11:37 I don’t do business in 19th century Mexico.
1:11:40 I don’t know. You just do shit when you’re young,
1:11:43 because that’s the time you do shit and you just learn about the world
1:11:48 and you experience things and you laugh and you cry and you get out there.
1:11:52 And like, if you think it’s all about this ladder that you get to this other thing,
1:11:54 it really isn’t.
1:11:58 And every single one of those things that you do that has no rationale
1:12:01 is really actually about opening a door to something else.
1:12:04 That’s kind of my advice.
1:12:07 You have to go to your rate, your rate, my professor profile.
1:12:13 Your top tag, your top tag is inspirational to which I would to which I agree.
1:12:17 You are you are inspirational, gives good feedback.
1:12:19 Just like what your co-workers, you said.
1:12:22 Mid, you’re inspirational.
1:12:25 You love you love group projects and get ready to read.
1:12:28 Those are your tags for rate, my professor.
1:12:31 Listen, I like there is so much from business
1:12:34 you can learn from the wire from Breaking Bad,
1:12:38 you know, all the conference rooms in my last company were named after characters
1:12:41 in the wire. I just think I learned stuff from books.
1:12:42 I learned stuff from fiction movies.
1:12:45 I learned stuff from listening to a song.
1:12:49 I’m just like, you know, I remember like the first time one of my kids
1:12:53 friends said I went to Irving Plaza and I saw this artist, Billy Eilish.
1:12:56 And I was like, who is Billy Eilish?
1:12:59 And he’s like, I would do anything for Billy Eilish.
1:13:03 And I was like, whoa, and I look and she has like one Spotify stream.
1:13:06 And I’m like, holy shit, like what is going on here?
1:13:09 And, you know, what is the thing there?
1:13:11 Whatever. She was not marketed.
1:13:13 She was discovered. The audience was the one.
1:13:17 They were like, she is by Billy Eilish, no executive in a high
1:13:20 in a, you know, tower somewhere said, you’re going to take Billy Eilish now.
1:13:24 And so they’re all just like, if you unpack why things work in the world
1:13:27 and you’re willing to get out there and experience them.
1:13:30 Then I think that that’s the opportunity.
1:13:33 The one second piece of advice I would give is that
1:13:39 a lot of times you think it’s about adapting to your environment.
1:13:43 I had a student of mine and she went to work at consulting
1:13:46 and she was the only one who didn’t get a job offer.
1:13:48 You know, you get your whatever offer to come back.
1:13:51 And she’s like, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
1:13:54 Like I messed up and like I got to figure out how to change.
1:13:57 And they told me I should stop talking so much in meetings or whatever.
1:14:00 And I said, you just shouldn’t work in consulting.
1:14:03 Like you are just you. You are the best version of you.
1:14:06 You’re just in the wrong situation.
1:14:09 And she goes to the startup and they’re like, you can’t talk enough.
1:14:11 And they love her and she’s so happy.
1:14:14 And I’m like, you’re the fucking same exact person.
1:14:18 You just got to find the place that celebrates you for who you are.
1:14:22 And by the way, you are you and you got to do the best to be the best you can.
1:14:25 But you got to put yourself in the best place.
1:14:27 And you got to think about your inputs.
1:14:31 And, you know, your inputs aren’t necessarily like, you know,
1:14:34 the things that you think they are.
1:14:39 They might be going to the Sri Lankan restaurant in Staten Island
1:14:43 and having a life changing roti and just rethinking everything
1:14:45 you ever knew about the world.
1:14:47 There’s some episodes where in the YouTube comments,
1:14:51 people are being like, well, I saw Sean put his chin on his hand
1:14:57 and just stare into the screen or or Sam just sat back across his arms
1:14:59 and kind of had his mouth open and he was just staring at the guest.
1:15:01 These guys have a new man crush.
1:15:05 I would say this is one of those episodes where I definitely do.
1:15:07 I appreciate you coming on.
1:15:11 Thank you for not only this episode, but also helping us when we were doing the milk road.
1:15:14 It’s not even one specific piece of advice you had.
1:15:17 But after we talked to, we were like, we came away with a very strong sense of,
1:15:20 OK, cool, we’re just going to do this our way.
1:15:23 Like we don’t need to conform this in any way.
1:15:26 If anything, let’s double down into all of the like quirks
1:15:29 and weirdness and fun versions of what this could become.
1:15:32 And let’s just play that out and see what happens.
1:15:35 And so that was the one thing that we took away from from hanging out with you.
1:15:37 And I hope, you know, other people do that, too,
1:15:40 because I don’t think you get that advice.
1:15:42 I don’t think you get that vibe from most people.
1:15:44 I get that. Listen, I just play the long game.
1:15:48 If I could be helpful to you and then you’re successful and then you buy
1:15:52 an NBA team and then it’s the playoffs and I want my feet on the hardwood.
1:15:55 Then I’m hoping the day is off. I got you.
1:15:58 Dan, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you.
1:16:00 I appreciate you guys for having me.
1:16:01 See you soon.
1:16:04 I feel like I can rule the world.
1:16:10 I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days on the road.
1:16:12 Let’s travel never looking back.
1:16:12 – Bye.