Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Tatiana Manning. I support our Voice of a
Speaker 1: Customer team at Pgenie. If you're a small business customer,
Speaker 1: we're here to support you. That's why I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about our new podcast, Real Talk with PGENI.
Speaker 1: We know small businesses are dealing with rising costs and
Speaker 1: looking for ways to boost their bottom line. On our show,
Speaker 1: you'll hear from our customer experts with our small business
Speaker 1: Engagement team, who will show you effective ways to improve
Speaker 1: your operations, find important resources, and most of all, save money.
Speaker 2: I ride the RAND analysis for the Emergency Food Bank
Speaker 2: and based on their usage history, by just making a
Speaker 2: simple rate change at no costs, it was a twenty
Speaker 2: five dollars annual savings.
Speaker 1: So listen to Real Talk with Pgenie and find more
Speaker 1: resources for your business by visiting pge dot com for
Speaker 1: slash real Talk.
Speaker 3: All right, guys, welcome back. Shout out to Houston, Shout
Speaker 3: out to the great state of Texas. We are enjoying ourselves,
Speaker 3: thoroughly enjoying ourselves here. We had a crazy, tremendous networking event.
Speaker 3: Everybody came out and it's just really good, really good
Speaker 3: to just feel the Southern hospitality. Everybody's going out of
Speaker 3: their way. Everybody's so nice and for.
Speaker 4: Us, yeah, I feel like they got the message. They
Speaker 4: heard La was crazy, Atlanta was crazy, Brooklyn was nuts,
Speaker 4: and they were like, we got to show him how
Speaker 4: was really done down here.
Speaker 5: And so it's a very progressive town.
Speaker 3: I've noticed a lot of people doing well for themselves,
Speaker 3: a lot of entrepreneurs. Everybody we met at the networking
Speaker 3: events like I got the largest real estate black owned
Speaker 3: real estate company, I got a construction company, I got
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like everybody's trying to do something.
Speaker 3: So shout out to Texas.
Speaker 6: We are.
Speaker 3: We are enjoying ourselves and part of our Texas run
Speaker 3: is that we're highlighting people in the area and some
Speaker 3: of the heroes doing their thing, your hometown heroes for sure.
Speaker 3: So along those lines, we have a very special guest today,
Speaker 3: t Brown Zone. Thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 7: Thank you this when I say Houston, yeah now, thanks
Speaker 7: for having me, I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: No, for sure, for sure. So Mike is a is
Speaker 3: an interesting guy. He has a lot going on. He
Speaker 3: had a career first and foremost as a football player,
Speaker 3: football star, A two year All American at Duke, and
Speaker 3: he was an academic standout as well, four point zero
Speaker 3: high school student.
Speaker 5: Student athlete University, which is one of the.
Speaker 3: Top academic schools, and then had a career in the NFL.
Speaker 3: Played three years in the NFL as well. But now
Speaker 3: he's doing his thing in the tech space and some
Speaker 3: other stuff we'll get into. It is very interesting, But
Speaker 3: can we talk about football first before we talk about
Speaker 3: what you're doing in the entrepreneurial world. So you grew
Speaker 3: up in Texas. You're from Texas and from Houston, right,
Speaker 3: we're part specifically a leave.
Speaker 7: We call it the SWAT for anybody that knows it,
Speaker 7: and uh, yeah, we were proud.
Speaker 5: Of that shot to shout out to the SWAT.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: When I heard the SWAT was my brother used to
Speaker 4: live in Atlanta. That's still for southwest Atlanta. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: it's like.
Speaker 8: Texas is southwest side of Houston, all right.
Speaker 3: So you're in the league, right, and we've all shout
Speaker 3: out to the to the NFL because well the NFL players,
Speaker 3: because a lot of the guys follow us on social
Speaker 3: media and we connect with so many players in the
Speaker 3: NFL and they're really into financial literacy, right, now, But
Speaker 3: when you was in the league, was that prevalent, Like
Speaker 3: did you guys talk about investing in savings and tech.
Speaker 5: Like real estate?
Speaker 3: And because we've all had this horror stories of athletes
Speaker 3: going broke, so many athletes going broke, like eighty percent
Speaker 3: of NFL players go bank up bobbies after they get
Speaker 3: finished playing, how was it from the from the inside
Speaker 3: in as far as you know, the conversations of financial literacy,
Speaker 3: if that was going on.
Speaker 7: I mean, I would I'll just say that it's certainly
Speaker 7: made some leaps and strides, you know, towards where I
Speaker 7: think it should be. I mean this we're talking when
Speaker 7: I was you know, nine to twenty twelve, and I remember, like,
Speaker 7: you know, having the formal sit down, you know, with
Speaker 7: within the team meeting room with a guy from you know,
Speaker 7: Merrill lanch or whomever will come in and talk about,
Speaker 7: you know, different things. But I think, you know, honestly,
Speaker 7: that was that was probably it, at least for me,
Speaker 7: you know, And and you know, I guessaid my journey
Speaker 7: was a little different, as you know, I'm trying to
Speaker 7: I'm trying to stick and stay off the bubble. But
Speaker 7: you know, they're internally and honestly, for me, there was
Speaker 7: a lot of conversation about not necessarily financial literacy, but
Speaker 7: guys would talk about what they're doing with their money,
Speaker 7: and it seemed like everybody was trying to find their way.
Speaker 7: And it was like, I know, at the time, restaurants
Speaker 7: was kind of the kind of the move and you know,
Speaker 7: obviously we kind of know how that that works out,
Speaker 7: but and some real estate stuff and you know, I
Speaker 7: just remember having and again this is a part even
Speaker 7: part of my personal story that really led to me
Speaker 7: being where I am now is having these conversations and
Speaker 7: coming up with these ideas and talking about different things.
Speaker 7: Now I wasn't necessarily tech, right, but it was just
Speaker 7: different ideas of businesses or different you know, ways to
Speaker 7: kind of make more money if you will. But it
Speaker 7: wasn't specifically investing necessarily. So I think now there's a
Speaker 7: lot more kind of programming related to getting players to
Speaker 7: understand kind of how to how to you know, leverage
Speaker 7: your money to work for you beyond the field. And
Speaker 7: one of the things that was I remember they always
Speaker 7: they were telling that they were really heavy on protecting
Speaker 7: your money, right. I remember they talked about like not
Speaker 7: like understanding that the tickets that you're giving aren't free.
Speaker 7: So like when you're giving tickets to people to come
Speaker 7: to the game, that's actually deducted from you, and like
Speaker 7: you yeah, you look up and you got you know,
Speaker 7: ten to fifteen worth the tickets.
Speaker 5: They give you, like four tickets free.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it depends like home game, away game, and like
Speaker 7: what you can get beyond that. But you know, they
Speaker 7: I remember as rookies, they were like, like everybody's gonna
Speaker 7: want tickets, and you need to understand how to say no.
Speaker 7: And like they would tell you, like, you know, you
Speaker 7: need to point people to somebody else who can be
Speaker 7: your no guy. Right, So it was things like that,
Speaker 7: you know they said, you know, I remember saying. One
Speaker 7: of the guys told us was, you know, ten thousand
Speaker 7: dollars seems to solve everybody's problem, right.
Speaker 8: It's like everybody need ten bands to like do something.
Speaker 5: I'm hurt right now.
Speaker 8: I got this basic idea.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying, I just need ten k investment,
Speaker 7: and it's just like, you know, that's that's how you go, bro.
Speaker 8: So it was that kind of stuff.
Speaker 7: But I'd imagine now that there's a much more robust
Speaker 7: you know, programming around what to do with your money,
Speaker 7: how to how to manage it. I know actually a
Speaker 7: couple of financial advisors that work with a number of players.
Speaker 7: I know a pretty good financial advisor. Yeah, that probably
Speaker 7: should work with some players.
Speaker 3: We've got a lot of relationships with. So all right,
Speaker 3: so can we talk about tech? So after you're done playing,
Speaker 3: le play about three and a half years in the league,
Speaker 3: which is a good amount of time. I think the
Speaker 3: average you said two and a half years and a
Speaker 3: half until you're right on average.
Speaker 7: That's bouncing. Yeah, that's trying to make it happen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So all right, so you go into the tech world
Speaker 3: with Draper University. Right, so this is a life.
Speaker 5: Changing experience for you, right, life changing? So can you
Speaker 5: talk about that?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: And so the way the transition happened, you know, like
Speaker 7: I mentioned, we were having a lot of business conversations.
Speaker 7: So what a lot of people don't know is that
Speaker 7: I was prepared for law school. I graduated with a
Speaker 7: public policy degree, graduated early, take the l sat ready to.
Speaker 8: Go into law. Go play.
Speaker 7: Now I'm like, okay, I think businesses is where I
Speaker 7: want to go. So I said, I'm gonna go get
Speaker 7: an NBA. Right, That's what I figured. You get an
Speaker 7: NBA and figure it out from there. So came home,
Speaker 7: was actually about to go to Rice and a friend
Speaker 7: of mine, former teammate at Duke who's now in the
Speaker 7: league at that time, told me about a program Draper University.
Speaker 7: And I'm like, what's that. He's like, it's a new
Speaker 7: thing in Silicon Valley and I'm like, well, what's that.
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 8: Exactly?
Speaker 7: This is twenty thirteen, And you know, honestly, I thought,
Speaker 7: and this is gonna sound very ignorant, I thought he
Speaker 7: was talking about breast, you know what I mean, like Silicon.
Speaker 4: And you know, the crazy thing is like when you
Speaker 4: said draput like I know Houston Like yeah, So I'm like,
Speaker 4: oh no, you're talking about Tim d But you want
Speaker 4: to talk about who he is before?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, So Tim Draper is a legendary venture capitalist in
Speaker 7: Silicon Valley. And let me just also give y'all some name.
Speaker 7: Silicon is how you said Silicon? Everybody watching just thank
Speaker 7: me later. It's Silicon Valley, Silicon, Silicon. This is not
Speaker 7: doctor Miami. And I learned this when I got out
Speaker 7: there and then and people were telling me, They're like
Speaker 7: That's how you know who's actually in tech and really
Speaker 7: really in it is by the way they say the
Speaker 7: actual name Silicon Valley.
Speaker 5: Don't embarrass yourself, Silicon Silicon.
Speaker 7: So you know, Silicon Valley like legendary VC venture capitalist
Speaker 7: but from a lineage, so DFJ is their fun but
Speaker 7: his father, his father's father's father, like they were actually
Speaker 7: apparently like some of the first vcs.
Speaker 8: Ever you know in that Bay area? Can playing with
Speaker 8: VC is yeah.
Speaker 7: So VC stands for venture capitalists and essentially what they're
Speaker 7: doing they're investors. But the difference is that they're investing
Speaker 7: other people's money essentially. So a VC will go out
Speaker 7: and essentially they have to raise a fund. So they
Speaker 7: got to go out and convince people that they can
Speaker 7: identify the best companies. And usually they're able to do
Speaker 7: that through a track record or they get people to
Speaker 7: believe in them, right or whatever, or you know, and
Speaker 7: probably Tim Draper's you know experience, right, he had a
Speaker 7: family that was doing that and so he was able
Speaker 7: to ride that. So you raise money from you know,
Speaker 7: big wealthy families, endowment funds. You know, you're raising that
Speaker 7: money and then you're investing that money on behalf of
Speaker 7: those investors, which are called limited partners. So LP's in
Speaker 7: a fund mean I'm giving this money to this person
Speaker 7: to go invest on my behalf and then when the
Speaker 7: return comes, like the company gets acquired, then the LPs
Speaker 7: make money, right. But it's the general principle the gps
Speaker 7: general partners that are, you know, going through the process
Speaker 7: of finding the companies, vetting the companies, making the investment.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 7: And so when you build a track record of finding
Speaker 7: very successful companies, then more people it's much easier to
Speaker 7: raise a fund. And so Tim Draper is like an
Speaker 7: early investor in Yahoo or I think all his portfolio
Speaker 7: early investment, Sky, Tesla, Twitter, Space, some companies you might
Speaker 7: have heard of, right right, a few and so you
Speaker 7: know he and then in twenty thirteen he starts this
Speaker 7: entrepreneurial school. Essentially it's a program called Draper University. Now
Speaker 7: it's not like in a credit the university to get credits.
Speaker 7: I don't think maybe they've gotten to that point now,
Speaker 7: But at the time it was just basically a crash
Speaker 7: course through Silicon Valley for aspiring tech entrepreneurs. And my
Speaker 7: friend told me about I don't even know how he
Speaker 7: knew about it, but he told me, and I was like,
Speaker 7: all right.
Speaker 8: It's in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 7: I've never heard of that, but you know, I applied,
Speaker 7: and then Tim Draper himself ended up calling me. And
Speaker 7: it was a very unique situation because I wasn't really
Speaker 7: not sure I would even be able to go, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean, like in terms of wanting to go,
Speaker 7: because it was just so foreign. I'm like, I'm here
Speaker 7: about to go to rights families here, you know, I'm
Speaker 7: gonna just do that. And so what I ended up,
Speaker 7: you know, once he called me, I was like, all right,
Speaker 7: Tim Draper, who had learned a lot about at that point, Yeah.
Speaker 8: It is.
Speaker 7: And I honestly it was the first batch. I thought
Speaker 7: he was calling everybody. It wasn't until I got there
Speaker 7: and it was fifty something other students and we're all
Speaker 7: talking about how we found out about Draper and and
Speaker 7: I'm like, yeah, you know, and Tim called me, and.
Speaker 8: Everybody's like what.
Speaker 4: I thought.
Speaker 7: I thought it was just you know, it's the first batch.
Speaker 7: He wanted to welcome everybody, and you know, well but whatever.
Speaker 7: So that was like that pivotal moment because if it
Speaker 7: hadn't been him and you know, the other kind of
Speaker 7: standard process. I may have not decided to go because
Speaker 7: it was out of my comfort zone, but I've been
Speaker 7: wanted to step out of there sometimes, So go out there,
Speaker 7: and essentially it's nine weeks.
Speaker 8: I mean, we're learning. I mean it was just jam.
Speaker 7: We're going through how to build a company, how to
Speaker 7: you know, grow a company. We're learning from founders of
Speaker 7: companies that Tim had invested in.
Speaker 8: And I remember meeting, you.
Speaker 7: Know, a little twenty three year old agent kid that
Speaker 7: you know just sold a company for five hundred million,
Speaker 7: and I'm like, you ain't tackled nobody out here sitting good.
Speaker 7: And so that's when it really triggered on me. Was like,
Speaker 7: I'm learning that people are literally building and creating, you know,
Speaker 7: the technologies that we're using every day, and I had
Speaker 7: never even heard about it. And you're talking about a
Speaker 7: guy that had a four point zero president of the
Speaker 7: engineering club. You think I would You don't think I
Speaker 7: would have been coding if I know about that when
Speaker 7: I was seven or eight years old, Like some people
Speaker 7: that I had met out there had been coding, had
Speaker 7: been building things. And so I was like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 7: late to the game. But I'm here and we're gonna
Speaker 7: get active. And so I ended up finishing number one
Speaker 7: in the program. And for me that I was like
Speaker 7: halfway through the program, I knew. I said, I'm moving
Speaker 7: to the Bay and I'm gonna start a tech company.
Speaker 7: And so was grinding through that and was really really optimistic.
Speaker 7: And and you know, after that, went home and uh,
Speaker 7: you know, told my then fiance that we we're going
Speaker 7: to the Bay and out of here, and you know,
Speaker 7: shout out to her because you know she I could
Speaker 7: have told her I want to build a staircase to
Speaker 7: the moon and she would start chopping down trees, like
Speaker 7: let's let's start building and uh.
Speaker 8: And so you know, we we took that big leap
Speaker 8: of faith.
Speaker 4: That gets overlooked man, because like, obviously I have a
Speaker 4: wife and it's like, like, how are you able to
Speaker 4: do all these things? And I'm like, YO, strong support,
Speaker 4: no tru support, and believe.
Speaker 7: You know, for me, it's uh, I don't even realize
Speaker 7: to your point how rare it is. I never take
Speaker 7: it for granted. I never take it for granted. And
Speaker 7: shout out to my wife, by the way, what's up,
Speaker 7: you know she and for me it's like, uh, that
Speaker 7: is the only way I'm able to really do it
Speaker 7: now that.
Speaker 8: We're really really in the game tech game, and.
Speaker 7: You know, when we look back on I mean, that
Speaker 7: was you know, five years ago though, which which is crazy,
Speaker 7: where I didn't even know what the thing was and
Speaker 7: and here we are fully immersed and actually doing well.
Speaker 7: And her early support is really what even encouraged me,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean during that time where it's
Speaker 7: like I don't know what I'm I don't know what
Speaker 7: I don't know, but I know I want to get
Speaker 7: into it, and I don't know it either, but let's
Speaker 7: let's go. I believe in you, so, you know, went home,
Speaker 7: and that's when I spent time.
Speaker 8: Learning how to code. We had had a daughter, and I'll.
Speaker 7: Be honest, we was living in my mama garage, you know,
Speaker 7: not the garage, but I was in the garage.
Speaker 4: It sounds better, I was.
Speaker 7: I was coding in the garage. We weren't living in
Speaker 7: the garage, you know what I'm saying. We have no
Speaker 7: infant out there, but we was in the house. But
Speaker 7: I would be in the garage like literally banging out
Speaker 7: code and like learning and teaching myself. So I created
Speaker 7: a curriculum and and for me, it was like I'm
Speaker 7: hearing that people know how to code and this tech
Speaker 7: thing and and like, you know anything, I want to
Speaker 7: put my time and effort into. I want to be
Speaker 7: the best. And so boom we we. I'm like, we're
Speaker 7: going to going to the Bay. We get out there,
Speaker 7: and you know, I got one goal, start a company,
Speaker 7: and and you know, get out there is not a
Speaker 7: lot of me, not a lot of folks that look
Speaker 7: like me. But you know, I'm coming also from Duke,
Speaker 7: so you know, I was, I was, I was okay
Speaker 7: in that environment.
Speaker 8: I could navigate.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: And so I ended up working at a startup because
Speaker 7: I said, you know, before I jump out there and
Speaker 7: try to build something, let me at this point, I
Speaker 7: only had about nine weeks super program and some lines
Speaker 7: of code behind me.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 7: And so I was like, let me go work at
Speaker 7: a company. And that's where I got hired, actually at
Speaker 7: a company called keep uh in the Bay area, you know,
Speaker 7: your traditional Silicon Valley tech startup. They had raised about
Speaker 7: ten million dollars at that point, and they were actually
Speaker 7: ranked higher than Airbnb at that time.
Speaker 4: And uh, another Silicon Valley.
Speaker 7: Exactly Uh, no, it was it was it was you know,
Speaker 7: shout out to them because they gave me an opportunity.
Speaker 8: Again, I have no experience, but they you know.
Speaker 7: I came on basically entry level on the growth team,
Speaker 7: and within about five or six months, you know, based
Speaker 7: on my performance, I was now in leadership, you know,
Speaker 7: and that was one of the things I loved about
Speaker 7: tech is well, now, there's a lot of issues and
Speaker 7: things that still need to be addressed, but when it
Speaker 7: came to merit based kind of promotion and moving up,
Speaker 7: as long as you're creating.
Speaker 8: Value in that in that company, because.
Speaker 7: Again it's all early stage and you're trying to exist,
Speaker 7: you're building something that has never existed in the world.
Speaker 7: That's my definition of a pure like true tech startup.
Speaker 7: Like an entrepreneur. You can open up a barbershop or
Speaker 7: you know, food truck or whatever, but to be building
Speaker 7: something that hasn't existed in the world. There ain't no
Speaker 7: googling how to do X, y Z, how what's the
Speaker 7: business model for this?
Speaker 3: It's interesting that you say that because in the next
Speaker 3: segment we're going to go into what you're doing now
Speaker 3: and your trailblazing. You're kind of trailblazing your own set.
Speaker 3: But it's a backstory how that came in about. So
Speaker 3: we're going to go into that in the next segment.
Speaker 3: All right, So now he ain't going segment two and
Speaker 3: we're gonna talk about your company, Win Win. But before
Speaker 3: we do that, so all right, we gotta talk about
Speaker 3: fantasy football.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: We have briefly talked about fantasy football, but it's a
Speaker 3: billion dollar industry, right, and fantasy sports, well fintasy sports,
Speaker 3: but football is the biggest sport in America. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: so it's the biggest fantasy sport. But yeah, fantasy sports
Speaker 3: in general. So all right, you find out about the
Speaker 3: power of fantasy and then this kind of leads to
Speaker 3: some ideas for you, right, so can you talk about
Speaker 3: that because you kind of told us a story off camera,
Speaker 3: but yeah, it's interesting now for sure.
Speaker 7: So you know, I'm in the bay, I'm in you know,
Speaker 7: working at a company, and again my goal is to
Speaker 7: start a company.
Speaker 8: And I'll just say real.
Speaker 7: Quick, one of the things that changed in my mindset
Speaker 7: being in Silicon Valley was the fact that people approach
Speaker 7: problems differently, right, or they took it further. Anybody and
Speaker 7: everybody usually can identify a problem or pain point something
Speaker 7: they don't like. What I recognized was that people out
Speaker 7: there in particular were taking it further and saying, what
Speaker 7: could I do about that?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 7: How could I solve this pain point just for myself?
Speaker 7: And then turns out millions and billions of people have
Speaker 7: that same pain point. Now you have, you know, a
Speaker 7: company going.
Speaker 5: Same pain point. That's a that's like what does that mean?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: And that's not like a physical pain I get back hurt.
Speaker 7: I mean that could lead to some innovation, but it's like,
Speaker 7: you know, I don't like how these mics like it's
Speaker 7: you know, I needed to be able to do something else,
Speaker 7: like my back hurting because and like you know, if
Speaker 7: you could, how could I change that versus just you know,
Speaker 7: doing like all right whatever.
Speaker 8: I just got to get used to it.
Speaker 7: It's like, let me look at this microphone, let me
Speaker 7: you know, you start kind of analyzing a little bit
Speaker 7: because this pain point of always having it again.
Speaker 8: I'm just using a round example.
Speaker 5: It is a point.
Speaker 8: You know, there we go, let's let's.
Speaker 9: Let's get the whiteboard out and this thing out, and
Speaker 9: so you know, it's kind of taking that next step
Speaker 9: and saying, Okay, what can how can I how can
Speaker 9: I hack something together just to make it better for me?
Speaker 7: Right, It's usually how it happens, and then you know,
Speaker 7: from there you start to really develop something now. And
Speaker 7: so that was what kind of was new for me
Speaker 7: as I was looking at different problems and a big
Speaker 7: problem that jumped out for me in particular.
Speaker 8: And these pain points are usually specific.
Speaker 7: To your own experience, right, Your pain points may be
Speaker 7: different from mine because we walk a different path or whatever.
Speaker 7: And so for me in particularly when you look back
Speaker 7: at my history, right, I'm a former athlete, and so
Speaker 7: their athletes, current active, former all have a special place
Speaker 7: in my heart because you know, we have that common bond.
Speaker 7: And when I looked at fantasy sports, right, I started
Speaker 7: to learn a lot more about it. I always told people,
Speaker 7: you know, I didn't play fantasy. I play reality, and
Speaker 7: you know, I never was into that. And but what
Speaker 7: I did recognize, you know, particularly in FanDuel and DraftKings,
Speaker 7: you know DFS, which was kind of new compared to
Speaker 7: traditional season long fantasy. You know, I was like, wait,
Speaker 7: these companies are making billions of dollars, right, And at
Speaker 7: the time I was talking to a lot of friends
Speaker 7: in the league asking them, how do you feel about,
Speaker 7: you know, fantasy, And overwhelmingly the answer was I don't
Speaker 7: give a damn about it, you know, because I'm not
Speaker 7: making any money whatsoever. And I learned that the companies
Speaker 7: are making billions of dollars right, and the players plastered
Speaker 7: across their platform aren't getting any money out of that,
Speaker 7: and I just didn't That didn't sit well with me.
Speaker 7: That was the pain point that I was like, all right,
Speaker 7: that's somebody has to fix that.
Speaker 4: I have a pain point that revolves around fantasy sports.
Speaker 4: It involves me losing.
Speaker 5: A lot of monkey.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, we're gonna solve that pain when I'll
Speaker 7: show you exactly how we do that. But uh, you know,
Speaker 7: and that was something where I was like, okay, that's
Speaker 7: that something's not right there. And then on the other side,
Speaker 7: I started to learn about fantasy from the consumer standpoint.
Speaker 8: A lot of guys I was working with were.
Speaker 7: Really into fantasy and they were telling me about I
Speaker 7: started to learn actually why people were playing more or
Speaker 7: less because you're losing money. So you ain't playing for money, right,
Speaker 7: You're playing because it's fun. You can, you know, talk
Speaker 7: smack with the friends, you know, things like that, and
Speaker 7: like a whole culture, right, exactly exactly, and because.
Speaker 4: It's addictive, right, it's addictive, especially like when it was
Speaker 4: the season long one, it was okay, right, you talk trash,
Speaker 4: you know, probably like Monday morning, Tuesday when the week
Speaker 4: is over. But the daily one, it was like, ooh,
Speaker 4: I gotta have my lineup in by seven. I gotta
Speaker 4: have my lineup in by six thirty, or yo, I
Speaker 4: got to have my lineup in for the eight thirty game.
Speaker 4: It was like this never stops. And because it just
Speaker 4: became an addictive thing.
Speaker 8: I mean, it is gambling, yeah, let's be clear, but
Speaker 8: well you.
Speaker 4: Know it is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it is no way around yeah and now and
Speaker 7: that was where you know, for me, I recognized a problem, right,
Speaker 7: particularly for athletes who weren't getting any value out of
Speaker 7: this thing. I saw that it was highly you know,
Speaker 7: engaged by sports fans, right, and so I said that
Speaker 7: was where the idea for when when even came up, Right,
Speaker 7: I started talking to players, I started talking to the
Speaker 7: consumers the users of these platforms, and I was just
Speaker 7: getting a sense of you know, they're losing money, but
Speaker 7: it's fun. They're competing it's addictive. And I basically proposed
Speaker 7: the question to one of my coworkers one day, and
Speaker 7: I said, what if the money that you're losing, what
Speaker 7: if that money could go to something more impactful, like
Speaker 7: a charity that let's say an athlete cares about. And
Speaker 7: instead of competing to win money out of that pot
Speaker 7: because it's gone to charity, what if you could win
Speaker 7: something that money couldn't buy, right, like a game or
Speaker 7: on autograph jersey or you know, dinner with your favorite player.
Speaker 7: And it was an overwhelming Hell, yeah, I do that,
Speaker 7: you know. And it was like okay. So then I
Speaker 7: go call my my buddies in the league and I say, hey,
Speaker 7: what if I could get your fans? I know you
Speaker 7: care about your charity and your foundation a lot.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 7: And this was another unique insight that I had because
Speaker 7: I had a foundation as well, and I knew that players,
Speaker 7: we want to use our platform for good whenever possible,
Speaker 7: if it's easy and efficient, right, And so I said,
Speaker 7: what if I can get your fan base to, through
Speaker 7: this game of sorts, support your charity by donating to it.
Speaker 7: Is that valuable enough for you to you know, sign
Speaker 7: a couple of autographs or call somebody on face Simon.
Speaker 8: It's like, yeah, that's easy. You know, we do that
Speaker 8: already through certain things.
Speaker 4: So you have your own five one C three.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So outside of like the company and our and we
Speaker 7: we got a for profit and a nonprofit. But before
Speaker 7: I even started when when when I was playing, I
Speaker 7: had a nonprofit called Team Guinea. A good friend of mine,
Speaker 7: Toby Nwigwe probably one of the fastest growing artists right
Speaker 7: now coming out of the SWAT. He and I started
Speaker 7: it with another friend of ours, Jeff, and you know,
Speaker 7: we were you know, making purpose popular was our was
Speaker 7: our mission. So we understood the pain points around trying
Speaker 7: to raise money. So took that experience along with my athlete,
Speaker 7: my athletic background, and that's where we came up with
Speaker 7: this you know concept of win win where I said, okay,
Speaker 7: we're gonna leverage gaming right and we're gonna now drive
Speaker 7: more value to what the players truly care about, right,
Speaker 7: which is their philanthropic efforts. And that was the birth
Speaker 7: of win win and how we how we started that
Speaker 7: was the end of twenty fifteen and I was working
Speaker 7: at a company when I came up with it, and
Speaker 7: so I just started to do market research, and like
Speaker 7: I said, I'm learning how to like what the steps
Speaker 7: are you take to build a company? I'd never known
Speaker 7: so through through Draper, and like at that point I
Speaker 7: had built the network of other founders, particularly black founders
Speaker 7: that I was really like, we were all lifting as
Speaker 7: we climb, you know. I knew even at that time,
Speaker 7: I knew I would see three four founders boom, jump
Speaker 7: out there and go start something. We knew folks like
Speaker 7: you know Deshaun the founder of Maven, you know, shout
Speaker 7: out to DeShawn. He you know, a brother out of Oakland,
Speaker 7: you know, is running Mavin, one of the largest hairwave
Speaker 7: kind of tech companies uh in the in the world probably,
Speaker 7: And so you know, to see guys like that just
Speaker 7: continuing to push the envelope.
Speaker 8: You know, really motivated me. And so I was like,
Speaker 8: this is this is why we're here.
Speaker 7: I was actually my wife, I should say, it was
Speaker 7: getting comfortable with kind of that tech check and uh,
Speaker 7: you know, we were in the bay, you know, living
Speaker 7: that living that life, and it was like, that's gonna
Speaker 7: have to stop because it's time to get active.
Speaker 3: So you have you have an idea. But one quick
Speaker 3: thing about fantasy. You has said one percent of fantasy
Speaker 3: players win ninety percent of the money.
Speaker 5: Is that true?
Speaker 7: Yeah, So in that in that research that I was
Speaker 7: doing less than one percent at least at that time,
Speaker 7: right this is twenty fifteen, when you again you couldn't
Speaker 7: get a away from a FanDuel of DraftKings ad. You know,
Speaker 7: less than one percent of the users on those platforms
Speaker 7: were winning over ninety eight percent of the money. And
Speaker 7: again that was for me, it was mind boggling that
Speaker 7: you know, you're just continuing to lose money while you playing.
Speaker 7: And that was where I started to dig into what
Speaker 7: the real kind of so we you know, for us,
Speaker 7: we want to pull out the best parts of gaming
Speaker 7: and gambling and combine.
Speaker 8: It with giving.
Speaker 7: But that was kind of the data I was learning.
Speaker 7: And then you start to learn about the algorithms that
Speaker 7: the scripts that people are writing. They can create, you know,
Speaker 7: a thousand lineups just like that, you know, and they
Speaker 7: can bankroll the actual tournament by you know, being able
Speaker 7: to cover all those entry fees knowing that they're going
Speaker 7: to take everybody's money. We're calling them sharks, where they're
Speaker 7: coming in and scooping up all the menos probably right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, listen, man, one, I'm telling you. One day, I
Speaker 4: literally went through every game that I had lost and
Speaker 4: saw the same names, and I just compiled a list
Speaker 4: of twenty people and I called my boy up, Larry.
Speaker 4: Out to Larry, he's.
Speaker 5: Another guy who does Fanta fantasy legend.
Speaker 4: Fantasy leg is a fantasy legend. Actually he actually did
Speaker 4: win some money. But it's the thought that I could
Speaker 4: win because like you might get, like you go into
Speaker 4: these low level entry games is gambling two dollars games
Speaker 4: and you might win one hundred dollars. I actually want
Speaker 4: a few times. But in the long run, right, those
Speaker 4: sharks they always flood the rooms, So it's like, you
Speaker 4: know what, I can't beat them.
Speaker 3: Because the sharks always eat fish. Yeah, in life, you're
Speaker 3: either a shark or your fish.
Speaker 4: I was a gold fish. I definitely quick, real quick.
Speaker 5: So let me ask you this, all right, So, okay,
Speaker 5: so you actually.
Speaker 3: Have a really good idea where you you like you said,
Speaker 3: you you take the the best part of if there
Speaker 3: is the best part of gambling, you take the best
Speaker 3: part of gambling, and you take charity, which is always
Speaker 3: a good thing, and you kind of cambind it with sports,
Speaker 3: which everybody loves and you're having center bonuses. It's a
Speaker 3: really good idea, right, So what's the next step as
Speaker 3: far as putting together? Were gonna talk about funding in
Speaker 3: the next segment, but before we've been talking about funding
Speaker 3: because you said you didn't have any background and building
Speaker 3: a business. You went to Draper University. That helped out
Speaker 3: a lot. So what steps did you take to actually
Speaker 3: build out the platform? And obviously you loved your relationship
Speaker 3: with the players in the league, So how did that
Speaker 3: look as far as your business plan and actually putting
Speaker 3: that together?
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, great questions.
Speaker 7: So you know, for me again, when I moved out
Speaker 7: there in August twenty fourteen or June twenty fourteen, there
Speaker 7: was one goal. So even as I was working at
Speaker 7: that company, I'm gleaning as much knowledge and information as
Speaker 7: I can, like, hey, how did y'all you.
Speaker 8: Know, who's y'all's lawyers? Like who did y'all say? Who
Speaker 8: set this up?
Speaker 7: And you know, just building a network of other founders
Speaker 7: that were you know, far ahead, you know, just started
Speaker 7: you know, other people that had ideas and it was
Speaker 7: just like, so what did y'all do? Because again, the
Speaker 7: thing is it ain't no Google for this stuff. Now,
Speaker 7: you know there's some information out there for sure, blog posts,
Speaker 7: different things. But you know what I was mentioned in
Speaker 7: earlier is like a tech entrepreneur is very different from
Speaker 7: a recor entrepreneur typically because you know, entrepreneurship is broad.
Speaker 7: You could go, you know, open up a food truck
Speaker 7: or barbershop and you're an entrepreneur and that's more power
Speaker 7: to you. When you're tech entrepreneur is a little different
Speaker 7: typically because you're creating something a technology that has not
Speaker 7: existed in the world yet, right, And so there is
Speaker 7: like you can look up all the literature you can
Speaker 7: on you know, the business model for a barbershop and
Speaker 7: where you get the clippers and how much you're charging
Speaker 7: boothrin and all these things, and that's great, right, that
Speaker 7: roadmap is there. When you're building something that hasn't existed,
Speaker 7: that that's not there, so all you can really do.
Speaker 7: And I talk a lot about these data points that
Speaker 7: I call them, and it's really insights. It's conversations that
Speaker 7: you're having with different people. And for me, I want
Speaker 7: to be a founder. I want to start a company,
Speaker 7: so I'm going to ask and talk to other founders
Speaker 7: and see what they went through, how they're doing different things.
Speaker 7: Now it's going to be very different for me, likely
Speaker 7: because we're running totally different companies, right because what they're
Speaker 7: building hasn't existed.
Speaker 8: What I'm building hasn't existed.
Speaker 7: And so I'm taking these very relevant data points, right,
Speaker 7: So I'm not talking to some guy that's you know,
Speaker 7: doing something in you know, West Palm Beach, Florida, that
Speaker 7: you know, it's not relevant to tell me what I
Speaker 7: should do to start win when I'm talking to folks
Speaker 7: in the midst of it all. And so I was
Speaker 7: just cleaning that information. And really, those data points allow
Speaker 7: you to make the best decision, the best informed decision
Speaker 7: you can. So you know who what's the first hire
Speaker 7: I should make, or you know, how do I set
Speaker 7: up a pitch deck, what's the story of the of
Speaker 7: the company, how do I set up the business model?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 7: None of this stuff existed, and so you have to
Speaker 7: make You have to make the best decisions you can.
Speaker 8: That's why there's.
Speaker 7: A ton of mistakes that are made, and those data points.
Speaker 7: Surrounding yourself around with great advisors, people that have done
Speaker 7: this successfully helps you. You're never gonna be perfect but
Speaker 7: it definitely helps you minimize the number of mistakes because
Speaker 7: if you can minimize the mistakes, you have a much
Speaker 7: higher chance of reaching success. And that's what I learned
Speaker 7: in the first few years of any company. It's really
Speaker 7: not about reaching success, it's about survival.
Speaker 4: How many people are on the team.
Speaker 8: I got five people right now and through that process.
Speaker 4: So what was the selection process for them? Was it
Speaker 4: people that you knew or you sought these people because
Speaker 4: you saw or knew the history of their work.
Speaker 7: So a lot of the early hires, you know, they
Speaker 7: come through referrals, right because other people like love what
Speaker 7: you're doing, and they may know people. That's usually the
Speaker 7: best form of finding a great hire because people that
Speaker 7: you're close with came highly recommend you know, can highly
Speaker 7: recommend somebody, I'll be honest. One of the big learning
Speaker 7: curves for me and starting Win Win and happened very
Speaker 7: early on. It's a very expensive lesson was hiring. And
Speaker 7: that was the thing that you know, I didn't have
Speaker 7: a process in place at first, and I didn't go
Speaker 7: through the proper procedures.
Speaker 8: To really vet them.
Speaker 7: I literally hired like two or three people because they
Speaker 7: went to do and like that that was it.
Speaker 8: You went to duke.
Speaker 4: Oh, Okaymni.
Speaker 8: We're out here though.
Speaker 7: But you know, and it was more or less that
Speaker 7: we weren't ready to have I mean, we had ten
Speaker 7: people full time pretty much for we ever even launched
Speaker 7: the thing, and we went in with a lot of
Speaker 7: assumption so that the hiring process is key.
Speaker 8: And now you know, we learned it was a very.
Speaker 7: Hard lesson to learn, an expensive lesson because you know,
Speaker 7: we're paying Silicon Valley salaries too, and uh and that
Speaker 7: ain't no joke. And so you know, change course, you know,
Speaker 7: corrected it, and now we're going we're literally in that
Speaker 7: process now that we've moved back to Houston. We got
Speaker 7: we got recruited to move to Houston and be a
Speaker 7: part of Houston's tech boom that's happening now.
Speaker 8: Uh and so we're thrilled about that.
Speaker 7: And so now we're implementing a real, real thorough process,
Speaker 7: you know, in vetting people, making sure and we have
Speaker 7: a much better understanding of what we actually need too
Speaker 7: because we've been doing it. So now we have a
Speaker 7: very clear road map. We have governance, We have board
Speaker 7: members folks that weigh in on these decisions. So but
Speaker 7: you gotta you gotta get to that point. And so
Speaker 7: it's a very very tough road. And I applaud anybody,
Speaker 7: any entrepreneur. First of all, Right, just because there is
Speaker 7: a road map doesn't mean it's gonna be an easy
Speaker 7: way to get there. But actually those that are building
Speaker 7: something that hasn't existed, right, who have to create that
Speaker 7: road map and then worry about somebody else, you know,
Speaker 7: trying to take over and beat you out. So a
Speaker 7: lot of respect for anybody that's gone through that process
Speaker 7: because it is it a taxing one for sure.
Speaker 3: Governance very good word, very key word to understand in business,
Speaker 3: Very very key word to understand business.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 3: So so okay, so can we talk about how you've
Speaker 3: leveraged your relationships because so a lot of times people
Speaker 3: are putt in situations and they don't fully maximize their relationships, right,
Speaker 3: and this is key to anything. You can work in Walmart,
Speaker 3: but you have a relationship with somebody, So you with
Speaker 3: NFL in an NFL, but you didn't squander your time
Speaker 3: in the NFL. You build key relationships and now you're
Speaker 3: using the relationships to help in your business. Right, So
Speaker 3: you talk about that because obviously. I think that that's
Speaker 3: a key component as far as the success of what
Speaker 3: you're planning with.
Speaker 4: You have the ability to do things that the average
Speaker 4: person doesn't.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker 7: And you know, I think one thing I always remember
Speaker 7: learning learning at ducat at is that your your network
Speaker 7: is your.
Speaker 8: Net worth, right.
Speaker 7: And I've always taken approaching And it wasn't until recently
Speaker 7: where I was reading a book called Give and Take
Speaker 7: by Adam Grant, and it's a phenomenal book that talks
Speaker 7: about you know your relationships and you know who you are.
Speaker 8: Are you a giver or you're a taker? Right?
Speaker 7: And for me, I realized that I've been a giver
Speaker 7: because when I talk about like networking, you think about
Speaker 7: somebody who's like, I'm going to network or I'm going
Speaker 7: to meet somebody really just looking to see what I
Speaker 7: can get out of them, right, and I usue them coming.
Speaker 7: And I've noticed it's by myself. I want to fear
Speaker 7: how can I help you? You know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 7: I look to build very authentic relationships, right, I don't
Speaker 7: want nothing from you, Right, I'm grind and trying to
Speaker 7: make it happen myself. I don't want to come in
Speaker 7: and just be trying to extract value. I always want
Speaker 7: to add value. And so even when it came to
Speaker 7: the players right as I like, I got a handful
Speaker 7: of players that I remember talking to during that time,
Speaker 7: and you know, I'm just it's really like it was
Speaker 7: a bad back and forth, like real just authentic conversations
Speaker 7: about man, this tech thing is crazy, Like I'm literally
Speaker 7: in the middle of it, and they're like, man, like,
Speaker 7: tell me about that. And so we're just having these conversations.
Speaker 7: It wasn't like I was hitting them up with a
Speaker 7: direct you know, motive, like hey need you, I need
Speaker 7: to leverage you.
Speaker 8: That's the only reason I'm calling you.
Speaker 7: Like, I have authentic relationships with these guys that you know, again,
Speaker 7: we talk about life and all these things. So when
Speaker 7: it came time to talk about when when and develop
Speaker 7: and even including them in the development of that idea.
Speaker 8: You know, it was it was a natural, you.
Speaker 7: Know, a fit for them to say, yeah, bro, like
Speaker 7: let me know, like I'll definitely host a tournament or whatever,
Speaker 7: you know, whatever you need.
Speaker 8: That sounds dope, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And so it's building those relationships, and you know, my
Speaker 7: whole thing is We want to add value even from
Speaker 7: the business, not even just me personally. I guess that
Speaker 7: goes into the business, but you know, we want to
Speaker 7: be adding value to all the partners that we work with.
Speaker 7: And we were starting with athletes, right, but I've now
Speaker 7: been talking about this expansion map that we've already laid
Speaker 7: out and have already begun to where we're now going
Speaker 7: to start working with entertainers, artists, influencers, teams, universities. We
Speaker 7: really built win when as a platform that will help
Speaker 7: any entity of influence mobilize an audience in supportive of cause.
Speaker 4: You know, so one win Obviously, fantasy is huge in
Speaker 4: the NFL, but you are you crossing over to other sports.
Speaker 8: So we you know, today we have one hundred and
Speaker 8: fifty athletes across the NFL and NBA.
Speaker 7: And to be clear, we've been in our beta phase,
Speaker 7: so we've been very much so under the radar, you know,
Speaker 7: testing making sure. That was one of the things that
Speaker 7: I learned in this kind of tech flow, right, is
Speaker 7: that you got to you gotta secure what they call
Speaker 7: product market fit, right because in your mind it's, oh man,
Speaker 7: it's a perfect idea, right, and then you know you
Speaker 7: may even do some surveys or asks me, would you
Speaker 7: buy this if this was available?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 8: Yeah, for sure. But soon as that, soon as that
Speaker 8: paywall come up.
Speaker 5: In the credit card, what had happened?
Speaker 4: What's up? You ever walk into a small business and
Speaker 4: everything just works like The checkout is fast, the receipts
Speaker 4: are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the
Speaker 4: door before the line even builds odds are they're using Square.
Speaker 4: We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it
Speaker 4: just feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a
Speaker 4: vendor at a pop up market, or even one of
Speaker 4: our merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to
Speaker 4: take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence,
Speaker 4: all from one simple system. If you're a business owner
Speaker 4: or even just thinking about launching something soon, Square is
Speaker 4: hands down one of the best tools out there to
Speaker 4: help you start, run, and grow. It's not just about payments,
Speaker 4: it's about giving you time back so you can focus
Speaker 4: on what matters most ready. To see how Square can
Speaker 4: transform your business, visit Square dot com, backslash, go backslash
Speaker 4: eyl to learn more that Square dot com, backslash, go
Speaker 4: backslash eyl, don't wait, don't hesitate. Let's square handle the
Speaker 4: back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward.
Speaker 4: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
Speaker 4: A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring,
Speaker 4: and sure they definitely can be, But understanding a professionals
Speaker 4: routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little,
Speaker 4: day after day. It's like banking with P and C Bank.
Speaker 4: It might seem boring to save, plan and make calculated
Speaker 4: decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is
Speaker 4: what helps you live a more happily fulfilled life. P
Speaker 4: and C Bank Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly
Speaker 4: Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of
Speaker 4: the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank
Speaker 4: National Association Member FDIC.
Speaker 6: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 6: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use
Speaker 6: Indeed stop struggling to get your job posts seen on
Speaker 6: other job sites. With INDEED sponsored jobs, your post jumps
Speaker 6: to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,
Speaker 6: so you can reach the people you want faster. According
Speaker 6: to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have
Speaker 6: forty five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't
Speaker 6: wait any longer, speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 6: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 6: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 6: at indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 6: to indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen right now
Speaker 6: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 6: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 6: all you need.
Speaker 7: And so now you didn't know went out and invested
Speaker 7: in all kind of stuff to build this thing without
Speaker 7: ever really properly testing it in the market live, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. And so we had to really
Speaker 7: go that rigorous testing process and shout out to our
Speaker 7: early players because we couldn't guarantee what was going to
Speaker 7: happen with their tournament in terms of like we can't say, oh,
Speaker 7: you're gonna raise you know, one hundred thousand dollars for
Speaker 7: your charity, like we don't know, because we were like
Speaker 7: testing this thing out. And so you know, these guys
Speaker 7: actually ended up becoming investors because they saw like the grind.
Speaker 7: They saw the trajectory and uh, you know, so we're
Speaker 7: expanding across all sports. Very soon, we'll be scaling vertically
Speaker 7: to now working with you know, Spike Lee could host
Speaker 7: a win win tournament for NBA. Pick them, you know,
Speaker 7: you join, donate to Spike's charity of choice, and now
Speaker 7: you get to win.
Speaker 8: You know, of course, I see to.
Speaker 3: The or like a phil Ivy, he's like the world's
Speaker 3: greatest poker plays black, so he do like like a
Speaker 3: World Series of Poker, but for charity something like that,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, something like that?
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Is it a traditional fantasy format where performances based on
Speaker 4: a skill I mean, on a scoring point system and
Speaker 4: then at the end, whoever has the most points because
Speaker 4: it gets the is the winner or do we do
Speaker 4: like head to head or is the twenty style?
Speaker 8: Great question?
Speaker 7: So, first, to be clear, it's not what people would
Speaker 7: consider or most people would think of fantasy. It's not
Speaker 7: daily fantasy, it's not FanDuel DraftKings. In terms of the game,
Speaker 7: we like to call it fantasy style game. So it's
Speaker 7: you're making predictions essentially of who's gonna win the game.
Speaker 7: So in short, how it works is you know, players
Speaker 7: hosting a win win tournament, promoting it off to fans
Speaker 7: when they come to the platform, click the link in
Speaker 7: the bio they come, and then they're joining the tournament
Speaker 7: by simply predicting who they think is gonna win. You
Speaker 7: know this upcoming weekend's games, right, there's sixteen seventeen games
Speaker 7: on any given week in the NFL, So you're just
Speaker 7: literally predicting the winners, nothing else, and you're everybody who
Speaker 7: joins that tournament. We're all on a leader board and
Speaker 7: we're ranked based on the accuracy of those picks that
Speaker 7: we've made. And upon joining, you're then given an opportunity
Speaker 7: to make a donation fully tax deductible to the players
Speaker 7: Foundation of Chill, and there's other perks and benefits that
Speaker 7: you can unlock by doing that. We have what we
Speaker 7: call Karmel coins. So for every dollar you donate, you
Speaker 7: earn these Karmel coins. You can unlock other perks and benefits.
Speaker 7: But when those games kick off, you're earning points not
Speaker 7: based on the size of your donation, which is you know,
Speaker 7: that would be like a raffle, you know, and so
Speaker 7: you're earning points based strictly on the accuracy of your prediction.
Speaker 7: So you're going up and down on the leaderboard as
Speaker 7: these games are happening in real life. And something unique
Speaker 7: is that the leaderboard is changing every five seconds, not
Speaker 7: based on who won or lost the game, but who's
Speaker 7: winning or losing at.
Speaker 8: That very moment.
Speaker 7: So as you got five or six games happening, I mean,
Speaker 7: the score is going up and down, and you're just
Speaker 7: I mean, it's it's going crazy, and we keep and
Speaker 7: that's that's what I said.
Speaker 8: We're taking the best part of that kind of gambling.
Speaker 4: How many people in the twenty at a time.
Speaker 7: That varies, there's no max, and you know it can
Speaker 7: vary varies based on the player, the level of promotion,
Speaker 7: things like that. But the key is that they're not
Speaker 7: competing to win money, right, So those are the those
Speaker 7: are the visceral kind of feelings that we took out
Speaker 7: of gaming and put it into win win, And they're
Speaker 7: not winning money, right, they're winning experiences that money can't buy,
Speaker 7: like having dinner with the player after the game, or
Speaker 7: court side seats or autograph jersey whatever. I mean, we've done,
Speaker 7: We've done a private jet ride. Patrick Peterson took the
Speaker 7: top three winners on the leader board and flew on
Speaker 7: a private jet with him to baton Ruge for the
Speaker 7: LSU Versus Alabama game course. I mean a sideline passes
Speaker 7: locker rooms the whole nine. And those guys collectively were
Speaker 7: on average, I think donated about thirty thirty five bucks,
Speaker 7: but they were the top three winners based on their
Speaker 7: scores and lead on.
Speaker 8: The leader board.
Speaker 7: And that's what we call Game of five giving, and
Speaker 7: so that's you know, everybody's competing, but the unique part
Speaker 7: is that everybody wins. Also, it's not a one winner
Speaker 7: take off, which I think is you know, if you're
Speaker 7: in first place, you get the jet ride, tenth place,
Speaker 7: you get the FaceTime call, one hundredth place, you get
Speaker 7: an autograph jersey all the way down the last place
Speaker 7: where you'll get twenty dollars in free lift credits as
Speaker 7: your prize. So as a fan, you've competed, you've contributed,
Speaker 7: and you've won something. And for us, we didn't go
Speaker 7: with that model really because it sounds good. We did
Speaker 7: it because it's acquisition and retention driving behaviors. Again, we're
Speaker 7: building a profitable, a for profit company that is looking
Speaker 7: to return capital to our investors ten x, which means,
Speaker 7: you know, somebody comes scoop us up for seven hundred
Speaker 7: million dollars or whatever.
Speaker 8: That's the goal.
Speaker 7: And so we have to think very strategically about the
Speaker 7: business model, about what are these triggers that will get
Speaker 7: people to come back and donate. What it'll get people
Speaker 7: to come So acquisition, if you know, you see your
Speaker 7: favorite player hosting a tournament promoting it, knowing that you're
Speaker 7: guaranteed to win a prize, you're more inclined to actually
Speaker 7: join right versus joining the raffle.
Speaker 8: I'll win something right.
Speaker 7: But more importantly, if you look at your predictions, and
Speaker 7: let's say you got one of the brand sponsor prizes
Speaker 7: like lift credits, you're gonna look at it, you're gonna
Speaker 7: be happy about it. But then you're gonna say, man,
Speaker 7: if I would have made these seven different picks, I
Speaker 7: would have been in Tier two.
Speaker 8: I would have got the autograph football. So what do
Speaker 8: you do?
Speaker 7: You come right back next week and try again donate
Speaker 7: boom And so now retention, acquisition, you know, these are
Speaker 7: the things that really drive a business as we look to,
Speaker 7: you know, drive revenue and evaluation them.
Speaker 3: All right, So in the next seven, we're gonna go
Speaker 3: into the most important part of any business funding. But
Speaker 3: it's a little different, a little different. We're gonna talk
Speaker 3: about equity crowdfunding, something that most people aren't too familiar with,
Speaker 3: so we haven't covered it yet. So yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 3: go into it, all right, So now we're gonna talk
Speaker 3: about something very interesting and something Actually when you when
Speaker 3: you contacted us, you brought up a good point. He's like,
Speaker 3: I don't think you talked about this, but you know what,
Speaker 3: we haven't talk about it, right, so, yes, equity crowdfunding. Right,
Speaker 3: so people might not be familiar with equity. Well, crowdfunding
Speaker 3: in general is a way to raise money from large
Speaker 3: amounts of people, right, So, like the most popular form
Speaker 3: is Kickstarter. People things like that, right, It's kickstarter where
Speaker 3: you it's kind of like a donation kind of charity thing.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you can give people like T shirts, but it's
Speaker 3: pretty much they're not getting nothing in return for that
Speaker 3: except for just good will they want to support you.
Speaker 3: Right now, Equity crowd funding is something that is new
Speaker 3: that came about from President Obama's.
Speaker 5: Jobs build up.
Speaker 3: I'm not yeah, the Jobs Act, and yeah, so can
Speaker 3: you talk about that, because it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 7: So you know, one of the any business, right particularly
Speaker 7: within in tech companies, right, you have to raise funding
Speaker 7: and for for you know, decades.
Speaker 8: Now, right. The way you do that is go to
Speaker 8: an investor. Right.
Speaker 7: You pitch your vision to that one individual usually or
Speaker 7: a fund, and you know, they make a decision on
Speaker 7: if they're going to give you the startup capital that
Speaker 7: you need to go build this thing, and in exchange,
Speaker 7: they get equity, right, they get ownership part ownership in
Speaker 7: the company. And that's how it's been done for ages.
Speaker 8: Now. One of the things.
Speaker 7: That it has created is a very big gap in
Speaker 7: terms of wealth and the access to generate wealth.
Speaker 8: Right when you talk.
Speaker 7: About angel investors, right, and again, trust me, like I've
Speaker 7: learned all of this stuff in the last five years.
Speaker 7: I didn't, Like I said, I didn't even know what
Speaker 7: Silicon Valley was or the word and so this was
Speaker 7: all things that I had to learn on the go.
Speaker 7: But when it comes to angel investors, these are basically
Speaker 7: wealthy individuals that are investing their own capital, like at
Speaker 7: their bank account. They they're investing in the companies getting equity.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: And then when those companies go on, they do very
Speaker 7: well and get sold or I po then those angel investors,
Speaker 7: those wealthier, those wealthy volks get even more wealthy, right
Speaker 7: because they get a return on their capital. And so
Speaker 7: it was creating this gap, and and you know, shout
Speaker 7: out to Obama because he you know, saw that there
Speaker 7: was a disparity there and thought that anybody should be
Speaker 7: able to have access if they can access that deal, right,
Speaker 7: because there's there's there's part access, but then having the
Speaker 7: capacity to even get involved, right, And so he created
Speaker 7: the Jobs Acts. Right, it's jumpstart our business startups, and
Speaker 7: it is you know, it's it's actually a whole lot
Speaker 7: of different things. But one of the things in there
Speaker 7: is equity crowdfunding. And what it does is it gives
Speaker 7: founders of companies the ability to open up the fundraising
Speaker 7: to what they call non accredited investors. So that angel
Speaker 7: investor that I mentioned is going to be an accredited investor.
Speaker 7: And to be an accredited investor, you have to make
Speaker 7: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or more
Speaker 7: at least for the last three years as your tax
Speaker 7: you know, paperwork will show or have a million in
Speaker 7: liquid assets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can see how that could be a problem. Like,
Speaker 4: especially in the communities we live in. It's like, how
Speaker 4: many people do we know that make two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty thousand as a combined family, one person make it.
Speaker 7: And as a group, actually you can. You and your
Speaker 7: spouse collectively have to make three hundred thousand, right, And
Speaker 7: so they even make that bar go a little higher.
Speaker 7: And so or have a million in liquid assets.
Speaker 5: That's it. That's the only requirements two million in assets.
Speaker 8: Or a million in liquid liquid. So it can't but
Speaker 8: it basically it can't.
Speaker 3: They got to be something like a retirement account on
Speaker 3: bank or stock stuff like that, things that you.
Speaker 8: Can liquid that, yeah, quickly.
Speaker 7: And so that's you know that and and honestly or
Speaker 7: like what I looked at in the research option done,
Speaker 7: that's about eight or nine percent of Americans, right, And
Speaker 7: so the ninety one percent, essentially right, can't can't even
Speaker 7: access that deal even if they know the founder of
Speaker 7: X y Z company. They can't you know, invest even
Speaker 7: if they haven't have some load of cash that they
Speaker 7: came across or whatever. But so what Obama said is,
Speaker 7: you know, through the Jobs Act, now anybody should be
Speaker 7: able to access that. So in twenty sixteen is actually
Speaker 7: when they went through, and now you started to see
Speaker 7: the rise of.
Speaker 8: These equity crowdfunding platforms.
Speaker 7: So the thing that you have to know is like
Speaker 7: if I run a tech company or startup, just because
Speaker 7: you know the Jobs Act exist doesn't mean you could
Speaker 7: just walk up and give me some money and say
Speaker 7: I want to be an investor. The companies have to
Speaker 7: go through, so this is all sanctioned by the SEC.
Speaker 7: You know, there's a lot of kind of formal time
Speaker 7: ters I won't bore you guys with, but you have
Speaker 7: to go through a very extreme vetting process.
Speaker 8: So first there's the platform.
Speaker 7: So you brought up a good point Kickstarter, Indie, go go, right,
Speaker 7: these are forms of crowdfunding. Go fund me is a
Speaker 7: crowd is a crowdfunding platform, right, And again to your point,
Speaker 7: you're raising money for something from a large crowd of people,
Speaker 7: hence the name.
Speaker 4: The original of the crowdfunding itself was based on a
Speaker 4: rock band like yeah, they couldn't get money to go
Speaker 4: on tour. Oh yeah, so their fans came together to say,
Speaker 4: like let's fund them to at least have a tour
Speaker 4: to perform.
Speaker 3: Hence crowdfunded Troy always comes with It was like a
Speaker 3: white elephant always comes with like these little known Alright,
Speaker 3: all right, so we're back to the crowd but.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you know, crowdfunding as in and of itself exists, right,
Speaker 7: It has existed for some time, all the way back
Speaker 7: to the rock band, right and to your point, equity
Speaker 7: crowdfunding came in right when you and let's just draw
Speaker 7: a comparison.
Speaker 8: Let's take Kickstarter for example.
Speaker 7: This is a Kickstart is a company that enables you
Speaker 7: to run a crowdfunding campaign, right, and so you can
Speaker 7: put up your project, whether it's a film, whether it's
Speaker 7: a whatever it is, right, and you can basically promote
Speaker 7: it and people will buy in and maybe you have perks.
Speaker 7: Like you said, now, the difference, right you talk about
Speaker 7: equity crowdfunding, there are also platforms, right, so republic is
Speaker 7: one that is probably one of the more popular ones.
Speaker 7: There's others called we funder, you know a few others
Speaker 7: that you know allow you to have an equity crowdfunding campaign.
Speaker 7: Now they have to go through a rigorous process to
Speaker 7: even be set up. But the big difference between those
Speaker 7: two platforms is that on Kickstarter, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 7: Basically anybody can set that up. You can go in there,
Speaker 7: fill out the thing, and then boom, launch a campaign
Speaker 7: and it's up to you. And you have to raise
Speaker 7: a certain amount to even access to the capital for
Speaker 7: equity crowdfunding because these are technically public offerings right of
Speaker 7: shares in a company and a private company, it has
Speaker 7: to be sanctioned.
Speaker 8: By the SEC.
Speaker 7: So it's a very rigorous process, right, I mean, they
Speaker 7: dove deep into the financials and all the history of
Speaker 7: the company, and then that's how you're able to even
Speaker 7: be accepted on one of the platforms, right like Republic
Speaker 7: for US and then and really it's a it's a
Speaker 7: because basically I don't even know if we said it.
Speaker 7: What it means is equity crowdfunding enables anybody, not accredited
Speaker 7: investors to invest into private companies for as little as
Speaker 7: you know, I think legally the minimum is like ten dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now that's something that all right, So I don't
Speaker 3: want people to not understand this, so cause I get
Speaker 3: this question of my DM so often, like when I
Speaker 3: post stuff about like Beyond Meat and like Lift and
Speaker 3: all of these stuff, and I post stories about like
Speaker 3: Knas and like how he invested early, and people like, well,
Speaker 3: how can I invest in these companies early? For the
Speaker 3: most part, you really can, right, like you said, I
Speaker 3: mean especially on that level.
Speaker 5: It's like angel investors and vcs.
Speaker 3: But even on the small levels and credited investors, So
Speaker 3: you have to be like a special kind of person
Speaker 3: for lack of a better word, to actually invest. But
Speaker 3: now it allows the general public. Crowdfunding allows the general
Speaker 3: public to invest in companies on the ground level because,
Speaker 3: like you said off camera, one of the main disadvantages
Speaker 3: is that you're getting people that can invest in these
Speaker 3: companies and then when they go public, their percentage goes
Speaker 3: up like a thousand percent. But by the time the
Speaker 3: general public gets it in the stock market, they've already
Speaker 3: made their money that they're out. They're out the day, right.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting because probably the most famous in our
Speaker 3: community person that has done that is Jay Morrison. He
Speaker 3: did a real estate crowdfunding with the Tulsa Real Estate
Speaker 3: Fund and he same thing. He raised money from the
Speaker 3: crowd and I think like over ten million dollars in
Speaker 3: a very short period of time. So it's a very
Speaker 3: successful real estate crowdfunding fund campaign. But it's something for
Speaker 3: people to understand from two aspects of it. From a
Speaker 3: business owner, it's a way to raise money, right because
Speaker 3: financing is extremely important and it's hard to get bank loans,
Speaker 3: it's hard to get outside financing. So this is a
Speaker 3: way for business owners to raise large amounts of money.
Speaker 3: Now you're giving up equity in it, and we'll talk
Speaker 3: about that. But you know, you don't get nothing for something.
Speaker 3: You always have to do something. So and it's also
Speaker 3: a way for investors to invest in companies that they
Speaker 3: believe in and they think that can blow up because
Speaker 3: now you might put in ten thousand dollars on a company,
Speaker 3: but in five years that company, that percentage might be
Speaker 3: worth one hundred thousand because you got it on the
Speaker 3: ground level. And you guys said something about Ben Herwitz
Speaker 3: right forwardz If anybody's not familiar, he's a tech giant,
Speaker 3: VC giant, and he's good friends with NAS. He's one
Speaker 3: of the reasons why NAS is really blowing up. He's
Speaker 3: kind of like mentored him. I read some stuff about that.
Speaker 3: If anybody's not familiar, Nias is doing this thing with
Speaker 3: Queensbridge Bridge. Yeah, and they invest in like lifting ring
Speaker 3: pill pack all a lot of these companies, and so
Speaker 3: Ben is really into hip hop. He's like a hip
Speaker 3: hop head, and it was maatic from what I understand,
Speaker 3: is like one.
Speaker 5: Of his favorite albums ever.
Speaker 3: So he just he developed and Horror Black by the way,
Speaker 3: no no, no, if you didn't know about the name.
Speaker 7: If you so he just took the barbecue.
Speaker 3: So you were saying that it was crazy because roughly
Speaker 3: he invested like two fifty into Instagram and then like
Speaker 3: two years later it was worth like eighty million or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, I mean, so I don't have any facts
Speaker 7: on this. Actually shout out to Chamellionaire if you know,
Speaker 7: Chamellionaires is really really been winning this in Houston's own
Speaker 7: ride Dirty and you know he's been winning in the
Speaker 7: tech game and just real quick, you know he I mean,
Speaker 7: we were talking about a situation that happened I think
Speaker 7: twenty seventeen finals, right, and this is where it actually
Speaker 7: came out that you know cha millionaires yeah because he
Speaker 7: because he yeah, he was you know, he was court side, yeah,
Speaker 7: and like in the background of a picture and it's
Speaker 7: how many ring tones did he sail hit the finals
Speaker 7: game game five? You know, court side and people came
Speaker 7: and said, no, he's been early investor in Lyft, early
Speaker 7: investor in Ring, you know, early investor in a number
Speaker 7: of companies that have done well. And so you know,
Speaker 7: actually Chameleon I was the one that kind of you know,
Speaker 7: put this, put this kind of this data out. Now,
Speaker 7: I don't know you know, the details and specifics on it,
Speaker 7: so let me make that clear. But there was a
Speaker 7: very sizeable return you know in the in the eighties
Speaker 7: of millions of dollars, you know, based on that initial
Speaker 7: investments from what I hear, but it shows the power
Speaker 7: of equity ownership, right, and now was a I think
Speaker 7: the with the real point that he was making is
Speaker 7: that you know, you have to be able to get
Speaker 7: in on the ground level. And for so long the
Speaker 7: price was so much higher than you know, most of
Speaker 7: our folks in the community could ever even think about investing.
Speaker 7: And so with the equity crowdfunding, that's where because it's
Speaker 7: coming from a crowd of people, you can make that
Speaker 7: price much lower, you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 7: for like for win Win for two hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 7: you can own equity, right, I'll be it a smaller
Speaker 7: portion compared to somebody that's putting in twenty five grand
Speaker 7: or two hundred and fifty thousand. But you know, it's
Speaker 7: all about having a slice of that pie, particularly if
Speaker 7: you believe in the company, if you believe in the mission,
Speaker 7: if you're going to be a consumer of it, right,
Speaker 7: and that to your point, the ninety one percent that
Speaker 7: aren't that are non accredited investors. They have to wait
Speaker 7: until it's already publicly traded to even you know, have
Speaker 7: some ownership, right, imagine being able to do that on
Speaker 7: the front end.
Speaker 8: But now you actually can.
Speaker 7: And that's where the equity crowdfunding, to your point, comes in,
Speaker 7: where we can raise money, particularly as black founders, we
Speaker 7: have now an alternative avenue to raise money from the
Speaker 7: crowd versus having to go to a very particular specific
Speaker 7: demographic of vcs and people.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought that com millionaire story up because
Speaker 3: it highlights a problem in the community. So it all
Speaker 3: started with the It was like the Golden State Finals.
Speaker 3: Anybody knows finals tickets, they cost a lot of money,
Speaker 3: like hundreds of thousands, Like it's crazy, now, hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 3: but a lot of money, a lot of money. So
Speaker 3: he's front row at the finals, and it's like a joke.
Speaker 3: It's like, damn, how many how much ringsols? Did he
Speaker 3: sound like he has somebody here doesn't belong where fifteen
Speaker 3: years But little do they know the guy's been making
Speaker 3: millions of dollars and investing in companies long after his
Speaker 3: musical career was over. So when they find that out,
Speaker 3: it's like, now it's not funny anymore. Right, So it's
Speaker 3: like a lot of times we highlight celebrities and entertainers,
Speaker 3: but like even if you look at that, you use
Speaker 3: Jay Z and Beyonce at the front row. Everybody knows them,
Speaker 3: but they're probably middle class for everybody else in the
Speaker 3: front row. Like the guy that got into the fight,
Speaker 3: nobody knew who he was. You worth eight billion dollars
Speaker 3: just a random billionaire. It's like, how many people that
Speaker 3: you don't know are just billionaires. The one person that
Speaker 3: you do know just became a billionaire. Not not you know,
Speaker 3: no disrespect to James b We love them, but that
Speaker 3: just goes to show you how much money is out.
Speaker 10: There, right, yeah, right, And you know, and that's why
Speaker 10: I'm glad you brought that up, because when I was
Speaker 10: in the bay, right, one of the things that I
Speaker 10: really actually appreciated, you.
Speaker 7: Know, relative to l A right, is that you didn't
Speaker 7: know who you was talking to or what you were doing.
Speaker 8: Like the money was just shown way differently, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean.
Speaker 7: And you just have people that were just grinding and
Speaker 7: hustling and building companies. And you know, you meet a
Speaker 7: guy just randomly looked like you know, random guys like yeah, man,
Speaker 7: you know, just so my second company Amazon word, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean, and drinks on you. Then you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying, And it's it's just a different
Speaker 7: it's a different mindset. And to your point, like you know,
Speaker 7: like I said, it wasn't funny no more, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean. And you know, I think that I
Speaker 7: love these examples where you look at you know, a
Speaker 7: Chamellionaire who and and that's a great friend. Shout out
Speaker 7: to Cam And and by the way, he's he's an
Speaker 7: entrepreneur as well as an investor. He started his own
Speaker 7: tech app, tech company called Convos, which I you know
Speaker 7: suggests everybody go check out and download. And he's been
Speaker 7: building and feeding into the community, giving back, you know,
Speaker 7: and and and you gotta you gotta love that. But
Speaker 7: you look at you know, the Beyonce situation right where
Speaker 7: uh if For those who don't know, you know, she
Speaker 7: essentially passed up a cash offer to perform at a
Speaker 7: big Uber event, passed on six million dollars, as the
Speaker 7: story goes, and wanted equity in exchange, and they gave
Speaker 7: it to her. And then they just recently iPod and
Speaker 7: supposedly it's worth somewhere in the three hundred million dollar range, right,
Speaker 7: And again that's the power of equity because you know
Speaker 7: the IPO, you own shares of the company and now
Speaker 7: you're able to cash that in. Now granted that's on paper, right,
Speaker 7: that that worth, but she can cash that in and
Speaker 7: make it.
Speaker 3: You know, who else has a good equity story? I
Speaker 3: told this story before, but I never told her on
Speaker 3: the podcast. Some might as well tell fifty Curt shout.
Speaker 5: Out to fifty. We don't we don't owe him any money?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows fifty cents vitamin water he made like they say,
Speaker 3: ninety eighty million dollars, right, because what happened is that
Speaker 3: they he had equity, I think like ten percent equity
Speaker 3: stake in the company. Then Coca Cola brought it for
Speaker 3: a billion dollars and then his ten percent was worked
Speaker 3: like one hundred million. What they don't know is that
Speaker 3: so vitamin water, they got some vitamin water dif from
Speaker 3: Queen Queens Queen, so yeah, so fifty Queens gets the money.
Speaker 3: So fifties from he's from the South Side. And you
Speaker 3: know who else is from Queens Metal World Peace Rhest. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's from Queensbridge, home with nas and mob Deep and
Speaker 3: a bunch of other people. So when the guys that
Speaker 3: started Vitamin Water, they was looking for somebody from queens
Speaker 3: hometown and they wanted a celebrity, so they approached run
Speaker 3: our tests about being like the face of vitamin water. Right,
Speaker 3: he's an athlete, sizeable nags, it's you know at that time.
Speaker 3: So they offered him the same deal ten percent equity steak,
Speaker 3: and he wanted two hundred thousand dollars. They didn't have
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand dollars to actually pay him, so they
Speaker 3: told them, well, we can't give you two hundred thousand,
Speaker 3: but we can't give you ten percent. He turned it down,
Speaker 3: fifty cent took the deal. Just so happened. One year later,
Speaker 3: Coca Cola bought them for a billion dollars and a
Speaker 3: ten percent turned into one hundred million dollars. So rhin
Speaker 3: our test gave up one hundred million for two hundred thousand.
Speaker 5: Education. He didn't fully understand the power of equity. He's like, no,
Speaker 5: pay me.
Speaker 3: You try to pull a fast one over, right, but
Speaker 3: it all comes down to education. So now you hear
Speaker 3: Beyonce say pay me in equity. So we're starting to
Speaker 3: fully understand this, and especially in the VC world and
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley, Oh that correct, Silicon Silicon.
Speaker 4: Valley, they're gonna know now.
Speaker 3: Well he was gonna know anywhere. So that's something that's
Speaker 3: been going on for years right where it takes time
Speaker 3: and the back end is always more profitable than.
Speaker 4: The front end.
Speaker 3: So now we fully understanding this, and we need to
Speaker 3: be fully aware of this. So in that vein being
Speaker 3: that you have run a successful equity crowd funding campaign,
Speaker 3: you're actually still running in it. You're still running it
Speaker 3: right now. All right, somebody has a business and they
Speaker 3: want to take the same route that you did, right.
Speaker 5: What are his steps?
Speaker 4: Actually?
Speaker 3: Because I know you said it's a whole process with
Speaker 3: the SEC they got to get approved and all that stuff.
Speaker 5: Like, what's the steps.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So the steps is, you know, you you have
Speaker 7: to you essentially can apply I believe to the company.
Speaker 8: Now we were a little rare.
Speaker 7: We actually you know, companies reached out to us, like
Speaker 7: Republic and how that got set up. So, but there
Speaker 7: is kind of a submission process, I believe where you
Speaker 7: can be considered. They actually have people on their team
Speaker 7: that are looking for companies and they're trying to say, hey,
Speaker 7: we think you should do an equity crowdfunding campaign because
Speaker 7: you know their model is they make a percentage of
Speaker 7: what you ultimately raise, right, So they're looking for great
Speaker 7: companies that they think will be successful. So if you
Speaker 7: end up finding yourself in a position where you know,
Speaker 7: you reach out and there's alignment, they do a vetting
Speaker 7: process themselves, then you're you're kind of in the game.
Speaker 7: You gotta go through the process of you know, pulling
Speaker 7: all your financials, right, you got to go through.
Speaker 8: It's just like I said, it's a very rigorous process.
Speaker 7: And you I think the thing you have to make
Speaker 7: sure that you understand is what you're what you're kind
Speaker 7: of getting yourself into. Right Because now, and this goes
Speaker 7: back to even uh and this is probably a whole
Speaker 7: nother podcast just around the types of funding and who
Speaker 7: gets that type of funding, right, because if if you
Speaker 7: you know, depending on your business, right, there are only
Speaker 7: a certain type of business, certain types of businesses that
Speaker 7: should be raising money from venture capitalists, right because these
Speaker 7: vcs want to see ten x return like hockey stick growth, right,
Speaker 7: and that's why they're giving you that money. If you ain't,
Speaker 7: if you ain't getting that way, which is fine, right.
Speaker 7: You have other companies that just grow steadily profitable, you're
Speaker 7: making money. That's a great business, but you shouldn't be
Speaker 7: taking money from kind of the the investors that we're
Speaker 7: talking about right in terms of their credit.
Speaker 8: Because there's a there's an expectation there.
Speaker 7: But when you when you go back to you know,
Speaker 7: looking at your business and where you are, right. I
Speaker 7: think one of the things that is key to look at,
Speaker 7: and we looked at this even in our own decision,
Speaker 7: is how attractive and understandable will it be to the crowd, right,
Speaker 7: because you gotta you gotta resonate with people, and we're
Speaker 7: building something that we believe touches everybody.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: You talk about uh, sports and philanthropy and entertainment, right.
Speaker 7: My good friend Don Dixon said the other night that
Speaker 7: you know, she invested in our company as well, and
Speaker 7: she said that, you know, when win operates into recession
Speaker 7: proof businesses, entertainment and sports, people could be doing down
Speaker 7: bad and all across life, but you're gonna watch that game.
Speaker 7: You're gonna find a way to you know, get in
Speaker 7: in that into that experience, and so you know, you
Speaker 7: got to think about is this going to be attractive
Speaker 7: to the average consumer. That was one thing that I
Speaker 7: had to really kind of even adjust how we talk
Speaker 7: about the company because I'm so used to talking to
Speaker 7: sophisticated you know, investors.
Speaker 8: That this is what they do.
Speaker 7: So there are terms in terminology that we can use
Speaker 7: that they understand very quickly, whereas you're talking to the
Speaker 7: crowd right through communication or whatever. You got to kind
Speaker 7: of break that down. And I've been learning to your point,
Speaker 7: like the the big gap and knowledge of what equity
Speaker 7: it actually is, even even to the point where on
Speaker 7: the hiring side, one of the things for startups is
Speaker 7: you have little capital usually, so you can offer early
Speaker 7: employees equity, right, and that's where you get big time
Speaker 7: companies like uh, you know, big time engineers at Google,
Speaker 7: for example, who will leave Google right a very cush
Speaker 7: job and go work at a startup because they're getting
Speaker 7: some percentage in the equity. So they're saying, I'll pass
Speaker 7: on that you know very well to do job, to
Speaker 7: take equity because I'm going to help build this thing
Speaker 7: to become whatever that is. Even as we've now come
Speaker 7: to Houston, there's been conversations with potential employees that who
Speaker 7: don't necessarily even understand. They're like, NA, like, you know,
Speaker 7: we need this much money, and it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 7: we'll be a little under market, but we want we
Speaker 7: can comp that with equity, which now I found myself
Speaker 7: having to explain, actually, how valuable that that's that that
Speaker 7: you're the fact that you even have an opportunity to
Speaker 7: have equity is a big deal. And that's what That's
Speaker 7: why I love these pop culture examples.
Speaker 8: Beyonce a chameleion there, you know.
Speaker 7: Fifty that everybody knows that they're showing that, you know
Speaker 7: how powerful that is. And now the fact that anybody
Speaker 7: can get in on that equity, I think it is
Speaker 7: a game changer for not only are communities you talk
Speaker 7: about generating generational wealth and you know create what you
Speaker 7: guys talk a lot about financial literacy. When you know better,
Speaker 7: you do better, right, And I think this is changing
Speaker 7: the game and opening up those opportunities.
Speaker 4: One of the things you said, and that's extremely important,
Speaker 4: is like even if it's a small right, one percent
Speaker 4: in equity, Right, Let's say it's two hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 4: Like that's the initial investment to own a percentage, Right,
Speaker 4: that could turn into fifteen thousand, right if you if
Speaker 4: you had more, obviously it turns into more of a profit,
Speaker 4: but that fifteen thousand can be the startup for you
Speaker 4: to invest in something else, like your first piece of
Speaker 4: real estate or your first restaurant. How it may feel
Speaker 4: fit for yourself. It's a beginning, right. A lot of
Speaker 4: people think like they're so small, I can't do it
Speaker 4: in Houston, right. You said something earlier about it becoming
Speaker 4: a tech hub, like it's going to be the Silicon
Speaker 4: of the South. How's the vision for that? Right? And
Speaker 4: who's are either the forefront of it or are the
Speaker 4: people out here that are going along on that? So
Speaker 4: with you?
Speaker 8: So we're excited.
Speaker 7: I mean, like we just got down here, you know,
Speaker 7: two months ago, or not even and to be coming down.
Speaker 7: You can sense the kind of the fervor in the
Speaker 7: air of like, you know, this is exciting, right because
Speaker 7: even with the investors, we got some new investors Shout
Speaker 7: out to them, you know here in Houston that have
Speaker 7: typically invested only in you know, oil and gas and energy.
Speaker 7: So now to have some you know, innovative, fast growing
Speaker 7: tech company opportunities has been great for those you know,
Speaker 7: kind of traditional investors. But what I'm more proud of
Speaker 7: is that we can bring this opportunity to everybody from
Speaker 7: Third War to the Swat, you know, to downtown in
Speaker 7: the gallery, anybody across the city, in the in the country,
Speaker 7: and really the world. That's the great thing about equity crowdfunding. Also,
Speaker 7: you can invest from anywhere in the world. I mean,
Speaker 7: we got investors in Canada, Australia, Africa that.
Speaker 8: Have come through in our campaign.
Speaker 7: And it gives everybody that opportunity to gain that equity
Speaker 7: we've been talking about.
Speaker 5: It's powerful.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 5: One, thank you for coming in. We appreciate you.
Speaker 3: How can the people contact you social media, your website,
Speaker 3: any initiatives that you got going on when win information?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what's what's what's the deal with that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, hundred percent. First, appreciate you all for having me
Speaker 7: first and foremost. You know, go get you some equity.
Speaker 7: Www dot republic dot co uh backslash win hyphen win
Speaker 7: uh and you'll be able to see our campaign is live.
Speaker 7: We don't we actually do know. So you're limited on
Speaker 7: the time. So we only have a limited amount of time.
Speaker 7: And once that door closes, then there's no more you know,
Speaker 7: non accredited investors that will be able to invest. So
Speaker 7: I encourage everybody to go check that out again www
Speaker 7: dot republic dot co. Backslash win dash when you'll learn
Speaker 7: everything about the company, nice video and all that good stuff.
Speaker 7: Me I'm underscore Mike T. Brown on Instagram, on Twitter,
Speaker 7: you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there
Speaker 7: as well. And yeah try when when the is the website,
Speaker 7: but just go to republic dot co win win and
Speaker 7: you'll be able to find all the information.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Shout out to the good people of Samoa. Samoa, right, Samoa.
Speaker 7: That's another way you got to say a lot of
Speaker 7: people just say Samo and Samoa Samo and just like
Speaker 7: Silicon Okay, I'm gonna get you all right with they.
Speaker 3: Might not familiar I used to I used to live
Speaker 3: in Hawaii and so familiar with the Micronesian Islands and
Speaker 3: Polynesian islands and very rich culture, very prideful people and
Speaker 3: make up a lot percentage wise NFL.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 7: I think, like literally, if you were born in Somemo,
Speaker 7: played football in some in high school, like the chances
Speaker 7: were like thirty if you if you went to college
Speaker 7: and play, you probably was going to the league.
Speaker 5: That's what's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, shout out to all you guys. Appreciate you, Troy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shout out to everybody on patreon dot com, back
Speaker 4: Slasher and Aalisia. It has been amazing all our patrons,
Speaker 4: especially the ones from Houston. They have shown out and
Speaker 4: laid the carpet out for us out here. And that's
Speaker 4: that's what Patreon's about. It allows us to travel, allows
Speaker 4: us to experience. This allows us to highlight hometown heroes
Speaker 4: and different types of cities. So thank you to everybody
Speaker 4: that's ow proud to pay program. As you know, we
Speaker 4: have five different tiers. You can subscribe at any tiar
Speaker 4: There's some bonus features, but the real part is being
Speaker 4: able to connect with people and coming to cities and
Speaker 4: talking to some hometown heroes who who need to be highlighted,
Speaker 4: right because we said even at the event, when we leave,
Speaker 4: the relationships that you forced it with the people who
Speaker 4: are at the event will last a lot longer than
Speaker 4: just that one night we were there. So shout out
Speaker 4: to everybody on Patreon, everybody that supported earni Leisure dot
Speaker 4: com and bought some merch. We had some mercher there
Speaker 4: last night. It flew off the tables, man, So shout
Speaker 4: out to everybody that has the merch. And we got
Speaker 4: some more stuff coming.
Speaker 5: We got one outstanding Patreon member in Houston.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we shouted out Danida on last episode, but Anita.
Speaker 5: Is outstanding member.
Speaker 4: Outstanding man, she's our number one supporter. We hung out
Speaker 4: with Danita and her crew out here and it was she.
Speaker 5: Didn't let us pay for anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that doesn't happen when we're from like even
Speaker 4: like our crew were like they were like, look, man,
Speaker 4: this is different, Like we don't get treated like this,
Speaker 4: especially like women don't buy drinks for us and that's
Speaker 4: just not culture. But they said, welcome to Texas.
Speaker 3: Said your money is no good. It's no good here
Speaker 3: Welcome to Texas. Welcome to Texas.
Speaker 4: So I said, this is that that southern hospitality that
Speaker 4: that they've been speaking about. So we about to go
Speaker 4: get to it right. She's an entrepreneur out here too,
Speaker 4: so shout out to her. And she said her mom
Speaker 4: is a huge fan too, so shout out to her
Speaker 4: mom and her whole crew.
Speaker 3: So my books hit for the week is Hard Things
Speaker 3: About Hard Things by Ben Harwitz.
Speaker 5: We actually just spoke about.
Speaker 3: Him and once again a lot of times people hit
Speaker 3: me up about my financial advising business.
Speaker 5: So my calendar is on Ernilisia dot com.
Speaker 3: You can book a thirty minute consultation for retirement planning,
Speaker 3: business planning, and state planning. You got to inheritance investment
Speaker 3: stuff like that. So thirty minute free consultation. My calendar
Speaker 3: is up there. And we got to give a shout
Speaker 3: out to executive producer of our show, somebody that you
Speaker 3: might not have ever seen before, but Michael McDonald.
Speaker 5: He actually does a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Behind the scenes, and he's helped me out with my
Speaker 3: Instagram page and he does he has his own company,
Speaker 3: Michael Media Group. So if you need any videos done
Speaker 3: or pictures or social media consultant or any type of
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
Speaker 5: Check him out.
Speaker 4: He does it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Michael J. McDonald on Instagram and yeah, check him out.
Speaker 3: So thank you guys for rocking with us, and we'll
Speaker 3: see you next week.
Speaker 5: Peace.
Speaker 11: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
Speaker 11: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from El Salvador
Speaker 11: accused of murdering a Texas. Man of Venezuelan charged with
Speaker 11: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
Speaker 11: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
Speaker 11: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy nom the United States
Speaker 11: Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border
Speaker 11: crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over
Speaker 11: one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you
Speaker 11: are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly
Speaker 11: one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned and deported. You will
Speaker 11: never return. But if you register using our CBP home
Speaker 11: app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Speaker 11: Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws,
Speaker 11: border and families will be protected.
Speaker 4: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,