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Speaker 2: Right, guys, Going back, E y L the edition.
Speaker 3: Fitting very fit, very fitting.
Speaker 4: So we got a very very exciting episode something that
Speaker 4: we haven't covered yet. Every every time you think we
Speaker 4: cover something, it's always something.
Speaker 2: Else to cover.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this this, this is a big one. So the
Speaker 4: gaming industry the gaming industry is a multi billion dollar
Speaker 4: global industry that has turned into a real just everything exploded,
Speaker 4: It's really exploded. They got the World Series of Fortnite,
Speaker 4: the World Series. It is the world.
Speaker 2: To man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I was there. I was all right, all right, sixteen.
Speaker 4: Crazy, unbelievable, unbelievable. So we're gonna do this episode justice. Yes,
Speaker 4: Austin Woolrich, who is the CEO and founder of the
Speaker 4: Players Lounge, So this is a really.
Speaker 2: Cool co founder shout that we forget them Players Lounge.
Speaker 4: So Players Lounge is a platform where gamers play their
Speaker 4: favorite video games against others for process. So long story short,
Speaker 4: you're doing what you're already doing, but you can actually
Speaker 4: win cash prices, and it's for everybody. It's not like
Speaker 4: you don't have to be the best player in the world,
Speaker 4: like you don't have to be the top twenty five,
Speaker 4: like the World Series of Pokers, like you got to train.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, it's a platform that's actually opened
Speaker 4: up for everybody and low barriers and entry as far
Speaker 4: as money is concerned. But you actually can make a
Speaker 4: lot of money. So they've paid out over twenty five
Speaker 4: million dollars in twenty nineteen, tens of thousands of users.
Speaker 4: It's a really big thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all them days that your mom and dad would
Speaker 3: tell you to turn the video games off, they might
Speaker 3: want to start telling you to turn the video games on.
Speaker 3: Man is it is a huge industry. And like I said,
Speaker 3: I'm just so I'm so upset that this wasn't around
Speaker 3: ten years ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this this is a new world. This is
Speaker 4: a new world that we live in where it's like,
Speaker 4: you know, you don't have to work in corporate America.
Speaker 4: You can play video games and make money, and you
Speaker 4: can create a company where you can make money and
Speaker 4: have other people play video games and turn into a
Speaker 4: lucrative business. So, first and foremost, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4: Appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Orse of course I love what you guys do. Thank
Speaker 6: you so much for.
Speaker 2: Having me, no problem.
Speaker 4: So yeah, let's get right into it. So players lounge,
Speaker 4: all right? So what is the process? I I kind
Speaker 4: of know because I read, but I think it's an
Speaker 4: interesting story. How do you get because you was at
Speaker 4: Wesleyan If anybody's not familiar, that's one of the best
Speaker 4: colleges in America.
Speaker 2: I think it's the most expensive one.
Speaker 3: Definitely the most expensive.
Speaker 2: It cost It costs a lot. It costs a lot
Speaker 2: of money, so big money. You you you go to.
Speaker 4: You know, this extremely prestigious university. What made you want
Speaker 4: to really go into video gaming as a career.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think video games has just always been a
Speaker 5: part of my life since I was a kid.
Speaker 6: I always been playing since a young young age, and
Speaker 6: to fund my.
Speaker 5: Video game addiction, I would actually sell my old video
Speaker 5: games that I finished on eBay. And I was actually
Speaker 5: just looking at my eBay account recently, and I made
Speaker 5: it in nineteen ninety nine, so I was ten years old,
Speaker 5: so it was ten years old.
Speaker 6: I don't even know how. I couldn't even.
Speaker 5: Explain how I was doing it back then, but I
Speaker 5: was like literally going on the computer, selling like my
Speaker 5: N sixty four games, my PlayStation games, and getting the
Speaker 5: money somehow via PayPal, and then going to the game
Speaker 5: stop or whatever and buying.
Speaker 6: The next game that I wanted. And so it's always
Speaker 6: been a part of my life.
Speaker 5: And even a few years later, actually got paid twenty
Speaker 5: dollars an hour to help some family friends children like
Speaker 5: beat the games that they were stuck in so they
Speaker 5: had their own PlayStations or whatever, and they were stuck
Speaker 5: in i don't know, like Spiral the Dragon or some
Speaker 5: game like that, and I would just come over and
Speaker 5: get paid like twenty an hour to just help them
Speaker 5: beat these games.
Speaker 3: So you like a video game tutor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 6: And I think it was more.
Speaker 5: So my family friends kind of engaging and putting some
Speaker 5: some fuel onto my entrepreneurial spirit and like kind of
Speaker 5: driving me to continue to go down that path more
Speaker 5: so than like it actually being a wise investment for them.
Speaker 5: But but yeah, that's definitely been Biggins has always been
Speaker 5: a part of my life. And so when I was
Speaker 5: at Wesley in my freshman year, I actually came across
Speaker 5: the site that is now a competitive Player's launch. I'm
Speaker 5: not going to say their name, but they provide similar
Speaker 5: offering where you can play video games against other people
Speaker 5: for money. You're betting on yourself playing vide games against
Speaker 5: other people around the country for money. And so I've
Speaker 5: always been really big into FIFA as one of the
Speaker 5: games that I've invested at, and so I was playing
Speaker 5: on the site and one summer I won a couple
Speaker 5: of brand on your FIFA and the money actually hit.
Speaker 3: My account, and I was like, I'm the man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's made more than some kids making in the
Speaker 5: internship over the summer just playing FIFA for a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks. I just found like a guy and just
Speaker 5: took his money, Like fell a little bad. I took
Speaker 5: that money and went to went to Florida, went to
Speaker 5: Miami with my boy.
Speaker 3: So you know, the crazy part is that, like you said,
Speaker 3: you were ten in nineteen ninety nine, So like for
Speaker 3: the kids that are listening now, it's like before you
Speaker 3: could play online, you had to go to your friend's
Speaker 3: house to take his money, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So once you got online with it, it's like, all right,
Speaker 3: well this is a new game, right.
Speaker 5: So it how I see it is that like you
Speaker 5: have your certain circles that are wanting to play video
Speaker 5: games against you for money, and then over a course
Speaker 5: of course of time, like they're not down to play
Speaker 5: you anymore because clearly you're better if you got to
Speaker 5: give odds and stuff like that. And so this platform
Speaker 5: really expands the pool of people to play against her money.
Speaker 6: Exponentially.
Speaker 5: It's like every single circle that comes into this one pool,
Speaker 5: and now you have like thousands and tens of thousand,
Speaker 5: one hundred thousands of people how to play with for money.
Speaker 4: Okay, so yeah, so you say so use that all right? Yeah,
Speaker 4: so you say that you was playing a FIFA, you
Speaker 4: won a couple of thousand.
Speaker 2: What happens after that?
Speaker 6: So that kind of opened my eyes, like looked like
Speaker 6: this platform, it works, and there's a big opportunity here
Speaker 6: we could build our own. And so.
Speaker 5: I was at Wesleyan playing soccer there and my eventual
Speaker 5: co founder is Zach and I actually talked about this
Speaker 5: idea because we played PIFA pretty competitively at college.
Speaker 6: We would go into each other's dorm room before a game.
Speaker 5: We couldn't be going out on like a Friday because
Speaker 5: we had a game on Saturday, and so the whole
Speaker 5: soccer team would go to someone's dorm and just like FIFA,
Speaker 5: like for money for sure.
Speaker 3: So they started they started out as little tournaments in
Speaker 3: the dorm rooms.
Speaker 5: Uh no, that was just like for fun. It didn't
Speaker 5: have to do with players on. We didn't start players
Speaker 5: on back then. But like the idea was kind of
Speaker 5: an inceptualized in that environment where like I just did
Speaker 5: it on a site for money, and then we're also
Speaker 5: like experiencing those circles.
Speaker 6: I was just talking about in the dorm rooms at college.
Speaker 5: And so we started spitball on the idea, but we
Speaker 5: had soccer, we had school work to do, and it
Speaker 5: never really evolved beyond just a couple of conversations.
Speaker 6: But I can fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 5: And so we graduated college in twenty eleven, and then
Speaker 5: Zach and I ran into each other in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 5: and that's kind of when the ball got rolling.
Speaker 2: So you start, you start.
Speaker 4: You got the idea and you want to take it
Speaker 4: and make it a real company, Right, So what's the
Speaker 4: first step as far as that is concerned, Like the
Speaker 4: blueprints that you kind of sitting down with Zach and like,
Speaker 4: all right, this is the framework on it.
Speaker 5: So we had our initial like spitballing of the idea
Speaker 5: when we were sophomores, and nothing, it didn't really come
Speaker 5: in fruition. And then graduating twenty eleven and three years later,
Speaker 5: I'm watching the World Cup and I'm like, damn, I
Speaker 5: really miss playing FIFA, and so I immediately ordered an
Speaker 5: Xbox and my friend and I just started playing a
Speaker 5: couple of games with FIFA, and I was like damn,
Speaker 5: Like I really missed playing FIFA with my friends and playing.
Speaker 6: FIFA for money, and like like just the whole vibe
Speaker 6: of that.
Speaker 5: I really miss that. And so I was thinking, like, Okay,
Speaker 5: so how can I recreate that experience? Because in New
Speaker 5: York people have small apartments, and people are working a
Speaker 5: lot and have conflicting schedules, and so it's not as
Speaker 5: easy to get people into like a room to play
Speaker 5: like a bunch of FIFA together as a I was
Speaker 5: in college, and so I thought of an idea where.
Speaker 6: Why don't I just go to bars and say, hey,
Speaker 6: you guys have.
Speaker 5: A Bengo nights, have a trivia night or whatever to
Speaker 5: bring patronton on a traditionally slow night like a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Speaker 5: Why don't I introduce a FIFA night? And so I
Speaker 5: partnered with a bar in Williamsburg and I had maybe
Speaker 5: like fifteen or twenty or so of my friends ready
Speaker 5: to come to this event. And the day before I
Speaker 5: run into Zach, my college soccer teammate, at the gym.
Speaker 5: He just moved back from Brazil because he was at
Speaker 5: the World Cup, and so I'm like, yeah, we should
Speaker 5: come to this event, like you're gonna love it.
Speaker 6: We're gonna be playing FIFA for money.
Speaker 5: It's a tournament, just ten dollars entry fee, and like
Speaker 5: the wind will get like two hundred.
Speaker 6: He's like, damn, that sounds really dope, Like you need
Speaker 6: help doing it, Like I want to help, And I
Speaker 6: was like, yeah, for sure, Like this shit is a
Speaker 6: lot of work.
Speaker 5: Setting it up, so I could definitely use some extra hands.
Speaker 5: And so the first event was it was a great success.
Speaker 5: We had like maybe fifty people packed into a dive
Speaker 5: bar in Williamsburg, and we realized that, like there was
Speaker 5: definitely something here. We recreated that environment that we had
Speaker 5: playing FIFA in college, where like there was money on
Speaker 5: the line, everybody was friends, people were meeting new people,
Speaker 5: we were playing good music. And so before starting Player's Launch,
Speaker 5: I was like a full time rap producer. So at
Speaker 5: these events played like all the music that I wanted
Speaker 5: to hear, like all the newest rap and all that shit,
Speaker 5: and so it really made it to like a party
Speaker 5: at the same time. And that's kind of how Players Lounge.
Speaker 5: That's how it really started. It was just an event
Speaker 5: company that hosted FIFA tournaments at bars with cash trucks.
Speaker 3: So you guys went from Brooklyn, you killed the city
Speaker 3: right in Manhattan, then you started spending expanding west, right,
Speaker 3: didn't you go to San Francisco.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we did a couple events in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: We went through an accelerator program out there at UC
Speaker 5: Berkeley at the Business School, and so we threw a
Speaker 5: couple of events out there, and then we did a
Speaker 5: partnership with Anheuser Bush and they flew us out to
Speaker 5: Toronto to do like a big event out there. So
Speaker 5: we were touching different parts of the country and North America.
Speaker 5: The Anheiser bushdy was kind of cool just to kind
Speaker 5: of like explain the value behind that on both sides.
Speaker 6: So for us, the value obviously was cash. They were
Speaker 6: paying us money and they gave us more validity.
Speaker 5: And on their end, the value proposition was, hey, we
Speaker 5: have this screw players lounge and we could present them
Speaker 5: to bars as a way to bring in more traffic,
Speaker 5: and in return, the bars will get rid of a
Speaker 5: millerte tap and add another Anheuser Bush tap.
Speaker 6: And so that was kind of the partnership that that
Speaker 6: we'd drawn up with them.
Speaker 3: So as you kept doing it, are the crowds going
Speaker 3: what are they looking at you say, at in the
Speaker 3: Brooklyn one you had fifty What are the crowd sizes
Speaker 3: is looking like? As you keep going around out the country.
Speaker 5: So we had different types of events. We had big
Speaker 5: tournaments with hundreds of people. We had events where like
Speaker 5: we found a group in Washington, d C. That we're
Speaker 5: doing similar type of things PIPA tournaments, and we had
Speaker 5: them come down. They got hotel rooms, and we had
Speaker 5: a whole World Cup like New York versus DC. So
Speaker 5: our whole our whole squad that the regulars that came
Speaker 5: to the players on the events in New York played
Speaker 5: against the regulars in d C. So that was a
Speaker 5: really really fun event. That's probably the funest event we
Speaker 5: ever did. And then the one in Toronto was pretty big.
Speaker 5: We had like over one hundred people there, but the
Speaker 5: majority of it was just like very consistent weekly tournaments
Speaker 5: or leagues. And so we had a website built where
Speaker 5: like you had a leaderboard you can see where you
Speaker 5: were at any given time. The leaderboards updated in real time,
Speaker 5: so you could pull out your phone and check the
Speaker 5: website and see like, oh, you just lost the match,
Speaker 5: like where'd.
Speaker 6: You go up or down? Or whould you go down
Speaker 6: on the leaderboard.
Speaker 5: So it's more like the consistent league and turnament and
Speaker 5: flow that was really the bread and butter g.
Speaker 4: So at what point does this really start to scale
Speaker 4: and go from because it sounds like, all right, you
Speaker 4: were doing like in person experiences in Brooklyn, Toronto, La,
Speaker 4: different places, and with that it kind of grew and
Speaker 4: became bigger than just the in person bar experience. So
Speaker 4: at what point does it grow to having you know,
Speaker 4: the first thousand people that are all over the world
Speaker 4: using it, And it's really no longer the focus is
Speaker 4: no longer in person. The focus is more just on
Speaker 4: the internet.
Speaker 5: So after about eighteen months of doing events, uh, there
Speaker 5: wasn't really that much growth happening, and there was a
Speaker 5: lot of work, a lot of like sweat, and it
Speaker 5: was a large capital investment to continuously grow events because
Speaker 5: you have to buy consoles, you have to buy gains
Speaker 5: by controllers. Every time you had more people, you needed
Speaker 5: more of that, and the expenses and revenue weren't growing linearly,
Speaker 5: and so we decided to pivot. And the pivot was
Speaker 5: going back to our conversations that we had in college,
Speaker 5: like yeah, let's build a digital platform where anyone in
Speaker 5: the country, anyone in the world can play anyone else
Speaker 5: online for money. So it's basically expanding that circle that
Speaker 5: I was telling you about earlier. And so it was
Speaker 5: around November of twenty fifteen we decided, look, we're gonna
Speaker 5: pivot from events and focus all of our efforts into
Speaker 5: a digital product. And the digital product is gonna have
Speaker 5: the DNA of the events, which was like a community
Speaker 5: environment where you can see what's happening, you can see
Speaker 5: who's playing. It's not like a casino or anything where
Speaker 5: it's like people are siloed off in their little slot
Speaker 5: machines and not really interacting. Like no, it's an environment
Speaker 5: that we create that's popping, and you want to know
Speaker 5: what other people doing, how much money.
Speaker 6: Other people are playing for.
Speaker 5: You want to transfer that DNA over into the digital products.
Speaker 5: And one thing that's really important that I definitely want
Speaker 5: to share it with everybody is that pivoting is very
Speaker 5: normal and its majority of startups and successful startups have
Speaker 5: pivoted at least one time. And so you take kind
Speaker 5: of what you learn from your initial build your MVP,
Speaker 5: so you can call the event our minimum viable products.
Speaker 6: The event Company.
Speaker 5: And so what we learned from the event company was
Speaker 5: that one hundreds or even thousands of people were willing
Speaker 5: to travel all across the Trystate, from all across the
Speaker 5: Try State area to a random dive bar in Williamsburg
Speaker 5: to play FIFA with the with like minded.
Speaker 6: People for five hours until two in the morning. That
Speaker 6: happened twice a week. So we knew that people were
Speaker 6: really really trying to do this, and we knew that
Speaker 6: people were given that people were traveling from very far away,
Speaker 6: there weren't that many options out there for them. And
Speaker 6: then we started talking to our customers in person, like
Speaker 6: what would you want from a digital product, like what
Speaker 6: would translate.
Speaker 5: Over to make you want to use it? And so
Speaker 5: we learned a lot there and interviews are very key.
Speaker 5: And so we took all that information that we learned
Speaker 5: and the clear desire that there isn't a feasible product
Speaker 5: to allow people to do this from their own homes
Speaker 5: as opposed to driving like two hours. We took that
Speaker 5: information said all right, let's scrap the event stuff and
Speaker 5: go fully digital. And so.
Speaker 6: We needed money to build the digital products. And so
Speaker 6: this is a great story. My co founder Zach.
Speaker 5: He got word that a Wedsley and grad probably one
Speaker 5: of the most successful Wesdy grads. This guy named Strauszelnik.
Speaker 5: He's the CEO of Take two Interactive. They make grant
Speaker 5: to photo NBA two K and he's also like.
Speaker 6: The chairman of this Viacom CBS conglomerate.
Speaker 5: So he's like a real real big dog and he's
Speaker 5: a Wedsley group. And so we got when that he
Speaker 5: has these workout classes at six am every Thursday. And
Speaker 5: Zach could tell anybody like when we were on the
Speaker 5: soccer team, I hated working out, I hated going to gym,
Speaker 5: hated lived in weights. I was just on the field,
Speaker 5: just cooking. But I didn't want to like do any
Speaker 5: like workouts and shuff like that. But Zach, Zach enjoys it.
Speaker 5: And so he's like, fuck it, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 5: this workout class. I got a friend who invited me,
Speaker 5: and I'm gonna go every Thursday, which ended up being
Speaker 5: from like April to November, every Thursday until he's down
Speaker 5: to have.
Speaker 6: A meeting with us. I'm like, all right, go for it.
Speaker 6: And he was very successful. He went like.
Speaker 5: Two three thursdays in a row, didn't get a word
Speaker 5: with him. Five six thursdays later, maybe said hello, maybe
Speaker 5: got an introduction, and then eventually he was able to
Speaker 5: build up enough rapport to be like, hey, look, me
Speaker 5: and my co founder from Wesley and we started a
Speaker 5: company and esports company and NBA two K is part
Speaker 5: of our vision. We sit down with us and hear
Speaker 5: about it, and he was like, yeah, for sure, and
Speaker 5: we went to uh we went to a brunch spot
Speaker 5: in the upper east side of Strauszonik, and we were
Speaker 5: so naive at the time and we didn't really like
Speaker 5: know all this terminology of like evaluation caps and all
Speaker 5: this stuff, and we and he was just like very
Speaker 5: polite about it and very understanding. But he was asking
Speaker 5: us to do like a bunch of like napkin math.
Speaker 6: And we're just like, oh shit, like uh, like look
Speaker 6: at bluster U. And then he ended up investing.
Speaker 5: He ended up investing sixty thousand on the spot and
Speaker 5: he was like, I love what you guys are doing.
Speaker 6: I think guys are very committed.
Speaker 5: And the digital product is definitely with the way to
Speaker 5: go kill the events. Digital product is how you make
Speaker 5: this a billion dollar business. The ceiling on the events
Speaker 5: side is very low and very capital intensive, and you
Speaker 5: have a much scalable business on the digital side. And
Speaker 5: so I'm gonna leave, here's my gym bag. I live
Speaker 5: at this address, take my gym bag back to my apartment.
Speaker 5: And then we got a deal. So we basically have
Speaker 5: to like find out where this guy lives and take
Speaker 5: his gym bag to a spot to secure the money.
Speaker 4: Why was why was it was that like some kind
Speaker 4: of just the ritual, Like it was a moment exactly.
Speaker 6: That's probably the best analogy. It is definitely a Diddy
Speaker 6: cheesecake moment. All right, you guys just take my bag,
Speaker 6: figure out where.
Speaker 2: I live and uh oh he didn't. He didn't give
Speaker 2: you his address. He oh, okay.
Speaker 4: It was still kind of weird, weird vibe before we go,
Speaker 4: before we get to the next thing.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to.
Speaker 4: I want to, I want to double back on what
Speaker 4: you just said, because there's a lot of valuable information
Speaker 4: in that. And the thing that I liked was Okay,
Speaker 4: So he found out that he worked out at this
Speaker 4: gym at six o'clock in the morning, but he went there,
Speaker 4: but he didn't just approach him the first time. It's like,
Speaker 4: all right, it's like the guy that's like the real
Speaker 4: creep and he finds out the girl like works in
Speaker 4: the coffee shop. If he's like really really like you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying into it, he's not just going
Speaker 4: to go and the first time, he's gonna make himself
Speaker 4: a regular kind of like, oh, I randomly saw you,
Speaker 4: like you know what I mean, you kind of hate Sometimes
Speaker 4: you got to create, you got to create the moment.
Speaker 4: So I love that because it's like he's intentional about
Speaker 4: what he wants to do, but he understands that the
Speaker 4: first time. If he just went and just spoke to
Speaker 4: him the first time, it's obvious the only reason why
Speaker 4: you're coming to this class is to speak to me
Speaker 4: now to hear what you're talking about. So now you
Speaker 4: just you don't even speak to him for like five weeks,
Speaker 4: but he sees you. He kind of is familiar with you.
Speaker 4: At that point. Then you say hello, Hey, what's up? Hey, Okay,
Speaker 4: I acknowledge you. Then you might just say hey, you know,
Speaker 4: like you know, it starts some small talk and then
Speaker 4: like a couple months in coming out, it's a conversation.
Speaker 4: So I think a lot of times, especially with networking,
Speaker 4: This is why I'm bringing this to this point. Networking
Speaker 4: a lot of times people it happens to us all
Speaker 4: the time. People hit us in the DM and they
Speaker 4: it's a very selfish like can you help me? Like
Speaker 4: there's no rapport, there's no trying to bring any value,
Speaker 4: there's no like can I in turn, it's just like
Speaker 4: I have an idea.
Speaker 3: Here, this is going to be the idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's like it doesn't work like that. Human
Speaker 4: nature is going to reject you nine times out of ten,
Speaker 4: even if it's a good idea. You have to take
Speaker 4: the time, you have to build rapport, and over the
Speaker 4: course of time, it's like chipping away the iceberg. Then
Speaker 4: you strike. You wait for the right moment to strike.
Speaker 4: You just don't go in off the rip.
Speaker 3: Exact, wait for that right moan to say, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: a Wesleyan grad too, and it's like, oh wait, hold on,
Speaker 3: let me have this conversation. Right. Sometimes the power of
Speaker 3: being that commonality like yo, we went to the same
Speaker 3: school is going to get you in the do it.
Speaker 3: I couldn't have said, y'all went.
Speaker 5: You need to have proper icebreakers, you need to have
Speaker 5: you have a plan, like as you were saying, like
Speaker 5: just going in guns blazing with no plan other than
Speaker 5: to ask for something like ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 5: people do that.
Speaker 6: So immediately that person's gonna write you off because he
Speaker 6: sees it or she sees it.
Speaker 5: Every single day. And so you have to really consider
Speaker 5: the angles that you're trying to approach people with. And
Speaker 5: if you come with the right angles and you actually
Speaker 5: like to think more about it, you increase the likelihood
Speaker 5: that you're going to get that beneficial result they're looking for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I like the fact that he told you
Speaker 4: that the scalable model is not in physical events. And
Speaker 4: this is even obviously pre Corona, but I think everybody
Speaker 4: realizes that now. I say this whole the time, like,
Speaker 4: you don't have to have a strictly online business to
Speaker 4: be successful. You can't have a brick and martar. It's
Speaker 4: just a tremendously harder But if you don't have some
Speaker 4: kind of revenue stream that comes from online, I don't
Speaker 4: think you have a successful business at this point because
Speaker 4: there's too many variables that go into play if you're
Speaker 4: just relying on live events or brick and martar. And
Speaker 4: this just accelerated that to me and should show everybody.
Speaker 4: Any type of business that you're starting at the very
Speaker 4: least should have a strong online presence with an online
Speaker 4: revenue model. And you probably want to look at a
Speaker 4: business that's just strictly online. It's a lot less overhead.
Speaker 4: Then it's a lot easier.
Speaker 3: Brick and Martys will close. Right, that happens, right, It's
Speaker 3: tough to shut down the World Wide Web.
Speaker 2: You can't impossible what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So obviously you need to have online presence exactly.
Speaker 5: Think about all the all the stores, the mom and
Speaker 5: pop stores that put off We're going to.
Speaker 6: Open up our e comm store later, keept putting that off,
Speaker 6: and now like that could be the fact of life
Speaker 6: and death for those businesses.
Speaker 5: And you got to rush to gravitate to a shopify
Speaker 5: or a platform like that and rush to create a
Speaker 5: three pl your third party logistics platform to handle your
Speaker 5: shipping and all that stuff. So it's a little too
Speaker 5: it might be too late for a lot of these companies,
Speaker 5: and something that you really have to always engage in
Speaker 5: as a business owner entrepreneurs, like where is the industry going?
Speaker 6: And if you don't do that, you're gonna you're.
Speaker 3: Gonna dare your company is on a complete opposite end
Speaker 3: of that, specially where it's like everybody's home, plus kids
Speaker 3: are in front of video games a lot of the day,
Speaker 3: Plus they are going to play online another plus that's
Speaker 3: not going anywhere, so that I could imagine how crowded
Speaker 3: your space be came. We're going to get into that though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna go into the next segment. We're gonna
Speaker 4: talk about break down a companies and also talk about
Speaker 4: the VC side. But yeah, before we go, I just
Speaker 4: wanted to just like you said, as far as the
Speaker 4: mom and prop grocery stores, and it's like a lot
Speaker 4: of times, like I said, you can be a hybrid.
Speaker 4: I want to just because the show is for entrepreneurs
Speaker 4: in it because everybody but we have a lot of
Speaker 4: entrepreneurs I listen to it. So it's like think about
Speaker 4: ways to be creative. And I look at Amazon. We
Speaker 4: referenced Amazon a lot, but Amazon when they when they
Speaker 4: purchased Whole Foods a few years ago, it was kind
Speaker 4: of baffling to a lot of people because it's like
Speaker 4: Whole Foods, if you really know the business, they were
Speaker 4: struggling and they've been struggling. But now they've recently turned
Speaker 4: six Whole Foods into what they call dark stores, which
Speaker 4: is pretty much just drop shipment centers where people order
Speaker 4: groceries online now during the pandemic and they're skating ships.
Speaker 4: So now it's like, okay, this is the play all along.
Speaker 4: So now they're emerging. Amazon does that a lot. Where
Speaker 4: they brought a bookstore, they got Amazon Go grocery store
Speaker 4: Whole Food So they're a perfect example of like I said,
Speaker 4: Brick and Martin isn't completely dead, but you have to
Speaker 4: you have to be able to merge it with some
Speaker 4: kind of online presence if you still want to have
Speaker 4: a Brick and Marter situation.
Speaker 3: I mean, they started out as a bookstore. Look what
Speaker 3: they've turned into.
Speaker 4: Yeah all right, so yeah, in the next segment, we're
Speaker 4: going to go into the details and break down the business.
Speaker 4: So okay, so you got the company up, up and running,
Speaker 4: so it's interesting business model. I had a couple of questions,
Speaker 4: So how do players get paid? Like, let's just break
Speaker 4: this down. So all right, so let's say I'm a
Speaker 4: gamer and I play Fortnite, right, and you know, I'm
Speaker 4: just I'm not like, you know, a champion. I'm just
Speaker 4: a regular gamer. So I go on your platform, I
Speaker 4: created user name whatever, and I played like a five
Speaker 4: dollars Fortnite game.
Speaker 2: Is this how this works?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's similar to fandor or DraftKings or even
Speaker 5: online poker, even though we're not we're not gambling. We
Speaker 5: are skill based competitions. That's important, Yes, very important. Going
Speaker 5: through a lot of legal UH invested a lot in
Speaker 5: legal opinions to ensure that what we're doing is legal
Speaker 5: in the majority of states in the US. So, but
Speaker 5: it is similar to those models where you make an
Speaker 5: account and you posit funds into your player's launch account,
Speaker 5: and so let's say you deposit fifty dollars, then you
Speaker 5: have a fifty dollars balance in your account that can
Speaker 5: be used how you see fit on the platform. And
Speaker 5: so whether that is playing a ten dollars head to
Speaker 5: head game that instantaneously matches you up against someone of
Speaker 5: equal skill for the game type that you want to
Speaker 5: play for, or a tournament that's like a five dollars
Speaker 5: entry free and first place gets one thousand dollars, and
Speaker 5: so you can just kind of spray your balance however
Speaker 5: you see fit on the platform. And so let's say,
Speaker 5: for your example, you want to play a game of
Speaker 5: Fortnite for ten dollars. You use our matchmaking software to
Speaker 5: find an opponent of similar skill, someone who has performed
Speaker 5: similarly on the on the platform, whether they've beaten or
Speaker 5: played the same players that you have, are in the
Speaker 5: same wager, average wager amount that you had, their winning percentage,
Speaker 5: their p and L, and so all these factors are
Speaker 5: included in our matchmaking system to ensure that you're playing
Speaker 5: so on of equal skill and so on. You never
Speaker 5: you don't feel grossly overmatched against. And so once you
Speaker 5: find an opponent, then a match lobby is created between
Speaker 5: the two of you where there's like a match chat
Speaker 5: where you say, hey, I'm ready to play. There's an
Speaker 5: informational area where you see their gamer tag and other
Speaker 5: relevant information that you need. And once you're ready to
Speaker 5: play your opponent, then you go to your PlayStation or
Speaker 5: your Xbox and you play that person in the game
Speaker 5: that you're playing. So in this case Fortnite, it's a
Speaker 5: very specific way to play for money. But for those
Speaker 5: who know how Fortnite works, you drop into a duo's
Speaker 5: match with your opponent on players lounge, and then whoever
Speaker 5: gets the most kills in that game wins the money.
Speaker 5: And so once the match is over, both players report
Speaker 5: the score back to the app.
Speaker 6: And so, Troy, let's say you win.
Speaker 5: Five to two, then you put that into the app
Speaker 5: and the opponent has to confirm the score, and once
Speaker 5: they do, the money is automatically dispersed in the winner
Speaker 5: and added to their account. In this scenario, if it's
Speaker 5: ten dollars per person, we take a ten percent fee
Speaker 5: from each entry fee and the winner would be getting
Speaker 5: eighteen in total.
Speaker 3: All right, So here's the thing, right, because I'll used
Speaker 3: to play games a lot, right, and when you're really
Speaker 3: good at it, and a couple of things. When you're
Speaker 3: really good at it, there are people who will quit
Speaker 3: during the game. So what happens then if somebody quits
Speaker 3: the match, or if there's a lag with the connection,
Speaker 3: what happens then?
Speaker 5: So we've built a massive rule set for every game
Speaker 5: on our platform for what happens in fairly common situations
Speaker 5: like a disconnection or throwing lags out, and so we
Speaker 5: have protocols in place for all of that and in case, so,
Speaker 5: for example, if the disconnection happens, we tell users to
Speaker 5: play the rest of the match based on how much
Speaker 5: timers remaining. So like if you're playing Madden and the
Speaker 5: disconnection happens at halftime, then we say start a new
Speaker 5: game and play the first half, and then you just
Speaker 5: add up the scores.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 5: Naturally one would think what happens if someone lies, what
Speaker 5: happens if X, Y and Z happens.
Speaker 6: Or someone says that they won when they really didn't,
Speaker 6: And so we.
Speaker 5: Built a very robust dispute protocol and functionality in the
Speaker 5: app that basically handles those situations.
Speaker 6: And it's very easy to prove that you want to match.
Speaker 5: These days, you're one button away from screenshotting a match
Speaker 5: or recording the last hour.
Speaker 6: Of your gameplay.
Speaker 5: And so if a dispute happens, we just ask our
Speaker 5: users to provide some simple evidence to showcase.
Speaker 6: Who won that match.
Speaker 5: And for what is worth, only one percent of all
Speaker 5: our matches end up in disputes anyway, and so it's
Speaker 5: not a very common occurrence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's two ends to the spectrum, right, there's
Speaker 3: the person that gets on a hot streak, and if
Speaker 3: you've ever had a a sports competitive game, you've gotten
Speaker 3: on a hot streak. Does it make it harder for
Speaker 3: people to want to play that person knowing that a,
Speaker 3: you have twenty six wins in a row, what does
Speaker 3: that person doing? And then on the opposite end, the
Speaker 3: person who is had a seven game losing streak, is
Speaker 3: there analytics to match them with somebody who's doing the same.
Speaker 5: Yes, we consider all those factors when it comes to matchmaking.
Speaker 5: So there's two ways to play on Player's Lounge. You
Speaker 5: press a button, it's kind of like calling an uber,
Speaker 5: and we match you up against the best possible person
Speaker 5: for you, which includes a lot of those factors that
Speaker 5: you just mentioned.
Speaker 6: And that's basically our users trusting us to tell them.
Speaker 5: Look like, you don't play video games for a living, clearly,
Speaker 5: and we want to make sure you don't go up
Speaker 5: against a pro who's playing on Players' Lounge like ten
Speaker 5: hours a day, because I just wouldn't make sense and
Speaker 5: you would probably leave the site after playing that person
Speaker 5: like a couple or playing a couple of those people
Speaker 5: in a row. And so that's the number one way
Speaker 5: to play on players Lounge. The majority or matches happened
Speaker 5: that way, just pressing a single button and getting matched
Speaker 5: up against somebody within less than thirty seconds. And then
Speaker 5: the other way is if you know the person you
Speaker 5: want to play, you can just send him a direct challenge.
Speaker 5: So like, hey, this guy is one of the best
Speaker 5: FEVA players or Madden players.
Speaker 6: On the site.
Speaker 5: I'm feeling like I'm cooking these days, so I want
Speaker 5: to see if I can match up against some of
Speaker 5: the best players. I'm gonna send him a DM and
Speaker 5: then he could see my rating on players Lounge. We
Speaker 5: have a player's Lounge rating, which is score between one
Speaker 5: and five. So the best player is probably going to
Speaker 5: be a five, and if I send him a challenge,
Speaker 5: I'm a two. He's like okay, Like bet a major lunch,
Speaker 5: send me that.
Speaker 3: Challenge, get this money.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we do have things in place so to
Speaker 5: make sure that like the Sharks, the best players don't
Speaker 5: necessarily like eat up all the all the minnos and
Speaker 5: like the majority of the players who well not only are.
Speaker 6: Playing to make money, but also.
Speaker 5: From our user interviews, and I really want to emphasize,
Speaker 5: like interviewing your customers is the best thing you could
Speaker 5: do in your business because you are literally getting like
Speaker 5: feedback on from the people who are using it the
Speaker 5: most and you iterate on that information. But one thing
Speaker 5: we've learned from our users is that a lot of
Speaker 5: people don't really care that much about making money a
Speaker 5: lot like I would think half of our users care
Speaker 5: about the extra value and excitement that comes from playing
Speaker 5: video games for money.
Speaker 6: Even if it's a dollar. It's a totally different experience.
Speaker 5: Your body feels totally different playing that game with a
Speaker 5: dollar online than if there's nothing on the line.
Speaker 2: So we interviewed Mike Brown.
Speaker 4: He's a former NFL player that had an equity crowdfunding
Speaker 4: campaign for a He has an interesting platform where it's
Speaker 4: what's it called win Win. It's called win win, and
Speaker 4: it is like esports, but it's for charity. So it's
Speaker 4: like fantasy sports with for charity. So he was saying
Speaker 4: that you know a lot of people that play fantasy sports,
Speaker 4: they don't necessarily play it to win money, like you
Speaker 4: just said. It's more so the competition, the camaraderie, the
Speaker 4: whole thing. So he was like, okay, Like, if you
Speaker 4: can have the same feel of playing fantasy sports, but
Speaker 4: you can actually do something good and give to a
Speaker 4: charity and then you get memorabilia, you get to hang
Speaker 4: out with an athlete instead of getting paid physical cash.
Speaker 4: Would that be appealing to you? And a lot of
Speaker 4: people like that idea and it became really popular. So
Speaker 4: it's interesting that you that you said that because that
Speaker 4: that reminds me of what he said. I had a
Speaker 4: question as far as on the business side. So you're
Speaker 4: you're getting you're getting paid, and you're paying people from
Speaker 4: playing these games like Fortnite and all these other types
Speaker 4: of games call of Duty. I assume in all these games,
Speaker 4: are there licensing agreements that you have to have with
Speaker 4: these individual companies that you're profiting on for ved?
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 6: No, there isn't.
Speaker 5: We check with that legal counsel on that, and it's
Speaker 5: more of like using their names and fair use because
Speaker 5: we don't end up right with the platforms.
Speaker 6: We're totally second screen.
Speaker 5: Experience at this time, and so what people are actually
Speaker 5: doing are just like seeing the words like NBA two
Speaker 5: K and Call of Duty and then just agreeing to
Speaker 5: play with each other for money on players Lounge with
Speaker 5: the contract that we essentially create, and then the actual
Speaker 5: games happens off players Lounge and on their consoles, and
Speaker 5: so we're not like integrated with the game at any
Speaker 5: at any point at this time, and so it's kind
Speaker 5: of the equivalent of like you're trying to sell your
Speaker 5: BMW on Craigslist, and so you have to use BMW
Speaker 5: in order to like give people an understanding of like
Speaker 5: what you're selling and the type of product and the
Speaker 5: type of like car you're selling. So it's similar in
Speaker 5: that vein where it's like we have to tell our
Speaker 5: users that we offer NBA two K and they want
Speaker 5: to play two K for money or else they just
Speaker 5: wouldn't be like a viable product.
Speaker 3: We said this earlier, and I don't know if everybody
Speaker 3: really understands that term game of skill and how that
Speaker 3: helps an illegal mass, right, because this isn't really good sembling, right,
Speaker 3: This ash esports is a game of skill? Can you
Speaker 3: talk about the battle to fight for that term?
Speaker 6: For sure? For sure?
Speaker 5: I definitely want to like shout out like FanDuel for
Speaker 5: kind of paving.
Speaker 6: The way here.
Speaker 5: Nigel Elis is one of my advisors, who's the who's
Speaker 5: the founder of FanDuel, and so a lot of kind
Speaker 5: of like the first iterations of players was modeled after that,
Speaker 5: and so FanDuel they for those who know FanDuel is
Speaker 5: like daily fantasy sports.
Speaker 3: It took a lot of my money.
Speaker 6: I love the product, but me too. But real quick,
Speaker 6: what it is is that you basically set a lineup
Speaker 6: of players who are.
Speaker 5: Playing that day, whether it's in the NBA or NFL,
Speaker 5: MLB and so, and then they accumulate points based on
Speaker 5: their performance. And then the more points your team acquires,
Speaker 5: the more likely you can be in the money, like
Speaker 5: win money in a tournament. And so they went through
Speaker 5: a massive legal battle for years with the federal government
Speaker 5: and like a lot of states to argue against that
Speaker 5: they were not gambling and that they were a game
Speaker 5: of skill. And so the skill argument comes from like, hey,
Speaker 5: like I can do all my research.
Speaker 6: On the teams and the players and the data.
Speaker 5: Like if I'm a data scientist, I have a huge
Speaker 5: upper hand against someone who just like watches sports leisurely.
Speaker 6: And they won that battle because it's true it's a
Speaker 6: game of.
Speaker 5: Skill, like if someone really knows their sports, they have
Speaker 5: a much higher likelihood of beating someone who doesn't really know.
Speaker 5: And so they paved the way for players Lounge because
Speaker 5: they spent millions of dollars lobbying and basically state by
Speaker 5: state getting the conversation going to the point where like,
Speaker 5: all right, the States are like, Okay, you guys want
Speaker 5: to making a shitload of money, so we're gonna open
Speaker 5: it up.
Speaker 6: But two, you've proven enough that you are not gambling
Speaker 6: and you are a game of skill.
Speaker 5: And so I'm definitely fortunate for Daily Fantasy kind of
Speaker 5: paving the way because I didn't really have to go
Speaker 5: through that, and the landscape was kind of like already
Speaker 5: the legal and regulatory landscape was already laid out for me.
Speaker 5: But that said, I still had to get invest a
Speaker 5: lot in legal opinions because the key here is like payments,
Speaker 5: and so the payment processors are really on the front
Speaker 5: lines when it comes to the government, because like you
Speaker 5: got to deal with anti money laundering and like all
Speaker 5: the Patriot Acts stuff, And so when you're moving money
Speaker 5: in the way that Players Lounge and Daily Fantasy is
Speaker 5: moving money, you have to be extremely compliant with anti
Speaker 5: money laundering laws and policies.
Speaker 6: And so not only do you have to get your
Speaker 6: legal opinions straight for the.
Speaker 5: Payment processes and the government, but you also need to
Speaker 5: make sure that you have the right protocols and the
Speaker 5: right policies when it comes to anti money laundering and
Speaker 5: the right.
Speaker 6: Technical systems.
Speaker 5: In place like geofencing and age verification in order to
Speaker 5: truly be compliant as a business like ours.
Speaker 3: So there is an age requirement for play songs, right,
Speaker 3: it is eighteen years old?
Speaker 5: Eighteen okay?
Speaker 4: So okay, So like what's the what's the revenue model
Speaker 4: for you guys? Like do you charge like you take
Speaker 4: a percentage out of winnings? Do you charge for everybody
Speaker 4: that plays?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 6: So it's pretty simple.
Speaker 5: We take ten percent from each entry fee, and so
Speaker 5: if you play a ten dollars match against someone else
Speaker 5: in the site, then we take one dollar from each
Speaker 5: entry fee and then the winner will get eighteen.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's it. That's just playing very very model.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So what's the retention rate? So if so the
Speaker 3: first person that the person that comes to the to
Speaker 3: the site, what's the retention rate of people who stay
Speaker 3: and decide to play more and more.
Speaker 6: I would say it's.
Speaker 5: In the range of It depends on the game for sure.
Speaker 5: The game is the type of game that they play.
Speaker 5: So like Madden NBA two K users retain a lot
Speaker 5: more than like a Fortnite user, But yeah, I would
Speaker 5: say like around like twenty over.
Speaker 6: Over eight weeks, I believe.
Speaker 3: So right now, you guys are in the console, right,
Speaker 3: so Xbox PlayStation, have you moved over to the PC side?
Speaker 3: Because I noticed that's I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 3: games there, counter Strike, League of Legends that are huge.
Speaker 3: Are you guys in that space as well?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 6: Not yet? For various reasons.
Speaker 5: One like there just isn't that much representation in console esports.
Speaker 5: Like the majority of esports as it's known, like mainstream
Speaker 5: wise are PC games, and.
Speaker 6: Like the people that are using our platform.
Speaker 5: Really love NBA two K and Madden, and like the
Speaker 5: esports culture around that of those games like hasn't really
Speaker 5: been created yet, Like it's still like the foundation might
Speaker 5: be there, but like the structure hasn't been.
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Speaker 6: Real Talk.
Speaker 5: Built on top of that, and we want to build
Speaker 5: that structure like we want to be the go to
Speaker 5: brand to play in competitive console esports for money. And additionally,
Speaker 5: like we want to represent the underrepresented because the PC
Speaker 5: market there's a huge barrier to entry there. So like
Speaker 5: if you want to be like a quote unquote esports
Speaker 5: player on the highest level, it's like kind of like
Speaker 5: golf or a sport like that, we got to invest
Speaker 5: like a lot. You gotta buy a PC, a crazy PC.
Speaker 5: It's like five thousand dollars and you have to invest
Speaker 5: all that time, and like for a lot of people,
Speaker 5: that's not an opportunity for them.
Speaker 6: And so the consoles are like the the.
Speaker 5: Way that they can really play video games. And so
Speaker 5: we want to like represent the console crowd because the
Speaker 5: a voice or a brand like associated with that. And
Speaker 5: then secondly, sorry, the other reason is that PC is
Speaker 5: pretty rampid. The rampant cheating on PC and it runs pretty.
Speaker 6: Rampid, and.
Speaker 5: Like it's not trustworthy enough for us to really get
Speaker 5: into at this time.
Speaker 6: That's another big reason.
Speaker 4: Okay, so what are the biggest games that people are
Speaker 4: playing on your platform? Like what's the top three games?
Speaker 6: Top three in terms of.
Speaker 5: Like wagers are Madden has a sizeable lead NBA two.
Speaker 6: K and then the third game.
Speaker 5: I think that this time is Call Duty, but it's
Speaker 5: really close between Call Duty and people.
Speaker 2: What's the most somebody has? Do you know, like the
Speaker 2: most a person has one on your platform?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there's a there are a few people
Speaker 6: of one, like.
Speaker 5: At this point, hundreds of thousands of dollars on one game,
Speaker 5: not like one they didn't like put up one hundred.
Speaker 3: We gotta watch that's that's cable television.
Speaker 2: Like what's the what's the most you can put on
Speaker 2: one game?
Speaker 5: Like if you just wanted to just say out the Gate,
Speaker 5: out the Gate as like a new user that's verified
Speaker 5: their account and like uploaded their ID because we just
Speaker 5: we didn't make sure you are who you say you are.
Speaker 5: Out the Gate five hundred. But as you continue to
Speaker 5: play on players Lounge and like you show that you're
Speaker 5: like a reputable member of the community, you don't really
Speaker 5: like try to cheat, people will up your wager limit.
Speaker 6: And so there are a.
Speaker 5: Handful of people who are betting like five thousand dollars games,
Speaker 5: but I would say like the majority of the larger
Speaker 5: tier bets are between like five hundred and two thousand.
Speaker 3: So what makes somebody a professional game because a few
Speaker 3: years back, I won't say how many, I had an opportunity.
Speaker 3: I was playing this NBA Live and this is when
Speaker 3: they had the Madden Bus and the NBA Live Bus.
Speaker 3: I got invited to the bus, and that was based
Speaker 3: on win percentage. Like I was like ranked No. Five
Speaker 3: in the world, right.
Speaker 6: You weren't playing before we started.
Speaker 5: You were really hooping in live.
Speaker 3: I was really, like seriously like I would. People were
Speaker 3: paying me to play for them, and I got up
Speaker 3: to like number five in the world. I played the
Speaker 3: number one dude. That's why I talked about the lagging thing,
Speaker 3: because I was beating them. He lagged and it got
Speaker 3: disconnected and so I got invited to the bus. But
Speaker 3: now in this day and age, right, how is somebody
Speaker 3: considered a professional game? Is there amount of money they've
Speaker 3: won or is it based on their skill set?
Speaker 5: There's a lot of ways it's gonna be a professional
Speaker 5: gamer these days. So the most traditional way is you
Speaker 5: get signed to a pro team.
Speaker 6: So you get signed to.
Speaker 5: Like one hundred Thieves or PAYS or NRG and you
Speaker 5: represent them on their Legal Legends team or their Call
Speaker 5: of Duty team or their Counterstrike.
Speaker 6: Team, So that's the most traditional way.
Speaker 5: Or you can be a content creator that's a professional
Speaker 5: gamer now too, because like these guys might not be
Speaker 5: the best in the world, but they're definitely the top
Speaker 5: one percentile. But they have a charisma about them that's
Speaker 5: like attractive on camera and people like watching them not
Speaker 5: only because they're good to have video games, but they
Speaker 5: have like a persona that resonates.
Speaker 3: With a lot of people, like a guy like Ninja.
Speaker 3: Ninja would be there exactly.
Speaker 6: Ninja is a perfect example. Cyber PK, myth tsmd Kwon.
Speaker 5: All those dudes, like they're really good. They're like some
Speaker 5: of the best in the world, but they're not good
Speaker 5: enough to be pros. But the combination of their charisma
Speaker 5: on camera and their video game skill set, I would
Speaker 5: label them as programer doing it for a living.
Speaker 6: Your programer.
Speaker 3: He's got a million dollar contracts man, that's a pro.
Speaker 2: No, it's crazy, but real quick.
Speaker 5: Part of the Players Lounge mission is to add a
Speaker 5: third way. You can be a progamer and like you
Speaker 5: may not be signed to a.
Speaker 6: Team, and you may not be like have to.
Speaker 5: We want to provide an opportunity for people to just
Speaker 5: make money. Enough money to pay their rent or like
Speaker 5: supplement a primary salary or maybe.
Speaker 6: Do it full time.
Speaker 5: But they're making like fifty sixty seventy one hundred K
Speaker 5: year instead of like.
Speaker 6: The millions that like sign pros are making.
Speaker 5: And so Players Lounge is really creating the infrastructure for
Speaker 5: like a third way for people to become pro gamers.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, shout out to my guy Marquis too. With
Speaker 4: the seventy sixes, I just made me think of something.
Speaker 4: So we were supposed to do something with the seventy
Speaker 4: six is before this whole Corona thing happened, and I
Speaker 4: was in Atlantic City, so he invited me to the
Speaker 4: training facility that they have in Camden, New Jersey, which
Speaker 4: is right over the river from Philly. So he's given
Speaker 4: me a tour of the Sixers training facility and he's
Speaker 4: showing me a room and he was like, you know,
Speaker 4: this is our room for gamers. He was like, so
Speaker 4: every NBA team they have a team of gamers that plays.
Speaker 4: I think it's a two K competition. He was like,
Speaker 4: you know, around March, we get a bunch of gamers
Speaker 4: and they come and he was like it's like training camp,
Speaker 4: Like they come in all day and they train in
Speaker 4: the morning and then like they take a lunch break
Speaker 4: and then they do different skill work. And he was
Speaker 4: explaining it to me, and there was a whole boardroom
Speaker 4: that was dedicated to the gamers for like eight weeks
Speaker 4: out the year because I guess the NBA has their
Speaker 4: own tournament. I didn't even know that, but the NBA
Speaker 4: has their own tournament.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they just ran their tournament during Yeah. Yeah, well
Speaker 3: I think Devin Booker won.
Speaker 2: The two K tournament, right, No, but these were just
Speaker 2: random people.
Speaker 3: The random people are doing one now, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: So the random people are like actual two K the
Speaker 5: best players in two K. So like what you were
Speaker 5: talking about before about like getting signing on on the
Speaker 5: bus like now these days, in twenty twenty, the NBA
Speaker 5: has actually partnered with NBA two K to create a
Speaker 5: professional NBA two K league where the Warriors, the Knicks,
Speaker 5: the Nets. Like I think, I think it's like almost
Speaker 5: twenty teams now. They all draft pro two K players
Speaker 5: and they play five on five two K against each other.
Speaker 5: And we actually had our two K specialist who was
Speaker 5: working for players on he got drafted in the most
Speaker 5: recent draft. So now like one of our boys places
Speaker 5: for the Hornets as like a power forward in this
Speaker 5: two K league.
Speaker 3: That's crazy. And I see him thrive shout shut out
Speaker 3: to day That's that's crazy.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: Yea, those those five on fives are pretty intense. And
Speaker 3: in the event of live sports not being here right now,
Speaker 3: this is what ESPN is showing. They're showing the five
Speaker 3: on five two K games. I was sitting there watching
Speaker 3: the game and I'm like, Yo, this is crazy, Like
Speaker 3: you were, like, each individual makes their player into my
Speaker 3: player zone, right, and then as you get skills and attributes,
Speaker 3: that's how you get drafted. Is that Is that what
Speaker 3: you're saying that you boy did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a there's like a specific mode in two
Speaker 5: K where you eventually, uh you actually just I guess
Speaker 5: present yours as being willing to be drafted and there's
Speaker 5: a whole competition around it. And then like the top
Speaker 5: like I don't know, one hundred like go to a
Speaker 5: draft and they may not get drafted, kind of similar
Speaker 5: to the NBA. Yeah, I think my boy got drafted
Speaker 5: in like the first round, like the first fifteen picks
Speaker 5: or something.
Speaker 2: It's pretty sad. Yeah, it's the whole it's a whole culture.
Speaker 3: It's a whole coach of I gotta get back into it.
Speaker 3: I'm convinced who coaches man. It is.
Speaker 6: The landscape for EST sports is crazy.
Speaker 5: Right now, and it's exciting. I mean, it's great for me,
Speaker 5: great for players. But kind of foresaw this happening back
Speaker 5: in twenty fourteen when we were hosting the events, and
Speaker 5: so it's crazy to see how fast the landscape has
Speaker 5: evolved since then.
Speaker 4: Sure, so all right, in the last segment, we're going
Speaker 4: to bring it home. We're going to talk about the
Speaker 4: VC process and then also the vision to expand going forward.
Speaker 4: So in this segment, we're going to talk about something
Speaker 4: that we've covered before, but not from this angle. So
Speaker 4: if you're a lawyer listening to the podcast, you know
Speaker 4: that we've had John Henry. Shout out to John good guy,
Speaker 4: you know him, John Henry. Okay, he's a he's a
Speaker 4: superstar VC young Dominican out of New York.
Speaker 3: Don't get the Dominican.
Speaker 4: Shout out to John Henry. Shout out to Kwame at
Speaker 4: Black Star Fund. They both are venture capitalists and they
Speaker 4: explained the process of venture capitalists from that side of
Speaker 4: the table. But they we haven't covered it from somebody
Speaker 4: that's actually been in the process of like receiving venture
Speaker 4: capital money. So a few years ago, you guys raised
Speaker 4: a few million dollars from a lot of big names.
Speaker 4: You've talked about one to take to ceo what's what's
Speaker 4: the gentleman's name against Strauss Strauszungner and then also I
Speaker 4: believe the former Yahoo CEO uh Marissa mayor uh Meyer
Speaker 4: and then uh Marco Ventures, a lot of big names
Speaker 4: and then biggest name of the big name, the six
Speaker 4: God himself or be Graham Drake.
Speaker 2: Drake is an investing in your company.
Speaker 4: So it's interesting because it's like, you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of entrepreneurs, you know, they they don't really they're not
Speaker 4: seasoned as far as like how Silicon Valley works or
Speaker 4: how to you know, go about asking for money or
Speaker 4: what's the process to even audition for these type of
Speaker 4: you know, the venture capital Yeah, exactly, So.
Speaker 2: Can you walk them through that a little bit? Like
Speaker 2: what what what was?
Speaker 5: What was you?
Speaker 4: You guys you kind of explained the first one as
Speaker 4: far as with the take two that was like just
Speaker 4: the in person rundown, but as far as like the
Speaker 4: other kid, the moment the other venture capital money that
Speaker 4: you've received, how'd you go about doing that?
Speaker 2: Like, what's the process?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's definitely multiple steps to this process. And so
Speaker 5: for us, the first step was just trying to raise
Speaker 5: any money to let us do us let us do
Speaker 5: this full time, because one thing that I really want
Speaker 5: to advocate is like, if you have a product and
Speaker 5: idea that you believe in and you have some proof
Speaker 5: of concept there, you've got to dive in full time
Speaker 5: because the just balancing like your regular life. I know
Speaker 5: it's not the easiest thing to do for everyone, but
Speaker 5: I'd highly recommend trying to figure out how.
Speaker 6: To do it full time or invest more hours into it.
Speaker 5: And so we really were trying to like extend our
Speaker 5: runway to do players on the first time full time.
Speaker 5: And so the first investment we got was actually from
Speaker 5: another member of our Wesleyan soccer team, Mark Murphy, and
Speaker 5: he was at Goldman and we just told him about it.
Speaker 6: He was like, Yo, it's really dope, Like I think
Speaker 6: I believe in this, and just gave us twenty grand.
Speaker 6: With that twenty grand, I quit my job and so
Speaker 6: at that point Zach and I were doing it full time.
Speaker 6: And then from then on.
Speaker 5: That was that was in May of twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 5: then from then on, we're trying to like extend this
Speaker 5: twenty grand as long as we can, and we're trying
Speaker 5: to raise from family and friends. Like, look, we got
Speaker 5: this idea, like we're going to build a digital product
Speaker 5: of this event company, and.
Speaker 6: It wasn't really working, Like we weren't raising.
Speaker 5: Money from brimily and friends just off the deck, and
Speaker 5: so we had to like really figure.
Speaker 6: Out how we were going to build.
Speaker 5: The first version of the MVP to be a proof
Speaker 5: of concept in order to raise some more money. And
Speaker 5: so that's when Strauss came in and we were able
Speaker 5: to convince Strauss to invest. We took that money and
Speaker 5: we hired our cTTO Dan, and then we built the
Speaker 5: MVP and we.
Speaker 6: Launched the MVP of Players launch in February twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: And so for the next year and a half, we're sweating,
Speaker 5: we're killing ourselves to try to raise some more money
Speaker 5: to not only pay our rents, but also like invest
Speaker 5: more in the big business so be able to test
Speaker 5: marketing strategies and hire people for customer service, because we
Speaker 5: have customers, but we aren't able to focus on like
Speaker 5: growing other parts of the business that we have to
Speaker 5: spend twenty four to seven handling customer service.
Speaker 6: So we really had to like invest in the company.
Speaker 6: And after we launched the MVP, we were able to
Speaker 6: raise some angel checks here and there.
Speaker 5: And so I would recommend if you're at this point,
Speaker 5: reach out to your friends and family and other relevant
Speaker 5: people who are investing in you as a person more
Speaker 5: so than the business or the products or the idea,
Speaker 5: because off the strength of you as a person, hopefully
Speaker 5: have enough social capital. Then like if you have at
Speaker 5: least something tangible and a vision and like a business plan,
Speaker 5: hopefully you'll be able to convince some friends and family
Speaker 5: to cut you with one K check, two K check,
Speaker 5: three check, three K, five k. And we were just
Speaker 5: every month just getting those checks in the door in
Speaker 5: order to pay our rent because we weren't going to
Speaker 5: go back to getting a job. We had to continue
Speaker 5: doing this full time, so that was really difficult, and
Speaker 5: we were trying to get like the larger checks in
Speaker 5: the door, like the one hundred K two hundred and
Speaker 5: three hundred and I must have met with this one
Speaker 5: specific investor like fifteen times with different materials, different reports,
Speaker 5: different reviews of our CAC to LDV ratio and like
Speaker 5: all this stuff and just wasn't willing to pull the trigger.
Speaker 5: And so fast forward to around summer of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: we finally got a group that invests in sports teams too.
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna say which teams can make give away
Speaker 5: the people, but their NBA teams and English Premier League
Speaker 5: teams and MLS teams to give us a term sheet
Speaker 5: and it was for a million dollars for twenty percent
Speaker 5: of the company.
Speaker 6: And that's an okay deal.
Speaker 5: But at that point we're like, we have to take
Speaker 5: this money because like we've been so distracted raising money,
Speaker 5: trying to raise money, we haven't been able to invest like.
Speaker 6: The majority of our time and like actually grow in
Speaker 6: the business.
Speaker 5: And so we have this term sheet and right around
Speaker 5: this time, Why Combinator has office hours around the country,
Speaker 5: and what that means is that they have the partners
Speaker 5: and even the CEO of hy Combinator travel around major
Speaker 5: cities and provide office hours so entrepreneurs can come in
Speaker 5: and just talk to them, tell them about their business,
Speaker 5: and then they can learn more about why Combinator and
Speaker 5: so what is.
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What is so that?
Speaker 3: It's like a workspace for people to come in, like
Speaker 3: creatives to come in and pitch ideas, Like what is that?
Speaker 5: So why Combinator is the most prestigious accelerated program in
Speaker 5: the world an accelerator program for startups in the startup
Speaker 5: since is like they put you through like a quote
Speaker 5: unquote boot camp for like three to six months, depending
Speaker 5: on the type of program, and you basically learn as
Speaker 5: much as you can during this time and id eate
Speaker 5: your idea, maybe pivot if necessary during this time, and
Speaker 5: then at the end you have a quote unquote demo day,
Speaker 5: which is you getting on stage in front of thousands
Speaker 5: of investors and pitching your product with the hope to
Speaker 5: raise money afterwards.
Speaker 6: And so Y Commentator is.
Speaker 5: By far the most prestigious. And it's actually harder to
Speaker 5: get into Y Comminator than it is to get into
Speaker 5: Harvard and Harvard Business School. I think it's twice Like
Speaker 5: if you go out the numbers, it's twice as hard
Speaker 5: to get into Y Comedy and.
Speaker 2: You apply, like you apply like online, like it's like
Speaker 2: a school.
Speaker 5: Like you like apply for Yeah, So how it works
Speaker 5: is I'll actually just continue the story, so I'll explain it.
Speaker 5: We'll get into that, and so, uh, we end up
Speaker 5: going out office hours with Michael Sibel, who's the CEO
Speaker 5: of Y Comminator, and he's like, he's like a Silicon
Speaker 5: Valley legend. Him and his team were the co founders
Speaker 5: of Twitch and also previously Justin TV if you remember that,
Speaker 5: but Justin TV became Twitch and Twitch sold to Amazon
Speaker 5: for a billion dollars and now he's the CEO of
Speaker 5: Y Combinator. And so we met with Michael in New
Speaker 5: York while we have this term sheheit on the table
Speaker 5: and we tell him about the business.
Speaker 6: We tell him that we're generating money.
Speaker 5: At that time, I think we were making like seven
Speaker 5: thousand dollars in revenue a month. And we told him
Speaker 5: that we've been busting our ass trying to raise money
Speaker 5: and it wasn't really going well. But now we finally
Speaker 5: have this term sheet, but it's not the best deal.
Speaker 5: And he's like, look, I'm gonna hie, I'm gonna give
Speaker 5: you guys some advice. And Michael's a really cool dude,
Speaker 5: and he's very matter of fact.
Speaker 6: And straight to the point.
Speaker 5: He's like, you should not take that deal. I don't
Speaker 5: care if it's for a million dollars. You should apply
Speaker 5: to y Combinator. You're generating revenue, so there's a good
Speaker 5: chance you get in. I can't promise you get in
Speaker 5: because it's very difficult, but you have a good idea
Speaker 5: in a space that is booming. I highly recommend you apply.
Speaker 5: The application deadline is tomorrow, so you better get on it.
Speaker 5: So we're like, we gotta try it. Why not? So
Speaker 5: we apply and the application process is like an online
Speaker 5: The initial application is online. It's a bunch of questions
Speaker 5: about your business, about the market, market opportunity, who your
Speaker 5: team is, why your team should be successful, and then
Speaker 5: you send like a little video, and then if you
Speaker 5: get over that hump, then they invite you to an
Speaker 5: in person interview at the y Combinator campus in Mountain View.
Speaker 5: I think they've now moved to San Francisco proper, and
Speaker 5: so we didn't take the term sheet. We applied to
Speaker 5: y Combinator, We flew out for the interview, we got
Speaker 5: proof for an interview, We flew out a week before
Speaker 5: interview and booked a airbnb. So we invested, like, I
Speaker 5: don't know, a couple thousand dollars of funds that we
Speaker 5: didn't really have for an airbnb a week before, and
Speaker 5: we just grinded and memorize all the questions that we
Speaker 5: thought that they were able to ask us, that we
Speaker 5: thought that they were going to ask us, like hundreds,
Speaker 5: hundreds of questions. We memorized every single possible answer, and
Speaker 5: then we walked into the interview, which is like a
Speaker 5: fifteen minute interview, and like, I'll be honest, I'm pretty.
Speaker 6: Sure I blacked out.
Speaker 5: I don't really remember what I said, but I knew
Speaker 5: I was able to answer whatever they asked because I
Speaker 5: had to answer prepared like anything in the realm of
Speaker 5: what they asked. I knew I had to answer prepared already.
Speaker 5: And so we got into y Combinator and that was
Speaker 5: a life changing experience and that changed the total trajectory
Speaker 5: of Player's lounge. We wouldn't be where we are today
Speaker 5: if it wasn't for Y Combinator.
Speaker 2: So through through that, what's it called why Combinator, Yeah, Ye,
Speaker 2: why Comminator, Okay, And that's the they have a website,
Speaker 2: common dot com.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And just to like really put in a perspective,
Speaker 5: like I guess the prestige of it and how good
Speaker 5: they are at finding businesses and also supporting their companies
Speaker 5: that they invest in. So when you get approved of
Speaker 5: why commenty, they invest in you, they invest seven percent.
Speaker 5: They invest like one hundred fifty thousand per seven percent
Speaker 5: of your business and then you're a part of the
Speaker 5: White ce network for life. And so some of the
Speaker 5: companies that have come in why common. There have been.
Speaker 6: Airbnb, Twitch, Coinbase, Dropbox, Reddit benefits.
Speaker 5: I'm missing a really really big one player's lounge. True,
Speaker 5: I appreciate you, but yeah, like the gravity of these
Speaker 5: companies companies are like crazy, and they have seven percent
Speaker 5: of all those companies that are all worth like north
Speaker 5: of fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 3: At this point in my mind, I'm thinking, like this
Speaker 3: is like the ultimate shar tank right now, Like when
Speaker 3: you guys walked in, you made this pitch. So they
Speaker 3: take seven percent to give you one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 3: But do they also find more investors or what happens
Speaker 3: next next?
Speaker 5: That's how why come an era end? So for the
Speaker 5: first for the three months that you're there, like we
Speaker 5: flew out to the Bay and we stayed in like
Speaker 5: East Palo Alto, and it's like a it's like a program,
Speaker 5: and so a couple of times a week you go
Speaker 5: to the campus and you learn. They teach you vital
Speaker 5: information about startups, how to grow your business, how to market,
Speaker 5: what you should be prioritizing, how to build a team,
Speaker 5: how to manage a team, uh, everything that's relevant. And
Speaker 5: they also bring in former why See graduates.
Speaker 6: So when I was there, like.
Speaker 5: The founders of Reddit came to talk, the founders of
Speaker 5: Airbnb came to talk. So you're getting some really crazy
Speaker 5: insightful information during this period, but ninety percent of the
Speaker 5: time you're working. And so when you're not like doing
Speaker 5: these like two three hour campus events, you're working on
Speaker 5: your company. Because you're not working on your company, nothing's moving.
Speaker 5: And they know that. They're really smart about that. So
Speaker 5: the misconception behind why Combinator is that like they handhold.
Speaker 6: You and build your business for you.
Speaker 5: No, they just give you the information the tools to
Speaker 5: do so. But then you got to put in the
Speaker 5: work yourself. So we were working like actual fourteen hour days,
Speaker 5: like waking up, go right to our computers, work, take calls, eat,
Speaker 5: go to the gym, work, take calls, eat dinner, work
Speaker 5: till midnight. Go to bed, do the whole thing again
Speaker 5: for three months straight and then at the end is
Speaker 5: where you get your reward, hopefully, which.
Speaker 6: Is demo Day. And so Demo Day is probably the biggest.
Speaker 5: Feeding fest, I guess for investors because y Combinator has
Speaker 5: such a great track record in investing that all the
Speaker 5: best investors come out for Demo Day because they already
Speaker 5: know that if it's vetted by why Comminator, then it's
Speaker 5: probably gonna be a good company. And so I got
Speaker 5: on the Demo Day stage and there were thousands of
Speaker 5: investors in the crowd, and some really big people were there.
Speaker 6: There was like NFL players there who come and invest there.
Speaker 5: Mersa Meyer was there, the former CEO of Yahoo, and
Speaker 5: so yeah, I had to get on stage and just
Speaker 5: pitch players lounge for two minutes with the hope that
Speaker 5: afterwards we'll get some money in the door and I
Speaker 5: don't have to worry about fundraising anymore.
Speaker 3: I'm in my mind, I'm listening, I'm hearing lose yourself.
Speaker 3: If that's what's playing in my mind, I'm visiting you
Speaker 3: right now, like this is your moment. You better not
Speaker 3: blow this.
Speaker 5: More of a drake fan, I gotta definitely shut out
Speaker 5: more of a Drake fan. I was listening to a
Speaker 5: lot of Drake at that time. But and then I
Speaker 5: guess that came to fruition to some.
Speaker 3: Extent, you thought it into existence.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 3: The power of the mind is not a joke, no.
Speaker 2: I mean, but that's that's it.
Speaker 4: This is an interesting conversation because it's like a lot
Speaker 4: of times, like even what we talked about Mike Brown before,
Speaker 4: but he put us on to Draper University, which I'm
Speaker 4: sure you're familiar with that, and so what you're explaining
Speaker 4: it sounds like it's like a boot camp for tech entrepreneurs, right,
Speaker 4: And it's like a lot of times. And that's one
Speaker 4: of the great things with Earn your Leisure is that
Speaker 4: it provides exposure to people that have been left out
Speaker 4: for a very long period of time. And it's like
Speaker 4: a lot of times you don't even know what you
Speaker 4: don't know. And you know, I'm not in the tech field,
Speaker 4: but you know, I'm in business. I've been in business
Speaker 4: for a long time and I wasn't aware of this,
Speaker 4: and it sounds like it's an extremely big thing, and
Speaker 4: it's like it's so many different things, like this that
Speaker 4: people don't even have any idea of, like you know,
Speaker 4: aspiring entrepreneurs and stuff like that. Like you never know
Speaker 4: what some information could do, Like somebody might hear this podcast,
Speaker 4: might apply to it might get accepted, it might become
Speaker 4: the next Airbnb. They you never know, like you know,
Speaker 4: it's like the power of information is extremely powerful.
Speaker 3: When I saw the word why combinated, I was like,
Speaker 3: what is that? It was mentioned in a couple of writings.
Speaker 3: I'm just like, yo, what is that? And now you
Speaker 3: just open the door to thousands and millions of its
Speaker 3: man to what it actually is. So kudos to you
Speaker 3: man to open an the door for us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm It's definitely my pleasure.
Speaker 5: And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to
Speaker 5: get on the show is because I learned so much
Speaker 5: in a similar fashion, just like absorbing content and like
Speaker 5: figuring out what is what and like you don't know,
Speaker 5: we don't know, as you said, Ford, and like I
Speaker 5: didn't know about why commentator, Like I only found out
Speaker 5: about it through like a friend.
Speaker 6: And then like when I said, when I told them
Speaker 6: we got in, they were like, or we got an interview,
Speaker 6: They were like, what are you crazy?
Speaker 5: Like you just that's like a very small percentile of
Speaker 5: people even get an interview, And I barely knew what
Speaker 5: it was at the time, and so when we got
Speaker 5: in the interview, like I look more into.
Speaker 6: It, I was like, wow, like this is a really
Speaker 6: big deal.
Speaker 5: And that's why we invested in the house before to
Speaker 5: really study and make sure that we crushed the interview,
Speaker 5: because this is it was a life changing event for
Speaker 5: myself and my team. And even if players doesn't really
Speaker 5: pan out, which that's not gonna happen, but the network
Speaker 5: that you get from Y Commentator allows you to just
Speaker 5: like it's like a fraternity, it's like a tech attorney.
Speaker 6: So like if I needed if I.
Speaker 5: Wanted to partner with Twitch, I can just go right
Speaker 5: to the top because it's a Y Combinator company. If
Speaker 5: I wanted to talk to like the CEO of Airbnb
Speaker 5: and put like PlayStations and certain airbnbs, I can hit
Speaker 5: up founders of Airbnb because of Y Combinator. So it's
Speaker 5: a very very very incredible.
Speaker 6: Tool.
Speaker 5: And for sure, like the knowledge, even even spreading the
Speaker 5: knowledge that it exists can be very helpful to people.
Speaker 2: Yeah I didn't not for sure, I didn't know either.
Speaker 4: And so all right, so now that that makes sense,
Speaker 4: where you get all the these venture capital that come
Speaker 4: from that, right?
Speaker 5: Yes, So after demo day, they set up basically a
Speaker 5: kind of like a speed dating type situation with investors,
Speaker 5: and so they built tech to basically for investors in
Speaker 5: the crowds that be on their phones and be like, okay,
Speaker 5: Players Lounge just went I liked them. I see that
Speaker 5: they liked Players Lounge, and then we set up meetings
Speaker 5: in this like speed dating environment. And so the majority
Speaker 5: of our vcs came from that experience, but the biggest
Speaker 5: ones came from like relationships beforehand. And so there's actually
Speaker 5: an email mailing list called Stealth Mode, which is basically
Speaker 5: like a network for black entrepreneurs, are minority entrepreneurs in tech,
Speaker 5: entrepreneurs in tech, and also like relevant business skill sets.
Speaker 5: And so one of my friends actually added me to
Speaker 5: the group and did a shout out like thank you
Speaker 5: for sorry, not thank you, congratulations. Yeah, congratulations to Austin
Speaker 5: and Players Lounge for getting into y Combinator. And then
Speaker 5: immediately a VC at Comcast Adventures.
Speaker 6: Kai Bond hit me up and was like, yo, I
Speaker 6: have a fund that I focus on.
Speaker 5: Minority investments under Comcast. I'm also a Wesleyan grad and
Speaker 5: so I know it doesn't make sense for you to
Speaker 5: raise right now because your evaluation is gonna skyrocket after
Speaker 5: a y combinator.
Speaker 6: But once it's time for you to raise, like hit
Speaker 6: me up and I got you.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna cut the check. I'm gonna cut the biggest
Speaker 5: check immediately.
Speaker 6: And so he was a man of his word.
Speaker 5: I love Kai Bond and Kai Bond of Comcast, which
Speaker 5: he's now actually courtside A Ventures. Yeah, he cut the
Speaker 5: biggest check in our round. And he did it before
Speaker 5: I even got on the demo day stage. I was
Speaker 5: just like, yeah, I'm raised. I'm going on demo demo
Speaker 5: days a week from now. He's like, cool, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: get this check cut before and he invested six hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: How does Drake, How does Drake get involved?
Speaker 6: It's a great story.
Speaker 5: Actually, So I was a music producer, full time music
Speaker 5: producer before starting Player's launch. So I was just like
Speaker 5: straight up making rap beats every day.
Speaker 3: What's your producer name?
Speaker 5: What was it? It was me and and my homie
Speaker 5: Brandon from UH from our hometown and our produced name
Speaker 5: was the Arsenal's okay.
Speaker 6: Some of our stuff.
Speaker 5: Actually we were on French montananis first album. Excuse my French.
Speaker 5: We did Life is so exciting for Fabulous, we put
Speaker 5: your tea on it. We did a bunch of stuff
Speaker 5: for kid Inc. Early on early on kid Inc. So yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean like that was my life and so obviously
Speaker 5: I had contacts in the space. And so when I
Speaker 5: was before I went to y Comminator. My manager at
Speaker 5: the time his name is also Austin, hit me up
Speaker 5: and was like, yo, I thought was gonna be like,
Speaker 5: where are the beats. I haven't gotten beats in a month.
Speaker 5: And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've been starting this
Speaker 5: company called Player's Lounge. And he's like, oh, we're like,
Speaker 5: come through to my spot and tell me about it.
Speaker 5: And so tell him all about it, and he's like
Speaker 5: very very connected. Obviously he actually manages like post Malone
Speaker 5: now and some really big people, and so he's like, Yo,
Speaker 5: this is really dope, Like I want to invest. I
Speaker 5: want to tell a bunch of my friends to invest
Speaker 5: as well. So he connected me with a dude named
Speaker 5: Sam should Treat and of should Treat Ventures, and so
Speaker 5: he's cool with Future of the Prince, which is who's
Speaker 5: Drake's manager, and so she treat Ventures invested in Players
Speaker 5: Lungs right when we got into Y Combinator.
Speaker 6: I was like the first like major investment we got
Speaker 6: at the time.
Speaker 5: And when Drake got on Fortnite with Ninja, he like
Speaker 5: broke the Internet, and I think, like the conversation happened.
Speaker 6: At some point we're like, all right, we got.
Speaker 5: To invest in esports. And then so the next time
Speaker 5: should Treat met with Feature of the Prince. He's like, yo,
Speaker 5: I just invested in this esports company called Players Lounge,
Speaker 5: and he connected me with the Future and so I
Speaker 5: talked to Future on the phone while I was at
Speaker 5: Y Combinator and he was like love it, like we
Speaker 5: want in Like that's that's news, that's a that's news.
Speaker 5: That's great news to me. Like I mean, Drake invested
Speaker 5: in Players Lounge, Like am I dreaming or what's up?
Speaker 5: And he was like all right, bet, Like we're gonna
Speaker 5: be in touch. Eight months later, goes by, I haven't
Speaker 5: heard from him and and we're just fine, and then
Speaker 5: reached out to him and then we ended up meeting
Speaker 5: in La, so I met him in person. We sat
Speaker 5: down and it was really funny. We met for forty
Speaker 5: five minutes, and he was on the phone for like
Speaker 5: forty two of those minutes.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, talk, I'm listening on the phone.
Speaker 4: Why, like like like you're talking to him while he's
Speaker 4: talking to somebody else.
Speaker 6: Yeah, up and take a bunch of calls.
Speaker 5: Like we're talking about like literally the most desired entertainer
Speaker 5: in the world. And I'm just watching firsthand, like how
Speaker 5: busy it must be to manage that person. But he
Speaker 5: seems to be doing an incredible job to the Prince.
Speaker 5: And then it's like, cool, we still want to invest,
Speaker 5: like drop the paperwork. So it's moved forward a little bit.
Speaker 5: So we dropped the paperwork. He puts me in touch
Speaker 5: with like the business team and stuff like that. So
Speaker 5: paperwork's there and it's just sitting there and sitting there
Speaker 5: in there, I'm like, all right, cool, no rush, no rush,
Speaker 5: understand it's like the busiest guy in the world.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 6: This is like August August twenty twenty eighteen. August twenty eighteen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he's on tour and my first manager, Anthony,
Speaker 5: like my day one from from Jersey.
Speaker 6: Who like manages the arsenals. He was like, Yo, I'm
Speaker 6: going to Drake show. You want to come with me?
Speaker 5: And it was my birthday, so I'm like, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 5: That's a great birthday gift. And it's an MSG and
Speaker 5: we are in a crazy VIP section. I'm like, I've
Speaker 5: never I've been I've been in music for a little while,
Speaker 5: but I've never been like put on like this and
Speaker 5: like showing Travis Scott, Mike Tyson's there, Drake's dad is there,
Speaker 5: DeMarcus Cousins, Damian Lillard, like Smoke Purp.
Speaker 6: We're all just like in this section Kylie Jenner like
Speaker 6: this section MSG. And then we end up going to
Speaker 6: the after party, like the private after party.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 6: I'm there.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know we were going there, so I'm
Speaker 5: like dressing in shorts and shit, look like weird.
Speaker 6: I look like a nerd.
Speaker 5: And end up just going to this after party and
Speaker 5: I'm coming out of the bathroom. It's a private after party,
Speaker 5: like Drake's just there just mingling, like security's not even
Speaker 5: really on him, and so I'm not pressing or anything,
Speaker 5: like I know that there's a deal like on the
Speaker 5: table and I'm not like I'm gonna go up to
Speaker 5: it like Creatures of Priends or anything and say that
Speaker 5: like for the exact same reasons why we talked about before,
Speaker 5: like Strauss and so Creature just sees.
Speaker 6: Me at the party.
Speaker 5: He didn't even invite me. He's like damn, like how
Speaker 5: did you get here? Like you know, yeah, but he
Speaker 5: was just like, oh shit, like I'm glad you're here
Speaker 5: when you meet Drake, and so he just like brings
Speaker 5: me over and introduced me to Drake and he's just like, Yo, Drake,
Speaker 5: this is Austin. He's the founder of Players Lines that
Speaker 5: I was telling you about, and we're gonna invest in
Speaker 5: this company. So I just wanted you guys to meet
Speaker 5: and I just dab up Drake and like we just
Speaker 5: say like something nice to meet you or something like that.
Speaker 6: I don't know, and yeah, that was that.
Speaker 5: And then then the paperwork got signed. So I realized
Speaker 5: if there was a moral to this story is that one.
Speaker 5: It's like doing face to face business is a really
Speaker 5: big deal, especially when you're dealing with like people like Drake,
Speaker 5: like really big celebrities who like people come to them
Speaker 5: with dealers all the time. Every day, Like still I
Speaker 5: get hit up every week, So yo.
Speaker 6: Can you hook me up with Drake invest in my company?
Speaker 5: And like so I can't imagine how that's happening like
Speaker 5: outside of myself.
Speaker 6: And so what I really what I really got out
Speaker 6: of that is just like.
Speaker 5: Being cordial, like not pressing, like yo, like sign his paperwork,
Speaker 5: sign his paperwork, Like no, like you got to understand
Speaker 5: who it is, and like you're not in a rush,
Speaker 5: like and you don't need the money. You also just
Speaker 5: raise a lot of money, so like why would you
Speaker 5: even be pressed. Let the let the let it happen organically,
Speaker 5: let it evolve organically. That's exactly what happened. Just my
Speaker 5: two circles, my old circle, my music circle, and my
Speaker 5: new circle kind of combined to get this done together,
Speaker 5: which was a really cool experience looking looking back at it.
Speaker 4: A man, now, this is a pleasure. What's the what's
Speaker 4: the before we wrap this up? What's the scaling model? Like,
Speaker 4: what what's what's in the future for players lounge?
Speaker 5: So first we want to just make the product, uh
Speaker 5: more social. So like remember I was saying, like the
Speaker 5: DNA of the events, putting it into the into the app,
Speaker 5: and like doing more of that, So like having a
Speaker 5: real platform where you can like follow people what you
Speaker 5: can do now, but expanding upon that, like seeing what
Speaker 5: your friends are doing on players Lounge and making it
Speaker 5: a network for competitive e sports and so like we
Speaker 5: have celebrities on our platform. We have NBA players, we
Speaker 5: have LB players, and they have like verified check marks
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. So creating the environment similar to
Speaker 5: like an Instagram or a Twitter where you can like
Speaker 5: CEO or favorite celebrities like play competitively, and then also
Speaker 5: like double down on that where you can like create
Speaker 5: your own esports team and compete for really big prize pools.
Speaker 5: And so like let's say you guys create the earn
Speaker 5: your leisure esports team on players Lounge and you sign
Speaker 5: like ten Madden players and ten NBA two K players.
Speaker 5: Then their performance on players Lounge will aggregate into being
Speaker 5: on the leader board with like a really big prize pool.
Speaker 5: And so you want to make it a lot more
Speaker 5: social and a lot more like team oriented, where like
Speaker 5: you nudge your friend like, hey, have you played on
Speaker 5: players Lounge this week? Because like our team is fit
Speaker 5: on the leader board, we get up the third. That's
Speaker 5: another one hundred thousand dollars in our pocket.
Speaker 6: So that's the kind of like shorter term trajectory that
Speaker 6: we want to do, and.
Speaker 5: Then longer term I kind of I envisioned us being
Speaker 5: in like a Netflix situation where like we're so big,
Speaker 5: the publishers may put wagering in their own games because
Speaker 5: we've proven that people are willing to do it, and
Speaker 5: we're proven that, like there's a million dollar, hopefully billion
Speaker 5: dollar business in this, so we may have to create
Speaker 5: our own video games with wagering in it, like Triple
Speaker 5: A quality video games, the same way that Netflix is
Speaker 5: making their own Triple A quality TV content to compete
Speaker 5: with the studios.
Speaker 3: How many people on the team? It's you and Zach
Speaker 3: and who else?
Speaker 6: We are a decent sized team.
Speaker 5: Now we have like twenty full timers and then another
Speaker 5: like ten part time.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Zach and I have the co founders Austin.
Speaker 4: It's been a pleasure, Bro, I appreciate it. How can
Speaker 4: the people follow you contact you? What's the what social
Speaker 4: media handles?
Speaker 2: Website? All of that information?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, on Twitter and Instagram's at world Dynasty spelled
Speaker 5: w O O L d Y and A S T Y.
Speaker 5: It's easily confused as world Nasty.
Speaker 6: But I'll take you. I'm not even mad at that one.
Speaker 5: That might be a nice producer name, to be honest,
Speaker 5: But I make another beat and then the players lounge
Speaker 5: handles are at players lunge on Instagram and at underscore
Speaker 5: players on Twitter, and yeah, hit me up. I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm very accessible and I really enjoy paying it forward
Speaker 5: because a lot of people were doing that for me.
Speaker 5: So if anyone listening wants to like learn more or
Speaker 5: like have a simple conversation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just just let me know, and uh, I'll make
Speaker 6: sure I can. I can help you out.
Speaker 2: Appreciate that, bro Troy Housekeeping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout to everybody on patreon dot dot com. I'll
Speaker 3: probably pay program the five tiers there. You can any
Speaker 3: tale you like.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: At four and five you get certain incentives such as
Speaker 3: eyl University, our online school that is the top business
Speaker 3: school in the world right now, and you also get
Speaker 3: access to our EYL you private Facebook real estate group
Speaker 3: which is growing at a rapid pace. Got a lot
Speaker 3: of incentives there, our book club, our weekly webinars, something
Speaker 3: that we do on YouTube live that have been calling crazy.
Speaker 3: A lot of information is being shared, So thank you
Speaker 3: everybody that's been tuning into that and all the earners
Speaker 3: that's been tuning in and showing love. We appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, EYL University is amazing. It's an amazing platform. We
Speaker 4: bring people on like once a week to kind of teach,
Speaker 4: so like an extension of like sometimes people come on
Speaker 4: the podcast, but people have like more engaged questions and
Speaker 4: it's like a zoom interactive.
Speaker 2: It's really dope. So I maybe we can get you
Speaker 2: on there one time gaming class.
Speaker 3: That'd be a file one A.
Speaker 2: Yeah, appreciate that. And aswers overliabilities.
Speaker 4: Is the merch earn your leasion dot com or you
Speaker 4: can purchase the merch, So yeah, make sure you check
Speaker 4: us out on you Alisia dot com. We gotta send
Speaker 4: you some merch also, and yeah, thank you guys for
Speaker 4: rocking with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Speaker 4: If you're listening to YouTube, subscribe, like and comment all that.
Speaker 4: If you listen to it on Apple, Spotify through the same,
Speaker 4: We greatly appreciate it. Tell a friend and tell a friend,
Speaker 4: and yes, uh, thank you guys, rock on us. We'll
Speaker 4: see you next week.
Speaker 2: Pease, please.
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