The Come Up

RockWater, Chris Erwin

Interviews with entrepreneurs and executives who are shaking things up and building exciting new companies. In industries like new Hollywood, podcasting, ecommerce, and the metaverse. Entertaining you with stories you won't hear anywhere else, from the next generation of leaders that are going to change the world. Brought to you by Chris Erwin, the founder of RockWater and 15-year veteran operator, seller, and investor of media, commerce, and technology companies. read less

Our Editor's Take

Anyone who loves a success story may enjoy The Come Up podcast. Host Chris Erwin interviews entrepreneurs and industry leaders about their career journeys. These stories will inspire listeners and teach them lessons along the way.

Host Chris Erwin is passionate about entrepreneurs who make a difference. The stories on The Come Up podcast are those listeners have yet to hear. Erwin has been building and selling businesses for a number of years. He founded RockWater Industries in 2017. It provides execs with finance and strategy advice. He showcases entrepreneurs and business ventures that have a significant societal impact.

The Come Up is a business podcast by RockWater. Each episode features a business leader or entrepreneur who is doing big things. The business owners come from startups in industries like new Hollywood, sports media, and the Metaverse. The question-and-answer style format is realistic and informative.

Guests are diverse and come from all kinds of backgrounds. Some popular guests are Sarah Penna, a creator launch executive at Patreon, and James Creech, the founder of Paladin. On The Come Up, Penna talks about what inspired her career in media and entertainment. Before Patreon, she worked at Dreamworks. James Creech discusses the risks he took to found Paladin and his role as a SVP at Brandwatch. They also talk about influencers, changes in the creator economy, and leadership.

When host Erwin brings Adam Rymer onto The Come Up, it's an episode gamers won't want to miss. Rymer is the CEO of Optic Gaming. With a history in digital media, Rymer brings ample knowledge to the conversation. A self-proclaimed nerd, the host of the podcast also explores Napster, esports, and the 1980s.

There are victories for every kind of fandom. Many guests are even first-time entrepreneurs. Taehoon Kim is a co-founder and CEO of nWay. He's founded two high-tech businesses. Camila Victoriano of Sonoro also guests. These are a few of many guests. The Come Up is a good business-oriented podcast.

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Episodes

Taehoon Kim — CEO of nWay on Raising $90M, Selling to Animoca, and Gaming x Web3
Nov 10 2022
Taehoon Kim — CEO of nWay on Raising $90M, Selling to Animoca, and Gaming x Web3
This interview features Taehoon (TK) Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of nWay. We discuss going to arcades with his mom in South Korea, why he wasn't allowed to play console games as a kid in Canada, what he learned from Samsung's work culture, why it's hard for VCs to invest in gaming, finding passion at the intersection of technology and art, the best type of IP for game partnerships, how he ended up selling nWay to Animoca Brands, and how player ownership in games creates attachment and meaning, and prevents gamer exploitation.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.comInterview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.Taehoon Kim:So I was really upset when Lightspeed thing fell through. I went out drinking with my friends and I got hammered that night. I had another VC pitch the next morning. I was so hungover that during the presentation I threw up three times. During the pitch, I would say, "Excuse me, I'd run to the bathroom." I would throw up, come back, continue the pitch. And I did that three times., And I did the presentation 9:00 AM I came home and I was, "Oh, my God, I totally screwed that up." I fell asleep. I woke up at 4:00 PM, got a call at 5:00 PM saying that he was in. Usually it doesn't happen that way, but it was a really weird period of time in my life.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features TK Kim, CEO of nWay and a serial gaming entrepreneur. So TK was born in Seoul, South Korea to a mom who was a gamer and a lover of arcades. After studying at Cornell, TK started his career at Samsung, where he helped launch their smartphone and next gen mobile gaming businesses. TK then went on to co-found three gaming companies, and raised over $90 million in venture capital. Today he's the CEO of nWay, which is a developer, publisher, and tech platform for competitive multiplayer games across mobile, PC, and consoles. nWay was sold to Animoca in 2020.Some highlights of our chat include why he wasn't allowed to play console games as a kid in Canada, why it's hard for VCs to invest in gaming, finding passion at the intersection of technology and art, why he doesn't mind getting rejected by investors, the best type of IP for game partnerships, and how player ownership in games creates attachment and meaning and prevents gamer exploitation. All right, let's get to it.TK, thanks for being on The Come Up podcast.Taehoon Kim:Hey, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.Chris Erwin:We have a pretty amazing story to tell about your career, but as always, we're going to rewind a bit and kind of go to the origin story. So it'd be awesome to hear about where you grew up and what your parents and what your household was like.Taehoon Kim:I was born in Seoul, Korea, and then I moved to Vancouver, Canada when I was in fourth grade. I think I was 10 or 11. At the time, growing up in Seoul, a little bit more strict environment. One funny thing is that my mom was a gamer and she would take me to the arcade, I think when I was super young, five or six years old. That's when I got really into gaming and how fun could that could be. But when I moved to Canada, however, she didn't really let me have any consoles, when that switch from the arcade era to the console era happened.I think she was a little bit influenced from the Asian culture and didn't want me to be getting too loose on academics. But when I got the computer, that's when I started really getting back to gaming. She didn't know I was playing games, but I was really into that. And then when Doom came out, that's when I really also started getting into online gaming, which is a big part of the reason why I'm so into PVP and competitive gaming.Chris Erwin:So your mom was a gamer and she would take you to the arcades in Seoul. What were the types of games that you guys liked to play together? And was this just something special that you and your mom did? Or was it a whole family outing that you did with your mom and dad and your siblings?Taehoon Kim:My dad didn't really like games, so it was just me and my mom. And she was really into Galaga and getting on the top of the leaderboard there. Oftentimes, I would watch her play and I would also try, but I wasn't as good as her. So I mean, I would mostly try to beat a record, but I couldn't. That's how I got into it early on.Chris Erwin:Did you also go to the arcade with a lot of your peers growing up when you were in Korea? And did any of your peers parents play? Or was it kind of like, I have the cool mom, she's into gaming, and we'd go do that on the weekends?Taehoon Kim:Oh, later on when I got older and I got in elementary school, yes, I definitely did go to the arcade with my friends. And then later on, in Seoul, arcades turned into PC bang. I'm not sure if you heard of it, but it's like the room full of PCs and it would play PC games there. I mean, I got in earlier than my friends, because of my mom.Chris Erwin:Remind me, what was the reason that you guys came to Vancouver from Korea?Taehoon Kim:I'm not a 100% sure if this is the real reason, but my parents would always tell me it's because I wasn't really fitting well with the type of education in Korea, where it was more, much more strict and less creative. They wanted us, me and my brother, to get a Western education. I think it turned out to be good for me, I guess.Chris Erwin:Do you remember when you were kind of joined the academic and the school system in Vancouver, I know it was at a young age, you were about 10 years old, you said, did you feel that that was like, "Hey, this is immediately different and I really like it and enjoy it"? Or was it nerve-wracking for you to make such a big change in your life to be uprooted at such a young age? What were you feeling at that time?Taehoon Kim:It was immediately different, lot less grinding. Even at third or fourth grade, back in Seoul, it was pretty tough. After school was over at 5:00 PM, I still had to go to all these after school programs until 9:00 PM or something like that. And I didn't do the homework afterwards and everybody was doing it. So there was a lot of peer pressure for parents to also put their kids to the same kind of rigorous program. And when I was in Vancouver, I didn't have to do any of that. So it felt more free and math was a lot easier.Chris Erwin:Math was a lot easier in Vancouver.Taehoon Kim:You know how crazy it is for Asian countries with math early on.Chris Erwin:So you're probably the top of your class. You were such a standout, and I bet at a young age that was pretty fun because it was easy to you too.Taehoon Kim:People thought I was super smart. I wasn't, it was just that I started earlier doing more hard stuff in math. It wasn't necessarily that was smarter. But again, on the other subject, because my English was suffering, I had to get a lot of help. So I would help them in math and they would help me with the other subjects.Chris Erwin:And you mentioned that in Western education there's also probably more emphasis on using the creative part of your brain as well, and balancing that out with the math or the quantitative side. What did that look like to you as you were going through middle school and high school before you went to college? Any specific applications or stories stand out?Taehoon Kim:Yeah, one thing that stood out to me was how a lot of the homeworks and assignments were project based and group based. Where teamwork mattered, and I would have to work with two or three other students to do a project, where we had a lot of freedom to create what we wanted. And the fact that there's no right answers. And it was really weird for me at the beginning, but I got used to it later on. But I think that's kind of a key difference. And at least at that time.Chris Erwin:During your teenage years and coming of age, before you go to Cornell, what was the gaming culture in Vancouver? And what was your role in it?Taehoon Kim:Early '90s when the console wars were happening with Nintendo and Sega, and there was a lot of cool things happening there, but I didn't get to really partake in that. My parents didn't allow me to have consoles. But same things were happening in the PC gaming, especially without modems and the early stage of internet happened. Me and my friends, we got started with Wolfenstein, which was mind blowing.Chris Erwin:Oh, I remember Wolfenstein, it was one of the earliest first person shooters on a PC.Taehoon Kim:It was mind blowing. It was the first game to really utilize 3D spaces in the way it did. But then the real game changer was Doom because you can... Even with the slow modem, I think it was an amazing feat, think about it now, with limited technology and networking, I could dial into, using my modem, and then connect with my friends, and I could play PVP. And that was when the gaming was the most fun for me, actually, playing with friends live. And I would play it late until night early in the morning, over and over again, the same map.Chris Erwin:I remember playing Wolfenstein at my friend's place, shout out, Adam Sachs. And then I also remember playing Doom, and I remember having the cheat codes where I can go into God mode.Taehoon Kim:Oh, right.Chris Erwin:And I was invincible and I could play with five different types of guns, including the rocket launcher. I can specifically remember from my youth some of the different levels. And sitting at my PC station kind of right next to my family's common room. Those are very fun memories. I don't think I was ever doing... I was never live playing with friends. Were you able to do that within the Doom platform? Or were you using a third party application on top of that?Taehoon Kim:I think it was within the Doom platform. It's pretty amazing. Doom was a fast game, so the fact that it worked, it was amazing. When Quake came out, afterwards, that's when I think e-sports was really ended up becoming more serious and people were going to playing at a more higher tier. But that's when I got out of FPS and dove into fighting games.Chris Erwin:Got it. You moved to Vancouver, you're a standout in school, on the math side just because of all your training in Korea. And you're learning about work in these more kind of project based environments or team based work, where there's also a lot of freedom for collaboration. You end up going to Cornell. When you were applying to school, what was your intention? Did you have a very clear focus of, "This is what I want my career to look like, so this is what I'm going to study in undergrad"? Or was it a bit more free flowing?Taehoon Kim:I really wanted to go into a top engineering school. I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to study electrical engineering or computer science, and I was looking at Cornell, MIT, Stanford, they had really good engineering programs. And I knew that the playing online games and doing a lot of mods and all that stuff in the computer, and looking at kind of the early stage of internet, I knew that was going to be a big thing later on. My goal was to kind of get into that sector by studying engineering or information technology.Chris Erwin:Was there any certain moments when you were at Cornell that to help to point you in kind of this gaming leadership, gaming entrepreneurship career path that you've now been on for the last couple decades?Taehoon Kim:Well, a couple things happened. I was good at math. I was good at engineering, and internet was happening. And then one thing I didn't talk about was that I was also really good at art. At one point, I even thought about going to art school. I think it was because of my mom's side of the family, a lot of artists. And I think it was the DNA from my mom's side. What I love about gaming was the fact that you can kind of combine technology and my love for technology and also my love for art.And when I graduated, Cornell, started work at Samsung and there was an opportunity to go into a new gaming. That's when it clicked for me. I was like, "Wow, I really want to get into this industry. It's as both of what I love." But at Cornell, because we had super fast ethernet, a lot of people were playing StarCraft at that time. And that's how I saw the world in terms of, "Wow, these type of massively play online games. I mean, RPGs or games where you can play competitively is going to be a big thing."Chris Erwin:I don't want to date you TK, if that's uncomfortable, but around what time period was this? What year was this around?Taehoon Kim:College was from 1997 to 2002.Chris Erwin:I have to ask, too, when you say that you almost went to art school, and that you had a passion for arts, since it's very early on, what type of art applications? Was it painting? Was it drawing? Was it sculpture? Was it something completely different? What did that look like?Taehoon Kim:Sculpture, I was good, but I didn't excel at it. I was mainly good at sketching, painting, and doing just a lot of creative art, concept art, which is a big part of game development, actually.Chris Erwin:Your first role, what you did for work right after Cornell was you went to Samsung, and there you were a product manager where you helped start Samsung's smartphone business, and you're also a product manager for next-gen mobile gaming. And as you said, this was exciting to you, because you saw gaming as the intersection of technology and art. Tell us how that first role came to be and kind of what you focused on there.Taehoon Kim:I was part of a team called new business development team. Group of 13 people, and our job was to create next-gen businesses. Three businesses that we isolated as something that we should work on was telematics, which is using the map data to help people and navigations and bring new technologies to the car. Second one was smartphone business, taking some of the operating systems from PDAs at the time and then moving that over to the phone. And then third one was gaming, because Nokia was going big with gaming at that time. And Samsung was second to Nokia in market share and someone wanted to do whatever Nokia was doing at that time.So those were three main things. And I got into the gaming side after one of the first business trips was to San Jose, which at that time was hosting GDC, Game Developer Conference. And it was my first time going to GDC. And, yeah, I was just fascinated with the group. It was engineers, artists, players, developers, publishers. And that community really fascinated me, and that's when I decided, "Hey, I really want to be part of this group. I want to get into gaming." So I came back and said, "Hey, I want to take on this project." And a lot of my peers were avoiding the gaming sector, because they knew that was difficult. And Samsung previously tried to do a console and it failed. So they knew it was difficult, but I wanted to get into it. I was super excited to get into it.Chris Erwin:Was it hard to convince your leadership, just based on the past challenges that Samsung had, to do it? Or did they just say, "Hey, TK, sure if you have an idea, see what you can do and then come back to us"?Taehoon Kim:Well, the leadership really wanted to do it mainly because Nokia at the time, that's when they launched their first gaming phone called N-Gage. I'm not sure if a lot of people remember, but it was a really weird device. They launched that business, and it was getting a lot of press. And our CEO was like, "We also have to a quick follow, and we have to get into gaming phones as well." So it was but different from what they did in the past, because it wasn't just a pure console, it's a smartphone plus a gaming device.So it was a completely different type of environment at that time compared to when they were doing console. But nonetheless, because gaming is a [inaudible 00:14:06] driven and also because it's a tough business, my peers were, "Hey, I want to be in another sector." So it was less competitive for me to take on that project.Chris Erwin:So that must have been pretty exciting. Your first role out of school, you work for a very large technology company that essentially gives you as a young in your career a mandate. It's like, "Hey, TK, you know what? You want to go forward and figure out a new gaming business line for Samsung? You got the green light to go and do it." That must have felt pretty good. And I think you were there for a few years. What did you accomplish? And then what was the reason for why you decided to move on from that opportunity?Taehoon Kim:It was a very unique opportunity for me. I think I got lucky being at the right place at the right time, because that's when Samsung was really taking off as a global brand name. That's when they first overtook Sony in brand value. And that's when the consumers were looking at the brand more than as a microwave company, and a major player in the IT space. And that's when they were also hiring a lot of people from overseas.And I did both undergrad and master's program at Cornell. And when I was in my masters, I got to know the founders of Palm, which was also a Cornell EE grad, through my professor. I got really stuck into Palm OS. I was semi expert with the Palm OS. I think that's why they hired me, because Samsung was the first major mobile manufacturer to adopt the Palm OS into their phone. And then the second thing is, because at that time Samsung's culture was still, it wasn't easy for Western certain people to... A lot of people from the US schools starting there, they weren't lasting that long. So it was hard for me as well, but I kind of decided, "Hey, I'm going to really make sure that I can stick around and tough it out."Chris Erwin:I think this is another important point for the listeners is that you are also building another company that you had founded while you were at Samsung called IvyConnection. Is that right?Taehoon Kim:Right.Chris Erwin:I like this because I think this is the beginning of a ongoing theme in your career that you are a builder and you're a founder. You're working at a full-time role, you're also building something on the side. And then this leads to, I think, some other big entrepreneurial ambitions kind of later on that we'll get to. But tell us quickly about IvyConnection.Taehoon Kim:IvyConnection kind of came out of the school project that was doing at Cornell, my master's program. At first, it was supposed to be a platform to connect tutors and students. And then I quickly realized, when I got to Seoul that there were a lot of parents who were looking to send their kids overseas to top schools, and they didn't know that things were different over there in terms how admissions worked. So I kind of created the category, which is a huge category is now it was the first company to do it. And so we did get a lot of demand. I started that right before I started working at Samsung, and it was just continuously growing. I recruited a whole bunch of my friends, and I had them kind of run the company. I was a co-founder, and while working at Samsung, I was advising and helping the growth.Chris Erwin:It's amazing, because you describe at Samsung it was a very brutal work culture at the headquarters. So you're probably working very long hours, very demanding, and then you're also building something on the side. It's like when did you have time to sleep?Taehoon Kim:I was young though, so I didn't need... I was happy to just work, until I was young and single. I was at my early 20s, so it was not problem for me. But, yeah, it was pretty brutal. We had to get to work right at 8:00 AM and the system kind of keeps record of exactly when you get into the company. And then you also had to come out on Saturdays for half a day.Chris Erwin:I did not realize that, that's the expectation across... Is that across all companies in Korea, as part of the work culture and the work norms? Or is that just unique to Samsung?Taehoon Kim:I think what's pretty unique to Samsung. I think at that time chairman wanted us to start early. You basically only have one day weekend.Chris Erwin:And for you, where you're also building another company on the side, it's almost like you never had time that you weren't working or very little bit, most likely. So you're at Samsung for about three years, but then you transition to Realtime Worlds. Explain why did you transition from your Samsung role? And what were you building at Realtime Worlds?Taehoon Kim:As I said, I was a project manager for a new gaming platform, and part of my job was also to source content for the device. And I remember playing Lemmings and I met the creator of Lemons, Dave Jones who just sold DMA Design and created Realtime Worlds. And I try to convince him to create games for my platform, but him and his co-founder, they ended up recruiting me. They're like, "Hey, join us. We just started Realtime Worlds, and we'd love to get your help, because we want to get into online gaming. And you have a lot more exposure to online gaming from Seoul, from Korea. So we wanted to be part of this exciting venture." So I decided to leave Samsung and joined them.Chris Erwin:How was that experience? Was it a similar work culture? Did you feel your past experience was very helpful and so you got in there and you're like you knew exactly what to do? Or was it still a very steep learning curve at that point in your career?Taehoon Kim:It was a steep learning curve for me, in terms of game development, because I have never done game development. Because Realtime Worlds is a game developer and publisher. That's right around when they just signed a contact with Microsoft for a game called Crackdown. It was like a souped up version of GTA. Dave Jones was also the creator and designer of GTA, the original GTA 1 and 2. So it was creating a similar game. And they had ambition to also create an online version of GTA, which is where I got involved.I got one of the large publishers in Korea called Webzen to do a publishing deal to fund portion of development for the GTA online project, and be a publisher for that. So they wanted me to create the Asia branch for Realtime Worlds, they called it Realtime World Korea. I started the studio here in Seoul, recruited some engineers and designers and also did biz dev work to get that publishing deal with Webzen.Chris Erwin:And I think also one of the highlights from your time there is that, did you also help to raise money from NEA, in your role at the company as you guys were growing?Taehoon Kim:Oh, yes. My professor from Cornell, he was friends with the founder of NEA, and he knew a lot of VCs. And Realtime Worlds was based in Scotland, and they knew very little about Silicon Valley. So I told him, "Hey, we're doing something amazing here and online gaming is a new sector, so I think we should be able to raise some money." So I created the deck, which I learned from school on how to do, so created a deck, created a business plan, and then flew over to Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and pitched to a few VCs including NEA. I was surprised. I was like, it was fairly easy at that time to raise money. NEA decided to, all by themselves, bring $30 million into the company and we didn't even have product launched at that time.Chris Erwin:This is pre-product. Did you go to Sand Hill Road by yourself? Or did you have a support team? Or was the company leadership saying, "Hey, TK, you know what you're doing here, you have the connections, go make this happen by yourself"?Taehoon Kim:It was just me at the beginning. It was just me by myself, just trying it out, because the first meeting is exploratory anyways. So at the beginning it was me. They love what they saw, and then afterwards it was like everybody, all the partners from the NEA side and also everyone from our side. At the beginning, it was just me.Chris Erwin:Wow. Did you enjoy the fundraising process? I mean, it seems like you're wearing so many hats, you're doing business development, you're fundraising, you're also building out different offices as part of the core game development practice. Was there something that you felt like you were gravitating towards more specifically? Or did you like doing it all and having a broad top down view of the company?Taehoon Kim:Yeah, I think the reason I ended up taking the fundraising process is because I actually enjoyed the process. A lot of people hate it, because part of the fundraising process is just being comfortable with getting rejected. But I didn't mind that at all. I'm like, "Fine [inaudible 00:21:57]." And big part of the process is also not only selling, but knowing what they're looking for. So I got really good at researching all the VCs, and instead of having one deck and just one approach for all the VCs, I would custom create the deck for each of the VCs, and only target the top tier ones. I quickly realized that it's actually easier to raise money from the top tier VCs than the second or third tier VCs, surprisingly. And that approach really worked, and I love the process.Chris Erwin:Why is it easier to raise money from top VCs versus tier two, tier three?Taehoon Kim:It's actually simple. The top tier VCs are able to make decisions on their own, even though it seems odd or different or something that doesn't seem intuitive. They are able to say, "Hey, we're going to take a bet on this," and they can make a quick decision. The second and third tier VCs are always looking to see what others are doing. They're always looking for validation. They're always looking to see what the first tier guys are doing.So a lot more due diligence, it takes a lot more work, and they kind of beat around the bush a lot more. They take a lot longer to make their decisions. And a lot of times they bring in other VCs to co-lead or see what they think. So it's actually a lot more work to get them to lead. So if you have a great product and you have a good vision, then just go to the top tier guys. Go straight to top to your guys. They'll be able to make a much quicker and faster decision.Chris Erwin:That's a great insight. TK, though, I do have to say yet again, while you're at Realtime Worlds, I think the same year that you start working there, is 2005, you also are the co-founder of another company called Nurien Software. So yet again, you're working at a company, it's a very big role, you're working across a variety of different company functions, but you're also building something on the side. Is that right?Taehoon Kim:Right. Yeah.Chris Erwin:What was Nurien Software?Taehoon Kim:So Nurien Software was actually a spinoff off of the Realtime Worlds' Korea office. Dave Jones, he introduced me to the guys at Epic Games, and that's when they were launching on Unreal Engine 3. And he also introduced me to another studio who was doing a music game, and that kind of clicked for me. I was like, "Hey, what if we take Unreal Engine 3, which is very high graphics fidelity, which is usually used for like MMORPGs and then create a music game out of it, because the music is to be very visual." And they wanted this to be kind of separate. So I decided to be make it, instead of doing it Realtime Worlds Korea made it into a separate one.And that also started to get momentum. And it turns out music plus gaming was a huge thing, especially in Asia. Just as we were starting the development for, we call it MStar, a music based MMO, another game called Audition just took off massively in China. It was doing a billion a year. It was a tough time for me because Realtime Worlds and Nurien Software, at the same time, was kind of taking off.Chris Erwin:And again, for Nurien Software, you also led a $25 million fundraise from NEA and top VCs.Taehoon Kim:I pitched them on Friday, and they told me they were in on Monday. So it was crazy times. That's when online gaming was really taking off. So it was actually, it's not just me, but it was much easier to raise money at that time.Chris Erwin:Probably, again, working a lot, building, not a lot of sleep. You're running both these companies. And then Nurien Software sells in 2010 to Netmarble CJ E&M. And what was the end result for Realtime Worlds? What happened to that company?Taehoon Kim:I was only running both companies for a short period of time. So right after Nurien Software got funded, the board wanted me to focus on the new VCs, and Nurien Software wanted me to focus on Nurien Software. So I helped Realtime Worlds find a replacement for me, and I left Realtime Worlds, and I was full-time at Nurien.Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you, if you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot, if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody. Let's get back to the interview.Taking a step back, so, TK, you're part of these very exciting companies. The leadership and the founders clearly, really believe in you, and think you are someone special. So they're giving you the green light to essentially co-found spinoffs, and then go raise additional venture funding for that. Did you feel at this point in your early career that you're like, "I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. This is an exciting path, These are growing industries. I'm good at it. I have the right international connections. And now it's time where I want to double down on this, and I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I see white space in these gaming markets, and I want to build towards that. And I'm going to go raise capital to make that happen." What was going through your head? Because it feels like the story that you're telling is so exciting for someone to be at your career stage. What were you feeling?Taehoon Kim:That's when I realized that this act of dreaming something up, raising money for it, and actually launching it and seeing it become real and seeing a product go live, and enjoyed by millions of people, is just really fulfilling. And it's something that I knew that I wanted to continue doing. It's something that I really enjoy.So even to this day, that's the main reason that I'm doing this. Well, it's more than financially driven motives. I just love creating new things and bringing it out to people and surprising people and seeing them delighted. It makes all the hard work worthwhile, and it's a very kind of thrilling experience for me. And that's when I realized, "Hey, I want to do this long term. This is what I'm good at. Coming out with new ideas and getting it funded and launching it." Not all of them are successful, but that's fine. The act of doing it is a reward.Chris Erwin:Very well said. So I think, was it that mindset, I think, a company that you did found and you worked at for one to two years before nWay was Pixelberry. What was the quick take on Pixelberry? What was that?Taehoon Kim:So Pixelberry was also a spinoff from Nurien Software. Nurien Software was an MMO company, so, as I said, it was using Unreal Engine 3. It was still very heavy. You had to download a big client, and run it on pc. And back in 2009, 2010, that's when social gaming and hyper-accessible gaming was taken off. So Pixelberry, at the beginning, was an experiment to try to bring over a lot of the core technologies built at Nurien Software and make them more accessible, and make it so that people can just instantly play on a browser.And the first game that we tried to do was a fashion game, because we realized from launching MStar, which was a music MMO, the best way to monetize those games were through, we're making a lot of money by selling clothing for the avatars, selling fashion, in other words. So we wanted to create a game, a social game, focused on creating fashion and selling fashion.Chris Erwin:I didn't realize that Pixelberry was also a spinoff of Nurien Software. So it seems that you had a really good thing going with the founding team of Lemmings that created Realtime Worlds. There was a lot of market opportunity. The founders really believed in you, and you had all these different ways, as you said, to kind of create and innovate as the gaming markets were evolving, and bring these incredible gaming experiences to users. And I think you were part of that team for almost six years, from 2005 to 2011. What was the catalyst that caused you to break off from that, start the venture that you still run today, which is nWay?Taehoon Kim:I was doing Pixelberry and it wasn't doing that well, mainly because, me as a gamer, didn't really enjoy fashion games that much. Maybe that was the reason. Or maybe because the industry was kind of changing rapidly, but it wasn't doing that well. Zynga and a handful of others were kind of dominating the social gaming space. And the co-founders of Realtime Worlds, Dave Jones and Tony Harman, at that time, just sold realtime worlds to GamersFirst. And they're like, "Hey, TK, let's start a new company together." And that's when I kind of jumped at the opportunity, because I really wanted to work with those guys again. And that's when nWay was founded.Chris Erwin:Oh, got it. So Dave and Tony are part of the founding team of nWay?Taehoon Kim:Yes, the three of us that were the founders [inaudible 00:30:16].Chris Erwin:So I think what would be helpful for the listeners is to explain what was the initial vision for nWay, when you, Dave, and Tony were coming together to found the company. What was your vision for what you wanted to build?Taehoon Kim:By that time, I did a lot of different type of games, did [inaudible 00:30:31] mobile gaming at Samsung, I did MMOs, PC MMOs Unreal Engine 3, and then also browser based games at Pixelberry. And the vision at nWay was like, "Hey, a lot of people are becoming gamers now through new technologies, new devices, mobile was really taking off. People were playing games on mobile browsers, smart TVs, and there was new technologies to bring them all together." So the vision was, "Hey, let's go back to the type of games that we love. Let's go back to the days when we were playing Doom online, and playing fighting games with other live players. Let's bring competitive gaming, let's bring real time multiplier gaming to the emerging platforms." So that was the vision.Let's create new technologies to bring console quality, competitive multiplier games that could run on mobile browsers, smart TVs, where people can kind of play together regardless of what device they were on." That turned out to be a big thing, these days with Fortnite and Minecraft, everybody's playing crossplay games. Your friend is on tablet, somebody else is on a Nintendo Switch, and you can play together.Chris Erwin:Okay, so when you start out, that's the vision. So where do you start? What was the first steps? Is it pre-product, we're going to go raise money, and put together a team? Or in the beginning of it self-finance and you were working on a certain game or a certain platform? What were your first early moves?Taehoon Kim:I took a lot of the learnings from the previous products. So by then I knew how to make games that would run on multiple devices. I knew it wasn't easy, but we wanted to do a quick prototype of an action RPG game, where it can have four player co-op and two player PVP mode that would run on a mobile phone and a browser. We were able to create a quick prototype in about six weeks, and the prototype, it did all the selling for us.Because I could just show it to the investors, "Hey, look, I'm over here. There's another guy on a mobile device, there's another guy on another device." And they could see that we're all synchronized, and they could see that it was a very fast action game. A lot of them were blown away at how there was low latency and running so fast just over the internet. And so we were able to raise money from the top tier VCs. But at the same time, 2011, 2012 was a period of time when there were a lot of acquisitions happening, and we were also getting a lot of acquisition offers at the same time, that complicated the process.Chris Erwin:So six weeks into building a prototype, you're fundraising on Sand Hill Road, but you're also getting inbounds from companies that want to buy your business that early.Taehoon Kim:Yeah. They saw the prototype and immediately give us ridiculous offers to buy the company. It was basically VCs and companies trying to buy us competing, which helped the valuation to go up.Chris Erwin:All right. So a couple questions on that.
Zach Blume — Co-Founder of Portal A on 2006 Web Series, the Wheelhouse Investment, and Building with Your Childhood Friends
Oct 13 2022
Zach Blume — Co-Founder of Portal A on 2006 Web Series, the Wheelhouse Investment, and Building with Your Childhood Friends
This interview features Zach Blume, Co-Founder and President of Portal A.  We discuss how he built a 360 monetization strategy for an early Internet video series, launching one of the first branded content studios with his childhood friends, creating one of the most well-known and longest-running digital formats in YouTube Rewind, how Portal A ended up selling a minority stake to Brett Montgomery's Wheelhouse, why feeling like outsiders is central to their identity, and what's up next for the Portal A team.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.comInterview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to the Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.Zach Blume:We built a business model around it that included merchandise, ad revenue share, ticketed events, and sponsorships. And so we actually ran that show at a profit, even though it was early internet video web series. And the idea was to build an entertainment property on the web that could become multi-season, could eventually travel to TV, which it did. It later became a TV series called White Collar Brawlers. It was super experimental, and I would say, looking back on a fairly innovative for three guys who had really no idea what we were doing and had no training in any of this, we built an entertainment property on the internet that was profitable.Chris Erwin:This week's episode featured Zach Blume, Co-Founder and President of Portal A. So Zach grew up in Berkeley and had a self-described normal suburban life of sports and friends. Zach then went to University of Oregon to study political science and pursued an early career running local political campaigns in California. But an opportune moment reunited Zach, with his two childhood friends to create one of the internet's earliest digital series White Collar Brawlers.After some unexpected success, the friend trio then became the founding team for Portal A, an award-winning digital and branded content company. Some highlights of our chat include his 360 monetization strategy for one of the earliest internet video brands, what it takes to co-found a successful company with your friends, how they landed a strategic investment from Wheelhouse, why feeling like an outsider is central to their identity, and how they're building towards the next massive creator opportunity. All right, let's get to it. Zach, thanks for being on the Come Up podcast.Zach Blume:It's a pleasure to be here.Chris Erwin:From our conversation yesterday, amazingly, I believe this is your first podcast interview ever. Is that right?Zach Blume:It's true. A lot of interviews over the years. Some predating the podcast era, some during the podcast era, but I'm honored to be invited onto yours. I've listened to a bunch of episodes, and we'll see how it goes.Chris Erwin:Awesome. All right, so as is typical, let's rewind a bit before we get into the whole Portal A story, although it actually starts pretty early on. So why don't you tell us about where you grew up and what your childhood was like?Zach Blume:Yeah, I grew up in Berkeley, California, the son of two die-hard New Yorkers who had moved out to California. My dad was born in the Bronx. My mom was from Manhattan. They were part of the New York exodus to California, and I was the first kid in my family who grew up in California and, of all places, Berkeley, childhood filled with lots of sports and playing in the street and all that good stuff. And the really interesting tie to the Portal A story, obviously, is that I met my two co-founders when we were somewhere between four and five years old. The stories differ, but we met in kindergarten, and we're close friends basically since we were little kids and played a lot of basketball together growing up. And the court that we played basketball in was called Portal A, which eventually became the name of our company 25 years later. The founder story of Portal A is very tied up in the childhood story of all for all three of us. I live in Oakland now, so I didn't stray too far from home.Chris Erwin:Got it. I remember in doing a little bit of research for this episode, I was trying to look up Portal A parks around the US, and I kept finding some in Orange County, so I thought you were an NorC kid, but No, you're a NorCal kid.Zach Blume:I mean, I think if there's an opposite of Orange County, it would probably be Berkeley.Chris Erwin:That's probably right.Zach Blume:But the court was actually an El Cerrito, which is an adjacent town to Berkeley, and it still exists. It's still around, and we should probably go play some hoops over there, but we haven't for years.Chris Erwin:Yeah, that'd be fun. So I have to ask, what did your parents do?Zach Blume:My dad has a business background. He runs and, up until actually six months ago, ran an investment advisory firm helping individuals manage their investments. It was a small company, five to six employees, just a great business, really community based, all about relationships and helping people manage their life and their money. And yeah, it's taught me a lot about business growing up, for sure.My mom was a therapist. She's retired now. She was a private practice in Berkeley. They've known each other since they were 20. They actually both went to the Wright Institute, which was a psychology graduate school in Berkeley. My dad was a psychologist briefly for about six months before he went back into business. And my mom was a therapist for 25 years. It was an interesting mix of business and psychology growing up, for sure.Chris Erwin:Got it. And were there any siblings?Zach Blume:No siblings? I'm the only one and-Chris Erwin:Oh, only child. Okay.Zach Blume:Yeah, interestingly, five of my closest friends, all groomsmen at my wedding, were from that same kindergarten class where I met Nate and Kai, my two co-founders. So there's definitely been a brotherly nature of those relationships. And at this point, I kind of consider Nate and Kai almost like brothers. We've known each other for 35 years, and we've been in business together for over 12 years, so it's pretty deep. Those relationships run pretty deep.Chris Erwin:Was there a part of you early on where you thought you might go into business and finance or become an investment manager like your father?Zach Blume:So there was also a lot of political kind of conversation and learning in my house. I remember from a very early age, my dad, when I was like eight, he would try to sit me down and read the Sunday Weekend Review in the New York Times. And it was like torture for me. But I think it got in there somewhere.In college, I actually studied political science and, for years, worked in the political world after I graduated from school. And I really thought that was my path, and it was for many years. I worked on campaigns. I started managing campaigns. I worked for political communication shop in San Francisco for years. I kind of burned out on the world of politics. I've since been re-engaged in a lot of different ways. But when I burned out on politics, that's when I thought I was going to go into business.I left the political world, was studying to go to business school, doing all the GMAT prep, and that's when Nate and Kai came to me and said, "We should make a web series together." Because I had a three-month gap, and it sounded so fun. We had made some stuff together just for fun earlier on. And so, while I was studying for the GMAT, I joined Nate and Kai to make this web series in the early days of internet video. And that's kind of the origin story of where we are today is that that web series, it was called White Collar Brawler. It was totally weird and crazy and awesome, and it started us on our journey to where we are today.Chris Erwin:Got it. So going back even a bit further, I'm just curious because you met your co-founders, Nate and Kai, back when you were in kindergarten, as you said, four to five years old, when you were in middle school, or when you in high school, were you guys part of the theater club? Were you creating any types of videos for your classes? There's something about meeting people early in your childhood, particularly in digital media, that I think blossoms into different relationships. So was there any kind of through line early on where you were interested in media entertainment before getting into PoliSci, which as part of your early career?Zach Blume:Yeah, I think there definitely was for Nate and Kai. There was less so for me. So Nate and Kai started making, maybe not in high school, but in their college years, they both went to school on the East Coast. This is like 2003, 2004, 2005. They started making internet, video, and web series when they were in college. And Kai was a film major, so he had some training, and they started just playing a lot of comedic stuff earliest day pre-YouTube, so quick time player-type stuff.So yeah, high school, I'm not so sure college for sure for them, at least it started building. And then, right after college, the three of us, plus another friend, grabbed a flight to Hanoi, bought motorcycles in Vietnam, and traveled across the country, and we made a web series called Huge In Asia.So it was like a 30-episode comedy travel web series, kind of just chronicling our journey across Vietnam. And then, they went on, I had to come back to the States for some work, but they went on to Mongolia, China, Laos, all sorts of different countries across Asia. That's where it really started for us the idea that you could not be in the formal, either entertainment industry or advertising industry. You could buy a pretty shitty camera, have an idea, start producing content and build an audience. And that was 2006. So the interest in internet video as a medium really started there.Then we all went our separate ways, and all did kind of normal early career professional stuff, but that Huge in Asia as an idea and an adventure was really the starting point for us. So yeah, so I would say the interest in video and film and just the distribution of it online started college years, and then the year after, we went to Asia.Chris Erwin:Got it. So just to add some context here, because I think YouTube was founded around 2004, and then it was bought by Google around '05, '06 pretty shortly after founding. So when you're coming out of college, I think this is around a 2006 timeframe, as you noted, when you guys decided to go to Asia and to do this motorcycle tour, was there a goal of, "Hey, there's an explosion in internet video, we have a chance to build an audience and make money off of this?" Or was it just, "Hey, this seems like a really fun thing to do. We're just coming out of college, we're kind of this in this exploratory phase, we like spending time with one another, let's go do this and see what happens." When you were thinking from the beginning, what was the end goal of that project?Zach Blume:Much more the latter. I mean, it was purely experimental. It was all about the adventure. I think there was a sense that we were at the dawn of something new, and I think that YouTube, Vimeo, I mean all the other platforms in the investment of history at this point, but there was an explosion of internet video technology that was enabling people like us to start making stuff. So I think there was like a sense that something was happening. It definitely was not a money-making endeavor. In fact, it was the opposite. And it was really just to experiment and play and see where it took us.Looking back on it, 15 years later, 18 years later, whatever it is, I think it's 100% served its purpose. We got our feet wet. We started experimenting. We started learning what worked, what didn't work, what audiences responded to, what made us happy. It kind of gelled our relationship as young adults versus as kids. And we never would've known at the time, but it did 100% lead to Portal A, and that's to where we are now.Chris Erwin:Okay, yeah, I hear you. I think, looking back in retrospect, it was definitely a catalyst to the forming of Portal A and where you got to where you are today, but it wasn't because when you came back from that trip, it wasn't like, "Oh, let's found Portal A and let's get going." You actually entered into the political realm for two to three years before founding Portal A, right?Zach Blume:Yep. That was always my plan, and that was the career I was going to pursue for sure.Chris Erwin:So, but the seed had been planted, but yeah, in '06, for the next two years, you become a political campaign manager. What campaigns were you working on?Zach Blume:First campaign was a Congressional campaign in Southern California. That was actually my first job out of college. We got trounced by 22 points in a very heavily Republican district by Mary Bono, who was Sonny Bono's widow. We had a candidate that we really liked, and it was the 2006 election, so it was kind of the midway point or the later stages of, I guess, Bush's first term. And there was a ground swell of just whenever there's a presidential election, two years later, the other party is the one that's like kind of getting their grassroots organizing on.So it was definitely an exciting time. It was an exciting election year. I happened to work on a campaign that was in a... It was Palm Springs. It was like that area, heavily Republican area, but I learned so much, and I was running a third of the district, and I loved it. I loved organizing. I felt like I was on the right side of history and doing the right thing.That then led to this fellowship that I did called The Coro Fellowship. I met one of my best friends on the campaign who had done the Coro Fellowship, and it was a year-long fellowship in political and public affairs. Everybody listening to this podcast will never have heard of Coro, but in the political and policy world, it's well-known and well-regarded, and that was a great experience. I got exposure across a bunch of different sectors, including government, labor unions, business, nonprofits, et cetera.Out of that, I started managing a campaign for the California State Assembly in Richmond, California, with a candidate, Tony Thurmond, who is now the Superintendent of Public Education in California. So he's gone on to do pretty big things. He's an amazing guy.And that led me to work at Storefront Political Media, which was a political media and communication shop in San Francisco that, at the time, ran all of Gavin Newsom's campaigns. He was then the mayor of San Francisco, obviously, is now the governor of California.I ran the mayor's race in Houston, of all places, elected Annise Parker, who was the first lesbian mayor of a major American city. And she was a fantastic executive out in Houston and then had a bunch of different clients, including firefighters unions, individual candidates. Ultimately, I was working for a client that was leading initiatives that didn't necessarily align with my own political values. And that was part of what led me to say I was ready to move on from the world of politics. So it was a fantastic experience, I learned so much, but that's what kind of prompted me to want to go to business school, which is what I was going to do until Nate and Kai came along and said, "Let's make a web series."Chris Erwin:Yeah. When you were working on these political campaigns and also working with Storefront Political Media, which is a national communication media and PR firm, were you bringing some of your grassroots internet video tactics to help build community, to help build influence and sway some of these elections? Was that part of kind of some of the unique flavor that you brought to these teams?Zach Blume:For sure, I was definitely the internet guy at that shop. I mean, there were a couple of us, there was a couple of coworkers who were of my generation. This was just when kind of Facebook was becoming a powerful tool for communications pre-Instagram, pre all those other platforms we're familiar with now. I definitely brought my expertise in video and the distribution of content online to that work. It was an interesting time politically. It was just at the advent of the internet as a powerful communications tool for campaigns.Chris Erwin:So then you're considering going to business school, you take the GMAT.Zach Blume:I got halfway through the class, and White Collar Brawler, that series, came calling. It was all-consuming. It was so fun. And we produced the hell out of that show, and it got a lot of notoriety. We got a big write-up in the New York Times, like big-Chris Erwin:Give us the context for White Collar Brawler again. What exactly was that project, and what were you supporting?Zach Blume:The log line was basically what happens when you take office workers whose muscles have become dilapidated by sitting in front of a computer all day long and train them to become amateur boxers. It just so happened that the two White Collar workers that were the stars of the show were Nate and Kai. So it was very, kind of like meta, we were the creators, and Nate and Kai were also the stars.The experimental part of it was shooting and producing the series in real-time. So there was an experiential element to the show, meaning as Nate and Kai were training to become boxers, fans of the show could actually come out and train with them, run on the beach in San Francisco or go to a training session with a boxing coach. We had events happening throughout the course of the show. It eventually culminated in an actual fight, a licensed fight in Berkeley between Nate and Kai for the Crown. And we had, I think, 1500 people showed up to that site and paid tickets-Chris Erwin:Was it boxing, mixed martial arts? What was the actual thoughts?Zach Blume:No, just old-school boxing.Chris Erwin:Okay.Zach Blume:It was the real deal. And-Chris Erwin:I may have missed this in the beginning. Who funded this? What was the purpose of it?Zach Blume:It was partially self-funded. It was partially funded by a friend of ours who had sold, in the early internet days, had sold his tech company to Google in one of the early Google acquisitions. So he just privately financed, I mean, we're not talking about big dollars here, and we built a business model around it that included merchandise, ad revenue share, events, ticketed events, and sponsorships, which I was in charge of in addition to other things.And so we actually ran that show at a profit, even though it was just an early internet video web series. It was actually a profitable property, and the idea was to build an entertainment property on the web that could become multi-season, could eventually travel to TV, which it did. It later became a TV series called White Collar Brawlers. And so it was actually super experimental, and I would say, looking back on it, fairly innovative in terms of for three guys who had really no idea what we were doing and had no training in any of this, we built an entertainment property on the internet that was profitable.Back to the question, I mean, that's what distracted me from going to business school because I felt like, first of all, I was learning so much, I was having so much fun creating content with two friends, and you just had a feeling that we were onto something and we didn't know what that thing was. We thought we were going to be an original entertainment company that would just make shows like White Collar Brawler, but we knew there was something. We knew there was a lot of activity and interest in this space. And so that took up all my attention and then took up my attention for the next 12 years.Chris Erwin:I will say from personal experience it saved you a couple of hundred thousand dollars and a lot of agony of actually taking that test.Zach Blume:Right, exactly.Chris Erwin:And being two years out of the workforce, speaking from personal experience.Zach Blume:Right. I know, I know.Chris Erwin:So, okay. And look, this is interesting to think about how you guys, as a founding team, were gelling and coming together. When you guys started talking, "Let's do this White Collar Brawler show as a team," what was your specific role, Zach? What was it like? What are you going to focus on?Zach Blume:Yeah, I mean, it actually reflects the role that I now play and ended up playing when we turned White Collar Brawler into a business. So Nate and Kai are more on the creative side, the creative and production side, both had experience. They had both actually before me had left their kind of "normal jobs," moved to LA, and started making internet video with a vision for again, "We don't know what it is, but there's something going on here, and we want to be a part of it."They had background as almost as creators themselves and also some training, actually with the physical act of production. So Nate and Kai were always much more on the creative side and the production side. And then my role was kind of capital B business. I was responsible for sponsorships. I was responsible for the operations of the show. I was responsible for where we were going to have office space, all that type of stuff. Basically the business side of creativity, and that's the same today. I mean, it's kind of like, it was just a foreshadow of the roles that we ended up playing as we were growing Portal A. And we've always had a super clear and complementary division of labor.I would say when looking for business partners, I think that might be, I mean, your rapport and your ability to communicate is lots of things are really important, but making sure that each person, each principal has a clear role and that they actually like that role and can succeed in that role is I think one of the keys to business success. So we've always had very clear roles. We've always liked our roles and felt like we belonged where we were. That's how it started with White Collar Brawler.Chris Erwin:That's awesome. Yeah, I have to give you some real kudos because you take very early on in your career, and in the digital entertainment ecosystem, you take an IP concept, and you create a diversified, sustainable business model around it where you have revenue coming in from advertising, sponsorships, merch, ticket sales, that's what many different IP properties want to figure out today. And many struggle to do that.Zach Blume:The only we could've described it back then as well as you described it now, but yes, that's basically what it was.Chris Erwin:Yeah, you look around at one another, you have this culmination in a ticketed event where there's over 1500 people pay to see the fight between Nate and Kai. And so you guys look around at one another and say, "Hey, we got something here." Is the next step? Let's found a business, call it Portal A and start doing this at scale. Or did it kind of just naturally happen, saying, "All right, let's find the next project and see where it goes from there."Zach Blume:It was much more, again, the latter. I mean, we did know that there was something brewing; I gave ourselves, at the very least credit for that. Did not have a business model. We did not have a plan. We had a kind of a concept and an idea and a good partnership. And I think that was really important too, is just how well we worked together.When we came out of White Collar Brawler, we had this idea credit to Kai. I believe we really wanted to do a show about whiskey, that that was going to be our next piece of IP that we wanted to develop and the concept behind the show, again because we didn't want, we were just going to be doing original series built for internet video was basically a distillery tour type show, but with a twist where there would be a membership model involved. And for anybody who was in a... 99% of viewers would just watch the show for the entertainment value, any type of good travel show that built that type of audience. But 1% of viewers would subscribe to the show and get a drum of whiskey. For each distillery that we were visiting as part of the show, they would actually get samples in the mail, and it would be kind of a whiskey of the month model married to an entertainment property.And we were coming out of White Collar Brawlers, we were visiting distilleries, getting drunk, trying to figure out this model. And we were super hyped on it. We thought it was a really interesting way to monetize internet video through subscriptions. And we even got into the logistics of shipping, and we were really going down that path, and in the meantime, we were broke, we were like 25 years old and-Chris Erwin:That was my next question. How are you funding all of this?Zach Blume:Well, we paid ourselves an extremely nominal salary. I would call it a stipend when we were making White Collar Brawler enough to survive. And then, coming out of that, we were trying to do our whiskey show, but that stipend went away. So we were without income, really. I mean, I remember going to Bank of America at some point, and there was so little... This is one of our funny stories that we tell each other. I remember this parking lot moment where the three of us had gone to Bank of America, where we had this White Collar Brawler account, or maybe it's a Portal A account. I'm not sure. And there was, I think, less than $1000 in there, and it was one of those like, oh, shit-type moments, and I remember going out to the parking lot and being like to Nate and Kai because I was always kind of the rah-rah guy of the three of us. And just, I remember basically having to give a motivational speech about that we were going to be okay, that this is going to be okay, despite the fact that we had absolutely zero money in the bank.That was where we were at that point. We were trying to figure out this whiskey idea, and then all of a sudden, because of the popularity of White Collar Brawler and some big YouTube videos we had made to promote the series, we started getting some inbound interest from brands. And that was never in the plan. We would think about sponsorships on our original series from brands, but never creative service worked directly to brands, and our first phone call was-Chris Erwin:Explain that difference for the listeners. I think that's a good nuance.Zach Blume:Yeah, I mean, if there was a business model, the business model we were considering was building properties like White Collar Brawler that could be sponsored by, in the best-case scenario, Nike or by Everlast, the boxing company, or by Gatorade or that's who we were pursuing for what-Chris Erwin:So think of title cards and brought to you by et cetera.Zach Blume:Exactly. Or like sponsoring events or merchandise or all that type of stuff. And we had some success, not from the big brands, but we had some success on White Collar Brawler with sponsorships from more regional brands, or like there were some beer companies and some smaller merchandising startups that were part of the sponsorship mix.I will say that we sent out about 500 to 1000 sponsorship emails and got about five sponsors. So we worked hard at it. And so that was the model we were going to pursue even for something like the whiskey show. We were going to look for sponsors and brand sponsors in that way. We never thought we were going to build a creative services company, meaning brands, an advertising company effectively, like brands hiring us as a service provider to create content. That was never, ever something we thought about.We started getting these phone calls. I remember being in a car one time, and I got this random call from a number I did not know, and it turned out to be a marketing manager at the Gap. Her name was Sue Kwon. Shout out, Sue Kwon, if you're out there. She was our first real client after White Collar Brawler. And we started making videos for the Gap, as kind of like a little agency production company.Then we got some more calls. There was a Tequila company that wanted us to make a web series called Tres Agaves Tequila. They wanted us to make a web series shot in Mexico about the origins of Tequila. Then we got a call from Jawbone, which was a hot Bluetooth speaker company at the time-based in the Bay Area. They wanted us to make a music video featuring a bunch of early YouTube influencers or creators.So we started getting these, we called them gigs at the time because literally all we were trying to do is pay our rent and so we could make the whiskey shows. We were just trying to get a little bit of income coming in so we could actually go out and make our dream whiskey show. And there were fun projects, and we weren't making advertising. We were making content, and that was a big difference for us. We weren't making pre-roll ads or 30-second ads. We were making web series for brands and music videos for brands and all that type of stuff. And without knowing it, we kind of stumbled across an area that was in high demand, which was brands trying to figure out what to do on platforms like YouTube and social media with video. We had established ourselves as understanding that world.So that's the origin of our branded content business which became the core of our business for many, many years was just one-off phone calls, unexpected phone calls, taking projects as gigs to pay the bills, and just kind of doing our best and seeing where it led.Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of the Come Up. I have a quick ask for you if you dig what we're putting down. If you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show, it helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody. Let's get back to the interview.What was the moment where you felt it evolved from, "Hey, it's the three of us rotating between gigs, hiring freelancers as need be, to what became a business, which is called a systematized and efficient way to deliver consistent quality around a good or service."Zach Blume:I think the first year was the gig model. It was just a patchwork of projects in order to generate some form of income. The second year it started to feel real. There started to be a fairly steady flow of inbound interests, and then a kind of something we be started to become known for a type of content. It was kind of humorous, entertaining, felt like it was native to the internet and to YouTube.I think in that second year was when it started to feel like a business, and then some light clicked for me that we actually needed to do some business planning and thinking, and I had no idea what I was doing. I mean zero, negative. Negative idea what I was doing. But I had grown up where my dad was a small business owner, so I had some exposure, but I just remember being it was just like a vast sea of unknown principles and requirements that I had to navigate.Chris Erwin:How did you figure that out? Did you put together an advisory board? Did you call your dad? Were you calling some other friends in business?Zach Blume:One of our earliest advisors was not a business advisor. He was our sensei in some forms in the earliest days. And this is another shout-out to Steve Wolf, who you may know, who was on the executive team of Blip, which was one of those many early internet video platforms. He really helped us understand the space.We did not have a formal advisory board. We did not have a board. And it was truly trial and error. That's the best way I can describe it. It was just using our brains and figuring things out through mistakes and successes. It is a total blur looking back on it, but I think we were a good partnership. We had our heads screwed on straight, and we kind of learned how to operate.Chris Erwin:Another important part, too, is, like you said, when you all looked at your bank account, and everyone's face went white, but you were the rah-rah guy, which is like, "Hey, guys, we're going to figure this out. Where there's a will, there's a way." And I think that's a very important role. Shout to Steve Wolf. He was one of the execs that oversaw the AwesomenessTV network when I was there in 2014, 2015 timeframe. Super sharp guy, OG in the digital space. So not surprised to hear that he was a valuable advisor to you.All right, so then I think there's another pretty big moment where your business takes an even bigger step up. And I think this has to do with becoming the official partner for the YouTube Rewind project. The moment where you felt, "Okay, we're really onto something here."Zach Blume:Yeah, it was coincidental. We were introduced to somebody at YouTube in 2011 as a three-person team that was making internet video content and mostly on YouTube. And Rewind was just a twinkle of an idea. I mean, it was like there was a minor budget. It was basically a countdown of the top videos of the year. The budget was, I think, $20,000 in the first year to make Rewind. And we shot it in a small studio location. It was one of our earliest projects, and it was before Rewind became Rewind, the big thing that many of us are familiar with. It was a major validator for us to start working with YouTube directly as a client. And Rewind eventually became a project that defined our growth for many, many years to come. But it started very, very small.Chris Erwin:From that project. You've been around for now for 12 years, being founded around 2010. What did the growth in scaling part of your business looks like? With YouTube Rewind and other marquee projects, you're starting to get a sense of what are we actually building towards. Was there a point of view there or like, "Hey, we have inbound interests, we're working with brands and advertisers," all of a sudden we're working with publishers, and were you just kind of being more reactive or was it a mix of being reactive and proactive?Zach Blume:The best analogy I can draw is to kind of riding a wave. This may resonate with you, but I don't think we knew what was around the next corner or what the next thing was going to look like. We were just building momentum in those early years and taking each project as it came. We knew we had something. We knew we had a good partnership. We knew we were starting to bring some really interesting, smart people to the team, clients that were really willing to push some boundaries. And I was learning as I went along how to run a business, and Kai was learning, and Nate was learning how to create amazing content, and there was not a lot of foresight. It was mostly about riding a wave and seeing where the wave took us. Then doing a really good job. That was really important because every project, the success or not success for the project kind of dictated what the next chapter was going to look like.So we just focused on trying to build some good fundamentals for the business, trying to make sure we were profitable because we had to be and just making work that we were proud of. That's the extent of our planning, I think, was just what did the next three months look like and how do we keep riding this wave?Chris Erwin:Yeah, and that's something I think worth emphasizing for the listeners where it's, so often people will say you have to be super strategic in planning every single move and where is their white space and how are you going to beat out your competitors to get it? But I think when you are building a small business, and this is something that I reeducate myself on consistently with RockWater, it's really about the basics, which is know your core service offering and nail it and delight clients, from there, that's really the core foundation from where you grow and where other things can emerge. And I think that's a testament to really what you guys have done for well over a decade is you know your lane, and you operate so effectively within it that is now, over the past few years, created some other really exciting opportunities for you, your success in your lane led to the investment by Wheelhouse a couple of years back. So how did that come to be? Because I think that's a pretty big moment for the company.Zach Blume:That fast-forward a bit over years of misery and happiness and everything in between. We threw ourselves entirely into growing Portal A for the bulk of our 20s. It was all-encompassing, tons of sacrifices that were made to other parts of our lives, which I'm okay with looking back. I do think that 20s are a good time to throw yourself and just be completely focused and passionate about something like this. And we built that branded business. We diversified the type of clients we were working with. Projects got bigger and bigger, Rewind got bigger, and all the rest of our projects got bigger.Starting around 2016, we wanted very badly to return to the original thesis of Portal A, which was creating an original entertainment properties for the web. That's where it all started. And we had spent so many years working with brands, and it was fantastic, and it was a good business, and we got to make really cool stuff. But we had this hunger to return to
Camila Victoriano — Founder of Sonoro on Building LA Times Studios, Latinx Podcast Innovation, and Following the Story VS the Medium
Sep 15 2022
Camila Victoriano — Founder of Sonoro on Building LA Times Studios, Latinx Podcast Innovation, and Following the Story VS the Medium
This interview features Camila Victoriano, Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships at Sonoro.  We discuss how fan fiction taught her to see nerds as heroes, being in the room when Dirty John was pitched to become a podcast, her crash course to figure out the business of podcasting, becoming a first time founder during COVID, why the Mexico audio market is like the US four years ago, Sonoro's growth to a global entertainment company, and why there are no limits to Latino stories.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.comInterview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.Camila Victoriano:So in 2017, we had a meeting with the editor in chief at the time, and he was like, let me sit you guys down and read you this out loud. And it was what would become Dirty John. That's when we realized there's something here that I think could be our first big swing in audio and in podcasting. And we got to talking and at that point we were like, I think we can do something here. And I think there's a story here to be told in audio. When it launched, it took us all by surprise with how well it did. Obviously we knew it was a good story, but I think you never know when something's going to be that much of a hit. Today, it probably has over 80 million downloads.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Camila Victoriano, co-founder and head of partnerships at Sonoro. So Camila grew up in Miami as a self-described nerd with a passion for books and fan fiction. She then went to Harvard to study English, literature and history, which led to her early career, starting at the LA Times. While there, she became a founding member of their studios division and a “audio champion”. Then in 2020, she went on to co-found Sonoro, a global entertainment company focused on creating premium, culturally relevant content that starts in audio and comes alive in TV, film and beyond.Sonoro collaborates with leading and emerging Latinx storytellers from over a dozen countries to develop original franchises in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Some highlights of our chat include how fan fiction taught her to see nerds as heroes being in the room when Dirty John was pitched to become a podcast, her crash course to figure out the business of podcasting, becoming a first time founder during COVID, why the Mexico audio market is like the US four years ago and why there are no limits to Latino stories. All right, let's get to it. Camila, thanks for being on the podcast.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.Chris Erwin:For sure. So let's rewind a bit and I think it'd be helpful to hear about where you grew up in Miami and what your household was like. Tell us about that.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. So I grew up in Miami, Florida, very proud and loud Latino community, which I was very lucky to be a part of, in the Coral Gables Pinecrest area for those that know Miami and my household was great. My dad, he worked in shipping with South America. My mom was a stay at home mom. And so really as most kids of immigrants, I had obviously parents I loved and looked up to, but it was very different than folks that maybe have parents that grew up in America and knew the ins and outs of the job market and schools and things like that. But really great household, really always pushing me to be ambitious and to reach for the stars. So I was, yeah, just lucky to have parents always that were super supportive. Questioned a little bit, the English major, that path that I chose to go on, but we're generally really happy and really supportive with everything that I pursued.Chris Erwin:Yeah. And where did your parents immigrate from?Camila Victoriano:My mom is Peruvian and my dad was Chilean.Chris Erwin:I have been to both countries to surf. I was in Lobitos in I think Northern Peru and I was also in Pichilemu in Chile and yeah, just absolutely beautiful countries. Great food, great culture. So do you visit those countries often?Camila Victoriano:I visited Chile once, much to the chagrin of my father, but Peru, I visited so many times and yeah, they both have incredible food, incredible wine. So you can't really go wrong. I did Machu Picchu and Cusco, and that sort of trip with my mom once I graduated college, which is really great just to go back and be a tourist in our country, but they're both beautiful and yeah, I love going back.Chris Erwin:Oh, that's awesome. All right. So growing up in your household, what were some of your early passions and interests? I know yesterday we talked about that you had an early interest in storytelling, but in some more traditional forms dating back to the ‘90s, but yeah. Tell us about that. What were you into?Camila Victoriano:I was always a huge reader. It's funny because my parents read, but not super frequently. My grandparents were big readers, but I always, always gravitated towards books. I remember, like many people of my generation when I was six, I read the first Harry Potter book and that was just mind blowing for me and I think...Chris Erwin:At six years old? Because I think I learned to read at like five.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. I had help with my mom a little bit but I remember we read it together and we would just mark with a crayon every time where we ended on the page. But I remember that book was like, I think when I first really understood how detailed and how enveloping worlds could be. And I think starting from that point, I just went full on into fantasy, YA, all sorts of books. I was just reading obsessively. It also helped that I was a classic nerd in middle school and high school and all throughout childhood, really. So I think for me, books, literature stories were just a way to see the world, see people like me, a lot of times in fantasy books or in sci-fi books in particular, you have the nerds as heroes.And so I think for me, that was a big part of why I gravitated to those genres in particular. But yeah, I just read all the time and then I did light gaming. So I played the Sims, again, similar idea though. You're world building. You're living vicariously through these avatars, but that was really how I spent most of my time, I obviously played outside a little bit too, but I was a big indoor reader always.Chris Erwin:Got it. This is interesting because the last interview I just did was with Adam Reimer, the CEO of Optic Gaming, and we talked a lot, he was born in the late ‘70s. So he was like a 1980s self described internet nerd as he says, before being a nerd was cool. So he was going to web meetups at bowling alleys when he was just a young teenager. Over through line with you because he was in Fort Lauderdale and you grew up in Miami. So two Florida nerds.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. Nerds unite. I love it.Chris Erwin:Nerds unite. You also mentioned that you also got into fan fiction. Were you writing fan fiction? Were you consuming it? Was it a mix of both?Camila Victoriano:A mix of both. So that's really in middle school in particular, how I really bonded with my small group of friends. I remember my best friend and I, we connected, we were on the bus reading a Harry Potter fanfiction on at that point it was fanfiction.net. And that is also again, similarly because in person with people, it was just like, we weren't really connecting that much. And so that community online was huge for me and my friend. We read all the time, people had comments, you had editors that you worked with and we wrote them ourselves too. And I think, looking back in the retrospective for me, that's where I think I first started to realize the potential of world building really in storytelling and in media and entertainment. It’s like, it didn't stop with the canon text. You could really expand beyond that.We loved telling stories about Harry Potter's parents and how they would go to Hogwarts, like super in the weeds, deep fandom. I don't know. I think for me that was just a real eye opener too, of like, oh, there's a whole online community. And I don't think at that point I was really thinking business. But I think for me, that's where I started to redirect my focus much more seriously too of, oh, this isn't just like, oh, I like books for fun. There's people all around the world that are incredibly passionate and spending hours upon hours of time, oftentimes after hours of school to just write and to really immerse themselves in these universes. And I remember writing them and reading them, just realizing how badly I wanted to be a part of creating things that caused the same feeling. And so for me, that was huge in that respect too.Chris Erwin:Well, thinking about fanfiction, literally there are now companies and platforms that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars that foster fanfiction, the communities around them. I think of Wattpad where you have film studios and TV studios, and a lot of the streamers that are now optioning IP from these fanfiction communities to make into long form premium content. Pretty incredible to see. So you go to high school and then you end up going to Harvard. I think you end up becoming an English major at Harvard. Was that always the intent from when you were in high school, it's like, yes, I'm going to go and get an English degree? What were you thinking? How did you want to spend your time in college? And then how did that evolve after you went?Camila Victoriano:I was typical good student in high school, right, but I think the older I got, the more I realized, oh no, my passion really lies in my English classes, my history classes. Obviously, I think math, once I got to calculus, I was like, all right, this might not be for me. And then science never really gravitated towards, so for me, it was always very clear that even though I tended to be a generalist in many things, my passion and my heart really was in writing and reading and stories and in history too, in the real world and how they intersected and how they affected each other. And so I remember when I was applying to schools again, my parents were like, are you sure you want to do English?Because for them, it was in Latin America, many of the schools don't have that many practical degrees like that. You pick something a bit more technical. So I remember I would tell them, oh yeah, don't worry. I'm going to do English, but I'm going to minor in economics, which never happened. Once I got there, I was like, absolutely not, but that's what I would tell them because I was like, oh no, I'm going to be an English major, but I'm going to have some business acumen to go with it. And I think at that point when I was going into college and applying to schools, what I wanted to do was go into book publishing. And I really wanted to, I remember I had seen that Sandra Bullock movie, the proposal where she's an editor and I was like, that's what I want to do. And so at that point I was talking to, we have this really awesome local bookstore in Miami called Books and Books.And I went and met with the owner, Mitchell Kaplan had a conversation with him. And I remember I told him I wanted to get into books. I wanted to get into publishing. And he's like, look, you're young, you're getting into college. I run a bookstore, but I would tell you, don't worry so much about the medium, just follow the content where the content's going. And that was a huge eye opener. Even though it seems now obvious to, sitting here saying that, I think for me at that age where I was, so it's easy to get one track mind of like, this is what I want to do, and there's nothing else, to get that advice from someone who was running a place that I loved and went to so frequently growing up.And I think that for me, gave me a bit more flexibility going into college, just saying, okay, let's see where I gravitate towards. I know I want to do something creative. I know I want to still study English, but maybe he's right and I don't have to just stick to publishing. So when I got into Harvard I still, again, focused my classes, really liberal arts, right, like film classes, history classes. But I was a bit more, when I got there, unclear of what that would actually lead to in an exciting way, I think. But that was probably a really great piece of advice that affected how I thought about what would come next after Harvard.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So following that thread, I really love that advice of, don't worry about the medium, just follow the content. Clearly I think that really influenced a later decision that you made about doubling down on audio. But before we get there, in terms of following the content, at Harvard, it seems like you dabbled in a few different things where you did an internship with the LA Times, which is maybe news and journalistic reporting. You're also a staff writer for the Harvard political review. So what did following the content look like for you when you were at school?Camila Victoriano:So Harvard can be a really overwhelming place. My mom had gone to college, my dad hadn't finished. So it was a semi first gen college experience where I was like, whoa, once I got there. It was incredibly, the first semester and a half were really, really overwhelming. And I had to get my bearings a little bit, but I think once I got there I tried to dabble in a lot of things. And I think there was literary magazine, there was the Crimson, which is a classic. And then there was a few other organizations like the Harvard Political Review at the Institute of politics. And so I sat in a few things and it's crazy. For people that don't know, once you get there, you still have to apply to these things.You haven't gotten there and then you're done and you're good to go and everything's set up. There's a pretty rigorous application process for most of these clubs, which makes it overwhelming. And so for me, what I ended up finding a home in, in terms of just the community and the way they welcomed you in when you came into the club was the Harvard Political Review. And as one does in college, you get a bit more political, you get a bit more aware of what's going on around you, world politics. And so I think I was in that head space already and wanted to flex a little bit of my writing skills outside of class. And so there I was able to really pitch anything. So I would pitch, I remember like culture pieces about the politics of hipsters, of all things, and then would later do a piece on rhinos that are going extinct.So it was really varied and it allowed me to be free with the things I wanted to write about and explore outside of class and in a super non-judgmental space that was like, yeah, pursue it. And we had all these professors that we had access to, to interview and to talk about these things. So it was just a great place to flex the muscles. But I think mainly my focus in college was building relationships with my friends, if I'm totally honest. I think as someone that's super ambitious and super driven, I was very particular and followed step by step exactly what I needed to do in high school to get into the school I wanted to get to. And then once I was there, I was like, let me enjoy this for a second. Let me meet people and have fun and intermurals and just...Chris Erwin:Wander a bit.Camila Victoriano:Wander a bit, 100%. And I think especially freshman year and sophomore year was very much like let me just wander, take random classes. I took a computer science class, which was a horrible mistake, but just giving myself the opportunity to make mistakes. And I think then by junior, senior year is when I realized, okay, no, I still like this path that I'm going on. I like the storytelling. I like literature. I like writing. Maybe I'm leaning a bit more political. Again, that's why I applied junior year for the LA Times internship because was that through line of, I still want to be in storytelling. I still want to be in media, but now in this college experience and getting into young adulthood, I'm becoming much more aware of the political and socioeconomical world around me. Let me go into media, that's maybe pushing that forward a little bit and a bit more public service.Chris Erwin:Clearly it was a positive experience because I believe that after graduation, you decided to commit to the LA Times full time.Camila Victoriano:Yes.Chris Erwin:And just to go back on a couple of points you noted just about wandering. I think, when I review resumes for people that are applying to my firm, RockWater, my first internship was right before my senior year of college. The summer before senior year. I now look at resumes where people start doing internships literally in high school, and they have six years of working experience before they graduate. It's super impressive. My little brother took a gap year before Harvard and I think that wandering around and figuring out what he likes, what he doesn't like is really valuable. And I always tell people, like my own professional career, I did some things early on that I didn't love, but I learned a lot and it helped shape to where I want to point myself later on. So I think that's really good advice for the listeners here.Camila Victoriano:Absolutely.Chris Erwin:I'm curious, so was there any kind of gap period, or did you just get to work at the LA Times right after you graduated?Camila Victoriano:I went straight into it. I took the summer after college to travel a bit. That's when I went to Cusco with my mom, I went to Columbia. So I went a little bit around Latin America, but other than that, that fall went straight into it. But I think to your point, and again, taking a step back a little bit like freshman summer, I went to study abroad in Paris for the summer. So just again, I had traveled outside the country maybe once or twice, but not a lot. And so for me, that was a really, I was like, let me utilize some of these resources that I have. And so it was, again, that wandering and then the sophomore summer I worked at a literary magazine. So again, going more deep into literature. So I did dabble in a couple things here and there before fully committing, but after graduating pretty much went straight into work.Chris Erwin:And so you get there and are you, again, working in the publisher's office?Camila Victoriano:Working more broadly, for the “business side” of the company, right. So I'm working on business development really broadly. What that started as was how do you diversify revenue streams? How do you develop new projects from the journalism? Basically, what are new ways to make money in a digital space? We pursued projects at this time, and I actually got to see through to fruition because I was there full time, an event series within what was called the festival of books. We developed a new zone focused on digital storytelling. So we brought on VR companies, audio storytelling companies, just thinking about how to expand what the company was putting forward as storytelling, which was cool to me.And also an interesting dynamic for me as someone that loved books to be like, let me throw VR into the mix and into the book festival, but it was really fulfilling, and after pursuing a few different things, developing a couple of platform pitches internally, what really stuck with our team and with me was in 2017, a year into that job, audio as a real business opportunity for the newsroom and for the media company. So in 2017, we had a meeting with the editor in chief at the time and he brought us this story and he was like, let me sit you guys down and read this aloud to you. It was very cinematic, but it was what would become Dirty John.Chris Erwin:The editor in chief read this story out loud to your team?Camila Victoriano:Yes. So just literally, it was a team of me and my boss and that was it. And he was like, let me sit you guys down and read you this out loud. And it was what then Christopher Goffard had the journalist had written as what was going to just be maybe a series online for the paper. And I think that's when we realized like, oh wait, there's something here that I think could be our first big swing in audio and in podcasting. And we got to talking and at that point, Wondery had just gotten started to another podcast company that obviously now sold to Amazon music. And so we met with [Hernan 00:17:57] and the early team there and we were like, I think we can do something here. And I think there's a story here to be told in audio.And so again, a year out of college, I'm there helping put together the production team that would create this massive story or what would become a massive story, we didn't know at the time. And what I was able to do was basically help primarily the launch strategy and help the marketing teams and the sales teams put together what's this actually going to look like when we got this out, there was the first time we had done anything like that. And so it was a pretty wild experience. And then of course when it launched, it took us all by surprise with how well it did. Obviously we knew it was a good story, but I think you never know when something's going to be that much of a hit. And I think today it probably has over 80 million downloads and it's been adapted both scripted and unscripted on Bravo and oxygen and had a season two ordered on Bravo.So it was a crazy experience. And I think for me, it was just like the ding ding ding of, oh, hey, remember what Mitchell told you in high school? Which was, follow the content, not necessarily the medium. And for me I had never really explored audio at that time. My parents were not people that listened to public radio in the car. That was not something I grew up with or that environment. So that was really my first entry point into audio and into podcasting. And as I started to dig into it more, I remember I was such a late listener to Serial and to S town. And I was like, oh my God, this is unreal and something that I've never heard of. I've never heard anything like this before. I probably never read anything like this before. And so I remember I asked my boss at the time, I was like, can I do this full time? I was like, can I just work on building out this audio division and this team? And I think at that point, luckily because Dirty John had been such a huge success, everyone was like, yeah, this is worth doing in a more serious way.Chris Erwin:Before we expand on that, this is a pretty incredible story. So you are in the room as your editor in chief is reading you the Dirty John story. So just remind me, with Dirty John, it was initially just a story. It wasn't like, oh, hey, we created this because we want to make this into an audio series or anything else. It was just, hey, Camila, you're looking at different ways to diversify revenue for the company, looking at different mediums for our content. Here seems to be a pretty incredible story. And was your editor in chief recommending that you make it into a podcast or is that something that came up in the room in real time?Camila Victoriano:No, I think he had already been thinking of it and that's to his credit. Right. And he was like, I think this might be it. And how do we get this done? And then I think Chris Goffard in particular is a great journalist. And he writes these amazing, more feature length pieces. And so his style of storytelling really lended itself to that as opposed to a breaking news reporter. And so he had already thought when he got the piece, this might be a good podcast or it might be our good first podcast. And I think he brought us in because we were the R&D crew of two that existed in the organization to really help make it happen. And so again, once we connected with the Wondery team and put the LA Times team together, it was a match made in heaven, I think. And it worked really, really well.Chris Erwin:It seems like you went right to Hernan and the Wondery team, were you like, hey, we should talk to some of the other audio and radio companies that are out there, or did you just go straight to Wondery?Camila Victoriano:We just went straight to them. And to be honest, I think that was something else our editors suggested. And I think to be honest, it did end up working really well because I think, we were coming from a very journalistic perspective and that's where I started to learn a bit more of the different ways to tell stories in audio, right. Start very character driven, really narrative as if you're making a movie. And so I think that it was a great match honestly, and I don't think we may have maybe looked at other things here and there, but it felt like a good fit right off the bat.Chris Erwin:You said you were working on the marketing strategy and the launch, right, of the series. Do you think there was any special things that you guys did? Obviously it's incredible story and it really resonated with audiences at scale, but were there any initial marketing tactics or buzz that really helped tip that into the mainstream?Camila Victoriano:I think what we decided to do, which was perhaps different than how some podcasts had been marketed before, because till then it had really been public radio driven, was I forget who said this, but it was basically like let's market this as if it was a movie or what would we do if we were launching a film? And so we really went all out in splashing our newspaper with these beautiful full page spreads. We were the LA paper, and so we had all this FYC, for your consideration advertising that would, you'd see those spreads for movies all the time. And so we were like, why don't we just make one of our own? And so it was a full team effort with the designers, the marketing team, me and my boss at the time and just putting together this plan where we really went all out.And I think that definitely caught the attention of our subscribers, which obviously were the first touch point to this story. And we did similar things online where we had, what's called a homepage takeover where basically everywhere you look online, you're seeing advertisements for Dirty John for this story. And so we had newsletters and I think a lot of that 360 approach to promoting it online, in print, although that's not as common, but on social newsletters and really just hitting all the touch points is something that definitely I have taken with me in my career. And I think is also just becoming much more common across podcasting as we launch and others launch more narrative nonfiction, fiction series, that sort of thing where they're becoming really entertainment franchises beyond just a really great maybe non-fiction or reported story. But I think absolutely the way we thought about marketing it helped to change the way that our subscribers and then the listeners that came in through more word of mouth, saw the show and understood it for, oh no, this is entertainment. It's journalism driven, but it's entertainment.Chris Erwin:It's a really good note because an increasing challenge for any content creators or content market is how do you stand out through the noise? There is more content across more mediums today than ever before. And so how do you really cut through the noise, drive mass awareness, but also be focused and really go after a niche community as well? It's not an easy formula. Sorry. I wanted to go a little bit back in time, but that was really helpful context. But then to the point where you said, okay, you're talking to your boss, your leadership. And you're like, I think there's something really big here in audio. I want to focus my efforts here full time. I also think this is interesting Camila, because when we were talking yesterday, you said that you took an atypical path in some ways where you followed the content, you followed your passions.It wasn't like, I'm going to go to school. And then I'm also going to get a dual computer science degree or economics or some quantitative math. And then I'm going to go do two years at McKinsey or an investment bank. And I think you following your heart it then puts you into these serendipitous moments, like being in the room when your editor in chief comes with Dirty John, and then you're like, hey, I've been working on these passion projects. I think there's something to do here in audio, let's go forth together. And then you just happen to be in the room at these incredible moments and then you're raising your hand for where your heart is telling you to go. And it's obviously put you on an incredible path, which we're going to talk more about. That's something that I'm just taking away here from hearing your story.Camila Victoriano:Thanks. That's a great way to put it. It's following my gut a little bit, and I think it just goes back to again, how I was raised and I think my parents were always, there's this funny saying in Spanish, [foreign language 00:25:29], which is like, if you don't cry, you don't get fed, basically. And so I took that to heart and like, yeah, I have a passion. And I think that part of me, the inclination is like, oh, if I work really hard, it'll get noticed. But sometimes it is like, no, you have to really actively say it out loud. And I think sometimes for people that are younger, like I was the youngest by like 10 years in a lot of the spaces I've been in, it's hard sometimes to do that and to raise your hand and say, I want this. But I think when I really felt that I did it and I think it's something I've just been working on in general.Chris Erwin:So you raise your hand and you say that you want to focus on what you perceive as a big audio opportunity for the LA Times. What does that look like for next steps?Camila Victoriano:Really, what that meant was I was the only person working full time on the business side, on this project, which was daunting, but also great because I got to have different touchpoints with all the teams. And so for me, it really became, how do I build essentially a mini startup within this legacy organization and how do we make something that moves quickly and can be nimble and can be experimental in an organization that, as I said earlier is nearly 140 years old at this point? So it was really exciting and really daunting. And so what I did first and foremost was figure out a good cadence to meet with my colleagues in the newsroom. And what it allowed me to do was really focus on offering them insight into the content that was really working well in the space that perhaps is maybe a bit more data driven, I would say.I was really looking at what was working well and also working with our data and product teams to see what were the types of stories that listeners or in our case, readers were gravitating towards and offering that insight to the journalist and to the editors and really working hand in hand with them to figure out based on that, what were they excited about turning into audio or what were they excited about putting resources behind? And so I was focusing a lot on content strategy in the very beginning of how do we follow up this phenomenon, which was also, I think for everyone, you have this huge hit, you want the sequel to be just as good.Chris Erwin:And to be clear. So the data that you're looking at is both in terms of the content that the LA Times is putting out. Like your articles, I'm not sure if you were also doing video as well, looking at who's consuming that, how often are they consuming it, is that type of content performing well relative to other content? In addition, looking at metrics for just podcasting overall, what genres are performing well, what do the formats look like? Is it short form or long form audio? So you are taking that for your own understanding and then educating a lot of the writers and the journalists in the newsroom. Because then when you put that information together, better ideas can start to germinate within your business. Is that right?Camila Victoriano:Absolutely. Yeah. And then what they would be able to offer me was insight sometimes into maybe investigations they were conducting, or they would be able to tell me, yeah, that is a great story, but maybe the sources aren't going to speak on audio. So it was a really wonderful collaboration between the business side and the newsroom in a way that was really organic and really respected the work that they were doing, but also offered them a bit of insight into, hey, we're exploring this new thing together. Here's how we might do it in the best way. And so I was doing a lot of that in a lot of that more high level content strategy, basically to guide the editors into figuring out what might come next. And then also just doing everything else, basically that the journalists weren't doing, right, or that they couldn't do because they were busy reporting amazing stories, which was building on an actual business model for what this might look like, which was difficult, because it was very early days and our sales team had never sold a podcast before.They had sold digital, had sold print, had sold events. And also marketing is like, how do we replicate what we did with Dirty John in a way that was sustainable and in a way that, how do we replicate that by tracking what actually worked well from that experience? Right? Because we could always splash all of our pages and flash all of our online presence with images and with links to the show, but figuring out how to basically make a report of what actually worked to drive listeners. And so it was a lot of in the very beginning, trying to digest and figure out what are the things that we could replicate and what is the “formula” that worked in Dirty John and others. Some of the stuff is hard to quantify and you can't measure, but trying to measure as much as I could to be able to build out a plan for, okay, we think we can make this many more shows and they have to hit these particular metrics. And I was doing a little bit of everything. Literally, like I said, my sales team or the sales team at the LA Times, they had never sold podcasts before. So I was literally calling podcast agencies and selling ads.Chris Erwin:You were selling ads yourself?Camila Victoriano:Yeah, I was. I remember I called ad results. We were doing a show about Bill Cosby, which is not an easy subject to pitch to sales, but I was getting on the phone, calling people and selling ads into the show. So it was really scrappy.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So essentially a one person team where you're creating the vision and the business plan and then also executing against it as well. That's a lot. Did you have a mandate from your leadership, which is like, hey Camila, we believe in your vision here, but we want within one year we expect like X amount of revenue or within three months. Come with a clear business plan and how much capital you need to grow it and then we're going to green light it. What were the expectations from your boss?Camila Victoriano:Yeah. It wasn't anything that specific to be honest, I think mainly the main mandate very broadly was like, Hey, this needs to make money after a certain point. Right. And it can't go on for so long of just, because a lot of people while making podcasts is cheaper than making a pilot, it's also very resource intensive. So while maybe it's not a lot of cash out the door, it's a lot of time from a lot of people to make something that is high touch investigative, like a year of reporting sometimes. And so I was asking a lot of the newsroom and the journalists. And so I had to work with our finance team at the time to build out a model that basically showed at least break even for year one and then started to make some profit after that or some revenue.And so it wasn't as super strict thing, but I think obviously they wanted it to be revenue generating and relied on me and my counterparts on finance department to put that model together. And again, I was an English major. I had never made a spreadsheet. I had never made a model V lookup, it was very new to me. All of that was the first time I was doing any of that. So for me, those next three years or so were an incredible crash course into all of the practical skills that perhaps I hadn't learned in the English major was those were all learned in that time period of building a business model, putting together business plans, content strategy, and then executing marketing plans and sales plans at the same time.Chris Erwin:So I have to ask, clearly your love and your passion is for storytelling, right? So now you're figuring out the business plan for how can you actually create a new sustainable business that's going to tell stories in a different way on new mediums. Did you enjoy doing some of that business work or was it more of like, eh, I don't mind doing it because it allows me to execute towards this primary goal or were you starting to see like, oh, I actually like using both sides of my brain, operating on both sides of the house. What did that feel like for you?Camila Victoriano:I think it was definitely the latter. I think I never expected to “business” as I had always thought of it. Right. I think there were certain things that I could really do without, I did not love sales calling and pitching. I was like, I could do without ever doing this again. But I think for me, what I realized during that time period and working with the folks on the finance team, our COO, our sales, I was like, these guys are all really creative and actually figuring out how this is going to work and how this is going to be sustainable is actually weirdly fun and interesting and
Mike Grisko — CFO at Atmosphere on Raising $150M, Becoming a 2x Founder, and the Future of TV for Business
Aug 4 2022
Mike Grisko — CFO at Atmosphere on Raising $150M, Becoming a 2x Founder, and the Future of TV for Business
This interview features Mike Grisko, CFO and Co-Founder of Atmosphere.  We discuss running an NCAA tourney at age 7, getting laid off during the Great Financial crisis, almost selling the Chive to Playboy, the challenge with professional politeness in UK work culture, raising $150 million in growth capital and quadrupling the team in 5 years, and what he looks forward to next.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.comInterview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up. A podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.Mike Grisko:We have this concept internally, like giving up your Legos. Your job description changes every three to six months when you're going through rapid growth. 18 months ago, we were less than 100 people. Yeah, today we're close to 450 employees just at Atmosphere. And so that requires you to change your roles. Some of the things that I was doing back in 2018, 19, 20, it's just not scalable at that level. And so being able to hire great people, reassign tasks and responsibilities is absolutely critical.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Mike Grisko, co-founder and CFO of Atmosphere. So Mike was born in the south side of Chicago and was the oldest of five siblings. He then studied at University of Illinois and his early career started in finance and consulting, including Pricewaterhouse Coopers in London and Moelis & Company in Chicago. While at Moelis, he met the founders of The Chive and was recruited for his first C-suite role as CFO. Soon after relocating to Austin, Mike partnered up with The Chive's leadership team to co-found Atmosphere, where he is helping to grow and scale the leading streaming TV service for businesses offering free audio optional TV. Some highlights of our chat include running an NCAA 20 at age seven, getting laid off during the great financial crisis, almost selling The Chive to Playboy, the challenge with professional politeness in UK work culture, raising 150 million in growth capital and quadrupling the team in five years, and what he looks forward to next. All right, let's get to it.Chris Erwin:Mike, thanks for being on the podcast.Mike Grisko:Yes, absolutely. It's a pleasure to join you on The Come Up. Really looking forward to getting into it.Chris Erwin:There's a lot of stories to tell here. As always, we're going to rewind a bit and we're going to talk about where you grew up and your childhood. So I think you're a Midwest kid. Tell us about that.Mike Grisko:I am a Midwest kid. Grew up on the south side of Chicago. 103rd and Pulaski for any local Chicago listeners. Was the oldest five kids. My mother was a ER nurse. My dad worked in engineering sales. It was a great spot to grow up. It was very much a blue collar neighborhood. We lived right across the street from Tally's Corner, which was famous for just so many cops and firefighters that had to live within the city limits. My mom was one of seven. My dad, one of four. And everybody lived within a couple miles of each other. So just cousins everywhere. So yeah, it's a fun neighborhood to grow up in. I don't know what your childhood was like, Chris, but it was very Stranger Things for us. You just go on your bike, you'd be gone all day. You just got to be back before the street lights came on.Chris Erwin:Oh, I hear you. I was born in '82, so I'm an '80s, '90s kid. And in the suburbs I was born Rumson, New Jersey, an hour outside the city. And it was about like, you get on your bike and you just travel all around the county and you get into trouble, you find dirt jumps, you go meet up with your friends late night. I remember taking the bikes out at 3:00 AM during sleepovers. It was the best.Mike Grisko:It was the best. Was Chicagoan through and through before. Now residing in Austin, Texas.Chris Erwin:So, okay. Being the oldest... I have two brothers, I have a twin and then a younger brother who's six years younger. And so you're the oldest of five. What was your role? Did you have a patriarch type role amongst the brotherhood?Mike Grisko:Absolutely. Especially my dad traveled quite a bit for work. It was definitely more of a patriarchal role took on but still. We were just very tight knit crew. Still are.Chris Erwin:Getting into middle school and high school. What were some of your passions back then? What did you like to do?Mike Grisko:We were always playing sports. You had the neighborhood crew. You're playing fast pitch against a parking lot wall. In addition to doing sports, it was also a bit of a nerd. Constantly reading, just super competitive in school. It was less about the learning, it was more just getting better marks than anybody who was around me. But yeah, that stuck with me for quite a while.Chris Erwin:Got it. Well, look today, you're the CFO and co-founder of Atmosphere and you've also had a CFO role at Chive. So were you big into the quant side and into mathematics and other science and other similar subject areas?Mike Grisko:Yeah, there's a bit of that. And then I've just always been incredibly fascinated by business and markets. Grew up in the '80s and when I was a... I think it was six or seven, my uncle started calling me Gordon Gekko. I think because I was the only-Chris Erwin:It's a great nickname.Mike Grisko:I know. I think it's because I was like the only seven year old who was running an NCAA tournament and I was doing betting spreads every NFL Sunday going down the line. Yeah. So it definitely makes sense, the career path that I chose, doing finance, doing the investment banking thing and choosing this direction.Chris Erwin:Kind of makes sense because you end up going for undergrad to the University of Illinois where you focus on finance and accountancy. So when you went to school, what were you thinking that you were going to do afterwards?Mike Grisko:When I got down there I wasn't really sure. It wasn't until I actually did study abroad program, which was in Melbourne Australia, which was some of the best months of my life. It was just absolutely incredible. Yeah, the fact that my best friend and I both got full scholarships to go down there was just such a deal. I mean, we got accepted. We just could not believe that they took both our applications.Chris Erwin:What did you get into? Did you do any surfing while you were out there?Mike Grisko:Did do some surfing, played Aussie rules football. We tried to get stuck into everything, just being able to travel and just the people and just such a fun environment. But that's really when I took a step back and started looking at like, "Okay, when I get back, I got to figure out an internship." And that's when chatting with a bunch of folks, really started to lean towards trying to get on an investment banking track. And so it's amazing. Sometimes you do really need to take a huge step away to start to piece that all together and figure it out. Because I really had no clue probably up until then.Chris Erwin:It's funny. It's almost a bit of the reverse, but it reflects your personality and your interests. Typical consultants or Fortune 500 executives or bankers will go on a sabbatical and say, "I don't want to be in these industries anymore. I'm going to go do something different." But you go to Australia, have the time of your life and you're like, "I need to go into hardcore finance. That's the path." I went in a very similar direction. I was an investment banker right out of undergrad too. All right. So that becomes your focus. What's your first internship or your first role in school?Mike Grisko:So I did an internship for Wells Fargo. Got to see the lending side, their corporate lending group, so did a summer of shadowing the analyst doing underwriting. And it was great. This is in the high times of banking. This was in '07. So the summer of '07, everything's riding high. I remember winning the internship competition. So they flew me out to San Francisco with my brother just for first prize for winning this thing.Chris Erwin:He was your plus one? You're like, "I'm going to bring my bro."Mike Grisko:Yeah. Yeah. And it was a very good learning ground, but I still... There's a few guys who I was friends with at Illinois who had gotten into the investment banking side. And so I decided to double down and just... Thanks Wells Fargo, but I really wanted to take a dive into the IB side and learn how to do M&A and capital raise and the rest. I'm sure probably similar sort of path as you. Must have been at least 20 to 30 different places I was submitting applications doing interviews with. Just running through the whole process.Chris Erwin:Yeah, it's a very intense process. But it's funny. Hearing from the people that have interviewed on the podcast, I think back to Michael Cohen at the Whistle, which was acquired by Eleven Sports. He started out as a credit analyst at Wells Fargo in Atlanta, before he went into do investment banking. And we actually worked at the same firm and I started out as a credit analyst at Bank of New York, which is now BNY Mellon. And you, you now run a free ad supported streaming platform for businesses. You started as a corporate credit analyst and then went to investment banking. If you're going to do finance and media, that feels like the path.Mike Grisko:Yeah. It's got to be. It's tried and true then. You got three examples right there.Chris Erwin:So then, okay, you graduate and then you go full time into Lincoln Financial. And you're an analyst there for about a year. What were those early years like?Mike Grisko:It's a mid-market investment bank, heavy Chicago presence. It was a good shock to the system going from your university environment to full corporate world and pretty intensive as I'm sure you remember from your banking days. So I had started in August of 2008 and so I think it was six to eight weeks before Lehman went under. Things looked like they were riding high and then all of a sudden... I just remember being very new, but then also seeing the senior bankers just going ghost white as deals are just being paused or put on hold or it went from they were closing close to a deal a day, M&A or a debt advisory deal, and then it just completely dries up.Mike Grisko:The first deal I ever did, it was automotive wire harness business. I was being spun out of Alcoa. And it was just bleeding money. Went from, if you remember, with all the automotive ODMs just shuttering production, they were like the fifth player in that industry. Basically overnight, they went to negative 80 million [inaudible 00:09:46] and trying to find a partner for that. That was great learning ground. But I ended up getting laid off into that second wave of layoffs they did in March 2009.Chris Erwin:Laid off in March of 2009 after the debt crisis hit. Yeah. I have some stories of what happened at my bank and I'm curious to hear yours. So yeah. What happened to you and what was going through your head?Mike Grisko:It's a big shock to the system. It's a kick in the teeth. It did a couple things. It really hardened me to, "All right, this is the actual professional and corporate world. Nobody's spots guaranteed." And I think it even that much more determined and more resolved to like, "Hey, whatever is next. I know I'm going to have to really outwork everybody else around me."Chris Erwin:I hear you. I joined the workforce in 2005. I was at my investment bank when the 2008 credit crisis hit. And I was still a young professional. And I felt like, "Oh, I'm insulated. This is a tough time for everyone. But I'm young. The leadership's going to take care of all of us." And I remember getting called into the manager's office one day. Everyone at the company's salary was cut drastically.Chris Erwin:And I was like, "Whoa." I felt the impact personally, in a very meaningful way in that day. And I was like, "All right, this is legit. This is the real deal." And I had to make changes to my lifestyle. I actually negotiated down my rent from my apartment in New York City, down 25%. Something I'm actually still very proud of. I built a nice spreadsheet defending that. But it does gut check you and it questions, "Okay. Is there a job for me here over the next year or two? Is my career derailed?" Is my whole future grand plan that I had sorted out in undergrad have to be completely reset?" But I think it's helpful for it to build resilience, right?Mike Grisko:100%. I thought for sure coming out of school, it was, "Hey, do two years to three years as an analyst. Hop over to PE. Maybe go get an MBA. Just follow the very traditional path." But I think that moment really drove me in a very different direction.Chris Erwin:Tell us about that new direction, because I think you end up going to Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Chicago for a few years before you end up at Moelis.Mike Grisko:In that period after getting laid off March '09, basically bottom tick the market. It was slim pickings out there for jobs. I even looked into potentially doing a program to get into medical school and doing a complete 180, picking up some undergrad science credits so I can apply to med school.Mike Grisko:But then by time, two or three months in, I was starting to get some good looks. And I had an analyst role on a corp dev team in Chicago, and then also got offered a position as an analyst at PWC in their corporate finance group, which they were just restarting. And so they had basically shuttered their investment banking practice, but then were bringing it back. And so I was the first analyst they hired in the US and I thought "Here's an opportunity to get it back on track." And a lot of corporate carve outs, cross border M&A was their big MO and huge selling point for me was they committed that, "Hey, you do a couple years here and hopefully we can get you over to London or one of our other international offices to do a two year program," which I ended up doing in 2011.Chris Erwin:So you went to London in 2011 for two years working for PWC?Mike Grisko:Yeah. It was fantastic. I mean the great, great mid-market M&A group over there. It was one of the coolest experiences of my professional career. Just being able to live and get fully immersed in a culture, especially in a professional culture. Anybody who ever has the opportunity, I highly, highly recommend. Because it really just does stretch you and challenge you in different ways. You knew how to do your job, but it's almost like the gravity's just off a bit.Chris Erwin:Okay. I like that. I've never heard that description, but I'm into it.Mike Grisko:All new faces, all new companies, all new lingo, trying to pick that up and then still trying to understand folks who have Manchester accents.Chris Erwin:What was one of the biggest cultural differences in doing business over there that you learned?Mike Grisko:I'd say the biggest one, you don't realize, there's just a professional politeness in the UK. So both with your superior is just not being fully direct with you in feedback. In addition to when you would be delivering direct feedback to analysts. They were offtaken. You might not be getting the full picture. We tend to be a little bit more direct and blunt here in the US than the Brits are.Chris Erwin:Something I think about is when I studied abroad in Spain, I met a guy named Tim Slee, who co-founded an ad agency with Steven Murphy. Shout outs to these guys. They're still very close friends of mine too today. And they would talk about their professional work culture was every day at 5:30 PM, they're hitting the bars. And they are buying rounds for all their clients and all their team. And they're like, "That's just how business is done over here. You drink a lot of pints and that gets revenue in the door." And I was like, "That's a lot to sign up for after a full day." I remember as a banker, I was just running spreadsheets till midnight.Mike Grisko:I don't know how you could socialize or network or do a professional career if you don't drink over there. I definitely learned how to go to the pub for a pint or two, and then be able to go back to the desk and start banging things out in the evening. It was just an incredible experience. My wife and I, we got engaged over during that two year stint.Chris Erwin:You brought your girlfriend who became your fiance on that trip. Okay, got it.Mike Grisko:Yes. That's a story for a different podcast. Having the conversation with her dad about her quitting her job and moving over with me.Chris Erwin:You're like, "I'm choosing her instead of my brother this time. Now I'm going to take my girlfriend on this trip."Mike Grisko:Yeah. And we ended up getting engaged shortly into our trip over there. But in two years, I think we visited close to 45 different cities. We were just so good about travel. It was a lot easier, didn't have kids then, to be very mobile on the weekends. And the Brits are great about taking time off.Chris Erwin:All of Europe is really good at it.Mike Grisko:When they said four weeks of vacation and they're like, "We expect you to use it." I'm like, "Absolutely will."Chris Erwin:Yeah. Maybe you bring that back to the Atmosphere culture. All right. So look, you spend around five years there. And then before we talk about your rise up at Chive Media Group and Atmosphere, you were at Moelis & Co for around three years. Tell us about your work there.Mike Grisko:I was starting to get to the stage I'd done enough smaller middle market deals. Enough corporate divestiture work. Really wanted to start seeing some more higher level capital markets and some larger transactions. And so I started shopping around at some different banks. Opportunity came up at Moelis and I jumped on it. Everything I was looking for just to gain from an experience level, next level on debt and equity capital raise to deals to getting to work on my first restructuring bankruptcy work to working on hostile defense deal with Ken Moelis.Mike Grisko:There was a pretty cool experience that really did give that next level of professional training. And I think that's the one thing like I started to realize being in investment banking, the true value of the relationships that you build, and just being able to sit in the room as well. In the room with the exact team observing and or advising on the actions to take and some of the biggest transactions or moves that they're going to be making. It's a great ground to just really absorb a ton.Mike Grisko:So in addition to like the financial training, the Excel sheets, and everything that comes with deals and running process, the network that I was able to build, just what I was able to observe and absorb, I think for some very talented professionals, both within the bank, but then the executives I got to work with, incredibly valuable. You just cannot replace that and the level of reps that you get in the career.Chris Erwin:I very much agree with that. You think about the 10,000 hours thing and the amount of time I spent creating investor decks and confidential information memorandums, AKA CIMS. And all the financial models, the merger models, the LBO dilution analysis, et cetera, the most rewarding experiences were when we were in meetings or had conference calls with private equity owners or family offices that own these cable, media, and telecom companies. And they're thinking about how do we drive more enterprise value?Chris Erwin:Do we spin this off? Do we go acquire these other companies and do a roll up scenario where there are synergies and thinking about, we have this network of management teams, who do we want to place based on the strategy that we have here? How are we going to finance with debt or equity or some other more alternative vehicles and just to hear the decision making in the rooms. And it was like, where are these men and women? Where are they being slow and calculated? Then where are they trusting their gut and moving really quickly? Just to be a fly in the wall was so valuable for my career.Chris Erwin:And I take a lot of that into the work that I did at Big Frame and Awesomeness in thinking about when Big Frame made a decision to sell itself and the work and the advice that we give our clients now. And often days, I wish I still had access to some of those calls every week. I get it through my client work, but just to be a sponge and just be able to just listen as a mid 20 year old. So valuable.Mike Grisko:Incredibly valuable. Yeah. That's well said, Chris. That's the big thing. And I have so much appreciation for it now. Just having seen both working alongside a lot of incredibly talented professionals in addition to some ones that were making bad decisions.Chris Erwin:Can we steer them the right way? TBD.Mike Grisko:But honestly, yeah. You're able to just listen, observe. You're just kind of building that muscle memory for when things are coming fast, as they really have over the last couple years, in my current role as an operator, it helps you just really break things down into first principles and what are we really trying to drive towards? It's helped make my decision making very formulaic. I think that's incredibly valuable. I like to say that... I'm sure we'll talk about Atmosphere in a second, but operating, whether it's startup, growth company, et cetera. It is a wicked learning environment. The variables are always changing. The dynamics are always changing. And so you're constantly going to be seeing new things. And so the ability to read, react, and adjust is super critical, a really valuable skill set that banking taught me.Chris Erwin:Well, let's talk about that transition, Mike. So your role as an advisor, as consultant, as a banker, now you make a decision, as they say, you go to the line. You go to one of the portfolio companies. So in 2017 you transitioned to Chive Media Group. How did that come to be?Mike Grisko:Well, it's twofold. I go back to the point on network and I got an opportunity to... One of the deals I worked on at Moelis back in 2014, 2015 was advising Chive Media Group. John and Leo Resig co-founders of The Chive back in 2008, starting in 2012, 2013, they really started to catch fire. I mean, it was a true social movement. You had folks wearing Bill Murray t-shirts and Keep Calm and Chive On. Folks wearing the shirts everywhere. So they brought Moelis in to take a look at strategic alternatives. And so over an 11 month period, we looked at everything from buying up smaller competitors to doing [inaudible 00:20:56] recap, to even potentially selling.Mike Grisko:And so we actually got pretty far down the path with Playboy, but Leo and John couldn't get comfortable with the deal and the management team that was there at the time. They decided to pull out. And so that was in mid 2015, but stayed in touch with both Leo and John. And when the prior CFO, who was part of the founding team was looking to move on in 2017, Leo called me up and I jumped at the opportunity. So that's some of the backstory just on how I came across the opportunity. Leo tells me now, I think I was the only person he reached out to.Chris Erwin:He was like, "I think I like this guy, Mike, he was on our deal team. Let's take a bet on him."Mike Grisko:It's very tight interview process, but it goes back to the point that building network from that seed in banking is just incredibly valuable. That wasn't the first time that I was offered a job by a client. You get so close to your clients when you're working alongside them. But this is the one I jumped at. The biggest thing is if you know Leo and John, they're just real salt to the earth humans. And that meant a lot to me. To be leaving banking into something that was a lot more unknown.Mike Grisko:Yeah. I knew whatever happened with the business, they were going to do the right thing by myself and my family. And I think that was the most critical thing I was looking for is I really wanted to jump into an operational role. I'd spent a little over nine years advising CFOs. There was some that I had incredible respect for. There was some I thought I could do that job better. The opportunity to jump right into this was just too good to pass up. And then there was the personal side of this, which at the time we were making this decision, I had a 11 month old son and then my wife was pregnant with our daughter.Chris Erwin:Oh, wow.Mike Grisko:Yeah. So the ability to go into something that had a little bit more flexibility or control over your hours was big for me.Chris Erwin:You were moving too. Because you were moving to Austin from Chicago.Mike Grisko:Yeah. The full go. And I think it's that personal relationship with John and Leo, that we're two feet in. Sold a place in Chicago and moved down to Austin, away from family again.Chris Erwin:Your 30 cousins and brothers.Mike Grisko:Right. Yeah. And rest is history.Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work. And it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody. Let's get back to the interview.Chris Erwin:You make the transition. And I hear you on the point of it's all about relationships. I think I was having a call the other day with Jason Rapp from Whisper Advisors who I've just gotten to know. And he had a note that I really liked. He said, "Companies are not sold, they're bought." And I think the implication there is it's about there being a clear strategic fit, but also this notion of there's relationships developed with strategic and commercial partners over time, and more often than not an investment or an acquisition is made from two companies who have many data points, a trend line of building a rapport and a relationship. And I think that also speaks to how executive hirings and placements, particularly at the C-suite level are done. You weren't out of the blue, it was long term relationship building where Leo and John had been exposed to your work. So I think that's important for our listeners to just be mindful of. We always say that. Say start planting the seeds now.Mike Grisko:I think that has been incredibly important. Those relationships and the relationships that I quickly developed with the other C-suite members at The Chive who are now at Atmosphere. You want to be working with good people. It is just so difficult to get a startup business into a true growth path and on a true path to success. Being able to do that with folks that you trust and truly enjoy working with is so critical. It starts at the top. If you want your entire company growing the [inaudible 00:25:02] in the same direction, it really does start with having a cohesive leadership group.Chris Erwin:So let's talk about when you show up, what are you guys working on? What are the goals in 2017, 2018, fast forward a few years, where do you guys get to? And that's going to set up the story for how Atmosphere was incubated, but take us back to that.Mike Grisko:I walked in at a pretty critical time for the company. There was a lot of different initiatives that Chive Media Group was chasing. It became pretty apparent quickly that we couldn't do all of them. The business needed an overall guiding direction and overarching focus. And so my first three months on the job, Leo and John asked me to, "Hey, just give us your full assessment as an outsider." And spent just a ton of time on a listening tour, diving into data. Became pretty clear that we were sitting on something incredibly powerful with Chive TV, which at the time was maybe in a little over 1000 locations and had six or seven dedicated employees to that product line. We knew that we had something incredibly powerful.Mike Grisko:We thought we had something incredibly powerful with that business, but we also had just many other initiatives, everything from original content creation with Chive Studios to some large initiatives, both on the digital ad sales side to a lot of different facets that they were chasing on the e-commerce side. So everything was set up for big strategic meeting in December of 2017. Myself, John, Leo, Eric Spielman, our chief strategy officer, and Alen Durbuzovic, our CTO. And we made some very critical decisions to really lay out, "Hey, here's our vision for the next three years." It included shuttering some business lines, re-orging some groups. All on the guise of trying to take the Chive TV product line and turn it into a real business.Chris Erwin:You start and pretty soon after you start, you're making some very big decisions at the company, contributing to that to allow you guys to focus on where you think the biggest win is. Atmosphere, I think technically founded in 2018, but Chive TV, you guys were working on this probably well before that, is that right?Mike Grisko:Yeah. So Chive TV was the original proof of concept. It was started in late 2014, early 2015 as an audience extension play. As the landscape got more and more competitive competing for eyeballs with Instagram, Facebook, and every other platform, Roku opened up their marketplace for content companies to build apps. And so they decided that technological opening allowed them to build a streaming TV app. And then they also were able to leverage the strong community on The Chive to help get distribution because the content programming, they realized quickly like, "Yeah, this is good for in-home, but this actually works incredibly well in bars and restaurants." And so that was the initial, "Hey, can we build an app? Can we distribute it? Can we actually make this work?" And that's where in the early days, I mean, they're a lot of learnings the guys talk about.Mike Grisko:And so it really teed up into 2018 where we had to go from, "Hey, this is a product with potential. How can we actually turn this into a real business?" That was the big mission of 2018 to see how we could really craft the story around Atmosphere as a platform. So Atmosphere, as it exists today, streaming TV platform for businesses. Over 50 different audio optional channels. We like to say we have a channel for every type of venue, whether you're a pediatric office or gym or a bar restaurant, we got a channel that's programmed for you. Everything from Chive TV, which is now a channel fully owned by Atmosphere to we have a Happy TV channel. We have Paws TV with cute puppies and kittens. We have partner channels such as America's Funnies Home Videos, Red Bull TV, and Disney's X Games. So we have quite a few.Chris Erwin:Mike, you have this content network, you have all these different channels that cater to different offices, different business environments, et cetera. And you make a decision as a company that it's like, "All right, foot on the gas. This is not just going to be an exciting new growth initiative out of Chive. This is its own standalone business that will probably require a separate growth plan, separate capitalization, and more." So when you guys convene, you, Spielman, the Resigs, and whoever else, what decisions do you make to really amplify the opportunity here?Mike Grisko:You summed it up pretty well from you, Chris. It really came down to this business has the ability to be a platform and like an N of 1 platform, the actual network that can tape over this niche of streaming TV for business. That's a big ambitious plan. So obviously would require risk capital to fund it if we really wanted to chase the velocity that we thought was there. It couldn't continue to be self-funded by The Chive and really drive to where it needed to be.Mike Grisko:Putting together that plan, and it was complications. Spinning the business off all of the shared services that were going to be required to spin it off. The conflict of interest was a big issue for VCs who were concerned if they threw millions of dollars into this new Atmosphere, entity in business, if it wasn't going well, would the entire founding team just turn around and go back to working at Chive Media Group and say, "Sorry, unfortunately, that didn't work out." It was a tough one to sell through. And if you remember in 2018, nobody wanted to touch ad supported startup businesses. Everyone was focused on subscription.Chris Erwin:Oh, how the world has changed. Just think of Netflix launching an advertising platform.Mike Grisko:Exactly. There was several times we thought about pivoting and driving resources hard into venues paying subscriptions. But luckily we stuck with the plan because we saw how much leverage there was in advertising to this massive underserved market.Chris Erwin:All right. So when you think about there's the big, exciting stuff to do, which is all right, what's the new growth plan who we hiring for this go raise venture capital, then there's all the administrative stuff of... All right. Yeah. Like you said, allocating shared services, who works on what, how do we communicate that, how do we set up a dedicated legal entity and put the right resources into that? All these little things that you as a CFO probably had to take care of.Mike Grisko:Yeah. And this is also where you and I met. As I'm pulling a lot of this stuff together with the group and bringing on lawyers, getting advisors all set, you and I got connected through Jason Anderson and you guys did an engagement for us both to... Well, number one, be that initial test run before we hit the market just on materials and the story, the model, just the entire thing, which was incredibly helpful and just help us. Like most VC fundraising rounds, it really comes down to the product, the team, and the TAM. And so helping us to find that overall opportunity in isolating our unit economics. There was a lot there because again, it wasn't just another enterprise SAS software business that was easy to digest and easy for VCs to give seed/Series A funding.Chris Erwin:I will say thank you to Jason Anderson for that intro. And it was a delight to meet you and Eric nearly five years ago now and have gotten to know the Resigs a little bit. But really, yeah, Mike, you're the first point of contact. I remember working arm in arm with you on some of this stuff. I have an image in my head of one of the financial runway slides of "Here's the traction for what we did last year," which I don't even know if it broke a million. "Here's our five year forecast," which was maybe at the low tens of millions. And the numbers that you guys are putting up on the board today are much bigger than that.Chris Erwin:But you guys were very hopeful, very optimistic. You saw a need in the market, but we also could sense that it wasn't a guarantee. It was a big swing. Chive was a business that had been around for over 10 years. It was time to find a new growth opportunity. And also, not just from a value creation perspective, but I think just for the team and for the brothers of an exciting new thing to dig into. And there was conviction and excitement, but it was clear that you guys were taking a big risk and there was uncertainty. I'm curious to hear the early days, when did you realize you really had something special here? Because you hit some big headwinds during COVID and maybe even a little bit before that, but things did change. Walk me through that.Mike Grisko:So our first headwind that we fought through was we'd agreed to heads of terms with a VC in early 2019 to do our initial funding. And they pulled out. They had internal issues that they had to sort out and they just could not do any fundings. And so we had to go back to our underbidder, who was Charlie Plauche from S3. And Charlie didn't try to take advantage of the situation. He stood up and honored his initial term sheet for the most part. And S3 ventures, if you don't know, Austin based VC, and Charlie was willing to roll up his sleeve, all those things we talked about with the conflict of interest, he and the team were willing to do the work because they saw the big potential. And his read on it, not only was this a massive opportunity, but this is a team that's done it before. And so it's an advantage that they've had The Chive business and been operating successfully for 10 plus years.Chris Erwin:Wow. Yeah. He probably had a chance to bend you guys over a barrel. But instead I think he was probably exhibiting the type of partnership behavior
Adam Rymer — CEO at OpTic Gaming on 1980's Internet Nerds, Adapting to Napster, and the Future of Esports
Jul 7 2022
Adam Rymer — CEO at OpTic Gaming on 1980's Internet Nerds, Adapting to Napster, and the Future of Esports
This interview features Adam Rymer, CEO of OpTic Gaming. We discuss what he learned from running Harvard’s campus store, adapting to Napster at Universal Music, why entertainment doesn’t value innovation, being on Universal Pictures’ greenlight committee, scaling Legendary Digital and working alongside Chris Hardwick and Amy Poehler, how to create communities for gamers, why he plays Fornite with his son, and how to follow your own roadmap.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com Interview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Adam Rymer, CEO of OpTic Gaming. So Adam was born in Fort Lauderdale and was a self-described '80s internet nerd. That meant hanging out on internet bulletin boards and attending internet meetups at bowling alleys. His online passions paid off and he ended up going to Harvard after writing an admission essay, comparing entertainment dollars versus grocery store dollars. Adam's early career included Universal Music where three months after beginning his new role Napster was launched. And Adam had to figure out questions like, "What now? And who do we sue?" After rising up to the exec ranks at Universal Adam then struck out on his own to co-founder production company that worked on projects like the Rover and sci-fi hit arrival. He then became president at nerd and legendary networks where he helped build a multi-platform media business alongside stars like Chris Hardwick and Amy Poehler today. Adam is the CEO of OpTic Gaming, where he is helping to grow and scale one of the world's most exciting companies operating at the intersection of gaming and entertainment.Chris Erwin:Adam, thanks for being on The Come Up Podcast.Adam Rymer:Great to be here, man. Good to see you.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So where are you calling in from?Adam Rymer:I am in Dallas, been here about two years now.Chris Erwin:Are you in the Envy offices right now?Adam Rymer:We are. I moved here in the middle of COVID and we've been, believe it or not, working mostly in the office since I got here.Chris Erwin:Like to hear that people getting back to the office environment. Well, we're going to talk about Envy more, but actually want to rewind a bit, Adam. So going back a few years here, I want to hear about where you grew up and a little bit of what your childhood was like to see if there's any kind of glimpses into this media and digital executive that you've become.Adam Rymer:I am a Florida man. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale. Born in Miami, grew up in Fort Lauderdale, '70s and '80s which whatever anybody thinks about Miami and south Florida now is not what it was like when I was there. It was retiree paradise. And then the occasional spring break debauchery but of course, I was too young to really understand and appreciate any of it. So I just saw all these college kids coming in and thinking that would be awesome. And then by the time I was actually old enough to enjoy spring break, that it all gotten kicked out of south Florida and moved to Daytona and Cancun and wherever else. So missed out on all the benefit of all of it. But Florida was an interesting place to grow up in the '70s and '80s. Left at 17, never really went back, but definitely helped shape my desire to stay someplace warm for the rest of my life.Chris Erwin:Okay. So I have to ask you, what was your household like growing up? Were your parents into the same things that you're into now, media entertainment, digital gaming, gaming, what that looked like back in the day was very different, but what did your parents do and what were some of your early inspirations?Adam Rymer:My dad was a physician. He was an immigrant. My mom helped run the household. I had a younger sister who was six years younger than I. And so we were not overly close partially because of the age difference. And partially because we were just into different things, I was probably what you would call a quintessential nerd back in the day when it was very, very uncool to be a nerd. I got an Apple 2e when I was, I don't know, probably like eight or 10 years old and was goofing around on that with floppy discs and playing Zork and all the text base games and whatever else I could get my hands on. I remember connecting to BBSs back in the day. That was how I spent a lot of my free time.Chris Erwin:But BBS?Adam Rymer:Yeah. BBS was a bulletin board system. It was the modern, the old precursor to, I guess what you'd call like a social media network today. It was dial-in multi-communication platform where you could type and talk to other people and play games with people online, text-based games for the most part and south Florida, believe it or not, was actually the hub of some of the biggest BBS companies in the .country every now and then we'd go to meetups with people who were on these, these services, but you'd get online and play trivia and you'd play just chat with each other. And I guess back in the day, you'd consider it pretty weird. And today you just call it WhatsApp.Chris Erwin:So question, you said we would go to meetups. How old are you and who is we? Are you going with your parents or friends?Adam Rymer:Yeah. I was like 13, 14, and I'd have friends that would drive me around. We'd meet at like bowling alleys and family entertainment centers like arcades and mini golf places. And there'd be people from 14 to 40, but everybody was just connected through these online environments of being... At the time, I guess we were outcast and ostracized. And like I said, we were big old nerds.Chris Erwin:Were your parents supportive of some of your interests here with these meetups and the BBSs?Adam Rymer:Yeah, I mean, they didn't really know what was going on. For me, it was just a way to meet people and make friends and met some really interesting folks. Met some really odd, strange folks through it. Some people went on to greatness and do some pretty cool things. Some people faded off into obscurity. I think it definitely helped define and set my career in motion from being part of something that was just on the cutting edge of interactivity and technology. And 'cause there was a lot of steps to it, right. We had to, you had to get a 300-baud modem. You had to connect a phone line to it. You had to pay for time on the service by dropping off some money at a house or sending something in somewhere else. And I mean, it was really complicated, but we made it work. It was a weird time. It was like during the days of war games, if you remember the movie War Games, it was like that sort of universe.Chris Erwin:I've known you for years now. This is the first time I've really asked about your upbringing in your childhood. And within one minute, learn something completely new, but it makes sense. Everyone nowadays talks about how do you build community? How do you build fandom amongst different media brands, participants, creators, and users, et cetera? And you have now three to four decades of experience of building fandom on the internet. It's all becoming much more clear. So as you go to high school and then you're applying for college, what did you think that you were going to do?Adam Rymer:It's funny so we used to go to Disney World a lot in Florida, right? Because it's only about two-hour drive from where I lived. And I was always, I guess, kind of a weird business-focused kid at a certain level. I remember writing my college essay about Disney, but not about the cool entertainment factor of Disney about the business of Disney and how I found it super interesting that when you would go to someplace like Disney World, that you would be totally open to spending $8 on a Mickey bar ice cream that if you were just at a grocery store, you would totally freak out about highway robbery. You would just never spend that kind of money. And, I wrote my essay about like entertainment dollars being different from regular dollars. I did, I guess-Chris Erwin:So precocious.Adam Rymer:... I was a weird kid and at the time I was like, "I want to be Michael Eisner." Michael Eisner was my idol at the time not knowing a whole lot about anything, but knowing Disney and seeing how that was working, I was like, "That's my aspiration." Right? So went off to college. And at the time I was focused on engineering because as a nerd, geeky kid, I thought I was going to be an engineer, but within a year of college, I shifted over to being an economics major and really focusing more on business and really put most of my efforts into pursuing kind of game theory and business and economics.Chris Erwin:You went to Harvard up in Cambridge, right?Adam Rymer:That's the one. Yeah.Chris Erwin:So your essay must have been something special to get into that school. Right?Adam Rymer:God. To this day, I don't know how I got in. I'll tell you, I mean, it's my 25th reunion this year. I look around and I see other people from my class and I see kids today and I mean the quality of students and applications is just phenomenal. And to this day I count my lucky stars that I went there and got in there and survived. It was the hardest experience in my life. I can't even tell you, I felt overwhelmed half the time, lucky half the time. I mean, it was something.Chris Erwin:Well, if you're going to a reunion, my dad, I think is Harvard '70. And I think he's going to his reunion this year as well. So maybe you guys can bump into one another there. So you're at Harvard, you're feeling overwhelmed, but feeling lucky and grateful. And do you think you get more clarity on what you want to do when you're graduating?Adam Rymer:Yeah. Well, look, while I was there, I had my first real work experience. So we had this thing called Harvard Student Agencies. And what that is a bunch of student-run businesses on campus that are sanctioned by the university. And they let students sort of operate businesses through a platform that the university puts together. And I started out running something called the Campus Store, which basically sold futons and refrigerators and class rings and all the stuff you need for dorm rooms. And then my second year I became vice president of the organization. And one of the things that organization also did was produce the Let's Go Travel Guides, which might be a sign of another era, but it was books that you would use to go travel abroad and low-budget travel through Europe and other places around the world.Adam Rymer:And it was a team of hundreds of students that would write these books and go out and travel and run these businesses. And I did that for two and a half years of my time at school. And I found my time working and helping to run these businesses to be maybe the best education that I got over my time there. So by the time that I was graduating, I was pretty dead set on being in the business world, operating, trying to figure out some way to be an executive in some way, shape or form. Didn't necessarily know exactly what type of business to run. So I ended up going into management consulting, coming out of school because to me that seemed like the best landing spot, where I could get a sense of a bunch of different industries, bunch of different businesses, try to solve some problems for different companies and then figure out what I wanted to do from there. Or just do that for the rest of my life. Because from what I heard, that was a pretty cool thing to do.Chris Erwin:Got it. You go to L.E.K. Consulting in the late '90s. Was the experience what you expected it to be?Adam Rymer:So, so late '90s, I got to take you back a minute. I mean, at the time computers were still relatively, they weren't new, but they were not as useful as they are today. Everything was hard. The internet was slow. The amount of data that you had access to wasn't quite there, Google wasn't quite there. So I was building a lot of financial models. It was hard to do the research. We were printing things out on overhead projector slides for client presentations. PowerPoint was not as user friendly as it is today. I think I, when I started there, we were using Lotus 1-2-3, not even Excel. I was working probably 80 to 100 hours. I found the work interesting. I found the rigor interesting. I found the type of things we were doing interesting. I did not find the clients. I was working on overly exciting, and that was a big epiphany for me.Adam Rymer:I found it really hard to stay focused working for industries that I didn't have a passion for. At one point I was no joke... People say these things as jokes, I was working for a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, literally a company that made vacuum cleaners and I was helping them reallocate their sales force across the country. It was just hard. I was on the road and I was looking through maps and I was looking at different DMAs and I was trying to help them figure this out. I also spent a lot of time working in the biotech space, trying to look at different drugs that were coming to market and how they should be priced and talking to a lot of doctors and physicians about whether they would use the product and whether they would get approved by the FDA.Adam Rymer:And look, it wasn't my background. I mean, I purposely stayed away from anything pre-med I don't think I took any biology classes past ninth grade. The work was fun. The hours were rough, but not being passionate about the day to day subject was a real challenge for me. So about a year in, I was trying to figure out what was next.Chris Erwin:I hear you. I mean, I was a banker, right when I graduated from school undergrad. I think from like 2005 to 2010. And yeah, we were able to pull down 10-Ks and SEC filings, from the internet and able to get a bunch of financial information using Excel to create models. And I just remember all my MDs being like, "We used to have to get the 10-K's physically mailed to us." They didn't have Excel and they were doing modeling by hand on paper or in these really basic computer systems. And I was like, "Either that sounds terrible or it was better because you could just focus and do less." Where when you have access to technology your bosses just expect, "Well, you can work on five assignments at the same time." Right? You're equipped. But anyway, I digress.Chris Erwin:So then, okay, you do that for a couple of years and then I think you make a decision that instead of being an advisor and consultant, you want to go work for a company. You go to the line, quote, unquote, "some people say." And you go to Universal Music. So how was that transition for you?Adam Rymer:I mean, it was a magical transition for me. I mean, it was a happenstance lucky break for me and my career and the whole rest of my career, to be honest with you. And it goes down in something I think about still on a regular basis is having been a nerd. I mean, this goes back to the BBS story is I had built a PC. I was living in Cambridge. I was downloading the first MP3 files off the internet from really obscure search engines, like web crawler and LICOs. And I bought the first MP3 player that was ever made. And I would take this MP3 player to the gym and the use case for a portable MP3 player I found fascinating. The other options available at the time were a Walkman with a tape that you had to make a mix tape for, or a CD player, which for those who don't remember them, trying to get a CD player not to skip when you're at the gym or on a treadmill is almost impossible.Adam Rymer:And so I, part of me just realized like this digital music universe is going to be the way to go. This is just going to completely take over the future as the technology gets better. And I went to the consulting company I was at, and I said, "Look, we should sell a project to the music business and help them figure out the future of digital music, because there's no doubt in my mind that this is going to change the whole face of how the music industry works." To their credit they let me help work on selling that project and they successfully did sell the project. To not their credit they didn't let me work on the project.Chris Erwin:You can be the idea, the inspiration, create the pitch. And then it's like, "And you're off the team."Adam Rymer:So I left and that was the impetus for me leaving. I applied for a job at Universal and I was very fortunate to get an interview and then ultimately get hired to go join the strategy group at Universal Music in New York in, I think it was 1999, early 1999. It was a life-changing moment because the beginning in 1999 MP3 files and digital music was starting to be a huge subject of conversation. It was on the front page of USA Today. I was quoted in a bunch of things. It was something that everybody was talking about and knew was coming. But what nobody saw coming was Napster and Napster happened about three months after I got to Universal.Chris Erwin:Oh wow.Adam Rymer:So all of a sudden I was thrown into the fire with, it wasn't just me we had a team of people. But it was the, "Okay. Piracy is real. It's not going anywhere. How do we solve this?" Do we start suing the companies? Do we start suing our customers? Do we create our own technology? Do we create a subscription service, which is no joke, an idea that we presented at the time in 1999. What do we do? How do we solve this problem? Because it's not going anywhere and technology isn't where it is today.Chris Erwin:Follow-up question on that. Adam, did you feel that the leadership, did they understand the weight of the situation? Were they really panicked, very concerned or it's like, "This is an issue we should sort this out over the next five years, but take your time and be thoughtful." What was that sense inside the building?Adam Rymer:I'm going to answer that in a couple ways. I mean, this is a problem that I have seen throughout my entire career, which is that at traditional entertainment companies, the leadership is rarely incentivized to try to really innovate solutions to the biggest challenges that are in front of them. There's a lot of reasons for that. And I don't necessarily blame the leadership that's at these companies. A lot of them are publicly traded. They need to hit their quarterly returns. They're incentivized to hit those quarterly returns. Innovation is very rarely valued at these companies the way that it needs to be. Oftentimes they can buy innovation when they need to. Right? They're big enough. They've got public stock and if there's a startup, they can often buy the company that's going to solve their innovation problem. The difficulty in these cases is when you're dealing with something that's inherently illegal or theoretically illegal, you can't just buy the illegal thing and make that part of your repertoire.Adam Rymer:So the answer that was given was essentially like, "Look, let's let the courts figure this out." It was somewhat of a, "Well, obviously this is illegal. So the government should just stop this and get in front of it and shut it down because we have the right to sell music on discs and all these other things." And I think there was an inherent unwillingness to accept the fact that the consumers get to decide these things. Consumers get to decide how they want to consume content, how they want to live their lives. And ultimately it's the entertainment companies and the media companies who have to answer to the consumers on these things. And that's where I saw the biggest disconnect. And it wasn't just at the music industry. I've seen that through most of my career.Chris Erwin:Yeah. You were at Universal Music for about one to two years. So, and clearly had some early exposure to digital, but we're seeing that this is a theme from very early on in your career and your childhood. But then shortly thereafter you go to Universal Pictures. Why'd you make that transition? Did you feel, "Hey, there's a lot of inertia here, things aren't changing and I want to go to another part of the house," or was it something else? What was that catalyst for change?Adam Rymer:Well, for anybody who remembers the advent of Napster and piracy, also the crash of 2000 from a tech standpoint, just really killed the entire music industry. I mean, the music industry was cratering at that point. People were losing their jobs. Revenue was cut more or less than half very quickly. And I had an opportunity to go to business school. So I jumped and I decided I was going to ride out the storm of 2000 and everything else while I was in business school. And if there was still a music industry to go back to, I loved the music business. I would've gone back to music after business school, but between 2000 and 2002, while I was in school, the music industry kept falling. They couldn't quite figure out the solution. And I spent my summer at Universal Pictures looking at a another side of entertainment.Adam Rymer:So after school that turned into a full-time offer. My thought on it was the biggest challenge the music industry had was technology hit them like a title wave because the technology at the time had already caught up to the feasibility for music, meaning you could download a song in a reasonable amount of time to make it useful for the end-user, right? It only took a couple minutes, 5, 10 minutes at most to download a song, if not an album based on where technology was in 1999. When I graduated from, from school and went off to film the technology, wasn't there to download a movie, right? We were still a long way off from maybe not that long, but technology hadn't quite hit the film business in terms of feasibility for the piracy and the not having enough time to get in front of.Adam Rymer:So the way I saw it was this is an opportunity to get into the film business and try to help them stave off the problems that the music industry faced. How do I take the learnings from music and apply it to the film business and try to do some things differently here that we couldn't do there?Chris Erwin:You go there and you have a seven-year run and you end up rising to become I think the SP of digital for Universal Pictures where you're managing an international staff of, I think over 20 people across the US as well as London and Tokyo, if I'm right. Did you feel that at that point that you were coming into your own as an executive where you have a vision, you know how to solve problems, you know how to build the teams? And did you feel like that was a transformational moment in your career?Adam Rymer:I thought so. I thought so. It was the, "Hey, this is great. My career's really advancing. I'm at the senior levels of a major studio. I'm getting to present to some really cool people." I'm continued to have some really lucky experiences. Got involved in some very cool projects. I was always very much on the business side of it. I was pretty far removed from I'd say the creative side. It wasn't until the very end of my stint at Universal that I got put on the green light committee at Universal, which is where you actually get to have a say over which films get made at the studio, which was a pretty cool experience. Although it didn't last very long.Chris Erwin:How big is that committee and how much weight did your particular vote from the digital strategy side count?Adam Rymer:I'm not sure how much weight anybody's individual vote has, except for a couple of people on those committees. There's about 10 people on that committee across the studio. You've got home entertainment and marketing and production and the head of the studio and those kinds of things. It's fascinating. I mean, it's very kind of closed-door sort of, sort of setting very private, almost Illuminati-ish, but it was pretty cool to be in the room for some of it. But my job was to weigh in on what the digital and alternative revenue streams could be for the titles that we were working on. So things like video games, YouTube content, ancillary products. At the time we were talking about things like ring tones. What's the other stuff that we can do out of these films to generate revenue.Adam Rymer:And then I would be on the hook for delivering those numbers against the P&L for that particular title. It was pretty neat. And I felt like things were going pretty well for my career at that point, for sure. Now the downside was during my time there, we kept getting acquired. And for most people getting acquired sounds like it's a pretty awesome thing. Usually, there's like, "Hey, you got paid out. That's a big success, big exit." Well, in the big giant corporate world, those kinds of acquisitions usually get met with, "Hey, we're just kind of sitting on our hands for a while." So Universal was a big company. And when I started working for them, it was owned by Seagram. Then it was owned by Vivendi. Then it was owned by GE. And when I left, it had been acquired by Comcast.Adam Rymer:And we were always the acquired company, which meant that the acquiring company was taking their people, having them learn about the business that they were buying, meeting with everybody trying to figure out what everybody did, which resulted in a whole lot of work for all of us to educate them. And usually, that met with a whole bunch of reorganization and strategy redesignChris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of the Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work. And it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody. Let's get back to the interview.Chris Erwin:So, Adam, I totally feel you on if you're always the target and you're being acquired the reeducation of the new leadership. It's a lot. I mean, I remember when Big Frame was bought by Awesomeness TV and then Verizon, and then Hearst then invested thereafter, and then Comcast NBC U came and bought Dreamworks, which had owned Awesomeness. And there's always the strategic goal shift, the mandate shift there's reorganizations. And there's a point where you're just like, "I just want to get to work." And look, that's the nature of the beast, but was that a reason why after your seven-year run, you then started to explore entrepreneurship? You were the co-founder and COO and CFO of Lava Bear Films. And you did that for a few years. Was that the reason why you made the switch?Adam Rymer:Yeah, look, I mean, there were management changes and to be honest, I had been part of a very big company where I was an employee number. I still remember my employee number to this day, which says a lot, and it was an eight-digit number. So I was just a little tired of being in that kind of structure and part of me who likes solving problems and actually making things happen and not having a whole lot of red tape. There was an opportunity in front of me. The chairman of Universal had left and had an opportunity to start a film production company and asked me to help him put the business plan together for it and raise some capital and go after it. So I thought it would be a great chance for me to not only learn how to start a company from scratch but also learn about the other side of the business, the creative side of the business. How do you actually make content from start to finish?Chris Erwin:Well, you must have been doing something right at universal if the chairman leaves and wants to bring you on board to his next venture, right?Adam Rymer:I would hope so. I would hope so.Chris Erwin:So you're there. You learned the creative side of the business, which I think is, I've talked about this on a few podcasts, right? Usually, in entertainment, you're either on the business side of the house or on the creative side of the house. It's rare for people to speak both those languages. I think of people maybe like Bob Iger or David Zaslav at Discovery in Warner Media. Right. So it's smart to build out that muscle and I think that you are an executive producer on The Rover and you helped finance the movie Arrival?Adam Rymer:That's right.Chris Erwin:Produced by FilmNation and [inaudible 00:28:25] and Glen Basner and they're good friends of ours.Adam Rymer:Great guys.Chris Erwin:Yeah. They're the best. And so you do that for four years and did you see like, "Hey, maybe there's a world where you stay in the creative side of entertainment?" Was that interesting to you?Adam Rymer:Look, it was an amazing experience. I always wanted to see how the whole sausages gets made from start to end and really got to do that. I was going around to film festivals. I was reading scripts. I was handling some of the talent deals. I was negotiating a lot of the financing for the films. We were selling the projects internationally. We were dealing with the studios. We were looking at the marketing for the films when they came out. But for I'm sure you've talked about this on some other podcasts the filmmaking process is very long and very slow. And so for me, it was I like being on the creative side of the business or having involvement on the creative side. But I don't know that filmmaking was the place for me to explore that in the long term, because I'm so used to being in areas where things move very quickly, right?Adam Rymer:Even the music business moves relatively quickly. And on the digital world, I was watching things happen. Snapchat was starting to happen and Twitch wasn't quite there yet, but YouTube was really starting to take off and there were all these other things that were happening in the background. And I just felt like I was missing some really cool, innovative opportunities that were going on. So I had an opportunity to go join Legendary, which was at the time a pretty cool independent studio started by Thomas Tull. They had made Godzilla and Hangover and King Kong and 300. And he asked me if I would help them build their digital businesses over there.Chris Erwin:Was it an immediate yes? Like, "Oh yeah, this makes sense. This is an incredible studio with some incredible IP. There's a lot I can do here. Let's get to work." Or were you evaluating other things too?Adam Rymer:I wasn't evaluating other things. And it was pretty hard decision because you this was a company that I had helped start and I was a pretty big piece of, but the opportunity and it was a blank slate. I was kind of handed a, "We don't know what the right answer is and we need somebody who's got enough experience on both sides of the equation here that understands making some content, understands distribution, understands the business side of it to really help us figure out what we should do with this asset that we have." They had just acquired Nerdist and just didn't have a solid business plan on how to start making real revenues out of it. So for me, it was a puzzle to solve right back to the things that I love, which is trying to put pieces together.Adam Rymer:At a certain level the film business has a very defined path, right? There's not much to solve in that. There's always new innovations that are getting made. There's new ways to finance a film. But for the most part, the business model of making movies is relatively defined. You might say that Netflix has changed that in some way, shape, or form, but there wasn't a whole lot of, "How am I going to do this for the next 20 years and innovate and do some neat things?" And at Legendary, it felt like there was a real chance to try all sorts of new ideas.Chris Erwin:When you enter their first year, they've acquired Nerdist and I think that was... Was that founded by Chris Hardwick?Adam Rymer:Correct? Yep.Chris Erwin:And so what did you think of, okay, these are the wins that I want to get in year one. I think that we are capable of doing this. It also feels innovative. And then I think it's going to set you up to have an exciting career overseeing digital at Legendary going forward. What was that first mandate for you?Adam Rymer:First thing was really figuring out how are we going to generate consistent revenue? Because at the time the video part of Nerdist was founded as one of the funded YouTube channels. Some people might remember that YouTube was putting a lot of money into funding channels for the purpose of creating more premium content on YouTube and right around 2014, they stopped funding those channels. And so a lot of these channels ended up in no man's land of figuring out how they were going to keep their business running. And so for me, the first step was okay, well, now that we don't have this stipend coming from YouTube every year, how are we going to find ways to just generate consistent revenue even if we're still operating at a little bit of loss, something that we can project to keep it all moving. So at the time we had the Nerdist podcast and we had some content that was existing on YouTube, and my first step was, well, how do we start monetizing podcasts in a better way?Adam Rymer:So I was able to take Chris's podcast and structure a deal with Midroll and that helped get us really kicked off with our first seven-figure deal, which let me hire some more staff and start to figure out some new lines of business.Chris Erwin:Did you feel like, "Hey, we figured out a digital revenue model here for media brands and fandoms built around big personalities"? And so did that then inspire you to say, "Well, let's start buying some other companies to add onto this roster"? Because I think you then acquired Geek and Sundry and then Amy Poehler's Smart Girls at the Party.Adam Rymer:That's right. So the idea was, well, if we can create enough of scale around these celebrity-driven community content businesses, then we can justify having an infrastructure that can support all of them the right way. So that allowed us to have a sales team that could support all of them, and start doing branded content deals that could leverage the communities that were built across all of them simultaneously bring some staff efficiencies together, and allow content production to be more efficient. So we had our entire... We had our own content production team. We had our own studio where we produced all of the content that we're making for the YouTube channels ourselves and for our branded content features. And ultimately that led us to start a Twitch channel with Geek and Sundry, which is where I started to learn quite a lot about Livestream.Chris Erwin:So do you feel at this point it's like, "All right." You're attached to a big studio, you have a lot of resources, you have incredible IP to work with, but you also, you're running your own division, which has its own P&L. It seems like you're on both the creative and the business sides of the house, where you have a real strong point of view of what content we're creating. How do we monetize it? What's getting green-lit? What new platforms are we experimenting with? You're building out a team against your vision. Did you feel like, "Hey, I feel like I have it all right now"? This is checking all the boxes for my career.Adam Rymer:In hindsight, I guess so. I mean, at time it felt very stressful. At the time it felt like we were building the plane while we were flying it. And there weren't a whole lot of examples for us to point to say, "Hey, we're doing it like these guys," or we've got somebody else that's done it in front of us. There were the MCNs out there that were aggregating a bunch of channels together. And they had a somewhat different business model, but there was nobody who was really trying to create more premium level content on a regular basis. And I mean, I had to answer to a pretty senior studio executive. So I had a lot of pressure from that side, but I did have the luxury of a good balance sheet. So I wasn't having to deal with trying to raise capital on a regular basis to keep the thing afloat.Adam Rymer:There was a couple years there where it really felt like the coolest, most fun job that I ever could have thought I've had. We were going down to ComicCon. Chris was moderating panels for us in Hall H. Got to go backstage and hang out with the cast of all the Marvel films before they got on Hall H. we had all sorts of fun people coming by the studio to be in the content, got to watch and be part of a lot of the content that was being filmed at our location. I think most of the people that were there at the time will tell you that it was a pretty magical place to be for a couple of years.Chris Erwin:I mean, I remember going to your offices a couple times during that period and just looking around at the different sets and the studios. And I was like, "This sounds like a pretty amazing gig, Adam." I knew that you were working really hard and that it was a lot and you were kind of figuring things out on the fly as you said, but I think everything in retrospect, you
James Creech — Paladin CEO on Selling to Brandwatch, Influencer SAAS, and Recasting Success
Jun 9 2022
James Creech — Paladin CEO on Selling to Brandwatch, Influencer SAAS, and Recasting Success
This interview features James Creech, SVP Influencer Strategy at Brandwatch and founder of Paladin. We discuss how former GE CEO Jack Welch inspired James to be a number one category leader, using his down payment on a house to start Paladin, his make or break pivot when the creator economy evolved in 2018, working till 3AM over Christmas to sell his company, why James and I are kindred spirits, and the power of recasting your success.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.James Creech:Thomas and Ole and I all put considerable capital into the project. To put that in perspective, at the time, Thomas was getting married. His fiancé, she was amazing to say, "We believe in this dream, and we want to put that money that we would have saved for a big, nice wedding with our family and friends towards investing in this startup." I had been saving to buy a house, so I took essentially a down payment on what I would do to buy a house and said, "I'm all in on the business." Every penny to my name and probably even some I didn't have like went into Paladin. Then, Ole had recently gone out and bought a Tesla. He ended up driving back to the dealership and returning the Tesla, so he could take all of that money and put it into Paladin. So, every single one of us was all in from day one.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features James Creech, SVP influencer strategy at Brandwatch and founder of Paladin. So, James was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in Bakersfield, California with parents who worked in oil and gas. Early on, James was a creative. In high school, he made sketch comedy videos with his friends and thought film and TV was his future. So, he went to USC Film School and ended up running the college TV station, but soon realized that he really enjoyed and was good at the business side of entertainment. His career started at a video advertising startup, where he helped scale the team to over 40 employees, but then moved on to Bent Pixels, which started as an early YouTube MCN.Chris Erwin:While there, James took a big bet on launching a technology SaaS product for the early creator economy, which he ended up spinning out and leading as CEO, until its recent sale to Brandwatch just a few months ago. Today, James leads influencer strategy at Brandwatch and stays busy on the side, advising over 10 different companies and publishing content on his podcast and blog. Some highlights of our chat include how former GE CEO Jack Welch inspired James to be a number one category leader, when he used his down payment on a house to start Paladin, his make or break pivot when the creator economy evolved in 2018, working till 3:00 AM over Christmas to sell his company, why James and I are kindred spirits, and the power of recasting your success. All right, let's get to it. James, thanks for being on The Come Up podcast.James Creech:Hey, Chris. Thank you, excited to be here.Chris Erwin:This has been a bit of a long time coming. I think I was on your podcast a year or two ago, and I said, "James, I'm going to have to get you on mine someday." And, we're finally making it happen. When we were doing the prep, I just got even more excited, because I realized just how cool and exciting your story is. So, excited to share that with the listeners, and as always, let's rewind a bit. So, we're going to go back. Tell us about where you grew up, what your household and what your parents were like.James Creech:So, I was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up mostly in Bakersfield, California. So, I always tell people, "You could probably guess what my parents did for a living, right?" We worked in oil and gas. So, I spent most of my life, yeah, in Bakersfield, from ages four to 18, essentially. My childhood was great. I have a younger brother and sister. We're a close family. We had the chance to do a lot of traveling when we were younger, which was fun. I remember soccer practice and tennis and Cub Scouts, mock trial. We were involved in a lot of activities, and our parents were very much a part of those activities and the stuff that we enjoyed as kids.Chris Erwin:Quick interjection, how far did you get in Cub Scouts?James Creech:To the end of Cub Scouts. Never made it to boy Scouts.Chris Erwin:Did you achieve the Webelos badge?James Creech:Yeah, I was a Webelos. I think that's about as far as I made it.Chris Erwin:Nice. I did one up you a bit. I got to Eagle Scout with my twin brother.James Creech:Congrats. Wow, that's a huge achievement.Chris Erwin:It's a lot of work. Back to you, so grew up in Bakersfield, had some younger siblings. Early on, what were your passions? What were you into? Was there any glimpse into the career that you have today?James Creech:I think when I was a kid, I used to tell people what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said I wanted to be the governor of California. I don't know where that came from. I don't know that I have any sort of interest or passion in politics. I think as I got older, I would say I lacked the moral flexibility to pursue a career in that field, but was interested in politics and government early on. Somehow, that morphed into maybe being interested in law and going to law school at a certain point. I was pre-law at USC, so that was certainly a passion. I ended up doing the mock trial, as I mentioned, and then interned at a law firm and realized, hey, a lot of love for the legal profession, a lot of great friends who are lawyers, et cetera, but that probably wasn't the path for me.James Creech:In high school, the thing that really captured my intention was making videos with my friends, essentially comedy shorts. It's interesting, the timing, right? I was inspired by SNL and all these other amazing sketch comedy programs. Had I been a generation later, let alone maybe even five years later, the videos I made probably would've ended up on YouTube and now TikTok. But, because of the timing, I just made videos with my friends, and we made DVDs and shared them with our friends and family. But, it wasn't any sort of big distribution.Chris Erwin:It's never too late, James. It's never too late.James Creech:Yeah. There's an archive of a lot of old, embarrassing footage somewhere.Chris Erwin:Yeah, IP libraries are in high demand, high valuation. So, there could be something there.James Creech:So, that's what I was doing and figured, okay, well, I'm interested in media and entertainment. I applied and was accepted into the USC Film School and thought, okay, I'm going to go into film production, right? Fast forward a little bit, and I realized in college, well, I'm way more interested in the business side than I am in say the creative or the technical side. The stuff I liked doing in high school with my friends was making videos, which was really more about the experience of being together, less about the filmmaking process. But, yeah, that was kind of the early days.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So, I have to ask, what was your role in doing these sketch comedy or sketch segments? Were you a director? Were you a writer? Were you an actor? Was it all the above? And, I also want to hear, if you just have an example of one of the things that you guys did, I'd love to hear about it.James Creech:Oh, boy. So, I was an instigator. A ringleader is maybe the right word. We did all sorts of stuff. We were filming on these really small handheld cameras. I would certainly come up with sketch ideas and get my friends involved. We would shoot them. I would edit them. We would share them. There's plenty of stories that I can tell you, many of which are maybe too embarrassing for the podcast. So, we'll save that for a beer sometime, but one that definitely stands out is we kind of faked this kidnapping of our friend. He had a new girlfriend. He was really invested in that relationship, not spending as much time with our buddies. So, I said, "Okay, let's go to his house one afternoon, dressed all in black like ninjas," and his parents knew. We gave everyone a heads up, but we went in and kidnapped him for the day, which was a lot of fun. So, that's probably one that stands out.Chris Erwin:It's funny, hearing you tell these stories. So, I just started listening to This Is Important Podcast from the crew of Workaholics. They started just by making different sketch videos. They were filming wrestling matches in their backyard. Just hearing about some of their stories and how they started, and then they talk about, yeah, and then we sold the show to Viacom. How did this happen in Comedy Central?James Creech:Yeah, I wish that was the journey, was certainly inspired by Derrick Comedy and some of the other early, early YouTube sketch groups. We didn't get that far, right? It was fun to run around in our backyard and make videos, and that's where it ended for us.Chris Erwin:Yeah, cool. All right, so you get into USC Film School in 2012. I believe that you end up with a marketing and poli sci focus. But, tell us about you showed up at school. What was your initial focus? And, then it seems like it pivoted as you started to understand that you realized the appeal of the business side of entertainment, versus the creative side.James Creech:Yeah, so I went to USC, 2008. So, it was right around the housing crisis, financial crisis, which I don't know, as an 18 year old, you're fairly oblivious to. But, I was passionate about filmmaking. I was excited to be in the film program, also in the poli sci school. So, I was kind of running this dual track of, okay, well, I'm earning my political science degree, but I'm also taking these film courses and think that's what I want to do after I graduate. I got involved at the college TV station, called Trojan Vision, which is the largest TV station in the country. We broadcast to over a million homes, and I just kind of fell into it and fell in love with it. So, I was a producer on a show my freshman year, worked hard, got promoted to senior producer, second semester.James Creech:I was like, "Hey, I really like this TV thing. I like being involved at the station, meeting other students," applied for a staff position the next year and became an executive producer of a show. Okay, my first experience running a show, working in live television, it's exciting. It's the adrenaline rush of making something go on the air Monday through Friday. Through that experience, said, "Okay, I like the organization of the show, coming up with new ideas." We were experimenting with new technologies like HD broadcasts and live remotes and stuff at the time. So, I was like, "Okay, I'm excited about this," and people kept saying, "Maybe you should take some business classes." And, I thought to myself as a sophomore, well, hey, no. I'm doing the film path. I've got political science. I don't know what the business thing's about.James Creech:But, luckily USC has a very flexible structure and approach to curriculum. So, you could kind of dabble and take a couple classes. So, I said, "What's the worst that could happen? I'll take a business class or two," found out right away, hey, this is where I should be, and ended up transferring into the business school as a junior. So, I'm taking these intro 101 classes surrounded by freshmen. So, I had a very different mindset, let's say, going to the business school. I'm really excited to be here. There are certain things I want to learn. I'm finding ways to apply this over at the television station. I had been promoted to the general manager, so I was running the whole station at this point, which is a real budget.Chris Erwin:That's a lot of responsibility at a young age. What you said, it's one of the largest college broadcast stations in the US, and you're going ... Is there live programming Monday to Friday? That's a big deal.James Creech:Money through Friday, yeah, hours and hours of content. I was working essentially a full time load, basically 40 hours a week while going to school. But, I loved it. I loved every minute of it, creating television, working with students, and making something out of nothing, and putting it on the air every night, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But, I loved it.Chris Erwin:Okay, so you start taking these business classes, and right away, you're like, "This is a good fit." Then, what are you starting to think about what you want to do when you graduate?James Creech:Between my junior and senior year of college, I got an internship at Blizzard Entertainment. I grew up as a gamer. I wasn't necessarily a desktop gamer. I was more of a console gamer, but loved the opportunity to get exposure to another form of entertainment and work in a bigger company and try to decide what was right for me. So, as I was going through that process, had a great summer internship experience, came back, and had the opportunity to say, "Do I continue as the general manager of the TV station one more year as a senior?" But, kind of realized, maybe it was time to pass on the baton. So, it was hard to say goodbye, but I ended up getting another internship opportunity at this ad tech startup, this company in LA that was helping brands and media agencies promote video content on YouTube.James Creech:This was pre TruView, very early days, helping to make videos go viral. I was just, I guess, really interested in social media, but also, a USC alum was the COO. She was hiring. It was close to campus. It paid. I'm interested in this career path, but also it checks a lot of the boxes as a student that I want to make sure it's a good fit. So, I fell into that internship opportunity and just got hooked right away on the adrenaline rush of working in early stage companies. So, meanwhile, I had been recruiting, trying to figure out what do I want to do after I graduate. I had out law school or becoming a lawyer from my internship opportunity. I realized, okay, I'm more interested in the business side, so I'm gravitating towards that.James Creech:I like this startup company I'm working at, but I had always thought of myself as going into corporate America. So, I did recruitment on campus. I was offered a job to do business consulting and move to New York, which was kind of my dream. I was very excited as an almost 22 year old getting ready to graduate, moved to the Big Apple, and have this, what seemed like a really exciting, glamorous job at the time with travel and everything else. But, long story short, fell into working at Channel Factory, this ad tech startup, loved the team and the mission and the opportunity. They convinced me to stick around, so ended up declining the offer to do consulting and stay on the startup trajectory.Chris Erwin:I think what I'm starting to see here is you're on a unique path where you have both the creative know how and understanding, as well as the business savvy. That's very rare in Hollywood, right? I think of people like Bob Iger at Disney that has both of those sides of the brains, but it's a pretty rare profile, which probably explains a lot of the success that you've had in a very young career to date. Okay, so you go to Channel Factory, and what do you focus on there? Because, it seems like you start at the company when it's pretty early on, and they're on a really high growth trajectory. And, you facilitated some incredible wins there. Tell us about that.James Creech:Yeah, it was ground floor, right? It was in the founder's living room, essentially. We were building a business out of thin air, which was enticing to me and kind of felt similar to live TV production. Okay, there's this excitement. There's this adrenaline rush. You can have a big impact. So, I was basically the fifth employee, came in as an operator, doing a little bit of everything, strategic projects, built out ad operations group, hiring, training, commercial ops. I ended up working quite a bit coaching and supporting and at some points managing some of the sales team.Chris Erwin:This is all in like your young mid-20s, right? Because, you just listed off a lot of different things.James Creech:Yeah. We were all young, for the most part at that time. We were early 20s. It was a young company. It was an exciting opportunity in an early stage of the business. We ended up, of course, bringing in some more senior experienced folks, but there was this meritocracy to an extent, this excitement for youth and passion. So, we were all kind of figuring it out as we went along, and I was this person who didn't know anything going into it, but was just excited about where the company was going and the type of impact that I could have. So, we grew that business to whatever, 40 plus people, and close to or exceeding eight figure revenues. We opened offices in New York and Chicago. It was this wild ride for two and a half years, so learned a lot of lessons, both good and bad.Chris Erwin:Can you elaborate on some of those lessons?James Creech:I learned a lot about how to treat people, right? I didn't always agree with the founder and the leadership at Channel Factory. I had some great people that I learned from and supported me. Then, there were certainly some differences of opinion at times. I would say the other thing is it taught me a lot about the type of leader that I wanted to be and the type of business that I wanted to build one day. It's instructive to learn what not to do sometimes, as it is to learn what to do. But, I got great contacts and relationships. A lot of the people at Channel Factory have also gone on to do some amazing things, many of whom have become very talented entrepreneurs. So, it was this kind of amazing talent pool and this breeding ground for incredible individuals who were passionate about digital video and making an impact on the space, and that's been exciting to be a part of. There were certainly some things that we did really well, and being a young company, made a lot of mistakes, myself included. And, you learn from that and keep going.Chris Erwin:I love what you said. I always repeat this in interviews. It's very important to learn what not to do or what you don't like. In the beginning of my career where I was an investment banker, I worked with some incredible people and developed some incredible skills. But, there was also a lot of experiences and things that I was exposed to that I really did not enjoy, I thought were not good influences to the rest of my career. I consider that very valuable. When I talk to young people that are emerging from the undergrad and entering the workforce, it's this thought of, I have to nail my first few jobs, and that sets up everything for me. The answer, no, I don't recommend that.Chris Erwin:Try new things and experiment, and if it doesn't go well, that's totally okay. And, you're going to learn from that. That was some of the most valuable experiences for me. So, I like what you just said there, James. I think that's spot on. So, after a few years there, you then end up at Bent Pixels, where you also realized some great wins for the company. So, tell us about some of the work that you were doing there and how this set you up for your first big entrepreneurial venture, which is Paladin.James Creech:So, I entered Bent Pixels as an operator. That's what I had done at Channel Factory. The company at the time was a multichannel network in the heyday of MCNs, right? So, there was this time of excitement around Maker Studios and Fullscreen and Awesomeness TV, and Machinima, this early wave of digital disruptors helping YouTube talent grow their audience, monetize their content, figure out the early stages of influencer marketing, and what now we've grown to know as the creator economy. But, this was ground zero, right? You remember. You were there, too. So, this was the very, very early stages of what these future digital businesses were going to look like.Chris Erwin:And, tell us exactly, what did Bent Pixels do specifically? Were they a software platform for the early creator economy?James Creech:They did three things, right? They were a traditional YouTube multichannel network, so they provided services to YouTube channel owners and creators to help them monetize their content. They offered digital rights management services, so they would help IP rights holders monetize and enforce anti-piracy against their content on YouTube. So, they were using the content ID tools and additional manual services to help manage those content libraries. Then, they did audience development, so they were doing channel management and audience growth for brands that wanted help with their YouTube presence, so not unlike Fullscreen, Maker, many others at the time, right? So, when we came in, Bent Pixels was probably a top 30 global MCN. It was probably in the top five for rights management. I don't know, hard to say where it fell in the audience development or channel management services business, just because so many people were trying to get into that space.James Creech:We were doing all of this and facilitating it through technology, right? So, when I came into the business, I mentioned I started as an operator. And, I looked around, and I said, "This business doesn't need operators, right? We have a very capable COO, a general manager." I was looking for ways to do process improvement, cut costs, or optimize systems. There just wasn't much of that to do. The company was profitable and growing, and it had been fairly well managed, right? Well, what the business needs is growth. That's completely new to me.James Creech:I don't really know the space I was coming from, I say is the demand side. I was working with brands and media agencies, and all of a sudden, I kind of end up on the supply side, right? Now, I'm working with talent and content creators. This business doesn't really need all of the skills that I necessarily have historically had. So, we've got to figure this out, right? So, I just reached out to as many people as I could in my network and then through LinkedIn and said, "Hey, I'm curious to learn more about this space. Are you up for getting together for coffee or having a conversation?"Chris Erwin:This is very interesting. What was your primary networking tool? Were you using LinkedIn back in the day for this?James Creech:I was super early to LinkedIn, and I would just reach out to people. I would say, "Hey, I think what you're doing is really interesting. I think this space is early on. There's probably a lot we could learn from each other. Are you open to meeting for coffee or jumping on a call?" And, you'd be surprised, so many people said yes, especially all over the world, right? I was meeting people in Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific. It was this amazing opportunity to meet these other entrepreneurs who were like, "Yeah, everyone's early. We're all trying to figure this out. What are the things that are working for you? What are the challenges?" So, it was a lot of just connecting and sharing and learning from one another. But, obviously LinkedIn has changed a lot, A, over the years, B, post-Microsoft acquisition. But, in those early days, I was a young, snotty nosed kid, very earnestly trying to meet people and be helpful to the extent that I could. And, people were very kind to share their time and experience with me.Chris Erwin:I love that. You and I were actually just talking about this, I think, on LinkedIn. I just started a 30 day LinkedIn challenge. I think LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social networking platforms for professionals, hands down. I've been pretty active on it for the past few years, but our team is definitely ramping up our investment in it in terms of the type of content that we're creating. We've been doing a lot of experimenting, as well as the cadence of content as well.James Creech:Which is amazing. I can't wait to follow your content journey. I did something very similar in 2021, where I wrote every weekday, and it was such a stretch goal. I learned a ton from it, which we can talk about at some point, but I love LinkedIn, very supportive of the platform's evolution into becoming more of a content destination, and like you said, showcasing professional stories and helping people connect. It's getting back to some of those early roots of what it helped me pursue in my career.Chris Erwin:I love that. Well, maybe we'll have to do a mini series of a podcast about LinkedIn best practices. So, you start reaching out to all these different contacts across the world, focused on how do we share mutual learnings, and how do we grow? So, what did you learn? Then, what did you take from your learnings and apply to Bent Pixels?James Creech:So, what I kept hearing was everyone was facing similar challenges, especially as we tried to figure out how to scale. You have to remember at the time, people were focused on initially hundreds of creators. Then, it became thousands of creators. At the highest levels of Maker, Awesomeness, we were managing tens of thousands of creators. Bent Pixels had tens of thousands of YouTube channel partners that they were supporting. This was before YouTube had the infrastructure tools, resources, support to help those creators themselves. So, MCNs were the first line of defense. The demand, the excitement for the space was so dynamic that it was this gold rush mentality, this exciting time of help and enable as many channel creators as possible.James Creech:So, we had been building some software internally at Bent Pixels at the time out of necessity to figure out, okay, how do we find the right creators? How do we manage those relationships, pay them accurately and on time? Eventually, that would become, how do we manage branded content projects with them? Everyone else was doing the same thing. They were trying to build tools in house. They were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. How do we take Salesforce and DocuSign and all these other tools off the shelf, stitch them together into this Franken-suite, and hope for the best? And, it was expensive, and it wasn't working. So, I kept hearing this, and I thought to myself, well, hey, if everyone's facing the same problems, and we're building what to me feels like a pretty good software solution for this, that should be the business, right? I was a big acolyte of Jack Welch back in the days. I would read a lot of his books, this legendary CEO and leader of GE.James Creech:One of the things that stuck out to me is, if you're not one or two in a category, you should cut it, right? So, it just occurred to me at every leadership meeting, I was like, "We have an opportunity. There's this untapped market potential to build software for this new breed of creative companies, and no one's doing it right. So, we should be first to market. We could be a leader there. It's great that we have this profitable growing business, but we're never going to win, right? We're not going to be one or two in the category. We're going to be ... Maybe we move from 30 to 20 or five to three, right?" So, I was advocating for that. Now, the way it was perceived on the other side is, well, wait a minute. We've built this business, at that point I think over five or six years. It is growing. It is profitable.James Creech:All these other companies have raised massive VC investment. They have a lot more resources. We're happy with our business, and we want to keep developing it, but we're not going to bet the house on James's crazy idea, right? They were advocating, hey, let's get into paid media. It's what a lot of other people are doing at the time. There's a big opportunity. I had that background from Channel Factory. So, they kept saying, "No, forget about that. Focus on paid media." I don't know. I was persistent, probably very annoying, young naivete, saying, "I really believe in this idea. Just give me a shot." They shut me down a few times and just said, "No, let's focus on the paid media thing."James Creech:Until, finally one day in some leadership meeting, with the support of our CTO Ole at the time, they said, "You know what?" I think maybe just to shut me up, "Okay, fine, right? You can have two months, 60 days. Give it a shot. Let's see what happens, right? And, if it doesn't work," which they fully expected it wouldn't, "After the field experiment, we'll go back to focusing on paid media." And, I said, "Sounds like a fair deal to me, right? I'll take that bet." So, in those next two months, I signed Maker Studios, Defy Media, Me Too, Networks, and 2btube, which would later go on to become the largest Spanish language creator community in the world. So, all of a sudden, they said, "Wait a minute. This is really interesting. We didn't think you would sign a customer, let alone four of the top players in the space. This is absolutely what we're focusing on, and you should do this full time."Chris Erwin:Did you have to evolve the technology product to service these clients as well as reposition your services to actually close these prospects? So, you had to do both, because you didn't have a technology background before this. You hadn't built tech products. You weren't a project manager, but you had to become this for this new role, correct?James Creech:Yeah. I am passionate about technology, had never been in product, had been adjacent to it, but said, "Yeah, we've got to figure this out." We built a software application that's meant for internal use. We have to figure out access rights, provisioning, white labeling, to make this an externally consumable tool. We need to figure out how to price it. We have to figure out how to sell this to our essentially competitors, right? We were working with these companies that were also in many respects offering the same services or going after the same talent. So, in some conversations, that was a bit awkward, right?James Creech:It said, "Well, how do we know that you're not going to take this data or use this technology to better your business and not ours, right?" So, that was a tricky thing to dance around and navigate. Huge props due to our technical team, Ole our CTO, [inaudible 00:25:56], a lot of our early engineering design product resources who were making this thing happen behind the scenes. I was out there kind of selling the dream, but they were the ones executing on this. A lot of it was just need finding, listening to the market. What do you need? Does the current tool in some form serve that? How do we adapt it to fit what you need? And, what else should we be building in the future so that we can help you get there?Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody. Let's get back to the interview. It's interesting, because just listening to this story, one version would be ... And, James builds this incredible business at Bent Pixels, and he does that for the next 10 years of his career. But, the reality is that actually, you're there for a couple years, and then you found Paladin. So, after this initial two months of success, what actually caused you to say, "Hey, I want to break out and create a different suite of technology tools for the creator economy?"James Creech:So, I think in success, we got even more excited and probably a bit persistent on my idea that, okay, this is really working. We're now signing more and more customers. We're going to put more resources into this. Now, we are the market leader. We're first to market. We're building a name for ourselves in this category. People are rethinking the perception of Bent Pixels as a software company, as a technology vendor, whereas to creators, there's still this brand identity around being an MCN, being a services business, being a media company. But, I'm kind of casting Bent Pixels in this new light and trying to position or change the branding to be this enterprise software tool. Meanwhile, that business segment is growing. Engineers are expensive, so we're adding a lot of headcount to service the need and the customers.James Creech:It got to a certain point where I'm still advocating, hey, let's sell off or shut down the other business units, because look around. A number of other acquisitions had happened. Awesomeness was acquired by Dreamworks. Maker Studios sold to Disney. There was all this M&A activity happening. So, I'm like, "Okay, it's probably a good time to think about what does an exit look like for the media business?" Then, we can focus. We can really double down on this technology play. So, I was advocating for that. The rest of the leadership team said, "It's very clear that you're passionate about this. We don't necessarily all share the same vision or belief in that strategy, but obviously, the way you run a media company and a tech startup, a high growth tech company, require different fundamentals, principles, capital. So, maybe these businesses should live on their own, right?"James Creech:So, that's when the idea was floated that we should spin it out, right? So, it was at the time myself, Ole, our CTO, and I had convinced my good friend and partner in crime, Thomas Kramer, who worked with me back in the Channel Factory days. So, he and I kept in touch. We would catch up and talk about a lot of these challenges. I said, "Would you come over here and lead product for us?" He got excited about that vision and that opportunity, so it was really the three of us advocating for this opportunity. Initially, I was kind of resistant, to be honest. I said, "No, like, I think this is where the business is going. We should focus on this." Ultimately, saw the light that, yes, okay, we should separate these companies.James Creech:For a long time, I wanted the software business to continue to be called Bent Pixels, and that maybe the media company should rebrand as something, Millennial Studios. There were some other ideas that were floated, but after whatever, six months of back and forth and working it out cooperatively as a team, we decided, okay, Thomas and Ole and James will basically buy the software IP and spin out and form a new company, and then will rebrand it, come up with a new name. Bent Pixels will continue as a customer of Paladin, but there will not be any formal relationship between the two businesses. I wanted to be very clear that Paladin is its own company and eliminate that conflict of interest idea. I think Bent Pixels was very happy to say, "Okay, we can offload these expenses from developers and sales people and everything else off our books, focus on our knitting, and get back to the growth of the media business." We worked that all out to happen April of 2016. So, that was when we took the leap and said, "Okay, we're going to set out on our own."Chris Erwin:Did you raise outside capital to give you and your two other founders the ability to purchase the software, purchase the IP, and kickstart what you called Paladin in April, 2016?James Creech:We didn't. We thought about it, but the way we originally structured the deal was Thomas and Ole and I all put considerable capital into the project. Then, some of our partners from Bent Pixels also came in as angel investors. They said, "We like you guys. We believe in what you are doing. We want to support you." So, they were kind enough to give us a little bit of seed capital to help us get through the early days of burn and very kindly help us figure out how to set up our books and transfer the employee leases and all these things that as first time entrepreneurs, you have to figure out. So, they were very helpful and kind and patient with us. But, Thomas and Ole and I were pretty much all in.James Creech:So, to put that in perspective, at the time Thomas was getting married, and he had promised his fiance this amazing wedding. She was amazing to say, "We believe in this dream, and as part of starting our life together, we want to put that money that we would have saved for a big nice wedding with our family and friends towards investing in this startup, right?" So, that was Thomas's contribution. I had been saving to buy a house, so I took essentially a down payment on what I would do to buy a house and said, "I'm all in on the business."James Creech:Every penny to my name and probably even some I didn't have like went into Paladin. Then, Ole has the best story of all, was living in Norway. He's Norwegian and had recently gone out and bought a Tesla, right? Because, he loved
Michael Cohen — CEO at Team Whistle on Wall Street to Digital, Scaling $0-100M, Leadership, and Exits
Apr 14 2022
Michael Cohen — CEO at Team Whistle on Wall Street to Digital, Scaling $0-100M, Leadership, and Exits
This interview features Michael Cohen, CEO at Team Whistle. We discuss being denied by a Goldman Sachs recruiter, when wearing a suit can be bad for business, being on the launch team of Whistle Sports, why the movie The Martian inspires his leadership, executing an M&A roll-up strategy and going from $0-100M in revenue, exiting to ELEVEN Group, and learning how to “play it where it lies”.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Michael Cohen:The presenter started off his presentation, and he said, "None of you in this room are going to get a job at Goldman Sachs right out of school." Sort of the most deflating thing ever. I've been preparing for this for an ungodly amount of time. And I was so angry for so long, but what I took away from that has stayed with me for my entire career, because what he then went on to say was, "I didn't start a Goldman Sachs. I started at X company. I then went to Y, then over to company A, and ultimately got to where I am today as a managing director at Goldman Sachs." And his point was that not all career paths are linear. You have to have different experiences along the way that ultimately allow you to become a better managing director at Goldman Sachs, or wherever you were going. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Michael Cohen, CEO of Team Whistle and chief transformation officer of ELEVEN Group. Michael was born in Long Island and grew up with parents who worked in tourism and technology. He decided to migrate to Atlanta for college, kicked off his career in a financial training program at Wells Fargo, but he soon returned to his home turf in New York City to be an investment banker, where Michael learned how to tell stories with numbers. Of note, this is where we first met and actually worked together for a few years. Chris Erwin:Michael's career then progressed into private equity and strategy consulting, but he left to take an early bet in digital media and helped launch Whistle Sports in 2014. Today, Michael is the CEO and has spent the past year integrating the business into its new owner, ELEVEN Group. Some highlights of our chat include being denied by a Goldman Sachs recruiter, when wearing a suit can be bad for business, why the movie "The Martian" inspires his leadership, executing an M&A roll up strategy and going from zero to a hundred million in revenue, and learning how to play it where it lies. Now I've known Michael for over 15 years, and he's one of my favorites to share industry notes with and riff about all things creator economy. Telling his story has been a long time coming, so let's get to it. Chris Erwin:All right, Michael, thanks for being on the podcast. Michael Cohen:Chris, thanks for having me. Been a long, long time that we've known each other, so I'm excited to chat with you. Chris Erwin:Yeah. This has been a long time coming. I think I've been asking you to be on the podcast for almost over a couple years now. There was some assumed perhaps missed emails or lack of responses or who knows what, but finally able to make it happen today. Michael Cohen:I take the fifth, but I'm glad I'm glad to be here today. Chris Erwin:All right, Michael. I've known you for a long time. I think dating back to 2006. This is ... I know. It's pretty crazy to say that. It's almost over 15 years starting in Wall Street finance into the world of digital media. A lot to talk about today, but let's start where you grew up, if there's any glimpses into your early career. Let's rewind a bit and tell us about where you grew up and what your household was like. Michael Cohen:I grew up in Long Island in New York, a nice, quiet suburban town called Jericho. I have an older brother and my two parents as well. The town was a very small town. Everybody knew each other, which was great, but also a little bit of a bubble. And so I think having grown up in that environment, it was something that I liked a lot, but also knew it was something I needed to get out of and experience the world a bit different. And I think part of my childhood allowed me to do that. My mom worked in travel, which allowed us to go to all different places. Some I appreciated at the time. Some, I certainly did not as a kid. Whish I could go back and appreciate some of those more, but again, this is well before we had digital cameras, let alone Instagram. Michael Cohen:You couldn't experience a culture the way you potentially can today through Instagram or other apps. I got to have a feel for other cultures around the world through that lens. And then my dad worked in and around technology for his entire career, which was pretty awesome. He traveled to Japan a lot. And I would always ... We went to the consumer electronic show, when CES was actually consumer electronics, or at least more prominently consumer electronics. I would inevitably have some new gadget. I remember a small, little TV that had a massive antenna that I got channel two on, which was great, super exciting as a kid. And then I definitely had the first MP3 player, which I think it was called the Diamond Rio. Chris Erwin:It could hold five songs? Michael Cohen:Yeah. It literally had I think five songs. You could upgrade the memory and you might get eight songs. It was literally the coolest thing ever, but you'd use it to go for a run because you had a Walkman. That was the only other thing. And if you do more than a 20 minute run, that's kind of it. But I think being around my mom and dad who were both working, gave me a strong appreciation for hard work and work ethic. I think both of the industries that they were in gave me perspectives that I probably wouldn't necessarily have had. I'd say my older brother, in terms of work ethic, not to say he didn't have great work ethic, but he is wildly smart. And he didn't actually have to work all that hard to do really well, which, on the other hand, I believe I'm somewhat smart, but also had to do a lot of hard work to keep up. That's just something that's always driven me. Chris Erwin:Michael, I think you have many moments of great intelligence, so don't cut yourself short there. All right. With your mother in travel, your father in tech, did you have a sense of what you wanted to do as a kid? Did a lot of people in your community work in New York City? Did they work in finance? What were you thinking about your careers you were preparing for college? Michael Cohen:Yeah, we had a lot of different folks in the neighborhood. Some worked in finance, some accountants, a variety of folks that worked in different industries. I think for me, business was something that was always an area where I wanted to focus. I knew I wanted to be a business man at that time, follow predominantly in my dad's footsteps and be able to work with a great company and travel, be a part of important meetings, a big team. All that stuff was important to me. Exactly where and what that meant was certainly TBD. Again, we didn't have internet, and all that stuff wasn't as prevalent as it is today to sort of understand all the options and choices. Chris Erwin:And actually, a quick tangent to that ... As a kid, what were your hobbies? What were your passions? What did you do outside the classroom? Michael Cohen:Played a lot of sports. I grew up in a neighborhood that after school, all of us would get our bikes. We'd go to a park. We go back to the school. We'd play pick up basketball, roller hockey, baseball, you name it. We were out until dinnertime. And that was just awesome, being able to always be playing sports. And then at home, I would say because I was able to get exposure to a lot of the technology, I probably had the latest and greatest computers, these massive machines, and got to tinker around with that. So played on the computers. I probably had the first CD burner that existed, and turned that into a little entrepreneurial business in high school, selling CDs. Chris Erwin:Burned popular CDs that you would buy at the time and sell them to your friends? Michael Cohen:There was a very popular dance mix. I don't remember what it was, but it was one of those things that ... I don't know if it was Tower Records or one of those [inaudible 00:08:06] things that you get 22 songs or something on. And it's a mix. I had this CD burner. My friend and I, we started selling these CDs for a few bucks to our friends. It was a nice little side hustle back in high school. Chris Erwin:Okay, so there's a little bit of an entrepreneurial bend in you. I see that. You decide to go to college, and you go to Emory university in the south. What were you thinking when you went to Emory? What was the plan there? Michael Cohen:It was interesting. My brother had gone to Emory. I went down to visit him, Emory in Atlanta, Georgia, early 2000s. The "dirty south" was really having a moment in terms of growth, in terms of pop culture, a really awesome vibrant place. I think for me, having grown up in more of a smaller neighborhood where I knew a lot of the people, I think feeling like a bigger fish in a smaller pond was something that was more exciting. And I think looking at Emory, looking at the curriculum, the school wasn't super small, but at the same time, it would give me warmer weather and the ability to feel part of the movement in pop culture happening at the time. Chris Erwin:And so from there, you end up going into finance, right when you graduate, which I think is around 2005. And I think you end up at Wells Fargo. What was your thinking there for your first role out of school? Michael Cohen:I'll back you up a little bit. At Emory, I majored certainly in business, but with a concentration in finance and marketing. And again, I had always had the desire to be a leader, wanting to be the head of a company someday. Didn't know exactly what that meant at the time, but that was always something that was important to me. I remember going to a ... The school had put on a road show of meeting different investment banks. I got to go to Goldman Sachs, the cream of the crop. I remember this so clearly. I had my suit on, I had studied, I had the vault guides. I knew every question that could be answered. I was ready, and the presenter started off his presentation. And he said, "None of you in this room are going to get a job at Goldman Sachs right out of school." Chris Erwin:Why are you there? Michael Cohen:I'm like, "Well, this is sort of the most deflating thing ever. And I've been preparing for this for an ungodly amount of time." I was so angry for so long, but what I took away from that has stayed with me for my entire career, and it's something I pass on. Because what he then went on to say was, "I didn't start at Goldman Sachs. I started at X company. I then went to Y. I went then over to company A, and then I went to company B and ultimately got to where I am today as a managing director at Goldman Sachs." And his point was that not all career paths are linear. You have to have different experiences along the way that ultimately allow you to become a better managing director at Goldman Sachs, or wherever you were going. Michael Cohen:Fast forward, that stuck with me. I didn't get a job at Goldman Sachs and actually, for the first time in my life, I decided to take a different road. I stayed in Atlanta after I graduated when a lot of my peers were moving back to Manhattan and New York. Again, Atlanta during this time was really booming, and I was excited about the city. I worked for Wells Fargo in their corporate banking group, where we were lending money to large Fortune 500 companies. Michael Cohen:It was a really interesting experience because it was so foundational in terms of learning and the training program that Wells Fargo had. It was just an incredible training program, got exposure to a lot of different people, a lot of different industries that we were covering. And it really gave me a very solid foundation. Ultimately, it was something that I would say, started to lay a very strong finance acumen for me down in Atlanta. I stayed down in Atlanta for a year after graduation and worked at Wells Fargo. It was a two year training program and my focus was all right, it's not investment banking, but maybe I can complete this training program in one year versus two years. So I completed all the training requirements. Chris Erwin:This is actually where we have a lot of overlap. Right after undergrad, I also started my career as a corporate banker. I went to the Bank of New York. It's now known as BNY Mellon. Similar to you, we were lending to Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries. So paper manufacturing, TMT, energy and utilities, and much more. I remember spending a lot of time pouring over financial statements and getting into all the details. I learned a ton. Follow up question for you, Michael, is what did you like most about the training program? Michael Cohen:What was great about the training program is that, and I remember this so clearly, they taught you how to hold your plate and a glass at a cocktail dinner. They taught you how to answer the phone. And you think about these soft skills that you take for granted today. Most people don't even use a phone anymore, let alone know how to actually pick up the phone. Go to a cocktail party, how you're supposed to hold the glass on the plate with one hand so you have the other hand free to shake someone's hand. Little fun things that you learned outside of just the core finance and accounting. Michael Cohen:But what was interesting, and why I ultimately decided to move back to New York, was it was a little too slow for me in Atlanta at the time. Still very much a nine to five attitude in that city in terms of where I was, and the opportunity to advance as fast as I would've wanted. This is when I got the opportunity to move to New York, and I landed a job at Waller Capital, which is where you and I had worked together. Chris Erwin:I remember that first meeting where I think you had just joined within the past handful of months. This is I think in 2006, and very similar experience to you, incredible training program at Bank of New York, learned a lot from the leadership there, but wanted something that was more faster paced. Wanted to jam in the hours while I was young in my twenties. I remember coming to an interview at night in the office, and this was a small office, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, or one rock, and meeting at the upstairs meeting room. It was in the dark. I walk in and I think we do a 45 minute or hour interview. And I was like, "Wow, look at this guy. He's got a similar background to me, but he's super sharp. He's very confident. And you got me very, very excited about the role." The interview I had was okay. Chris Erwin:But I guess it was good enough to give me the job, because I remember getting an offer letter shortly thereafter and then joined the company a few weeks after that. I'm curious, one of the things we talked about before was building three legs of the stool. Each of those legs being finance, operations, and strategy and leadership. What do you think that you got out of your experience at Waller Capital? And then you moved to The Cypress Group thereafter, what was the financial acumen that you were really building at that point? Michael Cohen:I think it was a few different things. It was a core foundational skillset in corporate finance and accounting, which is really understanding how the numbers work, how an income statement, a balance sheet, a cash flow, not only how that works, which I think I learned in Wells Fargo, but in investment banking and at Waller capital was more of how it's applied. Because what we did was we were advising companies ... As you know, you worked there, but we were advising companies on raising capital to support their businesses and more often selling the companies. Helping them with the most important moment of their lives to sell them to somebody else. How do you write a story based on these numbers and present them to the marketplace? I think that was ...What I learned there was really the combination of how to use numbers to tell stories. And certainly learned a massive attention to detail. Michael Cohen:You talk about Jeff Brandon, who we both worked with. I remember what he said to me. He goes, "In our business, 99% right is a hundred percent wrong." And that's really stuck with me. The detail side of that, because what he was trying to say was one wrong number calls out your credibility to a client, to a potential buyer. And it's cast judgment, cast doubt on the rest of the financial model. So we really, the threshold for being correct was there was really zero tolerance. It taught you how to double check, how to triple check your work, how to work with others, like yourself, to ask questions, to make sure that you were approaching things the right way. Michael Cohen:I would say the storytelling with numbers, the attention to detail, and then again, work ethic. Because we worked long hours together to ultimately be able to deliver for our clients. And you had to find a solution. I'll give you an example of that, which was, we had a pitch, it was a very large pitch. We had done the pitch deck. We were all ready. Again, Waller Capital was media and telecom. I don't think we hit that early, but we spent a lot of time focused on cable companies. These cable companies, if you zoom out of a map of the United States, it's like a puzzle. There's pictures of this map that we would often use in our pitch decks to show how some different assets, where a strategic fit of different areas. Well, that needed to be part of a physical pitch deck. Michael Cohen:And unfortunately the files were so large that they couldn't print out. Again, this is '06, so didn't have these great printers that you can buy off the shelves today. And I had said to the managing director, "Look, sorry, there's just nothing I can do. It won't print. It keeps jamming. It won't print." And the response was like, "That's just not acceptable. I need this for a pitch tomorrow morning. It's got to be at my house in Greenwich by 4:00 AM, because I've got a 6:00 AM flight." So, okay. And I've got my new shoes on, my new suit, my investment banker gear. Meanwhile, I'm living on a couch at this point, and I go down to the financial printers on Wall Street, and begging them to take this file. The financial printers were the people that actually printed out all the 10Ks, all the SEC documents that had to be physically printed back in the day. Michael Cohen:I begged them to find a way to get this file open. Ultimately after going to three different ones, I found someone that was able to print it. They printed it. I bartered with them, so instead of charging with me, we said, "Hey, the next virtual data room that we use will go with you." And I took a black car all the way to Greenwich. I dropped it off. My feet were all blistered up. Ultimately got home, got a couple hours of sleep, and back in the office by nine o'clock. While going through that, I was obviously fairly frustrated and tired and exhausted, but it taught me that every problem has a solution. You just have to work it hard enough. I think those three plus years at Waller Capital really instilled a core foundation in how I work, and not only what I know, but how I work and what I really am able to do. Chris Erwin:Very well said. After investment banking for a few years, you then head to private equity. You head to the Cypress Group and Torque Capital. Tell us about experience and what the training was there that was setting you up for the rest of your career. Michael Cohen:Wat was really interesting coming out of Waller Capital after three years was, I don't know how many different sell side mandates we were on, but probably, 30, 40 over my time there. Sell side is when, as you know, when you're selling a company to the marketplace, so you're representing a seller and you're going out and you're positioning them to a marketplace of buyers to ultimately sell it. Now, what was really fascinating for me, and what I wanted to do, was go on the opposite side. Okay. You sell the company, now what happens? A buyer buys it, what do they do now? How do they operate it? And Cypress Group was a two and a half billion dollar private equity firm. I would say they were focused on diversified industrials and manufacturing. Michael Cohen:And for me, what I wanted to get next in my career was a broader exposure to the economy. No better way to do that than getting more involved in industrials and manufacturing. The other side of it is I wanted to be involved in the actual operations of the company. Cypress was sort of nearing the end of its fun life, but really was focusing on portfolio operations. It would give me an opportunity to really roll up my sleeves, work with various executives in each of these companies that they had owned, and literally be on the front lines of operations. And I think that was an incredible experience, particularly because the fall of Lehman Brothers happened during that. When you have exposure to everything from automotive companies to kitchen cabinets during a recessionary period, how do you operate those businesses? Michael Cohen:It's one thing when you can't stop selling kitchen cabinets. It's another thing when home builds are cut in half, and you've got a massive manufacturing line needs to be retooled or relooked at. And so how do you fix that? I was able to go to many interesting places similar to our days in Waller Capital, driving around the country and various markets, and get on the manufacturing floor. What I remember very clearly are two things. One, the first company I went to that we owned, I was wearing a suit, tie, nice shoes, clearly bringing a New York aura to this company that was in Tennessee, I believe. And it was like, who is this guy? What is he doing here? How can he possibly help me? Michael Cohen:I quickly learned culturally, you can't get things done by decree. What I quickly did was, the next day I changed. I was no longer wearing a suit. I was a little bit more suitable, but I started just asking questions and listening. What I took away was, what are the biggest pain points that the CEO has, that some of the senior managers have. And ultimately I came away from that trip knowing that if I could solve some of those pain points for them ... And some of them were fairly easy. Some of them were, "Hey, I need just better communication between the board and us," or, "Hey, there's this issue that keeps popping up." These were fairly simple, but it just required connecting of dots to do. And I did that, and what was magical out of that was the respect and credibility that I was able to get. Michael Cohen:From that point on, I was able to acclimate and get involved in these companies in a way where I started to be able to understand truly what would move the needle for them as operators, versus me wearing a New York private equity hat. And that was probably the most fun I had ever had. It really reinforced my desire to really be an operator. I had now investment banking, private equity experience. After two years ... Private equity was a two year program. You signed two years, and then you're typically off to business school or you do something else. Ultimately, I had asked the head of the private equity firm for his advice on what I should do next. I said, "Hey, should I go to business school?" Michael Cohen:I had taken GMAT. I had done well. He was a big golfer. He said, "Play it where it lies." He goes, "You're sitting in the fairway. Why would you go to business school? You've already got the education. Everything you would've gotten, you've seen. You've been operating. You've been operating through these tough environments." And this was about the time where we saw an opportunity in the market to create what I would call a lower middle market distressed fund that would focus on these smaller companies that were forgotten during the post Lehman era, that were still extremely valuable, had a lot of asset value, again from manufacturing, whether that was equipment or what they were doing, but just were victims of the challenging environment. Going in, helping to restructure those, bringing those back to life, was awesome. It was the best. After two years, I joined a couple of folks there. Michael Cohen:We created this vehicle called Torque Capital Group. It still exists today. We made a couple of investments. I was really part of the very beginning of a fund, the very beginning of the investment that we made, putting together a hundred day plan, living in places like New Hampshire and outer Georgia, really working with the operators on what is this next iteration of the company. That was just such an incredible experience. What I took from that was ultimately, I was more excited about the top line growth side of things, the innovation that was happening in Silicon Alley. That then led me to the next stage of the career. Chris Erwin:Few interesting notes there. One, in terms of really listening, and being aware, and understanding the cultural nuances when you're working with different companies or leadership ... I feel you on that because I remember you and I used to do this. We used to do the cable tours when we were in banking, and I would show up to the middle of nowhere, Missouri or middle of nowhere, Wyoming to a cable head end, where we were representing the seller. The private equity company, their buyer, and their leadership and diligence team would come out. They'd all just be in general outdoor work gear. And I'm showing up in a suit, slacks, nice leather shoes. I was totally the odd man out. I thought that dressing nice like that would get me respect in the room, or respect in a situation because I was typically 20 years younger than everyone else that was there. Chris Erwin:That was not the case, and I learned pretty quickly that I got to adjust the wardrobe. And I got to listen more to the people that are around me if I'm going to have an impact in this situation. I think that's very right. And your boss, I think at the Cypress Group said, "Play it where it lies." Probably around that time, it's 2011 for you, I decided to go to business school because I think I realized I was making a change where I wanted to change geographies. I wanted to change roles. I wanted to change industries, and I felt that I didn't have the right skillset and I didn't have the right plan. I needed to reset and take two years to get the operating experience that I needed. Chris Erwin:It's funny, we took two different paths, but ended up in pretty similar industries thereafter, and pretty similar roles that have diverged over the past few years. It's just funny to kind of reflect on that. All right, so then after Torque Capital, we're going to get shortly to your rise in digital media at Team Whistle, but I think there was a quick stint of strategy work that you were doing. Tell us quickly about that, and then we'll get to your current role now. Michael Cohen:So now, I've got the finance acumen under me, I've got the operational acumen under me, and I see very clearly what I need next, which is more of the strategy work that was missing. What I was looking for at the time was, do I jump into a startup and take some sort of role that's ... I think at the time everyone coming from private equity or MBAs was looking for a business development role, or a strategy role within these companies. I got some really great advice from an angel investor who introduced me to the CEO of Fahrenheit 212, which their whole mantra, how do we take an existing asset, existing distribution channels, existing marketplace position, and how do we leverage that to create a new product, a new technology, bring that to market and ultimately build a startup within a Fortune 500 company? Michael Cohen:I was advised by this angel investor who said to me, "Go talk to Fahrenheit. I think this is a great bridge that will ultimately get you into more of that operating role, that startup role, but this is a great place to go. You'll have the ability to work with large Fortune 500 companies that you've been working with, but you'll also be able to help them work on new products, new innovation, very exciting activities." And so got the job where I was an engagement manager. My role there was to lead different engagements. I got the opportunity to work with everyone from Citigroup, to Samsung, and a number of others in between, but big companies and big challenges that we were trying to tackle for them. One of the best pieces of advice I got from the founder, a guy by the name of Jeff Valletta, stuck with me. He said, "Free yourself from the fear of failure." Michael Cohen:What he was saying was a couple things. One is, in innovation, you're going to fail sometimes, but if you play your hands scared, you're never going to innovate. The team that we built at Fahrenheit was there to support you. So it was one, the team around you is here to support you, so don't worry about you failing. And two, don't worry about the product failing because you're going to learn from it. And it was about iteration. It was a great environment to frankly, retrain my brain because in banking and private equity, when you hit a wall, you think about how do I financial engineer around this? How do I cut it? In innovation when you hit a wall, that's opportunity. Michael Cohen:It took me a number of months to sort of retrain my brain on that notion that this is opportunity, and so how do we innovate around it? How do we innovate through it? What does this mean in terms of opportunity? That to me was an incredible experience. I was at Fahrenheit for about a year, and then I left and ultimately started my own consulting company. And why did I leave? Well, something interesting happens when you work with Fortune 500 companies and you deliver them, at least in my experience there was you deliver them this great strategy. You deliver them this great idea. They sign off on it. Two things happen: one, the person who's the key stakeholder gets promoted and it's no longer their problem. Or two, they decide to take it internally. They're like, this is great. We're going to run with it from here. The idea of me getting to build a startup within a Fortune 500 company was not really a super viable path. You're able to bring the strategy to life, but often, they're going to run with it on there. Michael Cohen:So obviously lots of internal stakeholders, lots of different things you need to do. And being inside the company was how they were able to be successful with it or take it. But at that point, I was very confident in the skillset that I had built. And so I started my own consulting company called, Who Is M. Cohen Ventures. Chris Erwin:Can I just ask why, Who Is M. Cohen? Michael Cohen:A friend of mine was more advanced in the social media space at the time than I was. In terms of branding and everything, I was like, "I need a Twitter handle. What Twitter handle should I do?" I couldn't redo my AOL handle from high school. So he's like, "What about who is M. Cohen? There's so many Michael Cohens out there. What about who is M. Cohen?" And so I took that as my Twitter handle, and then I just started branding a lot of other things with it. I liked it. Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating, wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it. Everybody let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:After Fahrenheit and after Who Is M. Cohen Ventures, you joined what is now known as Team Whistle back in 2013. I'm curious to hear, from your point of view, how you ended up making this transition. Because I do remember when I was graduating from Kellogg, I was working for a company called Pritzker that actually invested in Big Frame and Awesomeness. I joined Big Frame back in, I think July 2012. I remember increasingly getting calls from you being like, "Hey Chris, I see you're working at Big Frame. You're in the YouTube MCN world, what's going on there? What are you doing? How are you building?" And I remember the frequency of those calls really ratcheting up. I think there was an eventual call I got from you, which was, "Hey, I joined Whistle." And I thought that was awesome. I loved having one of my financial brethren making the move into digital media where there's going to be some more quantitative focused minds and strategy minds entering the mix, which we needed. But how did that come to be from your side? Michael Cohen:I was doing the consulting thing as Who Is M. Cohen Ventures. One of my clients was the Whistle, and I was doing consulting for probably six months. I had a number of clients, probably had five different clients. And I wasn't sure whether I was going to just keep building a consulting company or do something else. It would actually, frankly, gave me the opportunity to date a lot of really interesting companies. I worked with small seed stage companies, some more funded companies, and some actually Fortune 500 companies as a consultant. But, I would say what got me to join Whistle was two things that happened. One, I would come home and I would talk to my wife and she said to me, "What's interesting, you talk about all your clients. When you talk about Whistle, you say, we. When you talk about your other clients, you say they." It was a really interesting, subtle observation that she had made. Michael Cohen:And then too, Chris, as you know, back in time, this was a wild west. Not many people knew what YouTubers were. It was probably the only platform that had creators. I don't think the term influencer was coined yet. And then Disney comes in and buys maker studios for a billion dollars. I sit there and say, well, one, there's a great team, a small team, but really interesting people that are here. And then two, there's just got some validation in this industry that perhaps there is some validation coming from Disney. Michael Cohen:At that point, John West, who was the founder of Whistle, said, "Hey, we got to raise some money, so I can't have my finance person as a consultant. So you going to join? You can create a consulting company anytime in your life. There's not going to be many opportunities you get to join a company at an early stage like Whistle." And he's a great salesman and a great mentor and friend, so I jumped on board. At the time it was called The Whistle and that began the nine plus year journey that I'm still on right now. Chris Erwin:Got it. When you first joined, what was the mandate? Was it, "Hey, Michael, we need to raise money. Let's get the model and the deck together"? And then the money's raised, what was your mandate immediately thereafter? Michael Cohen:They had raised some seed capital. Really I joined in 2013 and I would say our public launch was January 1st, 2014. And the premise of what we were trying to do was if you were to reimagine ESPN today, how would you do it? That was the question that we were asking ourselves at the time. It would be very different than what was happening back then. Traditional media, in our view, underserved today's generation. It was mostly a one way broadcast directly to you from the old guys with gray hair, talking about the glory days, talking about this scandal, that scandal. And, when I came on, the mandate was to help figure out what's the initial strategy that we want to take this on. Our view was, looking at how ESPN came to be and studying it, was ESPN came to be on the back of cable and satellite providers. They bought sports rights and, again, they sold them and then sold it to Telcos and had licensing fees and all that type of stuff. Michael Cohen:Our view was that the next company was going to be built on the back of social media company. Instead of cable and satellite, you're going to have the Facebooks, the YouTubes, et cetera. But our view was that instead of sports rights, it was going to be social influencer rights. And so the first step of what we did was we created a sports MCN, like a Big Frame before us, or a Maker, or Style Hall. All these others that were either generalists, or they were very vertical focused, Style Hall being more fashion and beauty. Tastemade, being more around food. Michael Cohen:There was still room for sports. The first thing that we did and that I was part of, was really trying to come up with that strategy. Once we landed on the MCN strategy, which, our view at the time we came after a number of other companies, was instead of this actually being the destination we're trying to go to, it was more of the vehicle. Michael Cohen:And what I mean by that is, we would create this MCN, we'd have a lot of creators under our belt. It would give us access to tons of data, which would then give us the ability to learn more about the audience and then figure out how best to serve that audience. So I would say the initial part of me coming on was helping with the capital raise, putting the deck together, putting together a financial model. But in order to put together a deck in a financial model, you of course need the business strategy. Looking back nine years, it's very easy to tell a linear story on what we did, but between us that's BS. We all know building a company is not a linear story. So that was the first piece of coming on. Chris Erwin:When you launch in January of 2014, did the launch go as expected? What surprised you? Michael Cohen:We were so
Brendan Gahan — CSO at Mekanism on YouTube in 2005, Selling Epic Signal, and Your First 100 Drafts
Mar 17 2022
Brendan Gahan — CSO at Mekanism on YouTube in 2005, Selling Epic Signal, and Your First 100 Drafts
This interview features Brendan Gahan, Partner and Chief Social Officer at Mekanism. We discuss working with OG YouTubers like Smosh back in 2005, founding Epic Signal and selling it to his former employer, hanging out in El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach, why it takes him 100 drafts to publish content, the future of the creator economy, and learning how to enjoy what you create.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up. A podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Brendan Gahan:I felt like my strengths could be better utilized going off on my own. It was really as simple as, well, I want to do this work the way that I know how to do it and the way I want to do it. And if that takes me going off on my own, then that's what I'm going to do. So I did. In hindsight, it sounds much smarter than it was. It was not smart from like an on paper standpoint, but I just felt like it was the right thing for me to do because I've been doing it longer than most people, I have relationships, I have a sense of what strategically works. I want to do it the way that I want to do it. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism. So Brendan was born in Ventura, California, and grew up surfing many local breaks. But although his parents were educators, he entered college without a career focus. But just a few weeks away from graduation, a last minute call from his uncle sparked his entry to media and advertising, and he never looked back. His career started at a creative agency working on some of the first YouTube campaigns with hit creators like Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox's Smosh. With a growing reputation as a social and digital expert, Brendan eventually started his own agency, Epic Signal, which he ended up selling to Mekanism. Chris Erwin:Today, Brendan is their chief social officer. On the side he also publishes a wide array of content, making it one of the industry's most well regarded thought leaders. Some highlights of our chat include what it was like to sell his company to his former employer, why he's hanging out in El Salvador's Bitcoin Beach, how it took him 100 videos to post his first TikTok, the future of the creator economy, and learning how to enjoy what you create. All right, let's get to it. Chris Erwin:Brendan, thanks for being on The Come Up Podcast. Brendan Gahan:Thanks for having me, pumped to be here. Chris Erwin:We were just having a little chat about, you got a surf in this morning, if that's right. Brendan Gahan:I did. I'm working in El Salvador this week in a little town called Zonte, people may have heard of it referred to as Bitcoin Beach. And there's a nice little right hand point here, so made sure to get out there. Chris Erwin:Are you regular foot or goofy foot? Brendan Gahan:I'm regular, yeah. Chris Erwin:Okay, so you like the right-handers. I'm goofy, I like to go left. Brendan Gahan:Yeah, right hand point in particular, it's like my favorite kind of wave. I grew up in Ventura. So grew up surfing C Street, at the point in Ventura. And then every once in a while I would make the trek up to Rincon and stuff. Chris Erwin:I'm curious, where exactly did you grow up? Were you in the LA County or were you up north? Brendan Gahan:No, I was in Ventura. So there's Ventura County, which encompasses quite a bit of Southern California, but I grew up in the city of Ventura, maybe three quarters of a mile away from the beach, it's like a 15-minute walk or so, and yeah, it was great. Chris Erwin:Great. And do you still have family that's in Ventura? Brendan Gahan:Parents are still there. I've got some aunts, uncles, cousins in the area. And then my younger sister lives, she's still in Ventura County, but about 30 minutes away from where we grew up. Chris Erwin:I often talk about Southern California real estate. And you look at one of the few pockets in SoCal that's near the beach that has been underdeveloped is definitely Ventura. I think that's true for the last 30 years. I think that's finally starting to change, particularly during COVID and remote work. Have you seen that there? Brendan Gahan:Oh my gosh, it's crazy. I was just there this past weekend. And there's all these developments going up, like apartment complexes and condos, and yeah, it's sort of interesting. When you look at Ventura on a map, there's sort of like this no man's land between LA and Santa Barbara. And for years, Ventura was just sort of like overlooked. It was like people would pass through Ventura to go to either Santa Barbara or LA, but then more and more Ojai started to become a place, and Ventura has become a bit of a destination and there's now some startups out there. Before the biggest company there was Patagonia. Ventura, growing up was sort of like this blue collar cowboy meets surfer vibe for the most part. And yeah, that's definitely evolving. Chris Erwin:I think cowboy meets surfer vibe sounds about as good as it can get, you know? Brendan Gahan:Yeah, yeah. Chris Erwin:I forget who, but when I was at Big Frame almost 10 years ago now, I remember there were some industry friends that had set up shop in Ventura and were commuting to LA, and it was only about like an hour, hour and 15 away, not that crazy if you timed it right. So curious, looking at you being at the nexus of digital media and advertising and all the things, were there any media influences when you were there, when you were younger? Did that come from your parents or anything like that? Or was your upbringing focused on completely different things? Brendan Gahan:Yeah, definitely not. LA seemed like the furthest thing in the world to me growing up. And it seemed like a city, it may as well have been New York in my mind. Even though it was only like an hour and a half, we would go to LA on a field trip every couple years, or maybe my parents would take us there and we'd visit a museum or something like that. But it was not like a destination that was really on my radar. And from a professional standpoint where my head was at, I sort of had the cliche jobs in mind, it was like, oh, okay, maybe I'll be a teacher or a lawyer. A lot of people I knew growing up, and a number of relatives were like firemen, so my mind was sort of gravitating towards, I thought I'd either be a doctor, a lawyer or a psychologist. So I didn't have much of like a media or a tech influence until later. Chris Erwin:What did your parents do? Brendan Gahan:They were both in education. So my mom was a teacher's assistant in resource classes. And then my dad initially was like a teacher and then became a principal at a number of the special education schools in Ventura County. And then when he retired, he was the director of special education in Ventura. So education ran deep in the family, I guess. Chris Erwin:Yes. No, clearly understood. But I think you mentioned that you had an uncle that was in the media space, right? Brendan Gahan:That's right. Yeah, yeah. So I had an uncle who worked in advertising and he was at Wieden+Kennedy like in the heyday when it was like Bonos, Air Jordan, all that, when it was as big as it could get, and they lived a ways away. But whenever I saw him, I would just like pepper him with a million questions because to me, somebody working in advertising, in particular on like Nike and in that era, it wasn't just ads. It was like shifting culture, like Spike Lee and all that stuff. So I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. And I'd always ask him a million questions about it. But in my mind I never thought that I would end up working in that space. It seemed like this extra terrestrial sort of thing. Brendan Gahan:But he was always really cool. And he was like a creative director doing a lot of the Air Jordan spots and that sort of thing. So he always had funny stories he would share. And I just thought it was the coolest thing. I remember being in like elementary school, he'd visit or we'd go visit him, and I'd just pepper him with questions. So it was always sort of like seated in the back of my mind, but at the same time it felt unattainable, but I was really fortunate. Brendan Gahan:I don't know if we want to skip ahead too much, but basically he ended up offering me my first internship, totally came out of the blue. I got a phone call one day, I was like two days away from graduating from college. And I was about to go home for summer and work, and yeah, just out of the blue, he's like, "Hey, I got this guy on my team," he had started his own agency at this point, he's like, "And we need some young kid who understands digital," because this is 2005. And so I came up there and I interviewed with this guy he wanted me to intern for- Chris Erwin:But you did not go to college for this, if I understand correctly, you went to, is it UC Santa Cruz and you were psychology and history? Brendan Gahan:Yep. Yep. Chris Erwin:And again, you thought with that you were going to follow in your parents' footsteps, become an educator, or become a lawyer. Brendan Gahan:Something like that, yeah, I thought I was zeroing in on like teacher, lawyer or psychologist. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do. And psychology I always thought was fascinating. So I studied that, and then I realized two, three years in, I was like, oh, I've taken a ton of history courses and if I just take a few more, I can get a double major in apparently history, because of all the writing and stuff if I remember correctly, it was like not a bad thing to have if you were looking to get into law school. So it just kind of like was a circuitous path to get where I ended up. Chris Erwin:It didn't feel like you were overly passionate about anything at that point. I think you were open minded and you had some, call it nuclear, familial inspirations or influences. But when you got this call from your uncle, you're like, hey, this has been the cool uncle that was part of these massive sociocultural movements, Michael Jordan and Nike, I totally hear you. So when you got that call, were you really pumped up or was it, oh no, this sounds like something interesting and there's some direction and let's just go see what happens. Brendan Gahan:I was really pumped. I was also really torn because I was going to go home and work as a teacher's assistant for the summer and do summer school, which I know my parents were sort of excited about on so many different levels, because I'd be home. They would see me. They loved the idea of me getting into education, at least I'm pretty sure that's what they were excited about. And so I was like very torn, but also super excited. Brendan Gahan:And I went out and drove up to San Francisco for the interview. And I still remember walking into the ad agency office for the first time just being like, holy shit, this is so fucking cool. This is an office, people work out of here. It was like this creative space. And I remember thinking, especially as a college kid, wow, there's like a beer fridge and your pool table, and all these things. And obviously I knew work was happening, but it seemed like a great environment to get work done. I don't think I ever overdid it on any of the fun things, but it was like this relief to sort of have that there, and it felt really exciting to me. Chris Erwin:So then you get the job and you move up north. Brendan Gahan:Yep. Chris Erwin:What were you focused on in the beginning there? And then, I think from our notes that you did some early work with Smosh, is that right? Brendan Gahan:Yeah, exactly. So I did an internship and then I eventually got hired, and I was technically like a junior account executive. This was 2005, 2006, 2007, I think, and it was in the early, early days of social media and I was the youngest guy in the office. So people would ask me random questions, like, "What's the deal with MySpace, what happens on that?" Or, like Facebook, nobody else could get on Facebook because you still had to have your college email address. So I sort of found myself being this resource, and at the same time me being flabbergasted by the way advertising was being done. Brendan Gahan:I remember the first time I found out how much a billboard cost, and looking at that and being like, this is almost more than, I mean, I can't remember the number right now, but I remember thinking, this is about as much I make in a full year with my salary and being like, I don't think anyone does anything because of the billboard, or certainly not like a normal billboard ad, and seeing this huge disconnect between what drove people to do things and what people were genuinely excited about and where dollars were being allocated. Brendan Gahan:So I think I slowly started just embracing that and being like, to me, it was common sense to a certain extent, like, look, I can go on YouTube and I can see how many people watch this video. Why aren't we doing this? This shows millions of people. Once again, like walking down the street, I don't know of anybody who does anything because of a billboard. And so that sort of evolved, and I started just pitching ideas proactively. And I remember I even tried to pitch clients and stuff, and stuff I in hindsight probably didn't have- Chris Erwin:Existing clients of the agency, or were you doing some new business development? Brendan Gahan:All of the above. I remember reading about it in the ad trades, like, oh, so and so company fired their agency and I'd be like, well, why don't they work with us? And literally come up with ideas and mail them things, and like try and get a response. And I don't know, just like this sort of, we're a creative industry, let's be really creative. Chris Erwin:Was that the expectation from your role or was that you just having some gumption of being a self-starter? Brendan Gahan:Not to pat myself on the back, but I think it was definitely me sort of having a little bit of gumption. I think I also just didn't know. It was a relatively small loose agency. And so I thought, well, it wasn't like this is exactly how you're supposed to do this job, and this, this and this, I think creativity was really encouraged and so long as work was getting done, anything I wanted to do sort of beyond that was like, all right, yeah, sure, that sounds cool. Chris Erwin:So did that spirit, is that what drove you... Did you work directly with Smosh? What is that story there? Brendan Gahan:Yeah. So late 2006, this client the agency had had before I was even there, they came to the agency and they were like, "Hey, we want to do an ad campaign. We don't have a big budget." And it was a portable MP3 player. And the partners at the agency were talking about it right behind me. And they were about to turn it down. And it was one of those situations where in hindsight, yes, it was not much money, and they should have turned it down by all means. But I just butted in. I was like, "Hey, what if we pitched them this idea of getting these kids on YouTube to promote it. And we just rather than try and squeeze like a campaign into this budget, let's just do one video." Brendan Gahan:And so they were like, "Oh, that sounds kind of cool. Yeah, let's pitch it to the company, to the brand." And they bought it. I think I literally turned around after the partners said it was okay to pitch it to the client and I emailed Ian and Anthony, found their email on MySpace and they emailed me back that afternoon. And I think the next week they came by the office because they were just up in Sacramento area, so it wasn't too far. Chris Erwin:They were one of the biggest YouTube channels at the time, right? Just for context, this is 2005, 2006. Facebook had just started in '04. YouTube had just started in '04. Google bought them I think a couple years later. So Ian and Anthony were probably one of the biggest personalities on the platform at that time. Brendan Gahan:Yeah. I think they might have been number two. I know they eventually were number one for a couple of years, but I don't think they were quite number one yet. It was sort of like early days and there was a lot of jostling for position and stuff. Chris Erwin:So you got their emails from their MySpace page, you hit them up. That definitely wouldn't happen today, not as easy to go direct to the top creators. And then they came by your office, what happened? Brendan Gahan:Yeah, they came by, by that point we had gotten the thumbs up from the client to like, "Oh yeah, sure, we're down, if you can make it work." They came by the office, we literally got in a room and it was sort of funny. I remember nobody knew what you would charge for something like this, you know? So we were literally just kicking around like, what would you want to charge for this? I don't know, how much do you want to pay for this? Just going back and forth. And then finally, one of the partners was like, "Well, I don't know, would you guys do it for like 15 grand or something?" And they were like, "Probably, why don't we go back to..." I think Anthony's dad was an accountant or something like that. Brendan Gahan:And they were going to run it by him. I might have those details wrong, but they were like, it was basically like a, pretty sure that'll work. Let's go talk to our parents. And then they came back and they were like, sure, and so we did it, they made this video called Feet for Hands. I remember when it went live it crashed the client's website, which I thought was so fucking cool. I felt so validated. And then, yeah, it got like millions of views. And I just wanted to do that again and again, and again. And I saw what Mekanism was doing and my first boss at that agency, he'd left for Mekanism, Jason Harris, the president and CEO of Mekanism now. He joined Mekanism, became a partner. And we had a great working relationship. Brendan Gahan:I interned for him and stuff. And I showed in that video, I was like, look, look, look at this thing. It's got three million views. I know I can help you guys. I was so envious of the work they were doing. They were doing like early viral video stuff. And this is like 2006, 2007, when a lot of this stuff, people weren't paying attention at all. And so I was just so envious of the projects they were working on. And they brought me in for a few interviews and I literally met the whole agency, which at the time was pretty small, I think like twice. And then they hired me. Chris Erwin:Was this East Coast based? Brendan Gahan:This is all West Coast. They were in San Francisco, just a few blocks away from the office I was at, at the time, and then got hired, it was like Mekanism was doing a ton of branded content, viral video stuff but oftentimes without any paid media. The platforms, most of them didn't even have paid media as an option. I think at the time you could buy a YouTube homepage banner and that was it. Facebook didn't have it. There was no sort of formal way of promoting that stuff for the most part. So we sort of, myself and a couple other guys, younger guys, we built out a team over time that was the social media team. And we were just constantly coming up with different ways to promote content, doing everything from Reddit seeding to tons and tons of work with creators. We worked with all the big creators in those early days, which was great, because it was a small community. We got to make a lot of deeper relationships at the time. Chris Erwin:Yeah. And you were probably working with a lot of those creators direct versus now there's tons of representatives, managers and agencies, and sometimes you never even talk to the end talent, but back then probably different. Brendan Gahan:Oh, 100%, yeah. We would get pretty elaborate sometimes with these campaigns, we would do like in person summits and kickoffs. We worked with 20th Century Fox on some campaigns, and we would fly like 50 influencers in and a bunch obviously would be in LA, but host these elaborate dinners and events, and sometimes it'd be two, three days long where they're meeting with the execs, meeting with actors, kind of getting a download of the campaign, what the expectations were for them. Then we'd take them out, go partying. So it was cool. Got to spend a lot of face time with people and it was a really fascinating time. Chris Erwin:You were there for about five to six years at Mekanism, right? Brendan Gahan:Yeah. Chris Erwin:And then I think you transitioned to full screen after that for a brief stint, but then you started your own agency, Epic Signal. So what was the catalyst for you to leave this kind of the broader corporate support and other people that were helping elevate your career to say, I want to do something differently, I'm going to do it by myself. Brendan Gahan:I felt like full screen was exploding at the time. You know this, all the MCNs were blowing up, but I felt like there was a lot of distraction and stuff. And the thing that I was really passionate about at its core was the strategy in collaborating with both brands and creators to create something awesome. And I felt like full screen, it was like they were trying to grow this MCN, this network and make a scalable business. So it was a little bit different from what I was really passionate about. And so I left, I thought I was just going to take my time sort of consulting. But I mean, this was like when influencer marketing was reaching this new fevered pitch because... We talked about it yesterday. Sometime around there, Maker was acquired, all these clients that I'd worked with and people at different agencies that I'd worked with over the years came out of the woodwork and were like, we have to have an influencer strategy. Brendan Gahan:We have to have a YouTube strategy. And I'd been the, air quotes, like YouTube guy and influencer guy since 2006. So I was one of a handful of people who had sort of like this deep bench and experience in this niche. So all my old clients started hitting me up. All of a sudden I had more work than I could personally do. And slowly started hiring people just out of necessity, because I didn't want to say no to these awesome opportunities. I was like, oh crap. I get to work with Mountain Dew, hell yeah, let's do it. Chris Erwin:I do want to clarify, but when you went off on your own, I mean I'm sure look, as the industry is growing, Google original channels program happened in 2011, 2012, hundreds of millions of dollars of funding into digitally native production companies to fuel the overall video ecosystem to help you to recruit more advertisers. And so when you decided to go off on your own to start Epic Signal, why was that? Had you always wanted to be an entrepreneur? Did you think like, hey, I want to be an owner and I'm early in a very nascent industry and so this is scary, but I'm going to get an early foothold and see what happens. Brendan Gahan:It honestly wasn't as strategic as that, it was more like, I felt like my strengths could be better utilized going off on my own. And I like being really hands on and strategic. It was really as simple as, well, I want do this work the way that I know how to do it and the way I want to do it. And if that takes me going off on my own, then that's what I'm going to do. So I did. And in hindsight, it sounds much smarter than it was, it was not smart from like an on paper standpoint. I left full screen. I left my equity on the tape because I left just shy of a year, but I just felt like it was the right thing for me to do, because I knew, I'd seen this space grow so fast and I was like, I've been doing it longer than most people. I have relationships, I have a sense of what strategically works. I want to do it the way that I want to do it. And that just made me feel good, and so that's what I did. Chris Erwin:Now did you launch Epic Signal in LA or did you move to New York? Brendan Gahan:So I was in LA, but very quickly was splitting my time up between LA and New York. I was going back and forth. I'd spend two weeks in LA, two weeks in New York, back, forth, back forth constantly, and then was about to move to New York officially, I ended up having more clients there than anywhere else, more brands I was working with there than anywhere else. And then as I was sort of putting the plan together to do that, I ended up selling it. And then I had to move to New York, so it moved things along. Chris Erwin:That happened pretty quickly, right? Because I think you had Epic Signal for, was it a couple years before you sold it to Mekanism? Brendan Gahan:Yeah, I think it was just shy of two years. It was almost two full years, yeah. Chris Erwin:Okay. And when you decided to sell, how big was your team at that point? Brendan Gahan:It wasn't big. It was like a half dozen people. Chris Erwin:Okay. Why did you decide to sell? Brendan Gahan:I found myself in a situation where I was doing so much back office stuff. It was like the very thing that I left to go do was, I wanted to focus on the strategy and deal with that, do the actual work. And then what I found was, when you are an entrepreneur, it's very easy to get sucked into dealing with lawyers and accounts, and payroll, and all this stuff that is not fun, all that back office stuff. Chris Erwin:I'm feeling you right now on that. That's where I feel like I'm at with RockWater. Brendan Gahan:You try and delegate it, but it's like all these things get this overflow back to you. And so I was back in this situation where I was doing the work that wasn't making me happy. And at the same time, I sort of felt like I have this window of opportunity where it's like, this is a really small team, we're lean and mean. We've got great profit margins. We've also got dope clients. We were working with like ABI. We worked on Bud Light campaigns, Corona. We did work with several PepsiCo brands, a handful of others. So we had a dope roster of clients that we were working with, a handful of whom were on retainer. And I was like, we have this niche where we're focusing on helping brands with YouTube strategy and YouTube creators. And oftentimes, especially the bigger brands, like a Pepsi, Mountain Dew, they had multiple agencies and they would have like a social AOR even. Brendan Gahan:And they did have a social AOR, but I was like, it's only going to be a matter of time before I get squeezed out and they start offering this services that I'm sort of in this interesting niche I can offer at this time that they don't have. And so I felt like the cache of the brands that I had, the team in place, people would find it desirable because of the relationships and already booked revenue, and great team. And so I thought I'll try and capitalize on my time and see if I can make a deal happen. Brendan Gahan:And then I had a letter of intent on the table and I would call my old boss at Mekanism for advice. "Hey, I'm negotiating with these guys, and this is a deal on the table. Does this make sense? What should I push back on?" So he was aware that things were moving along. And basically I was in New York, I had signed a letter of intent, things were sort of going through due diligence and all that. And he was like, "Let's grab drinks." So I met up with him for a drink. He's like, "Just come back." I was like, "All right, well, I got a deal in hand if you can beat it, I'm down. Like let's do it." I loved working with him. Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin. Your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work. And it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody, let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:I have to ask, did you run a formal sales process where you decided to sell and then you're like, all right, here's the 20 best fit buyers that are out there and I'm going to go call them or I'm going to hire someone to dial for dollars on the company's behalf. And/or were you also just getting unsolicited in bounds that you were like, oh, hey, this is interesting. Maybe with the market timing, things that you were sharing, where there was a lot of brands had big agencies of record, you felt that you were going to get squeezed out. So now is the time to sell, what was that looking like? Brendan Gahan:Exactly that, but sort of like the inverse. Initially, I sort of had a hunch and so I sort of informally had some conversations and dinners with people where like, I didn't come right out and say, "Hey, I want to sell," I didn't want to come across as desperate. Because I mean, and I wasn't, I wasn't desperate, but I wanted to sell. But I would sort of just seed the idea, like, "Hey, I'm kicking around the idea of selling, I'd love to do X, Y, and Z. And like' Chris Erwin:Just like dating, the classic courting phase, you're just doing the dance. Brendan Gahan:Exactly. And then once people started expressing interests, I was like, okay, I'm definitely onto something. This is something I'm way out of my depth on. So I asked around and some buddies recommended some lawyers and I hired them and signed a deal with them. And I was like, all right, let's make this happen. And that was the best decision I could have made. They earned every dime I paid them and then some, because beyond just the relief of handing it over, they definitely got me more money and I didn't ever have to be the bad guy throughout the process, which I'm very bad at saying no to people in negotiations and stuff like that. They were just like, every step of the way they were like, "No, just pass it over to us. We'll take care of it." And then they would hit me up and they're like, "Here's what's on the table, here's what we advise. What do you want to do?" And the process was stressful enough as it is, but having them sort of take the reins just alleviated so much stress. Chris Erwin:Selling your company is a very unique work stream that requires a very unique set of skills to execute well. And it can be very emotional for a founder, operator and CEO. This is your baby. You could transform your life through a big liquidity event, but it's also going to impact, you might be selling to another company and working for someone else. So having a partner there to guide you along the way is really important. I mean, I saw this a lot because I was a banker on Wall Street back in the day and sold a variety of different companies and helped shepherd the sale with Big Frame to Awesomeness TV. I just talked about that in the last podcast with Sarah Penna, one of the co-founders of Big Frame, and it's a really big decision. Chris Erwin:So I totally get it. I'm curious, who were the buyers that you were talking to? Was it different brand agencies? Was it different brands that wanted to actually just bring you on in house? Was it some of the emerging YouTube MCNs that wanted to build out their influencer sales arm? What was that group looking like? Brendan Gahan:I think it was two MCNs and this holding company, I won't name names and stuff, but it was a fascinating process. And to your point about seeing it and it being stressful and all this stuff, if you think about it, it's like, it's an experience that, as an owner or an entrepreneur you're out of your depth, it's a very unique thing that happens. It doesn't happen that often. And so bringing in professionals is so helpful because they actually do these deals. I'm doing totally different types of deals. I have no experience selling an organization. Chris Erwin:Yeah. You need to create a very compelling story and also urgency, get people excited and the feeling that they're going to miss out. So if you kind of go after the process willy nilly, you can set up a really bad result for your company. And also for your counterparties that are saying, "Hey, we're interested here. We've been in talks for a while. Why is this dragging along? Who else are you talking to?" Chris Erwin:So you can really damage, not only all the value that you've created for your business, but it can impact your team, it can impact the ability of you to continue working in the industry thereafter. So got to do it right. But so many say, I was just talking to a banker about this yesterday. Oftentimes, transactions result from long standing relationships and trust that have been built. So the end buyer for Epic Signal was your past boss at Mekanism, that became your eventual home. So after you joined forces with them, was the mandate, "Hey Brendan, come back on board. You're now part of the senior leadership team. The market opportunity is even bigger. Let's go after it with you and your whole team in a bigger way." Brendan Gahan:Pretty much, yeah. It was a bit of a plug and play option, they had... Obviously there was a social team when I left, the feeling was like there wasn't... A number of people had left by the time I came back, so I was able to bring my team in, merge it with the existing team. And we started expanding the offerings again. When I was running Epic Signal, I deliberately tried to keep it very narrow in niche, because I couldn't compete with a big social agency, it just wouldn't happen. Brendan Gahan:But by having two very key offerings, it streamlined so much of the processes and it gave me a clear point of differentiation. And when I joined back up with Mekanism, it was like full service, social, we're doing everything, community management in the lightweight, social content creation, analytics, reporting, influencer marketing, all this stuff. And so had to scale up the team and integrate with the larger organization as a whole. And it was fun. I think I'm sort of like this entrepreneur at heart or intrapreneur, and I like the process of sort of building and evolving and exploring new opportunities. So it was a really good fit, is a good fit. Chris Erwin:Thinking back on all of the brand and influencer campaigns that you've done, there's got to be one or two that stand out in terms of just something crazy went down. I think back to at Big Frame, working with some talent, doing a six figure brand deal, talent deciding literally two hours before something's supposed to go live that they're not going to post it or having a meltdown on the floor of VidCon and sobbing and crying because they're having a personal breakdown, because look, that life is tough and burnout is real in the influencer space. I remember a bunch of stories when we were launching different content verticals and flying in different 40 creators into like a creator house. This is like back in 2013, before there was like the modern creator houses of today. So any stories from the trenches that you remember from your early days? Brendan Gahan:Oh my God. Yeah, it's like, working with creators I think is one of those things, when you're in it, you're almost like, I'm never going to do this again. Then afterwards you're like, oh, that wasn't so bad. That was really fun. I think probably one that took the cake as far as stress goes, was we were working with Brisk Iced Tea, which is a PepsiCo brand. And we're about to host a summit because Brisk was relaunching, they had Eminem in the super bowl spot, and they were reviving the Claymation look. They did one with Ozzy Osborne, they did one with Danny Trejo, and we were actually having Danny Trejo fly out to New York, and he was going to meet with all these creators and stuff. And this was during the winter before super bowl. So I don't know if it was like December or January, or maybe early February, but there was a massive snowstorm. Brendan Gahan:Flights kept getting canceled and delayed. And I remember being glued to my phone, refreshing constantly, looking at, I think there were a handful of flights that were going to make it out of LA to New York before things were going to get canceled. And I remember, we signed up all these creators, Danny Trejo was going to show and he was going to be the cool, shiny object, and his flight to New York. I remember it kept getting delayed, delayed, delayed, it got canceled. We got him on another flight, delayed, delayed, delayed. And I was just like refreshing my phone and being like, this whole thing is going to fucking fall apart if that flight doesn't take off. It sounds like not that big a deal right now but I remember it was just one of those moments where I was just like, the whole thing was going to fall apart. The world was on my shoulders and I was just freaking out. But I've had a million situations like that, I remember- Chris Erwin:Did that work out? Did he get on the flight and did the campaign come together? Brendan Gahan:Oh yeah, he ended up [crosstalk 00:34:02]. Chris Erwin:He's like, I can't leave the audience hanging. Brendan Gahan:Yeah. He made it and it was freaking amazing. We thought we had him for like an hour, he was going to do a little talk, kind of talk about... His story's amazing first off. And then his spot with Brisk was super cool. And we thought people were going to get a kick out of that. I think we had like 45 minutes for him booked. He was going to come out and hang out and talk with the creators. I
Sarah Penna — Creator Launch Exec at Patreon on Her $15 Million Exit, Marrying a YouTuber, and Betting on Creators
Feb 3 2022
Sarah Penna — Creator Launch Exec at Patreon on Her $15 Million Exit, Marrying a YouTuber, and Betting on Creators
This interview features Sarah Penna, Senior Manager of Creator Launch at Patreon. We discuss how a trip to India inspired her media career, being one of the youngest YouTube MCN founders,  her $15 million exit to DreamWorks Animation, how she picks co-founders,  marrying a YouTuber-turned Hollywood filmmaker, founding a female-forward entertainment brand, and what’s up next for Patreon. Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Sarah Penna:We had outgrown the office. We were in the National Lampoon office. It was so janky and eventually we moved the talent team to my dining room table. I would cook dinner for the talent team. We would take talent meetings in my living room, which was just so bizarre and unprofessional but worked. My house was kind of a YouTuber hotel. It was very wholesome and very duct tape and bubble gum feeling. We were just kind of figuring it out. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Sarah Penna, senior manager of Creator Launch at Patreon. So, Sarah was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father was a serial entrepreneur and her mother ran the family construction business. Sarah's first foray into media began while studying abroad in India, when she became the translator for a documentary film crew. So after college, she moved to California and immersed herself in LA's up-and-coming digital media scene, which included working with OG YouTuber Phil DeFranco. Sarah rapidly became a digital expert and started her own digital talent management company in 2010, which eventually became Big Frame and was sold to AwesomenessTV and its parent, DreamWorks Animation. Chris Erwin:Today, Sarah runs a team that helps Patreon develop and launch premium talent partnerships, and also advises Frolic Media, a female-forward entertainment brand she co-founded in 2018. Some highlights of our chat include how we first met during an awkward interview moment with a guitar, when having 10,000 subs made you a Top 100 YouTuber, how she picks co-founders, what it's like to marry a YouTuber turned Hollywood filmmaker, and what's up next for Patreon. Now, I've known Sarah for nearly 10 years. She was actually my gateway drug into all things digital entertainment and where it not for her founding Big Frame, I would not be where I am today, and I am forever grateful to her, which makes me super pumped to share her story. All right, let's get to it. Sarah, thank you for being on The Come Up podcast. Sarah Penna:Thanks for having me. Chris Erwin:We got a little bit of history here. So, we'll see how much of that we can get through in 90 minutes before your next thing. Sarah Penna:Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot to pack in. Chris Erwin:As always, let's rewind a bit and let's talk about where you grew up. So, my understanding is that you grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. Your family had some land in Wyoming. I think your dad was a bit of an entrepreneur, but tell us about your upbringing. Sarah Penna:Yeah. I had a pretty cool childhood. I grew up in Utah. My parents were total hippies, just big personalities, did not grow up in the predominant faith of Utah. So, it was a little bit of an outlier, and my parents own a construction company together. So, a little bit of foreshadowing into how I worked with my husband at one point, but I grew up with an older sister and a younger brother. We had a menagerie of animals all the time, like goats, and my dad kept bees at one point. We always had two or three dogs and a bunch of cats and an iguana and chinchillas. We just had this kind of crazy Bohemian, bizarre, Jewish, hippie not Mormon family. Sarah Penna:So, my parents owned this construction company and became relatively successful with that but my dad has curse, as I do, which is, always coming up with new ideas and deciding to act upon them. He had a Japanese restaurant and he had a furniture company and he had an emergency preparedness kit company, and I- Chris Erwin:Would he do all of these at the same time as the construction business or would it be like stops and starts and all of that? Sarah Penna:No. My mom held it down. She really was the mastermind behind the construction company. She did all of the office work and made sure ... she really ran the company and then my dad was kind of the face of it. He was out at the job sites and in the early days, was actually doing the building. So, I got to see my mom be in this, talk about a male-dominated industry. She would come home so mad because she would get a piece of mail that ... her name's Paula and they would always address Paul, because they couldn't believe that a woman was running a construction company. So, I got to see this powerful woman running this super successful business in basically a hundred percent male-dominated industry. Chris Erwin:Sarah, I've known you for over 10 years and we worked together intimately for at least three or four of them. I had no idea about your background. I just learned more about you in two minutes. It took a podcast and a 10-year relationship to get here. Sarah Penna:That's totally my bad. Chris Erwin:All good. So, okay. As a kid, when your father dabbled in all these new business adventures, was that really exciting for you guys? Maybe frustrating for your mother, but as kids you're like, "Oh, dad's up to some cool stuff again." Sarah Penna:Yeah, it was fun. I was 15 when he did the Japanese restaurant and I got to work in the restaurant and just, it was cool, and I didn't realize the stress and the financial burden that it was putting on my mom and kind of how frustrating it was for her but I see that now, looking back, and she handled it amazingly. She's an incredible woman. But I'm a very early riser, and as a kid, I would ... my dad is, too. He would get up at four or five in the morning and I would, too. He would just load me up in his construction truck and we'd go get pancakes and go milk the goats and go check on his construction sites. So, I got to see the inner workings of that. Then, I love going to the office and rifling through my mom's office supplies. Chris Erwin:Well, I got some important Post-it notes here, got a yellow legal pad, all the things. Sarah Penna:It was so fun as a kid. You're like, pens and Post-it notes, and the office supply closet was just like this heaven. Chris Erwin:My dad, he ran a psychology business and still does for 40 years and had his own office, and then every year he hosted a conference. One of my favorite things is that he would hire his children, me and my twin brother, and we'd have to lick 500 envelopes and put stamps on them. But we got to use all of these office gear, we thought it was the coolest thing ever. Then, after a few years, we're like, "I think we're getting sick from all of this stamp-licking." Sarah Penna:Yeah, probably. Chris Erwin:But separate story. Sarah Penna:That's really funny. Chris Erwin:So, a question, watching your father's entrepreneurial endeavors and also your mother, too, running the business, did you feel like, "Hey, when I grew up, I'm going to have my own business too." Sarah Penna:Honestly, no. So, I was an incredibly shy child. I was very quiet. My family likes to joke that they thought I was just going to buy a cabin in the woods and just frolic in daisy fields and that would basically be all I could handle. So, to the shock of everybody, of what I wound up doing with my career, so no, I was very directionless. I went to a very intense high school that was a college prep school. There was a lot of pressure to kind of figure out what you wanted to do. Frankly, I just didn't have any passions. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, I want to take over the family business or I want to be an entrepreneur." I didn't even have that language. Sarah Penna:So, in a way, that was great because what I wound up doing didn't exist when I was little. If I had said, "Oh, I want to be a lawyer or an actress or what ... " something that did exist, I don't know that I would've found the path that I did find. My parents never called themselves entrepreneurs. They were just, this is what we do and this is how we do it. Chris Erwin:Very interesting, Sarah. So, I'm going to put the puzzle pieces together here. Let's talk about another formative event growing up. You had also mentioned that you studied abroad in India, where you actually learned to speak fluent Nepalese. So, tell us about this transformative moment for you. Sarah Penna:Like I said, I was a very shy child. In college, I kind of blossomed, but maybe in the wrong ways. I partied a lot and just, again, was quite directionless. I was a literature major, which is just like the lazy ... No, I love being a literature major, but it is a non-major. It doesn't really set you up for business success. Originally, actually, I was going to travel. I was going to study abroad in Italy and I had this moment where I just looked at myself and said, "You need to push yourself right now. This is a moment." My college had an incredible study abroad program in Nepal. Sarah Penna:Long story short, they couldn't do it in Nepal. There were some civil unrest, so they moved it to India. I went to India and I lived in a place that didn't have running water, and I did my laundry for six months in a river. I got perspective that I never would've had. During that time I met up with a documentary film, I will say, crew in quotes, because it was just two white dudes traveling around not knowing what they were doing. They were in this tiny little village that I was staying. I was living in a monastery and because I spoke the language I could just hang out with the locals. It was very funny to them that this tiny, little white girl spoke fluent Nepalese. Chris Erwin:Did you take Nepalese in advance of going to India at all? Sarah Penna:No. Chris Erwin:So, you just picked it up in country. Sarah Penna:Yeah. Chris Erwin:Wow. Sarah Penna:Writing is very hard, but the language itself is very intuitive once you fit the pieces together. So, I would help them. Tourists would come. I lived in this monastery for a couple of weeks. Tourists would come and I would help them translate and negotiate and all this stuff. So, these guys came, they were filming. I was like, "I'll join up with you guys and translate for you and help you get interviews and that kind of stuff." Because if you speak the language, it just opens more doors. So, I wound up traveling with them, and one of them I wound up dating, but that's for another story. He was going to UCLA. I was graduating. He was going to UCLA grad school. Sarah Penna:I was graduating college and I wound up learning about documentary film and originally thought I wanted to go into documentary filmmaking. So, 2006 is when I was in India. Chris Erwin:Got it. Did you have an interest in media and the arts before you met this documentary film crew/attractive young man that you wanted to date? Sarah Penna:No, and I didn't have any connections and I didn't have any ... but, again, I was kind of, not in a disparaging way, but I was kind of an empty vessel, right? I had no idea what I was going to do and this thing really sparked me. I loved holding the camera. I loved seeing the story come together. I moved to Venice with him, and this is way too long of a story, so I'll just make it really short through a series of very wonderful coincidences, which involved me randomly picking a documentary film at the LA Film Festival and contacting the filmmaker. I got an internship at World of Wonder and that kind of started my trajectory in media. Chris Erwin:This was the first time you dated a documentary filmmaker. I look at this as a warm up for Joe. We'll get into that later. Sarah Penna:I only dated creative people, [inaudible 00:11:39]. Chris Erwin:Another podcast for your wild party days at Pitzer College. All right, so that led to your first work experience at World of Wonder. So, tell us about what that company was doing and what your role was there. Sarah Penna:World of Wonder in 2008 was probably the most amazing place to work, I have to say. It was constantly drag queens coming in the office, and parties. It was just a wild time. They were filming the first season of Million Dollar Listing, which I was an intern on. They were filming the first season of Tori and Dean: Inn Love, the Tori Spelling Show, which I was an assistant on. They were filming Porno Valley. They were filming ... I mean, it was just like a wild, wild time, incredible company. I loved it. I also recognized that reality TV wasn't really for me. While I was working there, I also was making short films and uploading them to these two new websites. One of them was called YouTube and one of them was called Current TV. Sarah Penna:Current TV was Al Gore's network based in San Francisco, where you would upload short documentaries and then the ones that got the most votes, they would ultimately put them onto their TV network. So, I had a couple documentaries get bought and put onto the TV network and ... Chris Erwin:Were you doing this independently or as part of World of Wonder? Sarah Penna:No, no, totally separately. Chris Erwin:Got it. Again, I had no idea that you did this. Sarah Penna:Yeah. Now, we're in 2007, the first documentary that got picked up was about me getting my medical marijuana license. Chris Erwin:Okay. Sarah Penna:It was a very new thing at that time, and so I documented the whole journey of what it was like to get a medical marijuana license and I smoked a joint on-screen. When I got hired there, it would play in the rotation, and one time Al Gore came to visit the office and they had the TVs up in the office playing Current, and my documentary came on with me smoking a joint and meeting Al Gore at the same time. It was very embarrassing. Chris Erwin:I'm famous/I'm super embarrassed. What a mix of emotions. Sarah Penna:Yes. Chris Erwin:So, Sarah, I have to ask, you're working at World of Wonder, you're working on these incredible programs that are probably being sold to network TV, right? Not digital outlets and streamers. What was the catalyst that you're like, "I want to put my content on YouTube and Current TV." How'd that come to be? Sarah Penna:I just felt something more compelling about it. It felt more free. It felt like, somebody like me coming from Utah with literally zero connections could make something and have it be put on TV within a couple of weeks. Then, on YouTube, you couldn't monetize at the time. It was very rudimentary. I don't know, I just fell in love with it. Chris Erwin:YouTube was founded in 2004 and then, was it bought by Google in 2006, if I remember correctly? Sarah Penna:I think that's right. Then, 2007 Time magazine made you, the cover and the Person of the Year was you, and it was a mirror. I was like, that to me was a moment where I said, "Okay, this is really a thing and I want to be involved in it." Chris Erwin:I think you start meeting some pretty important early personalities and movers and shakers within digital video. I think you met one of the founders of what eventually became Maker Studios, I think. Was it Danny Diamond or Danny Zappin? Is that the same person? Sarah Penna:That's the same person. His YouTube name was Danny Diamond. Chris Erwin:Got it. So, how'd you meet Danny? Sarah Penna:So, I was working at this very small web series production company which, yes, that was a thing in 2008. So, I got laid off right from Current because the financial crisis hit. They laid everyone off. They sold the network to Al Jazeera. I moved back to LA. I had been up in San Francisco, moved back to LA, started working at this web series production company, got introduced to Danny through some mutual friends. He said, "Look, I just got some money from YouTube and I'm filming this thing for this new channel that we're starting called The Station. Why don't you just come up and see what it's like?" So, I go up there and unbeknownst to me, it was every big YouTuber at the time. It was ShayCarl, and KassemG, and Shane Dawson, and Danny, and Lisa Nova, and everybody- Chris Erwin:OG names. Sarah Penna:Funnily enough, my future husband was supposed to be there, but I don't remember exactly what happened, but he wasn't there. Chris Erwin:Okay. So, you're doing this. Are you thinking to yourself, "Oh my God, I'm having so much fun. This is a crazy world." You're embarking on a very exciting career adventure. You're seeing this change in the media industry. Did you feel that at the time or was it more of, "This is fun. I'm meeting some cool people. Let's see where it goes." Sarah Penna:It was more the former. I really thought to myself, I want to be involved in this in some way, shape or form. I really don't know what this is. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Sarah Penna:Not to say that I'm a genius, but I just had something in my gut that said, you've got to be involved in this somehow. You have to make this happen. Chris Erwin:That instinct proved to be pretty powerful for you in starting Big Frame, which we'll get to in a little bit. So, you meet Phil DeFranco, a prominent OG YouTuber, and I think you become a producer for him and his team, right? Sarah Penna:Yeah. So, he hires me in November of 2009 and I worked for him. We launched a new channel, which was like a gaming channel for him. I did PR for him. I handled brand deals for him. I edited because I still knew how to edit at the time. A skill I'm very sad that I lost. That was just an amazing experience. He had split from Maker TV at that time and so, we were kind of running our own thing. I think Phil, to this day, is one of the most brilliant, genius content creators that's come out of the YouTube space. He's just continually reinvented himself and not, just kept doing what he did and stayed successful. So, that was a masterclass in how to run a successful YouTube channel. Chris Erwin:Got it. Also, through Phil DeFranco, you actually end up meeting your future husband, Joe. So, he actually showed up on time for production or maybe a first day that you guys had. How'd you first connect with him? Sarah Penna:Before Phil hired me, I got invited to a Halloween party at his house and Joe was there, and I had actually very embarrassingly seen Joe's videos before meeting him. I was producing a short film with a prominent YouTuber at that time named Olga Kay and we were just doing some fun. We actually crowdfunded it. We raised a couple thousand dollars and made this thing called Olga Kay's Circus. We wanted Joe in it because he had a lot of subscribers at the time. He had 10,000 subscribers, so he was in the Top 100 YouTubers. Chris Erwin:Oh, my God. Sarah Penna:Can you believe that 10,000 subscribers would get you there at that time? So, we wanted Joe in it and we wound up meeting at this Halloween party and then Phil connected us and match made us a little bit, and we went on our first date in January of 2010. Chris Erwin:Then, how soon were you married or engaged after that? Sarah Penna:So, we went on our first date in January 2010 and then we got engaged in September of the same year, and then we were married the next year. Chris Erwin:First date with Joe, January 2010. Engaged, September 2010. Married, 2011. Interesting timing because you launched your first company, Cloud Media, I think in 2010, and you're sharing production space with Joe. So, you're tripling down on the digital media space. You're literally married to a creator. You're sharing space together and you're founding your own media company. But tell us about what was the origins of Cloud Media. Sarah Penna:Yeah, so I basically, again, I didn't say, "Oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to raise money." I didn't have a blueprint for that. I didn't know what I was doing, which I think you'll hear a lot of entrepreneurs say, that's kind of a blessing in a lot of ways. So, I did a very big brand deal for Joe. I was able to negotiate a high six-figure deal for him, and using the percentage that I took as his manager from that, I started what I called the Cloud Media. I bootstrapped that company for a year and a half and just operated it based off of the percentages that I was taking from brand deals that I was doing for influencers and YouTubers, whatever we called them at the time. Sarah Penna:My difference was I would start out by not doing contracts with them. We would just have a understanding, which is very common with management companies. Most managers don't have contracts, right? That's more for agents and Maker and Fullscreen at the time were insisting on contract, and Machinima. I was like, "Hey, you don't have to sign a contract with me. Let me just show you what I can do. This is my fee, and if you like it, then you can officially sign onboard and we can go from there." So, that worked really well for me. So, I started signing. I think by the time that we re-founded the company as Big Frame, I had about 30 clients. Chris Erwin:I remember, that was one of the things that attracted me to Big Frame. This is definitely the reputation in the space, is that you had built, Sarah, one of the most premium networks of YouTube creators that existed. Really high quality YouTubers that worked together, that worked with you, and there was really good camaraderie and trust and rapport amongst everybody, and it felt very special and different. So, it's clear that was based on these initial values of, I'm going to do good work and prove myself to you, and that's how we're going to develop a business relationship. Until I came in and then I was like, "Sarah, we need contracts." Sarah Penna:A big influence on those ... those are, me as a person, my core values. But DeStorm, who was my second client outside of Joe, who I just cold called and was living in New York, he really sort of guided me in how he wanted to be treated, how he felt business should be done. He really helped collaborate with me on some of those foundational core values that we carried throughout the duration of Big Frame really. Chris Erwin:So, speaking of that, you're literally learning from one of your clients. Were there any other mentors in the space as you're figuring ... this is the early days. We still say we're in the Wild West of the creator economy, that was the real Wild West of YouTube. So, probably, very few people to learn from. Did you have anyone that you would call on a regular basis and say, "Hey, let's just share notes." Sarah Penna:No, I didn't. Unfortunately, I think the space became quickly competitive. I would say at the beginning there was a little more collaboration between, let's say, like Danny and George Strompolos and myself. We would go up to YouTube and talk to them together as a group and what our needs were and share creator feedback. I think once money started pouring into the space we got a little more siloed, which is understandable, but no, I didn't. I was really out there in the woods like, "Okay, this is what we're doing now." Not really knowing what that was. Just saying, "Okay, this is how we're doing it. This is how our contracts are going to look." Chris Erwin:How old were you at this point? Sarah Penna:I was 26. Chris Erwin:So young. So, then, I think, well, as part of that dynamic, as the space got more competitive, George is launching Fullscreen, Danny is launching Maker, more venture capitals moving to the space. The Google Original Channels program launches, $200 million dedicated fund to help creators produce higher quality content for YouTube, which will then attract more advertisers and more revenue. So, I think at this point is when you eventually connect with Steve Raymond, the co-founder of Big Frame, which got its origins from Cloud Media, right? Sarah Penna:Exactly, through a mutual friend. I was on the hunt for a CEO. I recognized my limitations. I did want to raise money. I didn't know what that entailed. Frankly, I needed more of a grownup. I think my skillsets were really great on the creator side and the brand deal side but as the industry started growing up, I very quickly recognized I need someone who has a skillset that I just don't have. So, I met Steve and we hit it off, and we had a couple meetings, and he just jumped right on in. We decided to re-found the company. None of us liked the name because people thought it was like cloud computing and, which is fair, and it just made sense to start fresh. It also gave us an opportunity to have contracts with people and just structure it in a way that would allow us to raise money. So, yeah. Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody. Let's get back to the interview. I have to ask, I started the advisory firm five years ago that I have now. I started that with a co-founder and then quickly realized, "Hey, I have a certain vision and I'm going to build this in my unique way." So, restarted the advisory firm with me as the solo owner. Chris Erwin:I've realized bringing someone else into the mix that really gets the vision that I feel comfortable sharing this with is difficult for me. I just know my personality, and founder issues are always like the hardest things in any startup. How did you feel in terms of bringing Steve on? Did you feel comfortable? When you met him, you're like, "Hey, this guy gets it. We have shared values and sensibility." Were you able to develop a sense of trust with him pretty quickly or did that take a decent amount of time? Sarah Penna:I trusted him very quickly. Although, I sometimes felt like that scene in The Little Mermaid where she's like, closes her eyes and signs her voice away, I was like, "Am I doing that?" I definitely had that moment where I was like, "Am I letting somebody in I don't ... ?" We had three meetings before. I was like, "Here's a third of my company." We had another co-founder, that's it. We don't need to [inaudible 00:25:56] but basically, here's half of my company. I definitely had people who were like, "Don't think you should have done that." But to me, the value of Steve and the ability ... I did trust him. The main thing for him was, he was very clear that he didn't want to disrupt what I was doing. He was very impressed with the business that I had built on my own and he didn't want me to feel like he was coming in to change that. Sarah Penna:He invested some of his own money and valued the contracts that ... I was like, I don't have that money to invest, but he was like, we should value the money that's in the bank for Cloud Media and the value of the contracts or the agreements that you have with the talent. So, I was like, "Okay, that's really fair." He made it easy. That, for me, was important. I don't like complicated things. I don't like long dragged out negotiations, and I was ready to just get to work. So, he was someone who was like, "I know how to do this. I have the connections. I don't want to disrupt your work." He's a good guy, I could just tell, and we made it work. Chris Erwin:I love that. I know Steve very well. He was my boss for three or four years and learned an incredible amount from him. But I think you're right, Sarah, the thing that stands out about Steve was just a good guy, good moral compass, and he doesn't let great get in the way of good enough. He'll just say, "This is good. This is thoughtful. We've talked this through. Let's move forward." But like you said, he's very fair in how he wanted to value the company. I didn't know that, but it's totally on brand for him. So, curious, I joined in the summer of 2012, I was ... Sarah Penna:Oh, boy, what a summer that was. Chris Erwin:So, I went to business school after being a Wall Street banker for a few years. Then, I was in school in Chicago and I worked while I was there for Pritzker Capital, which was an early investor in the YouTube MCN ecosystem. They had invested in Big Frame. They invested in Awesomeness. We eventually joined forces, and that is how I met Steve first. I was talking to Rishi, Rishi or Matt McCall and they're like, "Yeah, when you fly out to LA for these meetings, we invested in this company called Big Frame. You should check them out." I was like, "I don't even understand this company's business model, but digital video that feels like the future. I'll take a meeting." Chris Erwin:I remember meeting Steve and we had lunch on the Promenade, and then I came in for my first interview. I walked into the office, this is on Sunset Boulevard in the old National Lampoon building. I walked in and I walked into a ... it feels like we were just working out of someone's semi-living/work space. I was like, is this a company? Is this like what West Coast work is like? Because I had grown up working on the East Coast. I walked into the back room and in the back room there's this little circular table. Steve's there. Grant Gibson's there. Jason [Szymanski 00:28:39] is there. Then, you're at your back desk. Chris Erwin:So, you're supposed to be part of this interview, your head's down on your computer. They're like, "Oh, that's Sarah over there." I looked over and I'm like, "Oh, I guess this is what founders do in digital media. They're just heads down in their computers. Maybe I'll eventually talk to her over time." That was my first introduction to Big Frame. So, I just say all of this as I was like, this is like a precursor to just wildness that ensued thereafter. We had just gotten the Google Original Channels funding, raised some venture funding on top of that, and then it was like, build these five different content verticals. I'm curious to hear from you, there are so many memories from back in the day, but as you think about some of the war stories from the trenches, what are some things that stand out? Sarah Penna:Oh, my God. Well, your interview definitely. Also, you failed to mention that we had two absolutely crazy wiener dogs running around the office as well. Yeah. I think we had outgrown the office. We were in the National Lampoon office. It was so janky and we ... eventually, we're on three different floors. We moved sales to an office down Sunset. We were sandwiched between a strip club and a Trader Joe's. Then, Joe and I were renting a house off of Sunset, like walking distance, and eventually, we moved the talent team to my dining room table. Joe at that time was putting two YouTube videos a week out on his MysteryGuitarMan channel, and he would stay up all night and then he would sleep until 2:00 PM and he'd come downstairs. Sarah Penna:It was like, Lisa, Byron, Megan, Rachel were at our dining room table, and Joe was rolling out of bed as one of our talent but also my husband. I would cook dinner for the talent team at my house. We would take talent meetings in my living room, which was just so bizarre and unprofessional, but worked. We would also throw these wild game nights, board game nights, so Settlers of Catan was very popular at that time. We would have 40 YouTubers in our house playing Settlers of Catan with multiple games going on. My house was like a YouTuber hotel. We had a guest bedroom. Jenna Marbles came and stayed. Lena came and stayed with us. DeStorm. It was very wholesome and very duct tape and bubble gum feeling. We were just kind of figuring it out. Chris Erwin:I remember that. I remember Steve explaining, "Oh, we're having a reorg." The reorg was like, "Okay, we're moving the talent team to Sarah's house across the street." Then, production goes upstairs into a semi-new office that we got. For us, at that size, that was like a big deal. Sarah Penna:It was. Yeah. Oh, man, when we moved to our Lindblade offices, was that like heaven on earth to have an actual office, but that was later. Another funny memory I had was when Max first started. He had come from a place where he was doing really, really big deals. I handed him off a brand deal opportunity for $1,500 and he went in the bathroom, which by the way was right next to everybody's desk and splashed cold water on his face. We had moved him from New York to LA and he was just like, "What am I doing?" Ultimately, Max, obviously, was an absolute rockstar and built out that sales team to just be very profitable and doing really well. Sarah Penna:But that first deal was $1,500, and that was just par for the course at that time. It was shocking to people coming from the outside and then once it clicked, it really clicked and you're like, "Okay, I get what we're doing here." But there was just a lot of duct tape and bubble gum. Chris Erwin:I think Max is going to be an interview on this podcast coming up. I have interviewed Dan Levitt. When I think of Dan, we talk about when I first interviewed him and I think he showed up in some shiny suit and Jason Szymanski in the back office is pointing. He's like, "Chris, we're launching a music vertical and we have a new interview candidate coming in." I would just look out the window and I would be like, "These characters." I was like, "I've never worked with any characters like this before." I come from Wall Street, so it's was like everyone's in a suit and tie. I see people coming in shiny suits and I'm just like, "I think this is the new world I'm in. I'm just going to roll with it." Chris Erwin:So, it was such a rollercoaster of fun. So, then exciting things are happening and eventually, we move into this big new office, I think on Lindblade in Culver City. We're closer to Maker. We're closer to Fullscreen. Then, we run a process to sell the company. I'm just curious to hear from you, Sarah. Bringing Steve on was probably like, that was a big decision for you, but then hiring an investment bank that's going to run a sales process, we're going to have new ownership and potential leadership. What was it like for you to make that decision? Sarah Penna:That was really hard. I just wanted to keep the party going. Like many young entrepreneurs, I think I tied my identity completely to this company. And my husband was in the next office, he was a client. We went home, we would talk about brand deals over dinner. My entire identity was Big Frame. All of my friends were in some way, shape or form involved in this company. My family would tease me when I'd go home for Christmas. They're like, "Are all of your friends under contract?" I was like, "Yeah, kind of." Chris Erwin:Maybe a nice way to go through life. Sarah Penna:Yeah. I mean, we know where we stand with each other. No, but I just, I was so immersed that the idea of losing control was hard. I think I also felt my limitations as a founder and that's hard to come up against when you're kind of, I don't want to say that I was arrogant, but I was really confident and I felt really good about how I was running things and running the company. Then, we got to a point where my limitations and our limitations became evident and that's hard. It was hard and it was also exciting because it is, under most circumstances, it's a great thing. I also just had never been through anything like that, so I let a lot of anxiety get to me. Sarah Penna:I let it completely consume me. I'll be totally transparent. I would cry on the bathroom floor, like, what am I doing? There was a lot of doubt. I think that was probably the biggest strain on Steve and I's relationship, is how to go about this and how to present in the room. That was a big source of stress for us. Who's going to present? Is it me? I've been out there kind of the face of the company. I've been doing all the panels, and the VidCons, and the press, and the creator. Or is it Steve, who is the CEO who, frankly, should be doing it? Chris Erwin:That was unclear. We brought in an executive coach to help us figure that out. Sarah Penna:We did. Ultimately, like many of these things, it just came about through relationships and less about going and pitching, and the relationship that I had kind of built and cultivated, and changing landscape. There were a lot of factors, but that was very stressful. Then, in New Year's Eve of 2013, while we were in the middle of this process, I found out I was pregnant. Chris Erwin:Just to pile it on. Sarah Penna:Just for fun. Thought that would be a great thing to add on to the plate at the time. It's so funny because I think back a lot to the moment where I told Steve that I was pregnant, I was hysterical. I couldn't even tell him. I was crying so hard. He was like, in a very nice way, "I don't understand why you're so upset. This is a good thing." I was like, "What?" I thought he was going to be so mad and that this was going to ruin everything. I tell that story only to say, I think that our culture makes young women feel like ... and I had a lot of
Dev Sethi — Head of Sports at Instagram on Launching a Sports MCN, Athlete Creators and NIL, and Metaverse Fandoms
Dec 16 2021
Dev Sethi — Head of Sports at Instagram on Launching a Sports MCN, Athlete Creators and NIL, and Metaverse Fandoms
This interview features Dev Sethi, Head of Sports at Instagram. We discuss being separated from his twin in highschool, his side door into sports at YouTube, launching the first sports MCN at Whistle, why NIL is this century’s most important breakthrough for athletes, why he left the incredible team at Complex for Instagram, and the metaverse’s impact on the personalization of sports.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Dev Sethi:One of the things that I love sharing with the teams that I've managed, and the individuals I've managed and that's important to me is how do you empower those team members' voices, whether you're to 23 and out of college with no work experience, or 35 and have been in social, and digital, or in sports for decades plus, we all see what we do, our industry, what's happening differently than anybody else, and almost by sheer virtue of who you are and the life experiences that we all bring to these jobs. So if I'm, as a manager, as a team leader, able to create an environment or a safe space for people to share, that's how we're going to get better. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Dev Sethi, Head of Sports at Instagram. So Dev was born in the DC metro area, the first generation immigrants from India. Then in high school, Dev's life journey took a big turn after a traumatic family event and some wise words from a teacher which inspired him to become school president and captain of both the baseball and basketball teams. Dev then went on to Notre Dame, and soon after found a side door into sports media at YouTube's new partnership. He then left to help build digital communities at publishers like Whistle and Complex. But after a heart-to-heart with his mom, Dev reverted course, and returned to big tech as Head of Sports at Instagram. Chris Erwin:Today, Dev is shaping the future of sports fandom. Some highlights of our chat include being separated from his twin in high school, launching the first sports MCN, why NIL is this century's most important breakthrough for athletes, and the metaverse's impact on the personalization of sports. I've known Dev for over five years. He's one of the sharpest and kindest minds in the digital verse, I'm grateful to help share his story. All right, let's get to it. Dev, thanks for being on the podcast. Dev Sethi:Thank you for having me, nice way to spend my Wednesday afternoon. Chris Erwin:Yes. And appreciate it because I think you had some last minute dental work that was just done this morning, is that right? Can you still talk? Dev Sethi:Yeah. I don't know if folks are going to consume this entirely audio or even visual, but got last minute dental work done this morning so part of my mouth is still numb, Chris might see me drool out one of the sides of my mouth. But hopefully, I'm not slurring my speech too badly, and I promise you, if I am, it's because it's because of the Novocaine, it's not because of any other reasons. Oh, here we go. Chris Erwin:Well, Dev, what I can say is I think you sound great, and I don't think many of our listeners will be able to see the video, but you look great as well, as always. So you're good to go for my book. Dev Sethi:Making me blush already. Okay, let's do this thing. Chris Erwin:All right. So with that, Dev, let's rewind a bit and let's talk about where you grew up, your childhood interests and if there may any glimpses into what you were going to do in your sports media career from an early age, in some of our prep chats, you're telling me about growing up in the DC metro area, is that right? Dev Sethi:That is correct. And it's actually where I'm currently based as well, but grew up in Nolan, Virginia, literally adjacent to Washington DC. My parents are immigrants from India and that's where they ultimately ended up settling. So I'm certain that folks that are listening to your podcast can sympathize with me being a long suffering Washington area sports fan, that's basically epitomized my experience being a sports fan in this area, but grew up here and had a great time. It's actually quite a diverse area, and for those who have been to Nolan, Virginia and the DMV overall, it's changed quite a bit since I was a kid, it's virtually night and day how much this area has evolved over time. Chris Erwin:Your early household, growing up, were your parents into sports, immigrating from India? Did they have ties to the US leagues, and sports programs, or international? What was that like? Dev Sethi:Yeah, nothing prior to them arriving on these shores. My father was a sports fan and played sports growing up, but very different sports obviously in his own country than the US. But for certain listeners who I'm certain have had the same experience as I've had, but sports was and is an incredibly powerful way to assimilate into a new place, whether it's a new community, a new state, or let alone a new country. And so my father quickly adopted American sports as an interest, a hobby, an enthusiasm. And again, for those who are familiar with this area as much, there is a thriving Indian community or South Asian community in the DMV. And one of sort of its rallying cries was and is sports. Dev Sethi:And so, I have a lot of great fond childhood memories of going to Washington watch parties, and when you're showing up for Thanksgiving, the guys show up early, because they want to watch all three games on Thanksgiving before anyone starts feasting. And it just really was a big part of my growing up. And I think a great way for my parents to get comfortable in what was then an unknown environment for them, So it's a really big part of, I think, my personal history as well as my parents history. Chris Erwin:And did you have siblings that were also consumers of sports as well? Dev Sethi:I have an older brother who is four years older. He's not in this industry, so he will likely never listen to it so I can trash his athletic gifts. I think he played soccer and basketball but sort of gave it up early-ish in his life to focus on being more of an academic, which is why he's a lot smarter than I am. But I also have a twin brother who is equally a sports junkie, a passionate fan of pretty much all things sports. And he and I played basketball and baseball growing up together, and we were watching sports ourselves. So a very big sports house so I like to joke that I missed out on all the Disney movies like Cinderella and all those kinds of movies Beauty and the Beast, I have watched virtually none of them because on Friday, Saturday and Sundays, we normally have a sporting game on TV. Chris Erwin:I've known you for a few years now. And I don't think I knew that you were a twin. I'm also a twin as well. Did you know that about me? Dev Sethi:I did not know that about you, wow. Identical over fraternal? Chris Erwin:We are fraternal, but we look a lot alike. He took a very different career path than me, he's in the military, 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, ranger qualified, so he's just at a physical level that is well beyond where I'm at. But it's funny, thinking of growing up with him, I grew up in my family, we didn't watch a lot of sports, but we played a lot of sports. My brother and I were very athletic and active growing up. So when you said on Friday, Saturdays and Sundays, you weren't watching Disney movies because you are consuming, my brother and I, we would get up at 6:00 AM and go hit the basketball courts at like 6:30 or 7:00 on a Saturday. As soon as it was like my parents were up and we were allowed to get out of the house. That was what was fun, was having a twin, you always had someone to play with. Dev Sethi:Yeah. I don't know if I saw those early hours on the weekends very often as a kid, but to your point, having a partner in crime in more ways than one, and someone who literally is an activity partner. It's actually interesting for he and I, and he would attest to this, so growing up, I hated basketball and I loved baseball and he hated baseball and loved basketball. And you'll appreciate this as a twin and with your parents, my dad said, "Well, tough shit. I'm not driving you all to a million different activities, you're going to do these things together." Dev Sethi:And so, we ended up participating in these sports together. And again, the irony of it all is that I love basketball now and played it through high school and then intramurals in college, and he played baseball through high school as well. And so just one of these deals where sort of the forcing function of, "Hey, this is sort of you're a package deal." And parents aren't only chauffeurs, let alone when they've got two the same age that have various interests. But no, we played a ton of sports growing up, and to your point, hit the park and go play pickup together because you already got two out of the five people you need for a team, right? Chris Erwin:It's funny you say that, Dev, because I still give my parents, to this day, flack for not letting me do travel soccer. I was really good. And they were like, "No, Sundays are for going to church and other family activities." And I was like, "I don't need you guys to drive me. I have other other friends' parents that'll drive me." And I could have been this great star, but that's a... I'll leave the rest of that story for my therapist. A question that I have for you is you go to Notre Dame, and did you have an intent of getting into sports media when you were going to school and thinking about when you wanted to graduate or were you thinking about something else? Dev Sethi:I had, and I'm assuming I am like many former and current college students, where I really had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. And sports as a profession, as it were, was nowhere near my radar. The internships that I had in college, I think the closest experience I had to working in sports during college was an internship in SAP's marketing department. And SAP was a sponsor of Ernie Els and Chad Campbell, who were two then prominent golfers me. Ernie Els' just awesome and probably a hall of fame golfer, and that was the closest I got to sort of a sports experience in an internship in college. Dev Sethi:So yeah, to answer your question, I had no aspirations, I had no foresight or vision into how to even break into that. I knew I necessarily wasn't going to go the path of wanting to be an agent or something like that, which would've sort of required a much different kind of education. I really just had the fandom of sports in college and really didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated. No better illustration than the fact that I was a marketing major but I was also an education minor, because I have a sort of a side, if not hobby, passion around the profession of education and the industry behind education, and it sort of uses a different part of your brain than taking business classes. So I had a number of interests, but really, no direction, I guess, when it came to career stuff at that age. Chris Erwin:So what you just said about your interest in the educational field and that you also, I think, did a minor there at while at Notre Dame, where do you think that stems from? Dev Sethi:I had some very influential grade school teachers growing up who I thought really shaped who I am today, and also, where I am today in terms of just how I've been able to sort of to grow and have somewhat of a tenure in this industry now. But I do think having had such a positive impact from those educators at the high school level. Dev Sethi:It's funny, but the education minor, I needed to take some electives. And I took a course from a relatively new professor at Notre Dame and the course was actually called creativity in the classroom. Whereas you're at business classes that have 50, 60, 150 people in them, and you're using again, on one side of your brain, this class experience was incredibly intimate, it was maybe 12 people, it was focusing on a sort of a unique aspect of education in the classroom. I loved every second of it. And the professor, I thought, crafted the course in a way that wasn't rigid, it actually had a lot of flexibility to who was taking the class. And she was a great listener herself, which I think is, I don't want to say a rare trait for a professor, but I haven't experienced many professors who are nimble in that regard in terms of how they shape their coursework in a semester. Dev Sethi:And so anyways, I fell in love with the experience of taking a class that was so different than what I was normally used to taking. And that basically became, "Hey, well, I took that in the fall. Let me take another education-related course in the spring." And before I knew it, I was getting eligible for a minor, so. Chris Erwin:It's amazing how intersecting with great people in your life, it could be a professor within the educational department that makes you then want to specialize, it could be someone, a founder, CEO at a company that then recruits you to their vision, or someone in the industry that gets you excited about transforming your career. I hear that, that's an important to note is that these little human touches can be so transformational. Are you still in touch with this professor? Dev Sethi:I am. She's actually, really, the only college professor that I remain in touch with, and she still lives around Notre Dame. And so, when I have the occasion to come back and visit, we'll always grab dinner, or drinks, or lunch, or something like that. And I'm very quick to reiterate to her how important and influential she was to my experience, say in the same way an English teacher, who had never actually taught me, was instrumental in how I grew as a person and as a student in high school. And she's actually, now that I'm back in the DC area after a long time away, her and I are actually grabbing lunch next Friday. Chris Erwin:Dev, speaking of this high school teacher which had a big impact on you, there's a bigger story behind this that relates to the expulsion of your twin brother. Why don't you tell us about that? Dev Sethi:Yeah. I think I'm more comfortable telling this story because fortunately, my twin brother's life wasn't totally derailed by this expulsion and he actually works at meta now, which is kind of funny, so we're technically colleagues even though I've no idea what he does for a living. But no, we were juniors in high school and he got kicked out of our high school 10 days into our junior year. And it was under somewhat controversial circumstances. My mother was pretty furious about the circumstances and she wanted me to leave that high school too. Dev Sethi:And it was this teacher, who actually had never taught me before, I had not taken one of her classes. She pulled me aside one day while all this was going down, she said, "Hey, can you come by my class after school for 10 minutes?" I was like, "Sure, why not?" I barely knew her. And she sat me down and she said, "I know this is a tough time for you and your family," yada, yada, yada, "you don't realize this yet, but this could actually end up being one of your biggest blessings in disguise." and what she meant by that. Dev Sethi:And what I discovered and learned after I ended up deciding to stay at that school was, my experience in high school, my personality, just my being at that high school had always been inextricably linked to me and my twin brother. It was always Dev and Raj, it wasn't just Dev or Raj. And she sort of was reiterating, you have a chance to essentially be your own person, and to carve your own path and pursue the things that you may want to do, and not necessarily always have that association. Dev Sethi:And she was dead on. I ended up doing things my junior and senior year that I never would've thought I would've done. I ended up running for and winning high school president, which, if you know my personality at all, that's definitely not me. But sort of threw my hat in the ring, was captain of our baseball and basketball teams, did a number of extracurriculars. And it's funny because by the time I graduated, there were hundreds of students who had no idea I even had a twin brother, which I think, again, reiterates my then teacher's point. Dev Sethi:And so, just one of these sort of inflection points in my life where I don't know if I would've made that decision had it not been for her, and someone who had literally no relationship with me but at least thought enough about my wellbeing and my circumstance to share with me her perspective, and it ended up changing my... I mean, I cannot overstate that, it literally changed my life. So I don't think I would've gotten into Notre Dame had it not been because of that conversation, and all that stuff, and the things that happened, I don't think I would've been on that same path at all. And I would argue my twin brother would acknowledge that too. Chris Erwin:Wow. That is an incredible story. We spend so much money on our college and graduate school educations, access to all these world class professors and teachers yet some of my most prominent memories in the classroom, date back to when I was in middle school. And I really remember very prominently, a US history teacher that we had, Mr. Galante, everyone who has gone through his classroom has stories about him. There was no one that was as passionate and cared so much about his students learning. The way he would describe the American Revolution or the civil war, it made every learning experience incredible and fun. In contrast to you, I'm really not in touch with many of my professors, maybe just one or two from business school that I kind of see on LinkedIn every now and then, but it's pretty awesome that you're able to maintain that. Dev Sethi:Yeah. To your point, the fact that we're talking about these educators, we're dating ourselves, as I'm dating myself decades after they spoke, they last connected with us in the classroom, I think says everything and also I think it almost reiterates that education is a bit of a lifelong process. And I know that I'll actually never stop learning from both of those people in any of the interactions that I have, but obviously, a bit of a different relationship now that I'm a full-fledged adult at least in some parts of my life, and you have different types of conversations. But I'm very lucky to have had those people in my life. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Look, and I think what you just touched on is a broader theme of this particular podcast, Dev. You had mentioned the intersection of social and sport and just how fast this world changes on a weekly and monthly basis. So in talking about learning, it's you have to keep your learning curve steep. You've been in this industry for many years now, Dev, and you're in a senior role. And I think that people can say, "Oh, well, Dev knows everything that there is to know." And it's like, that's not true. Things are literally changing on a daily basis. So I like that when we were prepping for this conversation, you're like, "I acknowledge this, I'm the aware of what's happening, and for me to be effective, and to guide a team, and serve as my talent and business partners best it's like, I got to be learning every day and come in with a beginner's mind, so we'll talk more about that. I am curious, so what was your first role right after undergrad? Dev Sethi:Yeah, it was this interesting experience where... and I actually already had a job offer fortunately lined up, going to my last semester of college at a very different company, doing a very different job. It was at the Aon corporation and it was actually doing human resources and communications. And so, that's where I was ultimately going to spend my first years out of college, and this little company called Google decided they were going to show up on Notre Dame campus to meet with prospective candidates for an array of jobs they were hiring for, and this was back in 2006. And they came on campus, I was lucky enough to get an interview with them and it actually ended up being the worst interview I've ever given and I- Chris Erwin:Okay. We got to pause there. Wait, why was it the worst interview you've ever given? Dev Sethi:I'm not gaslighting anybody or anything, this is objectively the worst interview I've ever given my life. So they came on campus and I thought I was really smart having taken all of one psychology class during my college career. And I was like, "Oh, I'll pick the last session of the day on their interview schedule because a recency effect, I'll be the most memorable candidate," yada, yada, yada. And I got a call maybe three hours before the interview from the interviewer saying, "Hey, we actually mistakenly booked our flights to leave out of Chicago, not South Bend. And for those who don't know South Bend's about, I think, 90 miles or 90 minutes from Chicago, TODR, we have to leave early to catch our flight so we have to miss your interview slot, how can we make it up to you? Dev Sethi:And I said, I actually wasn't even feeling well that day. And I said, "Hey, no worries happens. Why don't we just do a phone interview whenever you get back to Mountain View." And we set up a phone interview, I had my twin brother and one of my best friends in high school visiting me in town that following weekend for a football game. And so, on a Friday, I get my car and I drive to some abandoned parking lot so I can take this hour long, two phone interviews, 30 minutes of piece. Well, Chris, I imagine you know this feeling because of what you do, who you are, and how expert you are, but the feeling that I had that maybe some people can relate to is when you're talking for that long and you're basically bullshitting on the questions they give you, but you know that they know that you're bullshitting, that's what the entire hour of this interview felt like. Dev Sethi:And I remember, and I kid you not, I hung up the phone. I drove back to my apartment with my brother and my friend were waiting. And I legitimately said that was the worst interview of my entire life, good thing I've got another job lined up. Let's party and have a great time this weekend going to the football game. And I got a call back a week later from Google saying, "Hey, we've enjoyed our time together. We'd love to fly out to Mountain View for in person interviews." And those, fortunately, went a little bit better and I got offered a job, but I still maintained to this day, to anybody who asks, that the only reason they gave me the opportunity to interview in person was because they felt so bad about canceling my first interview and so they gave me a second shot at it that went much better. But it was brutal. I mean, and that is exactly how it went down. And sorry, this is a very long-winded answer. Chris Erwin:No, it's interesting. Dev Sethi:But yeah, no, so true story. And even to answer your original question, we essentially were interviewing for general roles within two parts of the org. One was AdWords, which is essentially Google suite of sales products and ad products, and one was AdSense, which was Google's sort of publishing network and publishing tools. And so, I didn't know until, I want to say, maybe a couple months or weeks before I started, what role I was even going to fulfill and hearing my mom's voice in here saying," Hey, it's Google. You should probably try." Okay. I'll fly in a little bit blind and sort of see what these roles are about, see what that industry's about because this is 2007 when, again, our world, an industry looked a lot different. Chris Erwin:Something I deal with daily and something that just talking to different founders and executives, they also deal with all the time is imposter syndrome. So when you say like, "Oh, Chris, because of your role, RockWater, you're supposed to be an expert advisory firm. We're talking like we advise a lot of the smartest clients in this space. And so then we're supposed to show up and be smarter than them, that can put a lot of pressure on you. Chris Erwin:And so I actually flip that around in saying we're smart, we're thoughtful, but we believe there's so much to learn from everyone that we do business with. And I think if everyone goes through life and goes through business with that mindset, that's going to force you to be honest, and self aware, and give the best advice, and also learn the most to really understand where your clients and your business partners are at. And I think that's what sets us apart. But Dev, I'm bad at interviews. I mean, I remember really, various bad had interviews from college, but in contrast to you, I actually didn't get the job offer. There was no flying me out, so you clearly did something [crosstalk 00:22:56]- Dev Sethi:I still don't know how off the skin in my teeth, I got offered a position at that company. But I hear you on imposter syndrome too, and to your point, there's too much of where, I'm guessing is the case for you as would be the case for me, you could spend eight hours of your day just on Twitter reading about the industry, let alone participating in the industry. And so, you almost got to trust that information's going to come to you and that hopefully, you've surrounded yourself with a network of colleagues, friends, individuals who can help share their perspective and thus cultivate your own perspective to a degree, because yeah, it's too hard to keep up with it all. I mean, there's so many things happening on a literally hourly basis, let alone a daily basis. Chris Erwin:So Dev, you are a strategist at Google for around four years, but then you made a transition to be a senior strategist and overseeing new partnerships and development at YouTube between 2011, 2013. So I think this is where you first began to focus in sports, entertainment, and lifestyle verticals, targeting new creators, and doing a few other things there. Was that kind of like, as you would call it, your side entrance or backdoor into sports media? Dev Sethi:Absolutely was. And now, as I've described it previously, a side door into the industry of sports so to speak, because I was at Google, I'd spent a number of years in their sales and consulting arm, which, unbeknownst to me at the time, actually has provided me a lot of great perspective about the industry I'm in just through a very, again, different aspect of the ecosystem and literally, the advertisers who were helping money into our ecosystem. Dev Sethi:But it's about a little over half, I think, my tenure at Google there, one of my dearest friends who I've had the great fortune of working with a couple of times now, she mentioned that she had gone over to YouTube to focus on a different role actually within sports, and she said that the vibe just felt different, it felt a little more start-upy, interest points, verticals that I was sort of more keenly attuned to, whether it was sports specifically, or to your point, lifestyle relative to some of the clients I was working with on the sales side that, my last experience was in the finance vertical, prior to that, it was on an agency for portfolio business. Dev Sethi:So represented this opportunity, something different, and maybe even align a little bit with some of my passions. And that's where I was introduced, again, to at the time and continues to be one of the leading social media/video platforms in the world, and starting to learn more about that part of the industry. And also, again, focusing on sports and working with individuals, organizations who were producing content that was applicable, if not a good fit, for our platform. Dev Sethi:But as you shared dates earlier, that was 2011 were our industry was in its infancy, I guess you could call it, even though it was only a decade ago. I joke that YouTube hadn't even introduced monetization program when I first got there, a fully fledged one, Instagram was photo only, Snapchat didn't exist, Verizon hadn't spent a billion dollars on their own platform and their own content. All this stuff has come and gone in a relatively short period of time, and YouTube was in a much different place back then too, as was the industry, and thus, the conversations that I was having about that platform. Chris Erwin:I do remember because in 2012 is when I joined Big Frame. And that was, I think, recently, after Google and YouTube, I launched their Original Channel program, a 200 million dedicated fund to help fund better quality content on the platform to attract more advertisers. You were there during that period, so that must have been exciting. And I think that you were to see the different digital media brands and publishers that were being built from this funding and the complimentary seed capital that was being raised. And so I think, after Google, you decided, you're like, okay, I've been at one of the largest video platforms, but now I'm going to transition over to work for these publisher brands. And so you left, I believe to go to Whistle Sports in 2013, what was the impetus for that? Dev Sethi:Yeah, the impetus for me leaving the cozy confines, as I'll put it, at Google and YouTube because there's one thing that a company like that does, it really puts you in a comfort zone and really makes you feel like you're enjoying the employee experience to a large degree. So the same colleague who shared the opportunity around YouTube because her and I actually started together at Google together. She had made the move to YouTube. She said, "Hey, you should check things out on the side of the aisle. I did, took a job there. She actually left to join this then small sports media startup called Whistle Sports. And she basically asked me if I wanted to come over and be her partner in crime and build this thing together. And at the time, what we were focusing on was being the world's first sports-focused collective and multiplatform network, that was one part of the business. Dev Sethi:Another part of the business was sort of an analytics consultancy given you could gain a lot of meaningful data and insights about sports on digital and social through working with a collective and all the data they have on their audiences through social media, and then one part content brand, which I'm quick to say I had very little to do with, given the remit was really around partnerships and operations. Dev Sethi:But it was this interesting moment in time. And again, I know you'll attest from your time at Big Frame where you have a ton of creators and organizations who are still trying to understand the value they can gain and extract from being on social and digital, what their content strategy should be, what their audience engagement strategy should be, how does that marry with other parts of their business, what are those best practices, what are the things that an individual content creator doesn't have a muscle memory for, whether it's sales, production, et cetera, how do you create value? And that's what we focused on when I was at Whistle and doing partnerships and operations is big a real partner in their businesses. And hopefully, with a little bit of expertise having come from the walls of YouTube, but knowing that the industry was growing quite rapidly, YouTube was quickly becoming one of a number of platforms where people could build and monetize an audience. Chris Erwin:When you went there, was Michael Cohen working there, when you first started. Dev Sethi:Michael Cohen was a consultant at the time. And he and I got closely acquainted in the work that we were doing together. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Speaking of shared history. So Michael Cohen and I, I met him, I think in 2007, when I was interviewing at a boutique investment bank in New York City, and he was one of the guys that interviewed me. We got to know one another. Yeah, this is well before the MCN days. He left the firm, I left the firm, I went to business school. When I graduated, I ended up going to Big Frame. And I remember Michael reached out and was asking me like, "What's this whole like YouTube, MCN, digital video thing that you've got into." And he was picking my brain for a couple years. And then I remember when he made the move to Whistle and I was really pumped for him. Early on in his tenure there, as you guys were thinking about some different VOD strategies, he engaged our firm. I think that's how I first met you, if I remember correctly, Dev Sethi:I think it was, we now have so many shared threads together, but I think that was the first introduction, was when either you had informally known him or even, he had formally brought you on to help consult for the business. But it's wild how the scene's coming full circle and now I'm on your podcast. Chris Erwin:To think back, all the shared history, how we've worked together and now you're on the show. But I think that's one of the beautiful things, if you were an early mover in digital video, just camaraderie of the people in this space and the shared war stories, it's really fun. And it's incredible how much history people have in such a very short amount of time because the space moves so quickly, but it's also like it's action packed and very intense, so the days, and the relationships just really fill up. Dev Sethi:I think you and I both get reminded probably on a daily, if not nearly daily basis, just how intimate the industry can feel. And because of these shared connections, these shared histories, I mean, folks who are member of VidCon when it wasn't at the Anaheim Convention Center and it was the basement of a hotel, that, again, wasn't very long ago, and just, again, a lot of that shared past. Dev Sethi:And actually, it makes me think ways in which I can pay some of that forward to some of my team members and other other colleagues, because for lack of a better term, you and I have been working with creators probably exponentially longer than most people today who are trying to tap into or engage the creator economy as it were. And you and I were working with these folks early days when that term barely even existed, and if not, was specific to a platform like a YouTuber as an example. And so, I think it just goes to show how far things have come, but also again, how shared that history can be and again, how intimate the industry can be. I don't want to say we're OGs because I don't feel that way, but- Chris Erwin:I think it's okay to say we're OGs and I think this is not like patting ourselves on the back, but if you got into space in like the early 2010s, right around the Google Original Channels program, that's pretty early on. Dev Sethi:Definitely. And like I said, when I was there, they hadn't even created the full underpinnings of a monetization program, which the irony being fast forward to 2021, and they're a leader in terms of social video and monetization. So to me, 10 years, it's a long time, maybe the gray in my beard would indicate otherwise. One of the reasons I left those cozy confines was actually to force myself to experience this industry through a different perspective. And I don't want to say you get a narrow lens working at a platform, but it's very easy to view the world in one very specific way. Dev Sethi:And I remember talking to my boss at the time, great guy who I still have a close relationship with, and I was letting him know that I was going to make this jump to go from behemoth to small startup across the country because I also entailed to move from SF in New York, and one of the reasons I cited was I want to gain enough experience, ideally expertise, but enough perspective so that if I ever decide to come back, I'll be able to deliver even more value to a YouTube having had the empathy of sitting across the aisle, across the counter, so to speak, and having really had my hands on this industry in a much different way than just the platform. I'm the provider, so to speak. Everyone's coming to work for me or coming to work with me, they wanted to gain that kind of perspective. Chris Erwin:I think that experience at Whistle and then at Complex, which we'll talk about in a moment, has really made you much better equipped for the job that you now have at Instagram. I think that's very well said. Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of the Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guest, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody, let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:You're at Whistle for, call it, nearly three years and then you make the jump to become chief of staff at Complex working under Rich Antoniello, who is incredible, and then also with the rest of their leadership team, including Christian Basler, who was also interviewed on this podcast. Again, what was the impetus for going over to Complex, and what was some of the work that you were doing there? Dev Sethi:Yeah, and Rich and Christian are two of my favorite people. I'm very lucky to have crossed paths with them and had a chance to work with them. For I'm certain many of your listeners I've met them before, but if they haven't, it's worth trying to get some time with them because they're just amazing people and brilliant minds in our space. The impetus wasn't as straightforward as it might appear on my LinkedIn profile, but I actually left Whistle in the late fall of 201, and a big reason why I left was because I actually felt like I had given everything I had physically, mentally, emotionally to the job and to the team. And it was my mother who actually sort of called it
Brian Volk-Weiss — CEO at The Nacelle Company on Netflix's 1st Streamer Deal, Betting Big on Comedians, and Toy Shopping Therapy
Nov 18 2021
Brian Volk-Weiss — CEO at The Nacelle Company on Netflix's 1st Streamer Deal, Betting Big on Comedians, and Toy Shopping Therapy
This interview features Brian Volk-Weiss, CEO at The Nacelle Company. We discuss why betting big on standup specials got him Netflix's first streamer deal, how Iowa taught him about empathy in content production, bombing on stage and the genius of comedians, producing The Movies That Made Us, toy shopping as therapy, and why he'll retire when his first feature film is greenlit.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Brian Volk-Weiss:I'm shocked any of this worked. So much of what we built was theoretical for so long. And the fact that there's almost no greater feeling than watching the moment a theory becomes a fact. We were making stand-up specials at scale, 20 to 30 a year for years spending millions and millions of dollars. We didn't know if it would work or not, probably until year seven. We started this plan in '08, and I didn't know it would work for sure until 2014. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Brian Volk-Weiss, the founder and CEO of The Nacelle Company. Brian grew up in Queens with an early love for the Star Wars in 1989 Batman films. But upon realizing these worlds weren't based on reality, but instead imagined through the magic of Hollywood, Brian fell in love with filmmaking. So after college in Iowa, he moved to LA to become a production assistant. He then took an early career bet on producing a catalog of stand-up comedy specials, which almost bankrupted him, but the bet paid off big and enabled Brian to found his own production company, which is behind hit titles like The Movies That Made Us on Netflix.So Brian exudes an incredible love for his work, as well as constant amazement he's got to where he is today, which makes telling his story really fun. Some highlights of our chat include why comedians are geniuses, empathy and content production, doing Netflix first streamer deal, toy shopping as therapy, and why he'll retire when his first feature film is green-lit. All right, let's get to it. Brian, thanks for being on The Come Up Podcast. Brian Volk-Weiss:Thank you for having me. Very honored. Chris Erwin:Awesome. Let's rewind a bit. And why don't you start with telling us where you grew up and what your household was like? Brian Volk-Weiss:I grew up in Queens, New York. Was born in the late '70s. It was my mom, my dad and me and that's it. Chris Erwin:And early on, when did this love for toys, entertainment, storytelling, when did that really come to be? Was there a glimpse in your pre-teen years or as you were growing up in your house, any inspirations from your parents? Brian Volk-Weiss:I obviously, I got to get my mom credit because at three years old I could not have bought my own ticket to Star Wars. So I guess I can give her credit for my whole career in that regard. But I'm very lucky. It's the luckiest thing in the world. I saw Star Wars when I was three and I was so young, and by the way, everything I'm about to tell you, I have no memory of whatsoever, but my mom told the story her entire life. So I have it memorized. But basically at three years old, I did not know the word documentary, but basically the way my mom described my reaction to seeing Star Wars, it was as though I thought it was a documentary. Brian Volk-Weiss:And you have to understand, my mom was one of the first women to get a PhD from St. John. My dad was a lawyer. It was very concerning to them that their son for months, when he was asked, "Hey, what do you want to do when you grow up?" My answer was, "I want to fly an X-wing fighter. I want to join the Rebellion." And I mean, this really freaked my parents out. So my mom bought me this book that I still have, that was about the making of Star Wars, but it's written for five-year-olds. And I opened the book, the Death Star that was supposed to be the size of the moon was only six feet across C-3PO. There was a picture of his helmet off and it's Anthony Daniels. Brian Volk-Weiss:From that moment, and by the way, before that I wanted to be a limousine driver, just to show you how young I was. When people would say, "What do you want to do?" "I want to be a limousine driver." And then they'd say, "What do you want to do?" I'd say, "Oh, I want to join the Rebellion." After I saw the book, when they said, "What do you want to do?" I would say, "I want to make movies." And I mean, I've never wanted to do anything else ever. Obviously, now that includes television, but that's what led to it. Chris Erwin:Okay. And were you involved, in your pre-teen years or in high school involved in the theater in any capacity where you're writing stories, any of that? Brian Volk-Weiss:So I wasn't involved with the theater. I did one theater thing in college and that was what it was, but I did make little movies all the time. I made five-minute short film. By the way, I do have to say, when it was really hard to do, I mean, forget about shooting on 16 or even 8mm film, the camera I had literally shot on VHS tapes. It must've been three or four feet long. And by the way, that was the easy part. Editing in those days, I mean, you had to buy a machine for 250 bucks when my allowance was $5 a week. I mean, it was not easy to make these films, which by the way, were all garbage. I mean, they were terrible films, but yes, I did a lot of that. I did crappy little films in high school, a lot of them. Chris Erwin:I imagine you're casting your neighborhood friends and your peers. And were you getting some feedback of like, "Hey Brian, there's something special here. You're really good at this. You have some good vision. You're telling stories that need to be told, or you see things in a different way." Were you getting any early feedback like that as you're starting to put together your first contents [inaudible 00:06:03]? Brian Volk-Weiss:So I don't want to make you seem like my parents and friends were jerks, because they were not, but I made crappy movies and they were crappy. So nobody could look at them and truthfully say, "Oh, Brian, this is great." I mean, I'll tell you this, I was in show business for at least 10 years before my parents realized, "Oh wow, he might have turned this into a career." They were in denial my entire high school and college time that I would turn this into a career. Like I said, both of them were children of immigrants. They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist. The whole idea of going to show business with no job, I didn't know anybody when I got here. Brian Volk-Weiss:So again, their personalities, but I really do think being the offspring of immigrants that had to flee the Holocaust and everything, I chose a very risky career path. Chris Erwin:Understood. Like you noted, your parents were looking for the traditional route for you, for stability, for something was familiar for your parents who are immigrants coming to a country that was unfamiliar to them, trying to find things that were stable and known. And you're like, "No, that's not for me. I'm going to give something else a go." So you make a decision that this is the career for you, but when you go to University of Iowa, were these ambitions in your sites? Were you planning to go into the entertainment business then? What was your focus on for your study? Brian Volk-Weiss:Again, I never wavered for a billionth of a second from this being my career choice ever since I realized that Star Wars was fake. So it was always the plan. Like I said, not only were my parents highly educated, all of my grandparents were also, my grandfather was a doctor. My other grandfather was a dentist. And even the women, which traditionally, 100 years ago were not going to schools and becoming doctors and lawyers and stuff, they were also very ambitious, very hard working. So if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have even gone to college. I would have gone straight to LA at 18. Brian Volk-Weiss:Because of that, it never occurred to me until I was out of college, long out of college that I could have skipped college. But I did know when I chose where I went to school, it was irrelevant to my career. So that gave me a lot of freedom not to go to NYU, not to go to UCLA. I decided it was more important to me to have an experience that I could carry with me throughout my career, which I got to tell you, I think that was in retrospect one of the better decisions I've ever made for myself, because whenever I'm trying to look at things, should I green-light this or should I green-light that or whatever? I have a million friends in the Midwest. And a lot of people that I know, the majority of their friends are in LA or New York. Brian Volk-Weiss:So I get this point, I was in Minneapolis this weekend, this past weekend, was like eight or nine people that I know there. So that's who I think of when I'm making creative decisions, especially in the editing bay, by the way. Chris Erwin:In a way, are you saying that you can empathize with a broader audience mix than maybe those that have lived and grown up in LA, or the LA consumer is all they know where you're like, "No, I've traveled from east to west, in the Midwest. I've been in parts of the country where others have not. And I understand what they care about, what they don't care about, how they communicate with one another." Brian Volk-Weiss:Absolutely. I mean, 100%. And just to use a non-show business example, if I only had LA and New York friends, I would have a point of view of Trump that I do not have because of my Midwest friends. I still hate the guy's guts, no offense to anyone who likes them. And I respect your opinion if you like Trump. And I think I get that because I have friends in the Midwest, because I have friends that I've known for 30 years almost that like Trump. And I understand why they like Trump. I don't agree with it. I think it's terrible, but I understand why they do. Brian Volk-Weiss:So when I see Trump, I look at him from a point of view of, again, I truly think the guy might one day be responsible for the literal actual apocalypse. But I do know that I look at him differently from almost everybody I know in LA and New York. And that is because I have friends in the Midwest that voted for him and I understand why they did. And I know they're not racist. I know they're not antisemitic. It's that point of view that when I'm in an editing pay, I can think about what they care about, what they value, and not just LA and New York and Miami. Chris Erwin:I think that's very well said. And it's something that I feel that is an important value to me too. Look, I'm from the tri-state area. I grew up in Jersey, schooled in Boston, and then I worked in finance in New York. And then I did go to grad school in Chicago, but then I was in LA for 10 years and now I'm in San Diego. But I feel that my time in Chicago for a couple of years, as well as the fact that my brother's wife is from Ohio, and I have friends from Ohio. Chris Erwin:And sitting down with parents of my friends who have run steel mills in these manufacturing plants for over 40 years, and when I just talk politics with them, the notion of empathy is to understand their story is very different than what I hear from my coastal friends and my coastal peers. And not making this a political conversation of picking one side or the other, but just context and empathy, not only in the world is critical for political decisions for economic, but in telling story and reaching different audiences and understanding what they care about and thinking about what the marketing campaign is going to be is really, really critical. So I like how you've touched on that. Brian Volk-Weiss:You just said I think is, first of all, it's pretty much my favorite word. Second of all, I think if our country has lost anything as everybody says we have, it's context. It's a sense of context. Many times people I work with, trying to be nice, trying to be funny, whatever, kiss my ass a little, I don't know. But they'll write a script or something and they'll name something after me. And it's usually like a ship or a character, spaceship, boat, whatever. And it'll be like the USS Volk-Weiss. Brian Volk-Weiss:And I'll always say, "First of all, thank you. That's very kind. Second of all, that's not me. I don't like that kind of shit. Please change the name. And if you change it, please change it to the USS context." Because that's how powerful I think that word is because anything is nothing if you don't take into account its surroundings. And that's why I liked that word so much. And that's why, again, going back to your question, because I feel like I'm rambling, but that's why I went to Iowa. It gives me a sense of context I knew I wouldn't have if I had gone to school in LA or New York. Chris Erwin:So going back to your decision for you, Iowa, was there also in addition to context, something else that you received from that school or that experience that maybe was unexpected, but a delight you've brought with you for the rest of your life? Brian Volk-Weiss:I learned a lot from the school. I mean, just the experience of getting somewhere at 18 and leaving at 22. Just that experience is a great thing, but one of the things I learned because I learned a lot, but the thing that had a lot of value to me to this day is if you go to a school in LA or New York for the most part, again like UCLA or USC or in NYU, you're getting filtered in with lots of other people with the same beliefs. Another way to say it is, if I had gone to NYU, I would have been surrounded by people just like me who had made lots of student films. Brian Volk-Weiss:At Iowa, I mean, two of my best friends from Iowa, they were from farms. And by the way, that's another thing I learned, when you think of farm, you think of like, "Hey, there's a barn and a house and maybe 30 cows and a couple of pigs." These people were from... I was this New York guy. My mom had a PhD. My dad was a lawyer. These people from farms, they probably made 10 times what my parents made for a living. But you don't think that way when you hear farm. Brian Volk-Weiss:So just needing people who are the children of farmers, the first person in five generations to go to college and they're sitting next to me in the same class on the same first day of college, I took that, it's not destined that just because you make stupid films when you're in high school that everybody else around you doing that is going to end up in the same place. You can come from a farm. You can come from... One of my best friends, his parents owned a roofing company. Brian Volk-Weiss:The other thing that was great about Iowa was, Iowa City was very different than Iowa. So the minute you were five miles outside of Iowa City, you might as well have been in Nebraska or Oklahoma. But Iowa City had a lot in common with New York compared to the rest of the state. So just all of that knowledge and experience is just wonderful. Chris Erwin:Very well said. I think there're some themes that we can come back to there, but in moving your story forward, after Iowa, you move immediately to LA and you become a PA on Castaway. Brian Volk-Weiss:Eventually. That wasn't my first job. My first job, I always like to say this was a independent film called Going Back to Cali. It was a all white producers, but it was literally an African American copy of Swingers as my first job. I booked it six days after I got to LA. Every night, the producers would watch Swingers and the director. And then the next day we would basically redo the same scene with an entirely African American cast. That was my first job. I think six or seven months after I got here, I got here July, and about four months or five months later, I got Castaway. Chris Erwin:Got it. When you made that first move, and you got this first job, this call it African American copy of Swingers, did LA still feel right to you. Were you're like, "Yes, this is it. I'm excited?" Or were you like, "Actually, this is a little bit different than I thought and I'm questioning somethings." Brian Volk-Weiss:I'm not going to talk about LA because I hate LA the day I got here and I hate it now. But if you're asking me about show business, it was exactly what I thought it would be. If anything, it was more exciting, more fun, more awesome than I had even hoped it would be. I look back on those days, I know this might be a weird thing to say, but I only PA'ed for about a year, I was only an assistant for about a year and a half. And I'm sure if I could speak to 22 or 23-year-old Brian, they would tell me I'm smoking crack, but I wish I had PA'ed a little longer. I wish I had been an assistant a little longer because, especially a PA, I really enjoyed it. Like I really, really enjoyed it. Brian Volk-Weiss:I always joke, and if there's anything I've learned about myself over the years is as I've gotten older, a lot of times when I make the same joke over and over again, I'm not joking and I'll probably do it, but we'll see if I do it with this one, but I've always joked, "Maybe when I retire, I'll go back to PA-ing." I really enjoyed. Chris Erwin:What was it about it that you loved so much? Brian Volk-Weiss:There were two things about it. One of which I was aware of at the time, one of which I'm sure is now me looking backwards, but at the time, what I loved was it was such a tiny job. I was usually making 75 bucks a day, but you had such an important role. I'll never forget my first PA on a real job, it was a big car commercial. I'll never forget, at the end of the day... The whole day I got people, coffee, I did all those, "Menial jobs," which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Brian Volk-Weiss:But at the end of the day, I'll never forget the producer handed me all the cans of film because it was filmed back then and said, "Take these to photo cam to get developed." And I was just like, "No problem." And he goes, "Never forget, every penny we spent from paper clips to producer salaries is in these cans." And I never forgot that. And that was what was so exciting. I'm 22 years old, I don't know a thing about anything, and yet, I have the most important job bringing these cans somewhere for an hour. Bringing an actress coffee may seem menial, but she needs the coffee. It's very hard to be an actor. Chris Erwin:You're delivering coffee, but you're seeing an actress preparing for when she's going to be performing. What's her headspace, what is your routine before, what is the hair and makeup and everything's happening in advance of her going on set. So you're seeing the full experience. That absorption so early on is so valuable. Brian Volk-Weiss:So valuable. And also, a lot of fun. I mean, a lot of fun. And then in retrospect, looking backwards, the other thing I liked about it is, it was so simple. My job now, I mean, we're planning stuff for 2024. Almost everything we do now, if not everything we do now is connected to other things. So we're not just putting out a TV show, we're putting out a TV show, a book and a podcast. When you're a PA, they say, "Yo, go to Walmart, buy a hammer." You go to Walmart, you buy a hammer, you go back, they say, "Thank you." And then they tell you to do something else. And it's just very A to B, A to B, A to B. And I miss that. Chris Erwin:I hear that. It reminds me of a story. There is this very famous IP lawyer that had a very complicated job, dealt with complicated legal cases. And on the weekends to relax and decompress all he wanted, like you said, Brian, was the simplest task and actions. So he got himself a bulldozer in his backyard and he would just move mounds of dirt. A mound of dirt from one corner of the yard to the other, do that for four hours on a Saturday, that's how he cleared his brain. Brian Volk-Weiss:I get that. You wouldn't even believe. I might go buy a bulldozer now. I totally get it. That's brilliant. Chris Erwin:And I hear you. Look, as an owner of a smaller business than yours, just the weight of the responsibility, taking care of your team, taking care of your clients, making sure that you have payroll, you're planning years ahead. I hear you. So what are the simple things that you do to keep your sanity? Brian Volk-Weiss:Honestly, buy toys, collect. It's like going to church or temple or whatever. It's so peaceful to me to walk around a vintage toy store and just see what they have and buy some things, bring them home and put them in my collection. People have every right to say I'm hoarding. I get it. I mean, the volume in which I'm buying toys, I know it's ridiculous, but it gives me tremendous joy just exploring vintage toy stores, even antique stores. It really gives me a lot of peace. Even if I don't buy anything, just seeing the way the world was, seeing little bits of history. You'll see an ashtray from [Bell and Root 00:21:59], knowing that it'll eventually become Halliburton. Just seeing that in a store, an antique store like that gives me a lot of peace. Chris Erwin:When you go shopping or looking at vintage toys and vintage items, do you like to do that alone? Do you do that with certain peers that are also aficionados? Brian Volk-Weiss:My favorite way to do it is alone. Well, that's not true. The only exception to that is my wife, because my wife is just like me. If we go to an antique store, she doesn't want to talk until we're walking out. So I don't talk to her. She don't talk to me. We just shop and explore. But most people they want to talk and everything and I'm very focused. I'm really focused on what I'm looking at. The exception to the rule, even though it's not helpful to my relaxing is of course with my kids, it's the opposite of what my wife and I do, but I love my kids like any father does, but they're just so fucking funny that it's worth the distraction being with them because of how funny they are. Chris Erwin:Going back to your career trajectory, so after being a PA and then you're on Castaway, you break into, I think, BKEG talent management. And there you start managing comedians and then you start producing stand-up comedy specials. And it kind of kicks off this incredible run that you have there and then through New Wave Entertainment, which I think acquired BKEG in 2003. So I'm curious, right now with the creator economy where every major social and incoming platform and all the major streamers, they realize that the talent, the creators, they bring the audience and thereby the audience then brings the money and the revenue. When you started working with talent early on, what were some of your key learnings? How did you gravitate towards them? And then why did you start working with comedians in particular? Brian Volk-Weiss:I started working with comedians completely randomly. It was all random. I'd only been in a comedy club once in my life before I went to BKEG. I was interning at a tiny company that on the floor that his office was at, there was a communal copy room and all the assistants to all the producers and other people in the floor would get to know each other because you would be in the copy room copying stuff together and you'd have to wait while people were using the machine. All I knew was this guy I knew was leaving his job. He needed to replace himself. He was making 50 bucks cash a day under the table. That's all I knew about the job. Brian Volk-Weiss:I knew that I was broke. I had saved up about three grand during college. I had burnt through the three grand. I was about to start waiting tables on the weekend. I was still PA-ing, even though I was an intern five days a week, I had still been PA-ing on the weekends, but I still was burning through my money. So I met with his boss and I just needed the 50 bucks a day cash so I didn't become a waiter again because I waited tables in college and I got the job, and about a week into the job, I understood what a... I didn't even know what a manager was when I took the job. It was a tiny management company. Brian Volk-Weiss:I basically was like, "I can't think of a worse job than being a manager." So I basically gave my two weeks notice. The owner of the company, a guy named Barry, Barry basically said, "What do you want to do for a living?" And I was like, "I want to produce movies." And he was like, "Well, as a manager, you can do that." And he started walking me through how you do that. So I stuck with it. Then I started managing and that's exactly what happened. I mean the first movie I ever got on into a movie theater was through a client. The first show I ever sold on television was through a client. And the entire foundation of our company is from that process. Brian Volk-Weiss:To answer your other question, I understood talent very quickly. It was very easy to understand. They're not like the rest of us. And as a manager or somebody who becomes a manager or is thinking of becoming a manager, you have to make peace with that or not do the job. Because if you're a manager for any other profession, you just say the obvious thing and you tell your client what to do. So if I was managing engineers and I had the client working at Boeing, and my client was like, "I'm mad at my boss. I'm not going to work today." I'd be like, "Well, you work for Boeing. You got to go to work or you're going to be fired." It doesn't matter what you think of your boss. Brian Volk-Weiss:When an actor, you can't say that nor should you, because I cannot tell you this enough, I had clients I talked to every day. I would go on vacations with them. I would go to movies with them on the weekends. These were people I talked to seven days a week, 18 hours a day, that kind of stuff. And I would still be on set with them and we're just hanging out like friends, and then the second [inaudible 00:27:11] comes over and is like, "Hey, so and so, you're up." And they would go and start doing a scene. And I'm like looking at them like they're levitating or flying or can split at, it never wore off on me how amazing it is that people can become other people. Brian Volk-Weiss:I know this sounds insane. I've been doing this for 23 years and I'm still amazed that actors can act, but I made peace with that on day one. And for me at the time, because pretty much all my clients were stand-up comedians, they're complicated people, but you have to be complicated to become a stand-up comedian. You also have to be a genius. There is no stand-up comedian I've ever met that can sell 100 tickets or more that wasn't a genius. So when they say they're not getting out of bed for any reason, you have to engage with them, find out the reason and then work with the studio or the network or the producers or the director to get them simpatico. And I enjoyed that because I respected how hard it was to do what they did. Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody, let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:I'm hearing two things from you, Brian, that I think are really interesting. One, which speaks to the longevity of your career and why I believe there's so much more ahead is because it really feels like, just from talking the last 30 minutes, how much you love what you do. When you were describing Star Wars and your early impressions of Batman and making movies as a teenager and in high school. And then even just describing back then working with talent, watching them instantly transform on set and that wow factor for you. And then you still have that same feeling today, it's that you're captivated by entertainment in Hollywood. And that even if you despise LA, you love the entertainment industry, you love show business. And I don't think that star is ever going to fade. It feels like it's just going to get brighter for you. Brian Volk-Weiss:I say this, this could sound like a metaphor. This could sound like I'm trying to be humble, I don't know. But I'm telling you, I mean this, the way I tell you the sky is blue. When I tell you, I cannot believe any of this is happening to this day, I mean it. I absolutely made it. I'm shocked any of this worked. Absolutely shocked. So much of what we've built was theoretical for so long. And the fact that there's almost no greater feeling not connected to family, there's almost no greater feeling than watching the moment a theory becomes a fact. And we were making stand-up specials at scale, 20 to 30 a year for years, spending millions and millions of dollars. 99.90 cents of every dollar that came in for five or six years, we spent that money on making stand-up specials. We didn't know if it would work or not, probably until year seven. We started this plan in '08 and I didn't know it would work for sure until 2014. Chris Erwin:Well, that speaks to an interesting point that we were talking about before this recording. What was the catalyst that caused you to keep reinvesting in these comedy specials? Why were you putting 99.90 cents of every dollar that you brought in back into this growing body of work? Brian Volk-Weiss:Well, there's two answers to that question. The first answer is the long-term answer, which is I knew the day I got here, again, I was 22 years old, but I'd been thinking about this since I was five. I wanted to build a studio. That was always my goal. I always wanted to build a studio and I had read about how all the other studios had been built. I knew Disney was built on Donald and Mickey and all of that. I knew Warner brothers was built on this Mack Sennett Library. And that was the key word, library. So I knew I had to build a library. And if I wanted to build a studio, I knew I needed a library. I didn't know how to build a library. Brian Volk-Weiss:A bunch of lucky things happened. The first lucky thing was, like I said, as a manager, you make a stand-up special for your clients once or twice a year. So one day I get a call from an agent, a guy named Mike Berkowitz, and at the time I was a manager. I had all my clients and I was managing full-time. And then 98% of my job was managing, 2% was producing. And I got a call from Mike, and Mike asked me if I would ever produce a stand-up special for a non-client. And I was really offended. And if I'm being honest with you, I was kind of rude to him. It was Michael Ian Black's agent, and I said to him, I'm like, "Dude, why are you calling me about producing a special? I'm not good enough to manage him. Why can't I manage him?" Brian Volk-Weiss:And I was really annoyed about it. The next day in the shower, I suddenly remembered my job was to make money. And as long as it was legal, it didn't really matter how I made the money. So I called Mike back and I apologized. And luckily he forgave me, which if you knew Mike, this doesn't happen very often. No offense, Mike, but it's true. You would agree with me, if you ever hear it. But that being said, we did Michael Ian black special and word got out to the community that we were making specials for non-clients. So that was the first thing that happened. Brian Volk-Weiss:The second thing that happened was in 2006, I read a book called The Long Tail. And the reason that anytime I talk about the long tail, I always mention what year I read it, 2006 was a very important year, not because of what happened, but because of what would happen. The book correctly predicted the rise of YouTube, iPhones, streaming, everything, AVOD, Asphalt, everything. So I took the biggest risk of my entire life and I bet everything that that book would be right. Brian Volk-Weiss:Because the truth of the matter is one of my clients blew up. I mean, I started working with this guy when he could sell 400 tickets and three years later he was selling 15 to 25,000 tickets a night. He was making a million dollars a show. And I could have taken that money and put it in the bank, invested it, and I'd probably have more money now than I do if I had done that. But the other thing is, in addition to wanting to go to studio since I was a little kid, it was always very important to me to leave something behind. I didn't want to die and not have contributed something, anything, but something to the world. Brian Volk-Weiss:And basically, I bet everything that the book would be right. And I'll be completely honest with you, when I made the decision, I basically said to myself, "This is it." If the book's right, I'll be able to achieve my dream. If the book is wrong, I'll have to quit or get fired and either become an agent at a big agency or go back to school and become a lawyer or something. I knew I was making a bet it all bet. By good Lord, the grace of God, that book could not have been more accurate and correct in what it predicted. Chris Erwin:Well, because I think when you read that in '06, Brian, and then your investment in this stand-up comedy special library from '08 through the next 6 to 10 plus years, that also led to growing credibility for you to start going into unscripted and scripted work and TV series and film projects. And then eventually you being able to launch your own production company and studio in a cell in 2017. Brian Volk-Weiss:That's exactly right. I mean, it killed a million birds with one stone. One of the most important birds that literally changed the course of my life, the company's trajectory, everything was, I do not know anybody in my entire life that did a deal with Netflix before me. My first deal with Netflix was in March of 2009. I swear to you, you're going to think I'm joking. I am not joking. I signed the contract. The contract said, all over the contract, streaming, streaming, streaming, s-bot s-bot, s-bot. I hadn't a clue what that meant. Not an iota of a fucking clue, but the deal was for so much money I didn't want to risk losing it. So I just signed it. Brian Volk-Weiss:And that deal did two things. First of all, it brought in the money that allowed me to keep growing the company because that deal was for the rights to specials I had already made, had already aired elsewhere, like Comedy Central or Showtime, and these rights had reverted. And that's the deal I had done with Netflix. We didn't even have Netflix in my house. When I signed that contract, I hadn't even seen Netflix yet. Chris Erwin:It was a DVD company. I think necklace was founded around what? '98, '99. And then 8 to 10 years in, probably exactly in the timeframe you're describing of '09, there was this slow transition to streaming. But I don't even know if it happened at that date yet. They were probably just going to put that into contracts and planning for the future. Brian Volk-Weiss:It had happened. But first of all, nobody really understood it. But second of all, the first person I ever met at Netflix, this woman named Lisa Nishimura. When I met with Lisa, they were in the middle of their biggest crisis. Up until this very second, they were going through, I forgot what it was called, like Flixster or Flicker. They were dividing their DVD business from their streaming business, which nobody understood because nobody knew what streaming was. So it was this whole like, "What?" But the reason I bring this up is that deal I did with Netflix in 2009 got me in the door with them before almost anybody. Brian Volk-Weiss:And because of that, I met this guy named Devin Griffin, and Devin at a very unique job where Devin, he was the guy that whenever we had the rights to a special ending at Comedy Central or something, or we had a special that we shot without a buyer, and again, I feel like that's worth mentioning. To this day, other people I'm friends with who own production companies will say, even though they know our plan worked, they will still say to me, "It is insane that you were making stand-up specials with no buyers at scale." Almost everybody I know would try it once or twice and then quit. Brian Volk-Weiss:Part of how I got through it and survived the risk was we did it at scale. You can't make one or two at a time. You have to make 5 to 10 at a time, which means instead of spending 300 grand, you're spending 5 to 10 million. So when I tell you, we bet it all, I mean, we fucking bet it all. But the reason I bring this up is we were doing this at a time when no one else was. So even though we were tiny, Netflix had no choice but to work with us because we were the only independent company that had a stand-up comedy library. Brian Volk-Weiss:So I knew this Devin Griffin guy, who's now a very good friend of mine for a lot of reasons, by the way. He's the smartest person I know, but you also changed the course of my life. He was transferred after a couple of years from stand-up comedy acquisitions to unscripted. And he was the guy who was like, "What do you got?" I had been trying to sell this show, which eventually was called The Toys That Made Us for seven years. I never could sell it because a lot of people don't understand this, but producers are tight cast just like actors. Brian Volk-Weiss:So I couldn't sell it because I was always the stand-up comedy guy and executives and buyers were always like, "Why is the stand-up comedy guy trying to sell me a show about toys?" But because I knew Devin, because I was friends with Devin. Devin had been to my house. And Devin had seen my toy collection. And he also knew me, he knew he could trust, take my word. So if I told him I could do X and he knew I was a, "Expert," in toys, he green-lit Toys That Made Us and had changed everything for the company,
Doug Bernstein — GM at House of Highlights on AOL's "Digital Mailroom", Sports Fandoms, and Fulfilling His Destiny
Oct 7 2021
Doug Bernstein — GM at House of Highlights on AOL's "Digital Mailroom", Sports Fandoms, and Fulfilling His Destiny
Doug Bernstein is the GM at Bleacher Report's House of Highlights. We discuss what he learned from launching his own fantasy sports website, predicting the future of sports fandoms, how he convinced Turner and Bleacher Report to buy House of Highlights, why he’s inspired by Faze Clan and 100 Thieves, and fulfilling his destiny as a sports media savant. Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Doug Bernstein:Very early on in House of Highlights' lifespan, I became a really big fan of the account. I think we had about 500,000 followers. At this point, we would have these quarterly board meetings, and I ran through this deck, which outlined our pivot to social, and on the last slide, I had something that I really did not want to be a throw away, but I kind of was like, there's a good chance this is going to be a throw away, was like was this pitch to acquire House of Highlights. Luckily enough, the people in that room, again, didn't dismiss it. They were like, "Okay, make it happen." Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Doug Bernstein, the GM of House of Highlights, which is part of Bleacher Report. Doug grew up in Long Island and actually predicted a sports media career in third grade. In just middle school, he was making his own football cards. And while in college, accidentally ended up running the school paper and public access TV channel where he cut his teeth learning how to sell ads, be on camera and inspire a team. Then Doug got his real digital education when he went to AOL to run sports and news blogs. There, he realized that the next fandoms would be powered by user generated content and social media. So, he made the jump to Bleacher Report. Chris Erwin:At Bleacher, he ended up leading the acquisition of House of Highlights and now runs one of today's most exciting sports media brands. Some highlights of our chat include what he learned from responding to 400 blogger emails per day, how he convinced Turner to double down on digital, why he is inspired by FaZe Clan and 100 Thieves and fulfilling his destiny as a sports media savant. Alright, let's get into it. Doug, thanks for being on The Come Up podcast. Doug Bernstein:My pleasure, very excited to be here. Chris Erwin:Let's zoom back a bit and let's talk about where you grew up and what your household and parents were like. So I think you mentioned you grew up in Long Island, is that right? Doug Bernstein:That is correct. So I grew up in a town called Garden City, which is a suburb of New York City. It was me, my brother who's three or four years younger than myself and my mom and dad. And we just grew up in a really, really big sports household. A lot of my earliest memories are in and around sports. My dad loves to tell a funny story like when I was one, he was supposed to watch me and he got stuck on the WFAN call radio. My mom came home, I had a wet diaper crying, screaming, and he was still online to talk about the Yankees. I grew up playing a lot of soccer, watching a lot of basketball, playing soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. And then really just became infatuated with the Giants, the New York Giants, at a very, very young age. Chris Erwin:I was actually going to ask, what were the teams of your household? Who did you guys root for? Doug Bernstein:I am a very big and loyal diehard New York Giants fan. My brother has been more Jets but also somewhat of a colors guy. Like if they had good colors, he'd go in that direction. And my dad has always ... We've never had a set team, but I've always been a really, really big Giants fan to the point that I think it scared my parents when I was younger. I remember when I was in the third grade, the Giants had a loss and I put a note under my door. I went upstairs, put a note under my door and was like, "I'm not coming out until the start of next season. Knock on my door, put rice crispy cereal at the door, I'll eat it, but I'm going to stay in my room until the start of next season." Chris Erwin:How long did that last for? Doug Bernstein:I think it lasted until the next morning. I think my parents gave me a full Sunday, we're not going to bother him, and then Monday, "You got to go to school." We went to a lot of St. John's basketball games growing up, and that was a really formative experience. I loved going to those games with my dad and with my brother and being part of that atmosphere. Chris Erwin:What did you like about the live experience? Doug Bernstein:It was just everything. It was so cool to be able to watch the games, but also I think what I really gravitated towards was the people and the connections that were being made. So, every year, there'd always be the same older couple that would sit right in front of us, the same people that would sit behind us, next to us, and kind of those friendships and that comradery. I even remember when you're in kindergarten, first grade, these people you see them and then you see them again all the way through middle school. It's a really unique experience to have that. I grew up in a very non-religious household, so we rarely went to church, we rarely went to temple. Chris Erwin:The sports arena was your temple? Doug Bernstein:Exactly. So sports was that place where you congregated. I always remember when I'd go to church, there'd be that moment where you take people's hands and say peace be with you. And I would always feel like when I was at a game, it was the heightened version of that where you're clapping, people going crazy and having that feeling. So, I love being able to go to games. I think that was really, really formative for myself. Chris Erwin:You're going to games with your family I imagine through your early years and in middle school, was there a feeling like I'm probably going to end up in sports in my career in some way? When was that early glimpse? Doug Bernstein:I remember in second grade I would have to write journal entries, and I would write these five-page journal entries every Monday about the Giants recap. And then every Wednesday would be this three-page recap on the St John's game. And the teacher was like, "Why are you writing such long things about these sports when you're supposed to write about what you ate for breakfast and what you did with your friends?" So I remember that very distinctly standing out. I remember very distinctly in third grade, and my mom saved it, we were supposed to write about what it was we wanted to do when we were older, when we had a real career, and I wrote be a professional soccer player or work for ESPN. So I really was not good enough to be a professional soccer player but did end up working for ESPN. Doug Bernstein:And I was really lucky that I have parents that fostered it where we went to Bristol when I was in fourth grade and visited the ESPN campus. All of our vacations, we went to watch Duke in North Carolina. I don't know how my mom tolerated all this. We went to watch like US soccer in San Diego. A lot of our vacations as a kid were geared towards going to these sporting events. Chris Erwin:Oh wow. Doug Bernstein:It was really fun. I didn't really have a great context for work because my grandfather had started a company, my dad worked for that company, my uncles had worked for it. So there was always this, "Oh, that's the path is we worked for this family business." Chris Erwin:Was it sports-related at all? Doug Bernstein:No, no. I like to say they make like widgets. They may start off making fuses for TV, they make computer components, just a lot of little electrical equipment type stuff. So it was the furthest thing from my interest area. But as I got older, I was lucky enough to break into sports and not have to pursue that. Chris Erwin:I think you had also mentioned too, did you, at an early age, have to create your own basketball cards and fantasy football mag? So you had some sports entrepreneurship in you at an early age too? Doug Bernstein:I'm definitely putting my sports nerd hat very heavily right now. I was going through all our old boxes of cards, when cards was having a big resurgence of late, and I stumbled across a Kobe that should've been worth 40,000 but the edges were dented, that was heartbreaking. But I also stumbled across all these cards that I would make. Tim Duncan, Randolph Childress, Samaki Walker, all of these guys, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, I would made ... They didn't make college basketball cards, so I would make their card. I'd have an index, I'd get the magazine. I'd print up a little ... Like cut out the picture, find all their stats, write the stats on the back, give them a little bio. When I didn't have the pictures, I would draw. I liked to do a lot of art as a kid, so I would do that. I'd make little fantasy magazines and things of that nature which were always really fun. Chris Erwin:Were these just for you or were you selling these to your friends? Doug Bernstein:I'd sell them to my brother basically. Chris Erwin:Keep it in the family. Doug Bernstein:Right. Me and my brother would constantly be collecting basketball cards, trading them. And then we would build little teams that my dad or my dad's friends would then judge. So we did a lot of that. We played backyard basketball. In my mind, what I mean is like, "Okay, we're playing backyard basketball, but we need to make a league out of this." I was making jerseys in the fifth grade for all my buddies to play in this not official backyard basketball league. So I've kind of always had that in me. Chris Erwin:I didn't realize that you had such a creative bent to you as well. Very interesting to hear this. I look at you as the data, analytics and strategy mind behind House of Highlights and a lot of the work that Bleacher Report is doing, but hearing you, that you're making jerseys, making sports cards and like drawing characters and all that, it's incredible. Doug Bernstein:Yeah, it's funny. If you were to talk to any of my high school teachers or my wife, I think they would think it's comical that I started in the data and analytics side because I think I got a two on AP stats and got like a five or four on AP art. So I think they very like, "Wait, what? That doesn't really jive." But yeah, I think what has helped me a little bit with the data and analytics side is being able to interpret it more creatively and be able to have ... I always wanted to be more on the editorial side, whether that's a writer or a talent, but I couldn't write that well, I wasn't that great of a talent, I was a terrible talent. And then what I always had was I always had ideas, so I figured, "Hey, if I can't do that, let me at least come up with ideas." And then nobody wanted to listen to me, so I was like, "All right, well, got to have it rooted in something." That's how the numbers came about. Chris Erwin:Got it. Well, look, I think you got to test some of your editorial and talent muscles when you were in Pomona for college. So I think you made a decision that you wanted to pursue this sports media career. So you went and did media studies at Pomona, and you went from the East Coast to the West Coast to do that. Tell me about when you were at undergrad, what type of work were you doing? What type of work were you doing outside the classroom, and how was that inspiring your future sports career? Doug Bernstein:I was a media studies major at a small liberal arts school in California, which is really, really fun and enjoyable, but it's not giving you the most preparation for a post-graduate life. If you want to dissect 1970s cinema, you're in great shape, but there's only so many jobs where you're going to be able to do that after college. For me, I enjoyed school, and I think Pomona was a great college to be able to study media, play some sports, but I think I really found what it was that I loved once I was able to start doing things outside of the classroom. My first experience with that was I was on a soccer team, a teammate came up to me after practice one day and said, "Hey, do you want to work for the school paper?" I said, "Oh man, I'd absolutely love that. I'd been thinking about sports writing and stuff like that for a while, that'd be great." Doug Bernstein:So he was like, "Okay, meet me under the campus bookstore, we'll get going." And I meet him under the campus bookstore, and I'm all ready to meet the team or whatever, meet my editor. And he's like, "Hey, here are the keys. This is the office, the whole staff quit. This thing is yours." So, that was a real baptism by fire, inheriting a college newspaper. I think it was like $5,000 in debt, which at that time, $5,000 in debt felt like $500,000. And then being able to lay out a vision for what I wanted the paper to be, build a staff, execute against it, do some sports writing, like- Chris Erwin:I have to ask, in that moment, did you get more excited where like, okay, there's a little bit of shock value here, I'm going to have to build this from scratch, but I'm going to make it in my own vision. And I know what that looks like, and I'm going to recruit people that are excited by this and all the above or was it like, I'm not sure if I actually want to take this on? Doug Bernstein:No, I was way more excited. I was like, this is way better. I wasn't very enamored with the traditional school papers, like a lot of the stuff that they were covering. So, we ended up pivoting and doing a lot more music and movie reviews, a lot more things outside of the school. Chris Erwin:It's like Bill Simmons and The Ringer, it's integrating sports and pop culture. Doug Bernstein:Exactly. I was in school in 'O3/'04 when I started doing this. I think our first cover was the ultimate movie bad-ass was a 64-bracket ultimate movie bad-ass thing. So that was really, really fun and that was it exactly. It was like, man, I get to see out the vision or the creative that I would like for this to be and that was really, really exciting. And the ability to not just do the creative side but also really, really beneficial that I also had to do the business side. So I had to sell ads, go to the local pizza store, go to the local laundromat. Chris Erwin:Oh, so you were door-knocking? Like you had to drive revenue for the business as well and help pay off the debts? Doug Bernstein:Yeah, we had to make phone calls. We had to get ad sales, had to like pick up checks and like get a chicken parm at the same time. So yeah, definitely had to do like all of that and it was fun because it was an independent college paper. It wasn't like supported by the school itself. So it was like ... You really had like a P&L that you had to drive for and it was a great experience for a 20-year-old to be able to do that. Chris Erwin:Did you get college credit? That sounds like the best way to learn how to build like a sports media organization. Doug Bernstein:I did. I ended up getting school credit. So I think the second half of my junior and senior year, the second half of my junior year and my senior year, a lot of my credits were coming from like independent work. So I think I got credit from doing the school paper. I believe I got ... We had a public access college [inaudible 00:13:57] channel that had long been dormant, so I started to be like oh man, what's this? This looks pretty fun. I had a friend who's a faculty advisor, like the world's nicest man. He was 80-something years old. He worked at the theology school adjacent to where we were and so, I was like, "Oh, is there anything I can do for the school television channel?" He's like, "Yeah, just run tapes back and forth, upload like a thumb drive and make a PowerPoint of like what's happening this week, who's speaking." And I was like, "Oh, that's great." Doug Bernstein:And then when I went to meet him one time, they had an abandoned TV studio and I was like, "Wait, you have a TV studio here?" And he was like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Nobody uses it?" And he was like, "No, nobody's used it in years." And I was like, "If me and my buddies come and clean it out, can we use it?" And he was like, "Go for it." So me and my buddies spent a Saturday and Sunday cleaning the whole thing out. It was like a three-camera studio, had like a switcher in the other room and we cleaned the whole thing out and every Sunday, for the remainder of the year, we filmed. Two of my buddies did a politics show and then me and one other buddy did a sports talk show. Chris Erwin:Wait, how did you learn how to use the studio? Of like using the switcher and like the multi-cam operation, who taught you that? Doug Bernstein:This guy, the guy who had been like this really, really kind man to go out of like empathy on us and would come like Sundays after church and would help us learn how to film and learn how to do the switchers and I would go home and then whatever Mac editing software I had at the time and edit together really pretty crudely but it was decent enough. Again, it was just a really, really fun learning experience to be able to have done that and then was able to do that and then get credit for internships that I was able do to during school as well. Chris Erwin:I also had to ask, I think you had previously mentioned that you had some, I think, leadership pillars or philosophies that you had printed in the office at the school paper and I think you still have a copy of this or you still use these pillars today. What is that? Doug Bernstein:It's like actually like ... I mean I don't mean to take time to get it but it's like 10 feet from me, I do have the little five-page write up of like the guiding principles for that school paper that are very applicable 15 years later to overseeing House of Highlights and I think as part of those leadership principles, a lot was about like laying out a very clear and concise vision, allowing everybody to really understand their roles but also kind of like this mantra that I've had and that I've kind of liked a lot was you don't have to like each other but you always got to root for each other. And when you think about that, with any team or any organization, sometimes there's an expectation that oh, we all have to be friends, we all have to love each other and it's like, that's not really the case. I think the best case scenario is that you're all swimming in the same direction. Somebody's failure is your failure and somebody's success is your success. Doug Bernstein:I'm a big believer that like negativity is contagious and positivity is contagious and when you set the framework that what you have to do at the core is root for each other, so when we're like, any person that we interview with, the last thing I tell them is like this is our guiding principle for when you join our team is like you're not going to like everybody, we don't always get along with our coworkers but you really, really, genuinely do have to be rooting and pulling for them and that's been something that I think has worked pretty well for us and myself today, I think. Chris Erwin:Doug, you are so speaking my leadership language. I use the word positivity often and I agree and a similar value for us is we have always strived for excellence and that might require having difficult conversations with clients or with team members. I've learned, as a leader, that if you always introduce a shared objective, which is, look, we're working to do excellent work or to create something amazing, so I'm going to give you some candid feedback for how you can be better, for how we can be better, then it always lands differently. So, I really like how you think about it and I also like whenever you're recruiting someone to your team that you're making that expectation very clear upfront and it also kind of ... It has like a good sports vibe to it as well. Doug Bernstein:Right, exactly. Chris Erwin:So, let's talk about all this incredible college experience and then your early career starts and I think the first job you land at, if I'm right, is at the NFL in around 2007. Doug Bernstein:That's correct. So yeah, I had done an internship at the Tennis Channel in Santa Monica, which was really a great introductory experience, just all the internship stuff, logging tapes, doing research, learning to use Excel spreadsheets, all that stuff. Did another internship at NFL Films which, again, was a little bit more of the same. Again, a little bit more baptism by fire. I remember I went on my first shoot. I didn't know if I wanted to be in programming or production. I went on a production shoot. They said, "We have a shitty job for you." I said, like, "All right, I'm down. Let's do it." First big internship opportunity, they said, "There's dog shit in the backyard. Can you go pick it up?" And I was like oh, okay. Maybe being a TA is not for me. Doug Bernstein:And then I did an internship the second semester at ESPN Classic Now, so I felt really prepared for coming out of school and then like most graduates, it's harder to get a job than you would expect. I think it took me about four to six months to finally land something and that was after school. So I spent a lot of time over that final senior year trying to get a job and getting a break into sports is a really, really tough industry. And I remember I met with a friend's father who was like ... I told him I wanted to work in sports and he legitimately laughed in my face. He was like, "Okay, good luck. Have fun. Talk to me when that doesn't pan out." So, I was like, "Oh no, is that true?" Doug Bernstein:But was fortunate enough to kind of land at the NFL and was just a great way to get my foot in the door basically. Players get a percent bonus based on number of plays they're in. So, I was responsible for the monotonous job of keying in ... Like you had a picture and you key in who was in that play, like get their number, 89, 78, and then just doing that for every play of an NFL game. Chris Erwin:Players get a bonus for the more amount of plays that they're in? You're talking from like a media coverage point of view or just from like playing on the team point of view? Doug Bernstein:Like a tight end, right? If you're in a certain percentage of snaps, you'll receive a bonus, like a performance bonus. So the team can't do it and then whatever, agent, player, whatever, their reps aren't going to do it, so they have the league, as a neutral agent, do this. So, I think it's a little-known thing but I don't know if it still exists but at the time, for every NFL game, this is a great job, there's somebody that just goes behind each field goal and takes a picture of the left side of the field, the center and the right side, zooms out, takes one more and then there are people that just key in those players. So the thing about sports is there's always these little jobs that people aren't aware of and that it is just taking whatever chance you can get that helps propel you to that next step because maybe you are in the NFL office, you do see the commissioner. You do get to send emails and experience things. So, it was fun. I was there for a couple of months before bouncing over to ESPN. Chris Erwin:At these low-level jobs, were you getting more excited about entering into sports media? Were you getting a little disenchanted a bit or was it no, it's like hey, I like this but I just need to find my path and the role that I'm in is like not it but I'm going to get there? What were you feeling in that moment? Doug Bernstein:Well, I'm excited to have a job, right? You're just like very appreciative and grateful for a job. It was, I think, a six-month role, so I was like man, I really got to find something full-time. So it was like that appreciation but also combined with angst of being able to find that full-time role and trying to land in a spot that felt like more ... It was like growing your career, which is kind of what that position at ESPN ended up being. Chris Erwin:I think you end up at Versus for a little bit but then you end up at AOL as a product manager at Fleaflicker, right? So, what was that role as a product manager? Because that seems like an evolution of what you had been doing. Doug Bernstein:Honestly, I was a customer service rep. A product manager sounds way better but the way I backed into it is kind of funny. I worked at ESPN for a year and basically was cutting games down for replays. If you're ever up at two in the morning watching a college football game, I'd watch it live and then cut it down or I'd re-air SportsCenters, screen SportsCenters for re-airs, like Brazilian and all these other languages, really fun. It was like seven at night to seven in the morning and I always had this window where I would get ratings numbers. So I started to really dive into the analytics of the ratings and was like very, very curious about it just how my brain works. It was like if there's a [inaudible 00:22:37] game, how does that perform? If it's two top-10 teams, how does that perform? If it's close, how does that do? If it's a blowout, how does that do? Doug Bernstein:And I started doing this research late at night by myself just to kill time, and I might as well do something with it, so I forward it on to some people within ESPN, like oh wow, this is actually pretty interesting. And they started to share it and started ... I would have interview opportunities within ESPN that were kind of in ratings or research, but I was a very ambitious 22-year-old kid. My wife came up to Bristol in Connecticut, which isn't the world's most exciting place. It wasn't for her. So that's why I bounced over to Versus where I was able to kind of do the ratings and the analytics side, kind of go into TV programming with where I wanted to land and as I was doing the TV programming, I ran into a couple of challenges. Doug Bernstein:One, Versus which is now NBC Sports, Hunting and Fishing Network, I'm a Jew that's never hunted or fished, so that wasn't the world's best fit and also just I struggled in the role. Like it was a very ... A role that required a lot of attention to detail, like real minutiae and that was something that I wasn't like the best at, wasn't given that much autonomy, which is probably right for a very, very junior level role and kind of struggled and as I was doing that, I was having a hard time ... They were looking to move to Philadelphia. I'm a New York sports fan. There's no way I'm moving to Philly. Doug Bernstein:So I had kind of like this couple of months where they were just kind of unwinding things at that office and wanted to kind of keep my brain really engaged, so I created like the world's worst fantasy website is how I describe it. It had a good name. It was called Keyboard GM and I aggregated fantasy football rankings from different websites. And I went, oh, this is cool. Like maybe, I could do something in digital. I love digital because I was always doing that fantasy football stuff and kind of learning to code a little bit and build like a really janky website. Doug Bernstein:I also was doing a sports blog with a couple of buddies from ESPN and this was early mid-aughts sports blogging and really, one of the challenges on the TV side, was if you had an idea, it'd be like three months to get in front of the right person, three months of like sounding it out. Best case scenario, it gets approved. It's like six months of production and then it's on the air and it's like the difference between a 0.1 or a 0.12 and it's like man, that is a tough process. And when I was doing the digital stuff with my buddies, we would just create articles that we wanted to read every day and if they resonated, we'd be like oh, that's awesome. Let's do more of that. If they didn't, we'd scale [inaudible 00:25:11], we'd be like okay, let's not do that again. Chris Erwin:This is all on Keyboard GM? Doug Bernstein:So, there was Keyboard GM, which was the fantasy football website and I had ... I think it was like sportsblog.net, going way back for you, [inaudible 00:25:21] sportsblog.net and then that was like that was where we just kind of blogged. So there were two separate things that I was doing in the digital space. I was in this period where I was just trying to find something to continue to work in sports. Ideally, wanted to get into digital. My mom sent me this job, it was like a product manager at a fantasy football website, and I was like all right, let's go. It'll be great. Chris Erwin:She sent you a newspaper clipping with like a red circle around it? Doug Bernstein:Yeah, pretty much. It really was a customer service rep job at first and people always like to say they started in the mail room and be like that lot, right? I always like to say I started in the digital mail room because this is like a classic AOL thing where they bought a fantasy football website. They didn't tell any of their existing users. They just transferred them over to this new website. So, I was answering like 400 to 500 emails a day from customers about, "Hey, why are you transferring me? Where's my lineup? Where's my all this?" But it was a really kind of rewarding experience. I learned a lot about how to interact with your audience, your customer, your consumer. Doug Bernstein:When you're playing in the world's most detailed fantasy football league where it's like 32-team keeper league with full IDPs, like you really have a level of understanding for your users that kind of is not surface level. Like you get to know users on a one-on-one basis. You get to know who your fans are, how to cater to your super fans, how to understand what really is an issue and what really isn't an issue and work side-by-side and there was a programmer that founded it, a guy named Ori Schwartz, who was really beneficial in that he talked to me about what a roadmap is, which is something that I had no idea before, right? And really coached me up on the way of the digital world in a product and how to think not just of this week or next week but three, six months, a year out and then also taught me a lot, become somewhat thematic over the course of my career is about being a startup within a bigger organization. Doug Bernstein:So, Fleaflicker was kind of this very small startup within AOL sports and within this mess of AOL Time Warner ecosystem and then that has played out really similar when like Bleacher Report got acquired and it's like okay, a lot [inaudible 00:27:33] and then when we acquired House of Highlights, I had the same thought. Like I hearkened back to it and was like oh wait, what worked for Ori, this one guy, was like just a lot of autonomy and freedom and not trying to be micromanaging. And when we acquired Omar and House of Highlights, it was that same mindset. Doug Bernstein:So, I was able to do that fantasy football side of things for about a year or two and then what happened was, because I had the analytics [inaudible 00:28:00] ratings research background, they said, "Hey, could you start pulling numbers for Fleaflicker, the fantasy football website?" And I said, "Sure, would love to." And then because nobody else was doing that and digital analytics didn't exist at the time, they said, "Hey, can you start doing it for sports?" And I was like, "Absolutely, would love that." And then before you- Chris Erwin:I just love how you're so positive and excited about trying new things. Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners. This is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody. Let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:How did you create a culture and a mindset where like today, at House of Highlights, you trial so many different revenue streams and products for fans, right? Sports creator competitions, like talent and street wear collaborations to create new merch designs for different leagues and teams and I'm like, where do these ideas come from and how'd you get there and I'm hearing you talk about your entire history and career, you're like oh yeah, I'm going to learn how to run a school newspaper, learn to be a writer. I'm going to learn how to run like a TV studio and be on camera. I'm going to learn analytics. I'm going to start my own digital blog and fantasy blog. Like so now, I get it. And so again, you just jump into this new opportunity in data analytics with a very opened and ambitious kind of point of view. So, okay, I just wanted to note that for the listener. So, now what happens? Doug Bernstein:Yeah, so I mean I wanted to learn, right? My mom was bugging me about going back to like business school or grad school or whatever it might be, and again, I just loved digital media, like just my own internal self was like why does this happen? Why does this happen? Like what if you did this? Like how do you grow a sports website was of immense interest to me. So at a time, we were living in the city. My office was about five blocks from where I lived and my wife [inaudible 00:30:09] commuted into Queens. So she would have to leave for work at about six o'clock. Doug Bernstein:So I would go with her every morning and then I'd be in the office by six o'clock and this is AOL. People aren't strolling in till like 9:30, 10:00. So for three and a half, four hours, I had the office to myself basically and I was responsible for creating a daily report that looked at 40 different properties but it was like AOL cut it up every way, like puppies, kittens, kids, dogs, like you name it, they had it and really was able to understand like that was my [inaudible 00:30:41] essentially, was like come in every day, and I'd study the metrics for home page topic from search topic, from engagement, what articles did well, what articles didn't do well, what writers did well and just every single day or five days a week was responsible for like not just churning out this report but also really starting to like internalize what correlated to the numbers. Doug Bernstein:And I spent a lot of time sitting with the editorial team and there was a really incredible editorial team at AOL at the time, guy named Randy Kim, and I just had too many ideas than I knew what to do with and I needed to check myself and learn like okay, well, this is what the writer's thinking about, this is what the editor's thinking about, this is what the editor-in-chief is thinking about, these are all the things that we've done in the past and why your idea doesn't work, this is what the designer thinks about, and I think really learning before doing helped me a lot in that role. Doug Bernstein:That was a big thing was there were people that would come in straight out of grad school that were, I'm sure, way smarter than me and way better with numbers but I think one of the things that worked to my benefit was that I had spent an inordinate amount of time listening and learning and gaining the trust of the people that I was going to be working with. So when I gave a recommendation based on numbers, it wasn't just like oh, here's the numbers, right? It was like where here's a number guy, like again, this is like money ball days where like get the number guy out of here. It was like really trying to be deferential, especially at first and I put a big focus on like I would say like not try and be a weatherman breaking into the numbers but trying to be a doctor. Doug Bernstein:Not just saying like hey, the temperature was this, it's going to be hotter or colder, like up or down but really trying to be prescriptive in terms of saying like okay, this is the problem. This is what's going on and these are potential solutions for how you can solve it. Chris Erwin:I think a theme of your career is making sports more engaging and relatable for younger audiences. So, I think like as you start to look at some of the analytics from these 40 different AOL properties, what were like a couple revelations that you were getting call it in like either the mid-aughts or in around 2008 to 2011 that maybe you were seeing that others weren't? That you leadership was like whoa, Doug, you really get this in a unique way, what was that? Doug Bernstein:So a lot initially was focused on search and I think a lot of it was that had traditional newspaper people that thought of things a certain way. So you write one story on one topic at a particular time and what we were starting to see, especially on that search perspective was, the interest wasn't just when the editorial staff dictated it, right? So if we did a mock draft, an NFL mock draft mid-season, like historically, you only did mock drafts like the week before the draft. Like it was like sacrilegious to be able to do a mock draft like anymore than like a week or two out but when I was like, hey, if we could do a mock draft at the mid-point of the current season, I think it would do really well or at like the end of the college football season, we would see that do really, really well. And I was like oh wow, like there's a level of interest and engagement here that's not being met yet. People were interested in it. They were searching for it but there was nothing there for them. That was a big one. Doug Bernstein:And then the other big one was just like if a news story broke, for a while I worked really close with the AOL news team. So like if a tornado happened or anything that is newsy, politics, whatever, traditionally, they would just
Alison Eakle — EVP at Shondaland on Being 1st to Netflix, Bridgerton, Promotions After 30, and Motherhood
Sep 9 2021
Alison Eakle — EVP at Shondaland on Being 1st to Netflix, Bridgerton, Promotions After 30, and Motherhood
Alison Eakle is the EVP and Head of Creative Development at Shondaland. We discuss how imagining movie posters makes her a better creative exec, being a co-EP on Netflix’s #1 show Bridgerton, why she’s racked up so many recent promotions, and being part of new Hollywood’s most groundbreaking streamer partnerships. Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Alison Eakle:I'll never forget there was... The current assistant had put out a job posting. And how this works in Hollywood is you'll see jobs on things called tracking boards or emailed chains, but they always say, "No phone calls, please. Just email your resume." Right? And I was like, "I'm going to call him." And I did. And I just called him and I was like, "Look, I did not come up through the agency feed. I don't have the required experience, but I swear to God the desk I'm on is harder than any agency desk you can imagine. And I'll tell you why if you meet me for like 15 minutes." So we did. We literally met in the middle of the lot at Paramount. He was like, "You know what? I think my boss would like you." Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Alison Eakle, the EVP and Head of Creative Development at Shondaland. Alison grew up on the Jersey shore, actually my same hometown. She loved the arts since an early age, traveling to New York City for auditions as a young teenager, but she was planning to give it all up at Georgetown for career in politics until she had a breakthrough moment in her screenwriting class. Alison went on to get her MFA at UT Austin and then had roles in some of the most exciting production houses in Hollywood, from Paramount Vantage to Columbia Pictures and working for Ellen DeGeneres. Then a serendipitous moment took her to Shondaland where her career has been on fire. Some highlights of our chat include how imagining movie posters makes her a better creative exec, being a co EP and Netflix is number one show bridging that where she's racked up so many recent promotions and being part of new Hollywood's most groundbreaking streamer partnerships. All right, let's get into it. Alison, thanks for being on the podcast. Alison Eakle:Thanks for having me, Chris Erwin Chris Erwin:Very well, Alison Eakle. We got some history between us. Alison Eakle:That's right. Chris Erwin:So let's go back a bit. Where did you grow up? What was your household like? Alison Eakle:So I grew up in Rumson, New Jersey, which is a bit of a towny suburb, as they say, in the Northern part of the Jersey shore obviously. Well, I grew up the only child of Wall Street parents. Parents who had met kind of working at Wall Street in the '70s at a time that I've heard many incredible stories about. And it's interesting because when I was eight, there was a big stock market crash. And my dad was all for Morgan Stanley and my mom inspired him to start their own company, a financial investment advisory firm called Eakle and Associates. And so it's interesting I haven't really thought about that a lot, but I did watch my dad face what is one of my worst fears, that idea of just suddenly everything kind of pulled out from underneath you and I watched them together kind of build something new. Chris Erwin:Did your parents both work for the company? Alison Eakle:Oh yeah. My mom was VP, he was president and basically it was just a three person operation. And my dad, he had clients that he would manage their portfolios, but he put out something called the Eakle Report every week and would have to find really creative ways to talk about the stock market, which Godspeed to him because I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. I have no idea how to talk about the stock market. My mom ran all the logistics, taught herself computers at that time and really brought her up to speed fast. And they had that company for a long time until their divorce, which I have no idea what role the company played in that, but they definitely had it for, it was over 10 years, really successful. So that's kind of like what I grew up in. And I was very privileged. I came from a place of a lot of privilege where I went to private school. Chris Erwin:RCDS? Alison Eakle:RCDS, Rumson Country Day School, big shout outs, still very loyal to that school, that little short brown stone church on the corner. Chris Erwin:Are you still involved with the RCDS community? Like I have the friends from school I'm still in touch with, but I'm not giving back or anything like that. Well, maybe I should rethink it. Alison Eakle:No, I am not as involved as I want to be. I did have like a strange fantasy that one summer I'd go back or one year I'd go back to my 20s and substitute teach there. I don't know where that came from but- Chris Erwin:On the theatrical program? Alison Eakle:Yeah, why not? I'll do so. I love a school play. I love that. I love something roughly adapted from children's literature into strange costumes and children sputtering around on a stage, but it was just such a surreal experience because it was so safe, so incredible. I feel like that experience really formed me even from kindergarten on. And it was across the street from Bruce Springsteen's house. So what a quintessential New Jersey experience really? Chris Erwin:Yeah. I remember walking down Bruce's driveway on Halloween. He always would give out like the supersize snicker bars. Alison Eakle:Yeah. And [inaudible 00:04:44]. Chris Erwin:It was always like, we got to go to Bruce's house then we'd go to Bon Jovi's house. That was like such a fun thing. Alison Eakle:Yeah. That's very dead on. I grew up there riding bikes to the beach, just walking around the neighborhood. They're a very arcade fire of the suburbs kind of existence, but with the modicum of real safety that I so appreciate now and also again realize how lucky I was in a lot of ways. Chris Erwin:So I have to ask, your parents are to business, it's just funny to hear that. I just recorded a podcast last week with Naomi Shah, the Founder of Meet Cute, it's a new romcom podcast network. And her parents started a technology business based out of Portland, Oregon. And so it's just funny that now like a week later I'm interviewing you and your parents started a business together as well. There is an entrepreneurship vein in your family. So was there a theme though about your interest in the arts that came from your parents or did that come separately? Alison Eakle:That was from really my aunt and uncle. And look, my mom was one of those people who did leave her job when she had me, but continued to have that kind of type A excel at anything she put her mind to it personality. She was somebody who played the organ. We had like a Hammond organ in our living room now that I think about it. She had interest in music and musicals and all of that thing and certainly was very supportive of the arts, but wasn't necessarily kind of ensconced in it. Whereas my aunt had been an actress since the day I was born, my uncle had been an agent at Theatrical Agent in New York, but also run his own company called Cornerstone up until he died. And so for me... And they were much younger than my parents. My mom is like 12 years older than my aunt. Alison Eakle:So they were this cool young aunt and uncle really ensconced in show business. They took me to my first Broadway play Les Miserables when I was 10. I felt incredibly like I had a model to look at of like what would a life in that business look like. And I definitely was born with the bug and loved trying to get the solo in school plays or whatever it was. And eventually my parents did let me act as a kid and tried to make a go of it professionally. And I was represented at a now defunct agency called J. Michael Bloom. Chris Erwin:What age is that, Alison? Alison Eakle:So this is like, by the time I'm actually wrapped I'm 13. So this is like '93, which is a very awkward age to be putting yourself out there. But for whatever reason, I was really into it and loved it and had some close calls. I got to do a callback in a room with James Ivory for Jefferson in Paris, a role that eventually went to Gwyneth Paltrow, which I think the better woman won. They aged it up and gave it to her, I remember, but it was such a cool experience too for a year. My parents were very anti stage parents. They were like, "Look, you clearly have some bit of talent in this and you really want to try it. We'll let you try it. But it's going to be for a small amount of time." It was only like maybe a year and a half, two years and then you really do have to go back and focus on like high school if it doesn't click, if there's not for me. And I only went out, I didn't go out for commercials. So it was sort of- Chris Erwin:Did you take time off from school at all for this? Alison Eakle:RCDS was really lenient in the sense that if I had to leave at three o'clock for like an audition in the city or to do a reading for an off-Broadway play or whatever it was, I could be flexible, but come close as I may have, I never got the big part that would have necessitated the on-set tutor. Chris Erwin:Did you feel at an early age, a clear interest in the arts and that, hey, this is going to be my career, this is where I'm going to be? Alison Eakle:I think if you look at my life in general too, and we'll talk about this, it's so funny because that clearly was always had such a strong pull that even when I tried to divert myself to more stable or a prestigious academically kind of bent careers, like politics and things like that, somehow it would just find me again and kind of pull me back to acting, writing, performing, creating, that side of things. Chris Erwin:So I think it's good that Gwyneth got the part because you've obviously had very special trajectory at Shondaland, you are exactly where you are meant to be. Alison Eakle:That is very reassuring to hear. And I do tell myself that sometimes. And I do get to still read parts at table reads occasionally at Shondaland, which is how I scratched that itch. Chris Erwin:So you're acting in your teams, you have some representation, you're going out on auditions, I just got to throw this out there from the RCDS memories, for some reason this is so ingrained in my brain. I remember taking the bus with you I think after school and then going down, I think if I remember correctly, it was a stone driveway, a gray stone driveway. It was a circle. The school bus would go down that and we would drop you off and your house, was it a gray house or a white house? Alison Eakle:Yeah. A gray house and white trim. It doesn't exist anymore. It was raised to the ground to build some other crazy mansion, but it was an adorable 1920s house. Four fireplaces when I think about it. Good God. Chris Erwin:Wow. One of my earliest memories that is definitely imprinted in my brain and I remember specifically from you, I think you were a year above me. Alison Eakle:That's kind. I'm three years older than you. I just loved to hang out with... Chris Erwin:Yeah. So that's what I was going to say is that you befriended myself and my twin brother, John, and you're always so kind to us on the bus. So you were very interesting. You just had interesting points of views on things and we picked that up at a pretty early age. Alison Eakle was at the light in my childhood, but it didn't stop there. So after RCDS, I left that school system I think around third grade and I went into the public school system as did some of our other friends. At RFH, I think that's where we were reunited in a Spanish class. You were a senior and I was a freshman, was that Parker's class or Von Handle? Who was that? Alison Eakle:Oh, maybe it was Von Handle actually, now that I think about it, but I couldn't remember her name. I just remember she had great hair, like a really perfect... So what did happen was I took French from third grade forward. And then in high school I had done the AP and I was like, I sort of want to start another language when I might have a chance of speaking on a daily basis. And so I started Spanish as a junior, but it was hilarious to be... It was my only experience of being the lone senior in a class full of freshmen. It was such a blast and such a different perspective on things at that point in my life. I was so happy to be in it with you. And it was Adam Sachs too. Chris Erwin:It was Adam Sachs. Maybe John Waters was in there. Alison Eakle:Yeah. Waters 100%. And we had to make a video. I'll never forget this. We had to make a video project for the class. I forget who else was on my team, but there was like a surfer kid named Ryan. And we stormed at his house and I was just like, I'm 18 years old at this point just making a weird Spanish video with a bunch of freshmen in it, but it was great. I felt like I really loved that experience. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Very on theme again, a little bit older hanging out with the younger kids, we enjoyed it. There's something in the water, I think from like the Rumson Monmouth County area for Hollywood, because it's a bunch of people from the East Coast, but then Adam Sachs is running Team Coco, Conan O'Brien, you Andy Redmond running Tornante under Michael Eisner, you're at Shondaland doing a thing, Matt Warshauer another friend is a writer and- Alison Eakle:A really talented writer. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Impressive creator. And then I'm trying to do my thing at RockWater in New Media. So there's a crew of us out here together. Alison Eakle:It was probably the biggest surprise to me when I got here is how many people from growing up in New Jersey are out here, both from that experience, the experience we shared, but also somehow or another, we convinced a lot of people to leave New York when we first came out here in the mid 2000s. And we have a really... I always thought it would be kind of my film school crew that would, and there's a lot of them, the Austin Kids out here too, Austin, Texas, but tons of Jersey people. Chris Erwin:So after high school, the arts theme continues. You go to Georgetown, did you run a TV station there? Alison Eakle:Yeah. Well, it's so funny. I went there, again, trying to do like the sensible thing. I was like, I'm going to be in politics and urban development. And I had a real tracy flick then to me of like, I'm going to be the mayor of the city. And then I got into those classes and was sort of put off by the approach that the other students had to government and the idea that everybody was obviously in this kind of self aggrandized way. And I realized, oh, that's not maybe my jam. I'm not here to prove how much I know about how many congressmen are from which districts or what have you. I really wanted to affect change on a local level. Of course, part of its insane ambition. I don't think anyone decides to go into politics without being a little amped up about that and being like, I think I'm pretty great. Alison Eakle:I absolutely had that threat, but I felt so kind of outpaced by my classmates in terms of their ambition and I started to question if it was for me. And then weirdly enough, it was a sophomore class, a screenwriting class I took with a professor named John Glavin. And at that time, he had mentored Jonah Nolan who at that point had made Memento with his brother and suddenly I had, yet again, a model to look at him like, oh, somebody in a class just like this with this man as their professor broke through. Right? Obviously he has incredible talent. And that stuff can't be taught, but it was like suddenly I could at least see a path sort of. That same year, I think my sophomore year Georgetown University Television, the finest closer television channel in the land was starting on campus, and I realized, oh, that seems like fun. Alison Eakle:And my first show that I produced and sometimes hosted with Aaron Cocce and Brian Walsh, was it called G Talk Live? And I even forget all that I did. It was sort of a running gun, all hands on deck, but it's like a live call-in show, a talk show, panel show for the campus. And I'll never forget they were like, "Alison, do you want to host a very special episode?" And I said, "Of course, I do." About one of the most pressing topics out there, Dawson's Creek. So that was my big contribution, but I loved it. And I stayed with the television station all three years. And at my senior year, we sponsored like a film festival and the films were incredible. And you think back it was... I looked at a program I'd kept from maybe six years ago when I was moving and it's like, Zal Batmangli, creator of The OA along with Brit Marling, the two of them had made one of the shorts and contention and Mike Cahill and Brit Marling had also collaborated in a way that would pre-stage their collaborations on another earth. Alison Eakle:And it was kind of incredible because I look back and I see that drive. I see all of these people who actually were trying to carve out a space at a school maybe not known for people who are going to forge a path in TV and film doing so, but also it was like Mike Birbiglia and Nick Kroll, John Mulaney were all my contemporaries as well. So also seeing a real comedy scene evolve, I feel like again, very lucky and they're at the right time in terms of it was in the zeitgeists of again, getting to look at people really trying to forge that path in a way that I had not seen before. Chris Erwin:And then you felt, I think, empowered. It's like, I can do this. Like that screen writing class was a spark for you. It's like, fine, this is what I'm going to pursue. I came here for political science and different reasons, but that's now changed. Alison Eakle:Yeah. I'm so glad I decided to try it and listen. And again, at that point I'd let go of the acting thing, even though I would still occasionally act in like one act plays that friends would write or things like that. But I do think the acting informed the love of writing, which in turn, all of that feeds the work that I do now, essentially because I think as a creative executive, I do look at everything through the lens of, okay, I know what it's like to sit and stare at a blank page now with that cursor blinking and understanding kind of how do you generate something from nothing, how do you riff on ideas to try to get through a piece of writer's block, all of that. Alison Eakle:But I also approach things in terms of like, when I read a script, I do think to myself, do I want to play that role? Because I know that if I have that instinct of like, oh my God, I wish I want to say these words, I wish I could play that part, you're onto something at that point. That is a really good sign that somebody has created something worth making. Chris Erwin:Because you have an acting background, you can empathize with the words on the page and you could have a vision for how the words will manifest. Alison Eakle:It's almost like first, it's a different way that informs decision-making, right? Because in terms of creatively, the big question is like, what do you love enough that you would actually spend years of your life working on? And I think, again, that's one thing that goes, I can really appreciate when a piece of writing is going to appeal to an actor. Like in this business too, so much of it is who's going to fill this role, especially in TV so often if you're not going with an already established huge star, you need to find a person who can really become that role. Especially when there's a breakout hit and an actor has really been a part of creating that role with the writer, that follows them for the rest of their life. People always think of them in some ways as that person. Alison Eakle:So I do try to think of like, are there iconic roles in this that somebody would really dig into that would get me excited that way? And similarly, actually the writing piece of it comes into mind too, because if I read a pilot or something, but I found something worth pursuing and talking about it, if my head's already like, oh my God, I can see episodes, I know what I'd want to watch and want to see in the show, so that's the writer part of me thinking like, oh my God, if I had to pitch ideas for it, I could, that's really promising. So it's definitely stuff that that background I think does inform the work I do. Chris Erwin:Got it. As I'm listening to you, Alison, I'm hearing the passion come out from you. So I think you said you no longer act, but you really enjoy the table reads that you do with the Shondaland team. Do you think that there might be a future where you might see a script and you're inspired to be like, "You know what? I want to go do a one woman show. I'm going to join a small private troop." Is that something that either maybe you're doing now or that's like seated in your brain? Alison Eakle:It's something that I still do for friends. Like we'll still do writer's table reads together and things like that. I don't think I would rule out the idea of doing some kind of acting with friends on a project. I don't think it's going to be generated by me. I don't think I'm going to be the one to push it forward, but I think that if an opportunity presented itself, it would be really fun. And I actually love the idea of like voiceover, that idea of doing that kind of work too, because I give real actors steeped in their craft so much credit because the way you make yourself so vulnerable reading at a table read or doing a piece of voiceover where I can kind of hide behind, not be on camera and not be seen, that's more appealing to me now than leaving it all on the stage every night or really exposing myself fully on a show or a film and just emotionally, physically all of these things. I think that stuff's incredibly scary and every time I see actors go for it, I'm just standing out. Chris Erwin:Shondaland launched an audio business and maybe scripted audio is in your future. You could do some of that. You just- Alison Eakle:I'm going to ask Sandy Bailey if I can audition for some of those pieces. That's right. Chris Erwin:All right, cool. I want to flow into your early career, but so after Georgetown, you end up getting your MFA at UT Austin. So from there I think you go to New York for around six months and then you transition to LA if that's right. Tell us quickly, what was that journey from being at UT Austin, one or two key themes from that and then the beginning of your journey in Hollywood thereafter? Alison Eakle:I just was interviewed about my time at UT Austin. And I think the thing that's so crazy about it, that was a big takeaway was do not let your program define you because when I got there, it was just an MA screenwriting program. It became an MFA screenwriting program. But I think there was this kind of a mentality sometimes like we were the weird step-kids of like the film program, but also the really prestigious writing, the James Michener program that is for like novelists, poets, playwrights. So it's like a multi-disciplinary incredibly competitive workshop. Two years, they pay you. It was easy sometimes to feel a little less than, but then as time got going and I just fell in love with a couple of professors, I started like working on short films with people. I was a TA. Speaking of hanging out with younger kids and being a TA as a grad student, I can't tell you how many of my former students are also out here killing it and just absolutely running shit. Alison Eakle:And it blows my mind that I ever thought I could teach them anything like run indie film divisions of agencies. I really did start to just make my experience what I thought it could be as opposed to just be like, well, I'm just an MFA screen writing student. It was great. It was a great experience. I lived with law students instead. So that kind of exposed me to a whole different way of experiencing UT. They worked hard in the party tag, Chris, I will say that. That was my Austin experience. And I wound up working for Burnt Orange Productions, which is this company that had like a really cool experiment at hand where they were making low budget indie features like one was Elvis and Annabelle, starring a very young Blake Lively and Max Minghella. And that's the one, when I was there, they were making. Chris Erwin:So then thereafter, did you have a more specific lane of knowing where you wanted to go and what exactly you were going to do? How does that get you to, I think, was a pretty transformational role, which was at Paramount Vantage. Alison Eakle:It's so funny, but I really thought I was going to just be a screenwriter. My best friend, Ashley, who is now a show runner in her own right with her husband, she was finishing film school at Columbia. So the only reason I did that six months stint in New York was because A, growing up in Jersey and looking at New York is like the city. It just felt like I have to live in New York at some point. And so many of my good friends are there, I just want to have that experience. So I thought I might stay, that there might be a way to make it work, but New York is hard and expensive and it's even more so now an impossible place to live. But even in 2006, it's like, I'd worked Monday through Friday as like an assistant in an advertising agency and then Saturdays and Sundays, I would like go to Bronx Science and other schools in the city to teach SAT prep. Alison Eakle:So I was truly working seven days a week and still hardly getting by and I didn't even have to pay rent because I was just crashing with my friend. Her boyfriend, now husband, had moved out to LA in kind of October of '06 and we started processing and thinking about it could we really make this trip? I'm like, could I really break my mother's heart and move across the country? And eventually realized that if this is really what we wanted to do was to be screenwriters, it really did feel like we had to be in LA. And so we did it together with her two cats and her two goldfish and a Toyota Corolla. Chris Erwin:Two women, two cats, two goldfish, two Corollas. Alison Eakle:Yeah. Two of everything. One of the cats shit himself as we were crossing Arkansas. And there was a very uncomfortable gas station interaction with some locals and that cat and trying to get that cat out of the carrier of the car, but look, all worth it. The two fish died immediately when we put them in LA water, a very foreboding omen. New York was just, I knew in some way I wanted to get a chance to have an adventure with Ashley, collaborate with her potentially and we wound up moving out to LA together. Chris Erwin:Similar to you, after graduating from school in Boston, I was like, "Yeah, I got to go to New York." That's like what... You're in the tri-state area, big exciting visions. And then the fact that I can go down to the shore and see my family on like an hour train ride or the ferry that had just started to emerge. And I got stuck there for five years in finance. So you only got stuck for six months, I probably took like 10 years off my life doing finance in New York City. But you got out and so you make the move, you get to LA and then you end up at Paramount Vantage and you do a few things before that. Alison Eakle:And one really formative job. So basically I get there, I go to a temp agency my show business actors aunt had connected me with and I'm like, "Let me do a typing test. Let me show you I can use Excel." And I got a job that was temp to perm, potentially assisting a woman named Nancy Gallagher, who was an EVP of marketing at Paramount Pictures. And this woman was like close personal friends with Steven Spielberg and Joel Schumacher and Tom Cruise. Like she had done marketing campaigns for movies that had shaped my teen years, like Clueless and Titanic. Like I lost my mind when I realized really the impact she had had. She was also incredibly old-school, did not use a computer at the time. It was a kind of a wild experience. I would be there 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. I would never leave the desk. I would take dictation. I would read her an email she got. She would dictate an answer back to me and I would type it back to the person. Chris Erwin:This is 2007? Alison Eakle:Oh yeah, don't worry about it, Chris. But she was incredible. I mean, she was an incredible talent. She just was sort of like had not kind of embraced that part of the job and was just deep in the creative. I mean, again, I got to meet so many impactful, incredible filmmakers, like Calvin Kennedy, we had four movies that we're marketing. It was a real learning curve for the almost two years I did it. And that classic, first Hollywood job, like don't screw up that phone call from Scott Rudin or whatever it is. Like there were those moments consistently. And I was scared out of my wits until I wasn't. And eventually I was just like, I would see the kids in their suits come in from Yale to take my job since I was just a temp and interview and I was like, "No, no, no, no, fuck it. I'm going to keep this job." It almost became like a challenge to myself. Alison Eakle:And I think being able to stick it out and succeed there, even though I didn't want to do marketing, and on that desk is where I realized I never have time to write and I'm never making time. And people who really want to be writers, they make time. They get up at 6:00 AM and write for two hours before their desk job. And I was not doing that. So I just realized I think I found out there was a thing called development, which is basically what I loved about writing most was workshops like working with writers, not being the writer and started to try to think about how to make that transition. Chris Erwin:Got it. Look, I hear this from a lot of people who work at the agencies like pretty early on is that it's really exciting in the beginning, but it's also painful, the work, the stress, a lot of bad bosses, it turns people out and they leave Hollywood. But when you were there, did it feel like you're just getting more excited, but you're like, but I'm not in the role that I want. Like what you just described as like, I want to get into development. So I feel good about the industry, this is hard, but the stars in my eyes, they're still real and they're not going away. Is that right? Alison Eakle:Yes. I think I am at some level, again, like a pragmatist. There's always competing parts, right? There's the creative and the pragmatist and the pragmatists was like, you have a job that pays really well in a business that doesn't, you have overtime, you have health insurance, I was just like, keep doing this. And again, I love the challenge of a professor or a boss that's incredibly difficult to impress. So I love that challenge. And I learned a ton because honestly the biggest lesson of marketing is like, don't create something you don't know how to approach an audience with. You need to know who this movie or this show is for and obviously there's always a pleasant surprise when it kind of broadens out past that, but that was really drilled and it's like, what does the poster look like? Alison Eakle:Because we would get scripts and movies that we had to market. And we would look at each other what is this about? How did you sell this movie? And I will not name names, but it was incredible to see it from that other end. And that was the boss. She was incredible in teaching me like Alison, as an assistant in Hollywood, your job is to assume no one else is doing their job correctly, which is a terrible place to live for a long time in terms of that is so fear-based. But it is also a way to I learned how to anticipate what could go wrong or how to kind of shore up and idiot proof certain processes in a way that I do things still serves me to today. Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Irwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work and it also really supports what we do here. All right. That's it everybody, let's get back to the interview. Two points that I think are interesting. Alison, you described as being able to anticipate what could go wrong or sit at corners, we had Chas Lacaillade interviewed on this podcast, he now runs a digital talent management company called BottleRocket, but he said the same exact thing he was at ICM. He's like, "The one takeaway I have from that is you can always anticipate what's going to go wrong in a deal, a conversation, a client meeting," and he found that very valuable. Chris Erwin:The second thing I think that you said, Alison, that I really like is how to market and how to approach an audience. So I think today where media has changed, where they used to be fixed supply, if you can get theatrical distribution, you're going to win. If you're going to get on like a TV network, you're going to win. But with the internet, there is so much content out there even if you're like putting up content on Netflix or you're putting up content on YouTube or in some like digital, native way, your content has to stand down. And the marketing campaign that wraps the actual content itself, how you speak and engage and excite your audience, that is where the winners are today. So the fact that you have that lens from your history, I think is really interesting. Alison Eakle:You put it better than I ever could, but that all tracks. Yes, that feels right. Chris Erwin:So you realize you're not having the amount of time you need for writing, so you've got to change it up. So where do you go? Alison Eakle:I saw a job opportunity to assist the director of production and development at Paramount Vantage. What I'll never forget there was the current assistant had put out a job posting and how this works in Hollywood, for anyone who's listening and doesn't know, is you'll see jobs on things called tracking boards or emailed chains basically. But they always say, "No phone calls, please. Do not call me. Just email your resume." Right? And I was like, okay, this job is on the same lot, I'm going to call him. And I did. And he was so incredibly lovely. Colin Conley, he's still in the business, an incredible manager. And I just called him. And I was like, "Look, I did not come up through the agency. I don't have the required experience, but I swear to God, the desk I'm on is harder than any agency desk you can imagine. And I'll tell you why if you meet me for like 15 minutes." Alison Eakle:So we did, we literally met in the middle of the lot at Paramount. And he was like, "You know what? I think my boss would like you." And he was leaving to go work at the Sundance Institute, fucking cool as hell. And I tried not to be too intimidated. And I met his boss and loved her. And the only weird thing about that experience was when I did get the job, three weeks into it, most of Paramount Vantage was let go. They were downsizing all indie studios at that point. And I was like, oh my God, I just took a pay cut and a huge risk to take this job and now I'm going to get fired. That was all that went through my head is like, we're all going to get laid off, but I don't know what happened, but for eight months, some of us still hung on. Alison Eakle:And I learned so much about future film development from my boss, Rachel. And then we were all let go. Then it really did. The hammer came down in July of 2009. John Lynch left as the head of the studio of Vantage was done. And another colleague of mine who used to be at Vantage got me my next job just assisting a production exec at Sony Pictures, Elizabeth Kentiling, who was incredible. And the experiences were so different because at Vantage, I learned a ton about development, but we never got to make anything because essentially it was like, you already saw the writing on the wall. You knew it was only a matter of time to some extent that you were going to be shut down, which I've never had an experience like that since. It is sort of freeing, because I was just like, well, I'm going to learn and do as much as I can while I'm here. Alison Eakle:And then at Sony, it was the opposite where it was like, there was development happening on scripts so I was there, but my boss was making movies. Like I always watched her oversee Social Network and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and got really a firsthand view of like how that side of things works when stuff is going. So it was incredibly valuable, but the whole time I'm sitting there thinking, okay, I'm still an assistant, I'm 30... How old was I at that point? Probably 31. Again, wasn't acting, wasn't writing, wasn't really an exec. I would go to drinks with other assistants and them not knowing how old I was would be like, "Oh man, if I'm still an assistant at 30, kill me." Chris Erwin:It's interesting you're saying this because I was reading an interview that was done with you. Asked like what's the worst advice that you can receive or that you have received? And you said something along the lines like, oh, if you're like an assistant or haven't figured out your career in Hollywood by the time you're 30, it's over. And that's BS. That's not true. And so I think this is clearly where that's coming from. Alison Eakle:Oh yeah. And trust me in the moment I was like, maybe it is true. Like I'm not impervious to insecurities. 100% I was like, I've given all this up, I've left my family, I've moved to LA, did I
Naomi Shah — CEO of Meet Cute on Raising $6M During COVID, Leaving VC, and Rom-com Podcasts
Aug 19 2021
Naomi Shah — CEO of Meet Cute on Raising $6M During COVID, Leaving VC, and Rom-com Podcasts
Naomi Shah is the founder and CEO of Meet Cute. We discuss Naomi's early passion for STEM, being a Goldman Sachs equity trader, leaving VC to be a founder, why a rom-com podcast network solves a problem in the wellbeing market, raising $6M of capital during COVID, and how a non-Hollywood background makes her a better media entrepreneur.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Naomi Shah:At the early stages, it was exploratory, "Let's make one of these stories, let's figure out how this process works." I was actually on the investment team at USV when I started working on this idea. I had a really close relationship with the partners at USV, two or three months into building this, they said, "Why don't you come in and pitch us more formally." And that was a crazy experience of being in the same room that I'd sat in for the last two years listening to pitches and being on the other side of the table pitching my old colleague. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Naomi Shah, the founder and CEO of Meet Cute. Naomi grew up in Portland, and one of her earliest memories is not just learning to walk, but specifically walking to the local science museum. So from an early age, Naomi had a love for STEM and actually ended up going to Stanford to study mechanical engineering and human biology. But, her early career took her to Wall Street, first as an equities trader at Goldman Sachs, and then as an investor at Union Square, focusing on the intersection of entertainment and wellbeing. But after hearing hundreds of pitches and learning the power of story to convince her partners to invest, Naomi only decided to flip the script. Chris Erwin:She felt a large portion of the wellbeing market was under invested, and so wanted to create a product that mirrored the benefit of tech-powered health solutions, but done differently. And so Meet Cute, the rom-com podcast and modern media company was born. Naomi is one of the youngest founders I've interviewed on the show, and it was a lot of fun getting to know her over the past couple of months. Some highlights of our chat include growing up a tomboy, her love for the "Flubber room", how her family inspired her workplace culture, raising $6 million of startup capital during COVID, and how a non Hollywood background makes her a better media entrepreneur. All right. Let's get into it. Chris Erwin:Naomi. Thanks for being on the podcast. Naomi Shah:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Chris Erwin:As we always do, let's dive back a little bit. I'm curious to know a little bit more about where you grew up and what your household and parents were like, so tell me about that. Naomi Shah:I grew up in Portland, Oregon, loved growing up there. I always say it's like a small little big town. It has all the elements of a big city, but just geographically smaller, fewer people. And I grew up with my mom, my dad and my older brother, Preem. My older brother is two and a half years older than me, I always felt like I was chasing him, following in his footsteps in various ways, and we're still very close. Chris Erwin:When you say you always felt like you were following in his footsteps, was it because of like different hobbies he had or sports or friend groups or things he was doing in school? What do you mean by that? Naomi Shah:I would say when I was younger, I was pretty tomboyish just like in terms of what he did. So if he wore Pokemon shirts, I wore Pokemon shirts, if he was playing Pokemon, I was doing that. If he was like roughhousing with his friends at the playground, I was doing that, I was always kind of chasing him. I would also say that as I grew up, because we both went to the same high school, I was always Preem's little sister in high school, and so all the teachers knew me as Preem's little sister. So it was just always part of my identity growing up. Chris Erwin:And was he excited to have you following him around or was it like, "Ugh, my little sister's here. This is annoying." Naomi Shah:No, my brother is somehow is super mature and always took care of me and was totally fine bringing me around. Even to this day, if he's hanging out with his friends, he's always like, "Oh yeah, my sister's in town, she'll come hang out with us." Chris Erwin:Jumping forward. But describing yourself as a tomboy growing up, and now you run a rom-com podcast network, a little bit of a funny juxtaposition there. Naomi Shah:Absolutely. I think it's hilarious. And even as a tomboy growing up, I loved rom-coms and I identified with a lot of the protagonists in rom-coms because one of my favorite ones growing up, Bend It Like Beckham was about a woman who really loved soccer and her parents wanted her to be the like classic good, perfect girl. And she was like, "Why can't I be that and play soccer?" Same thing with She's The Man. And so I always identified with that type of tension where I knew that I could play soccer, be really good at soccer, and still be a woman. I could really care about science and math and still wear makeup if I wanted to. Naomi Shah:And kind of taking away the tension between those two things was something that was really important to me growing up and something that I really appreciate that my mom spent a lot of time on with me. She's like, "Just because you do science fairs and you like swimming and soccer, it doesn't mean you can't care about what you wear and want to look nice and all of these other things that people associate with being feminine." And so I really liked being able to do both of those, and I think that that's a big part of my identity today. Chris Erwin:Speaking of your parents, you're just talking about your mom, what were your parents like? So we know that you have an early history and interest in STEM, today you're media and entertainment executive. Is that inspired by your parents at all? What did they do? Naomi Shah:My parents ran a company together, it was a software consulting company. And so pretty early on in life, my brother and I were exposed to my parents being leaders. And they would bring work home with them, they would talk about it at dinner, they'd talk about it when we were on family vacations. And so I always saw myself in a role where I was impacting a lot of change in an organization, not really knowing what that meant. More tactically, both my parents went to business school and studied business, so I always imagined that past for myself. It turns out I didn't end up going to business school and I just threw myself into founding. And I feel like I've picked up a lot of the things just by practicing it day to day that I would have learned in business school. Naomi Shah:So I kind of felt like I'd stepped off of their path there, but it was inspired by seeing how they ran a company together when they were in their early 20s and early 30s. Chris Erwin:Co-owners and co-running this company? Naomi Shah:Yeah. Yes. My mom was the president, my dad was the vice president. Chris Erwin:You think of things of like, okay, the family income is not diversified. It's not like if one person loses their job or the company goes under, the other one's okay. But it's also like, they work together, spend so much time together. I'm sure a lot of it went swimmingly, but there's probably times and it was difficult and challenging. Did that come into the home front as well? Naomi Shah:I can't remember that happening. And I think they did a good job of making sure that they protected us from that. To be completely honest, when I was growing up, all I knew is that my parents ran a company together, I didn't really look into what they were doing, what the company did, all of that. So I felt like I was sheltered from that a bit. I'm sure it did. I'm sure that there was a lot of complexities to running a company and they probably had to work through that, and they spent a lot of time together. But I think that they split up the roles and responsibilities both at home and at work in a way that worked really well for them. Naomi Shah:And there was also a lot of flexibility that you get from that, like my mom was there to pick us up from school and if we got sick, she would take care of us. When my mom would travel for work trips, my dad would turn into, we joked he was Mr. Mom and he would make all over meals for us and drop us off to play dates. And so they really shared the load. And I think that that has played into not only like how I see running a company and making sure that people feel ownership over different parts of it, but also how we think about relationships and how work and relationships can be a symbiotic relationship and not in tension with each other. Chris Erwin:That's well put. I was going to ask you, does entrepreneurship run in the family? Clearly. And, what are the values of your parents as entrepreneurs that inspired how you run your company, how you find balance, how you empower different relationships on your team? I think the note that you just gave on that is really thoughtful. Now, it's like middle school going into high school, how early does this theme around STEM interest and passion start? Naomi Shah:I think it starts probably early, early on in our lives. I could imagine learning to walk and going to a science museum around the same time. In Portland, Oregon, there's a science museum called The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. And I just remember being maybe three or four years old and being in this Flubber room where you could just touch and play around with Flubber, and you're experimenting with how it's made and you're pressing it into different shapes and things like that. Naomi Shah:And my brother and my dad would be over in the chemistry and physics labs, and my mom would be in the Flubber room with me and I'd be walking around touching things and being like, "Why does this work this way? And what is this?" And they really encouraged us from a young age to not be scared of asking questions, not feel you're dumb because you don't understand how something works. And I think that they took it upon themselves to make sure that if we showed interest in something, that whatever that thing was, whether it was science or dance or writing, that they would help promote that curiosity in that space. Naomi Shah:And so I think that the curiosity piece has probably started way earlier than middle school, but my first foray into STEM and being interested in that happened in sixth grade, I would say when we were all, I remember this very vividly, we were all in the library at my middle school and our science teacher was like, "Everyone needs to do a science project this year. Go on Wikipedia, go on Google, go look for topics that you're curious about." And I was like, "That's an insane thing to ask a group of sixth graders. The world is huge, we're curious about so many things." Naomi Shah:And I remember like coming up with a list of topics that I was interested in and I ended up scratching all of them off, because I was like, "I want to do something that relates to my life and people in my life." And so what I ended up working on in sixth grade was a project around air quality and lung health because both my brother and my dad had allergies. And that was really the first time that I was setting up a research question, coming up with hypotheses, figuring out how to go about experimenting around it. And that process was what made me very interested in STEM and the whole discovery process. Chris Erwin:I have to admit, there's not many sixth graders who when tasked with a project and they could be like, "Go research any topic that you find interesting," that you take a pause, you caveat the project and say, "How is this going to help other people? How has this maybe going to help my family?" And then air quality comes to mind. So I think that's probably a pretty rare trait. Naomi Shah:I think so too. And I can't like take credit for that, I honestly think that like my science teacher in sixth grade probably sat down and helped me a lot with narrowing on topics. I actually think my dad was pretty influential and being like, "If you want to spend hours and hours researching something, you have to make sure you care about it." I'm pretty sure I came home and was like, "I want to build a hovercraft." I think that felt like the most interesting thing to me where I was like, "This is the future of travel. Let me research how to do that." My dad was like, "Awesome, I think that could be a really good project. Is that something that you as a person, as a human are really interested in?" Naomi Shah:And so I think I took some time there to think about, "What are things that I would actually want to know the answer to?" And seeing my brother and dad have allergies six months out of the year, I was like, "Why does that happen?" And I started looking up just very basic Google searches around it and found that indoor air quality was one of the top five silent killers. There's so many things that we know about pollution, we know about outdoor pollution, but no one really thinks about the air pollutants in their home. And so I was like, "Wow, no one talks about this. I don't know the first thing about it. I'm pretty curious in terms of, how does this affect my family?" Naomi Shah:I make it sound like in the hour that I was given, I figured it out, but I think it was like many conversations later, lots of lists, lots of hypotheses around these questions, and then I probably came to it. Chris Erwin:Got it. Okay. So it starts at an early age. You're describing an interest in STEM and science dating back to when you can start walking and you can actually visit some of these museums. Sixth grade, this big question for a report. Then you end up going to Stanford, and you actually focus on mechanical engineering and human biology. So at this point, you're going to undergrad, what did you think that your career was going to be? Naomi Shah:To be completely honest, because I was so interested in human health and things that impacted human health, I went in thinking that I would be a surgeon. I thought I was going to be pre-med the last couple quarters of high school before I went to Stanford. At Stanford, I started by taking a core classes like math and science that I would need for either an engineering major or if I were to do human biology, those were the classes I would need. So I went through a period of being a little bit confused about what my career was going to be. I can't say that I was like, "This is definitely what I want to dedicate my life to." Naomi Shah:And I think that that's pretty common for people in that age to go through a period of, "I'm not really sure what I wanted to do, but I know that whatever I end up doing, I want it to have an impact in some way." So I started out with human biology as my main focus. And then sophomore year, I took my first mechanical engineering class, kind of on a whim. I was excited about Stanford as a great design school, and I was excited about just sitting in on one of the classes there, figuring out what about design and engineering is pulling me into trying a class here. So I took my first class and was fascinated by the whole process of. you start with an idea, you sketch it out, you design it, you build it, you do user testing around it, you interview people, and then you put the final touches on it and you figure out how this could become a product in the world. Naomi Shah:And I think that that process to me felt very similar to the science research process that I loved in high school. I also feel like the pace of engineering felt very perfect for my personality where it's like, in academia, I think you'd spend a lot longer answering the same question and you have to be a lot more... you have to like apply for a grant, be patient about how long it takes you to get to the final answer. Whereas in engineering, you learn the process, you understand it, and you constantly apply that process to building. And I really liked that hands-on experience that Stanford offered in the mechanical engineering department. Chris Erwin:What I'm hearing though is also, you had a builder mentality early on where you liked the scientific method and process of, have a hypothesis, research, get some data, but also, you don't want to be stuck in the system where you're researching forever, that you wanted to put things out into the world. Naomi Shah:Exactly. And I think that that is a really important point, which is that, even in my science research when I was looking at air quality and lung health, when I got to my results and conclusions phase of the project, I think someone who wanted to stay in academia would have said, "Okay, this is great. I'm going to go back into the lab now." For me, what was interesting is, how does this connect into policy? How does this connect into building a product that people can use? So I think that my natural tendency at that point was to say, "What is the connection between research and humans? Naomi Shah:And that's where I loved mechanical engineering and in building because you had something physical that people could interact with. And so that's where I realized that, "Okay, I'm interested in the interface between engineering and humans. And so when people ask me, do I regret minoring in human biology? I always say, "No, I loved those lectures. I loved sitting down and learning about human development, psychology, behavioral studies, all of that, because I think that informs a lot of how you build." And tying that to today, building a company, constantly, I feel like I'm going through that process of like, "Here's a question, let's come up with what we think is going to happen. Let's go test it. Let's sit down and look at our results. Now let's see how can we implement those results into the product to make it better for our users." Naomi Shah:So I actually think that a lot of the things that I worked on starting in middle school, in college, and after college are all tied in to each other, and the common thread is just that curiosity and in that scientific process of question, hypothesis, results, and then implications, like, how does that tie into something tangible that people can touch? Chris Erwin:This is helpful because I went into this interview, Naomi, as I started doing research for it, I was like, "Okay, what's the through line here?" I was like, "Naomi is running a modern day audio media company focused on micro casts rom-com scripted content. Got it." So as I'm doing the research, I'm like, "All right, early STEM focus, mechanical engineering, human biology." I was like, "How does this come together?" But I think you've woven a tale for our listeners that makes a lot of sense. And I will say I've interviewed a lot of people on the show, I don't think anyone has a background like yours. Chris Erwin:But now, I think you might be inspiring maybe a whole new breed of people to enter into media entertainment saying, "Well, if Naomi can do it and look at her success now, then we can do it." My guest pedigree might be changing over the next couple of years. Naomi Shah:I love that you pointed that out. What I really about Meet Cute and how we've built Meet Cute is that I think we approach the space of media and entertainment through beginner's mindset. And I think that scientists and researchers always have to have a beginner's mindset because you never know what your results are going to be or what the data is going to show. And so, I often feel like media entertainment is one of those spaces that people are like, "Do you have a production background? Do you have an agency background? Do you know people in the industry?" Naomi Shah:And I actually think it's a strength to say no to those because you've come up with new solutions, new ways of doing things, you bring a fresh perspective to it. And honestly, I love talking about the different paths that it could take to get into media and entertainment because, to your point, we can inspire new people to join this way of like flipping existing and traditional models in an industry. But two, I think that people who are already in the industry love having conversations with new people because they bring a different perspective to the table, they bring something that hasn't been done before to the table. Naomi Shah:And so I love having those types of conversations and being like, "Yeah, I actually have no idea how these deals are done before, but here's an idea. What do you think of this?" Chris Erwin:I'd like to point out that you said also about a beginner's mind. It reminds me, I interviewed Matthias Metternich on this podcast, he's the founder and CEO of Art of Sport. And before he did that, he's launched a consumer product and media brand around it., he was at I think a FinTech company, like a B2B FinTech business. He actually also ran a women's bathing suit retailer and manufacturer. And I was like, again, "What's the through line?" He's like, "I like to get into industries with a fresh mind and solve consumer problems." And he's like, "I think it gives me an advantage versus I've been in this vertical for 20 years." Chris Erwin:But anyway, Naomi, we could go down a whole tangent on this. Before we get into your early career, going into being an equities trader at Goldman and being an investor at Union Square, I also do want to ask, I saw that, there's a pretty strong through line of volunteerism throughout your history. I saw Camp Kesem, I saw a StreetSquash, and then I saw OMSI, if I'm pronouncing that right. And so I'm just curious, when did this start? And I know Camp Kesem is for kids with parents undergoing cancer treatment. Honestly, I don't know what StreetSquash is. So what are some of the inspiration for these groups that you're involved in? Naomi Shah:This is a testament to my parents who have always encouraged us to try and be involved in our community in some way. OMSI is actually the science museum that I used to run around as a kid, and I volunteered there in middle and high school, basically talking about science experiments with the next generation of kids. And so I loved the education aspect of it. I thought that it was a way to give back to the community in a way to be involved in bringing STEM into more people's lives. Because I think that especially there is a stigma around middle and high school, I think a lot of women who could be really interested in STEM stop taking classes around it. Naomi Shah:And they either think that it's not for them or they don't see their friends in it, so they stop taking them, and that trickles into the breakdown of how many females are in certain college majors when you get to college. While I didn't think about this all as an eighth grader, now looking back, I can see that that was one of the things I loved most about volunteering at OMSI, is being able to bring an excitement around STEM to people who might not otherwise care about it. Showing people that there were really cool applications in the world by pursuing this stuff was part of OMSI. Naomi Shah:Camp Kesem in college was a summer camp that I worked at for a week at the end of the school year, and it was all Stanford counselors. I actually do have a personal relationship to cancer in my family, and so that was an important liaison for me. And it was at the first time that I shared that experience publicly, it was the first time I opened up about it to people that weren't in my closest circles. And I think that that was a really great way to be a leader and like learn how to lead with vulnerability and learn how to lead with transparency and honesty. Naomi Shah:And I think I take a lot of the things that I learned from being a counselor at Kesem into the way that I want our team to function at Meet Cute today, or the way that I interacted with my coworkers at USV and Goldman. Something that I always say is like, "Don't check your personality at the door, bring a lot of those experiences into your work." And I think it makes you a stronger colleague, I think it makes you a better teammate, I think it's easier to have discussions and brainstorms when you know a little bit more about your coworkers without oversharing. I think that that's also an important boundary to strike. Naomi Shah:So that was Camp Kesem, I loved being a counselor, I loved being outdoors. It was a week of no phones, a week of- Chris Erwin:So rare nowadays. Naomi Shah:Exactly. I think that those four weeks one every year was the longest I've ever spent off of my phone probably since I got a cell phone in middle school. It's one of the most liberating things when you come back to the real world at the end of the week and your phone is just like for the next 20 minutes, just like blowing up. And you're like, "It's actually so important to get away from your phones, but we just don't do it." And then the last one, you mentioned StreetSquash. Before I moved to San Francisco last year, I lived in New York for three years. And I don't play squash, but StreetSquash is a program that merges squash practice with academic involvement. Naomi Shah:It takes place in Harlem, in New York. And it's a primarily a program for kids who are usually first-generation, want to develop skills in a sport and get better in their homework and in academics. And we bring those two things together. And I actually love that because sports have been a part of my life growing up. I loved playing soccer when I was little, I ended up swimming in middle and high school, I skied throughout a lot of my childhood. And I found that having extracurricular activities that took up time meant that I was just more dedicated and learned things like discipline and showing up in teamwork, and those were all things that I think I took into school projects, my internships, my jobs after college. Naomi Shah:So I loved the combination of those two. And I started out as an academic tutor at StreetSquash, and then the second two years ended up co-chairing the young leaders committee. So was involved in fundraising, was involved in managing the board, all of that. Chris Erwin:Very cool. So now leaping forward a bit. You come out of Stanford, Naomi, and head to Wall Street, you become an equities trader at Goldman. Curious, what got you excited about going into finance? That was a path that I took right out of undergrad as well. What was the thinking? Naomi Shah:Yeah. I actually did an internship at Goldman my junior year. They came to campus and talked about how engineers that wanted to work on fast-paced problems could find a spot on the trading floor. Really interesting. And I was thinking about it and I was like, "I love patterns." When I think about science research, when I think about even mechanical engineering, I love looking for patterns in data and learning about why those exist and what we can learn from those patterns. And what was exciting to me about the trading floor is looking for those patterns in the public market, like how does this conflict internationally affect oil prices? Or how does a change in leadership in this government affect jobs? And things like that. Naomi Shah:So I think that I was just genuinely curious and I'd never applied it to thinking about the public markets until I started working at Goldman, and I loved the idea of working on projects that involve that data to the point that you were making earlier, applying that to something very directly, applying that to trades and making trades. So I can connect that in my mind to just curiosity and not really caring what the physical product was that I was working on, but instead caring about the process to get to that product. And so I actually loved my internship there. I really was excited about working in New York, about like that fast-paced lifestyle. Chris Erwin:You grew up in Portland you lived there your whole life, and then you were West Coast at Stanford, but you had never lived on the East Coast? Naomi Shah:Exactly. And I think part of me wanted to have one of those classic New York jobs. I think I was enamored by it. I loved the idea of waking up at... This is going to sound crazy, but I love the idea of waking up at like 5:30, grabbing a coffee and just being on all day. And I thinks that my personality has that intensity to it where I like the grind. And I think that that is part of what Goldman provided. They were like, "Yeah, everyone here is really smart and grinds, and you will be surrounded by people who will push you, will ask you questions. Will say, 'Why did you do that?'" And I really liked that. I thought that was a very important and pivotal part of my first job out of college. Chris Erwin:And what that sounds like to me, that's an early 20s love story with New York. Naomi Shah:Totally. Chris Erwin:I grew up in the tri-state area, Jersey Shore. And so I was super pumped about going into finance, being on Wall Street, being in New York, right out of undergrad, like you, Naomi, being like, "I'm going to work 24/7." To the point where I was walking around like delirious, because it was banking 7:00 AM to 4:00 AM, seven days a week. But it's funny, I'm seeing your eyes light up, which is probably reminiscent of when you were in your early 20s doing it. Now, you write about love stories, maybe you just got a theme for an upcoming Meet Cute show. Naomi Shah:We like to say that there's a rom-com every situation, so if there are there billion people in the world, there are nine billion rom-coms, and you can definitely see one happening around finance and the culture there. But yeah, I completely agree with you, I think that there is absolutely a... I wanted to live in New York, I wanted to have a job that pushed me really hard. I loved the culture around grinding. And I think that that was really a part of what made me sign a return offer at Goldman and come back as an equities trader. I really liked how fast paced the markets were. And I felt it played to a lot of my strengths. Naomi Shah:I always told people, "I don't think you need to be a finance major to go get a really good job in banking, I think you can be an art history major and apply that to banking. I think you can be an engineer and think of ways to automate and create process around trading." And I think that was what stood out on my resume to Goldman, where it was the scientific process, applying that to trading, how do you ask questions and create processes around answering those questions? And that's really the direction that banks want to go now. But what I've found there is that it didn't hit on the creativity part of what I was excited about. Naomi Shah:So I almost felt like a repetition to what I was doing that I liked at first, and then I started thinking, I don't know if this is what I want to do five or 10 years later. And I miss the creativity from building and college, from my mechanical engineering classes that said, "Okay, you have this idea. Now, go create it in the world, create something new that no one has seen before, and do it from scratch." And I missed that. So that's really what caused me to make the jump to venture capital, where I could work with early-stage founders and learn from them and learn that process of building something from scratch. Naomi Shah:And so that was what excited me about early-stage venture and about Union Square Ventures when I applied for that job, Chris Erwin:I also have to ask you just an inside question about Goldman and macro market trading. I know everyone likes to predict the markets of like, "Oh, there's a big governmental shift over here, some regulatory shift over there. Macro economic prices are soaring, they're falling." I think there's so much noise in the market that is actually very difficult to say, "Oh, because X happened, Y is then going to be the results," because you don't know the big institutional traders making their big market investments at incredible volume. Were you guys actually able to pinpoint specific market activity? I find that to be like so challenging for the retail traders that I talk to. Naomi Shah:Well, I definitely think you're right. I think that there is so much volatility and a lot of things can change an outcome of a trade. One of the interesting things is like, you have to be very good at taking risks in that role because you have no idea what the outcome could be. The market could move against you because something happens and you have to be really fast at trading out of that position. But I will say that there are a lot of research projects that you can do to say, "If this trade was executed... " Say for instance like oil prices crashed, "Well, what happened to these three prices when oil prices crashed five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago?" Naomi Shah:So you can map out what you think is going to happen, what you predict is going to happen based on historical trade data and figure out patterns in that that create more educated hypotheses about what will happen today. And who knows, there could be so many confounding variables, so that's why you have to put a 95% confidence interval around it and then be okay with that 5% of risk where it's like, if something else happens that isn't part of your model, that'll move the needle on what the outcome of your trade is. Naomi Shah:Surprisingly, markets are so cyclical and you can come up with a lot of predictions based on historical trade data. And that's where the pattern recognition comes in. Chris Erwin:Very helpful. When you leave Goldman, I think you were there for about a year, did Union Square reach out to you or were you proactively looking for your next one? Naomi Shah:I was surprisingly not really aware that venture capital was a career path. And at that point, I think no one I knew was in VC, and so I didn't really understand what a job or a career in VC looked like, but I was looking around at different startups and different companies. And I stumbled upon the USV Blog, which is a dynamic blog that they post about their investments. And so I read back two or three years in their blog, like why did they make an investment in Twitter? Why did they make an investment in Duolingo? Why did they make an investment in SoundCloud and Etsy? Naomi Shah:And I was fascinated by, it's a very different risk profile than public markets because you're taking these like eight to 10 year bets on companies at the earliest stage of an idea, you're taking a bet on the idea and the founder. And I love reading why they took that bet, what convinced them to do it. And I felt like it was a really good example of taking some pattern recognition, which I think I had affinity towards and then taking some like creativity and intuition and saying like, "What do we want the world to look like in five years?" So I was reading their blog and then around that time, they actually put out a call for analysts and there was this two year analyst program. Naomi Shah:So in that evening that I was starting to read and stuff, I just submitted an application. I literally spent like a few hours on it, and the application was closing soon, so I probably just like made it into the application pool right as it was closing, and talked about what I found interesting about VC. And I think that one of the questions was, here are three companies, talk about whether you think they're overvalued or undervalued. And I obviously used a lot of my training from Goldman to answer that question, but then I applied a separate lens to it, which is like, what as a user do I think this company is doing well? I think I picked Snapchat, Chris Erwin:Were you bullish or bearish on Snapchat back then? Because now Snapchat is crushing it, but there were a lot of skepticism over the past. Naomi Shah:I was bullish. And I think that was rare. I think everyone else that just Snapchat was bearish at that time. And I pointed to a bunch of things that I thought they were doing really well and setting themselves apart. And maybe we're going through a tough few years, but I thought that they had a long-term view on a lot of things. And so I think that that was a pretty unique perspective. And then I backed it up with a few quantitative and qualitative points. Chris Erwin:What I like that I'm hearing from you is I think just going through your background, if you look at like STEM, engineering, biology, it was very defined data sets, very defined research methods and hypothesis creation. But I think then as you were saying, at Goldman, something you were missing was like, what's the creativity? What's the art and the science? And I think going into venture investing, and you're starting to read these theses on their blog, you're like, "Look, there's some market data and information, but the data sets are a lot less defined." And you have to trust your gut and have a different set of judgments. Chris Erwin:So it feels like the creativity vein you saw a lane for you that was building off of yet a financial background still got you excited, but this is clearly setting you up for even going deeper once you started Meet Cute, is that right? Naomi Shah:Also I'm very impressed with how you articulate things, because these are things that I've just started articulating to myself after years of doing this. And these are the types of things that I love thinking about. So absolutely. I think that venture investing is an art and a science. I think that founding a company is an art and a science. I love using both sides
Dan Levitt — CEO of Long Haul Management on $6,000 Salaries, Disney's Big Miss, and Cracking YouTube SEO
Jul 22 2021
Dan Levitt — CEO of Long Haul Management on $6,000 Salaries, Disney's Big Miss, and Cracking YouTube SEO
Dan Levitt is the founder and CEO of Long Haul Management. We discuss how Dan paid rent while making only $6,000 a year out of college (many side hustles), beating me in an office rap battle, Disney's big miss in digital music, executive producing one of YouTube's premium original series, and what it's like to represent some of the biggest sports and gamer personalities on the Internet.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Dan Levitt:I chose the safer Disney route. Again, I needed to pay the bills. But I made a promise to myself. Every day, I saw someone else doing what I wanted to do. They were the AbsolutePunks of the world. Or there were other people who turned the music blog into an A&R career, or leveraged it in other ways.I'm good at seeing gaps in the marketplace and where could you go in it. I made a promise. The next time I see it, I'm fucking going for it. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Dan Levitt, the founder and CEO of Long Haul Management. Dan grew up in Boston with an early love for music and yet-to-be-discovered bands. So, after wrapping a few acts in high school and interning at Philly radio stations during college, he kicked off his career by moving to LA with absolutely no job prospects.But after a few A&R gigs at Columbia Records and Disney, Dan was early to see how digital and YouTube were going to transform the music industry. So, he left traditional media and kicked off his digital career, joining one of the early YouTube multichannel networks, company called Big Frame.We actually worked together there. And in less than nine months, I actually had to lay him off. Dan struck out on his own, positioned himself as the YouTube guy for the music industry and started his own talent shop, Long Haul Management.Some highlights of our chat include how Dan paid rent while making only $6,000 a year when he first moved to LA ... You'll crack up at some of his many side hustles ... when he beat me in an office rap battle, executive producing one of YouTube's premium original series, and what it's like to represent some of the biggest sports and gamer personalities on the internet. All right, let's get to it. Dan, thanks for being and the podcast. Dan Levitt:Thanks for having me. Chris Erwin:Awesome. I believe that you're a fellow East Coaster like myself. So tell me, where did you grow up? Dan Levitt:Sure, I'm from a nice suburb of Boston, Newton, Massachusetts. Literally voted safest city in America back when I was younger. So, nice Jewish suburb of Boston. Chris Erwin:Got it. It's funny. I went to underground at Tufts in Medford/Somerville. I think, while I was there, it was rated one of the most dangerous mafia-driven neighborhoods in the Northeast, or all of the US. So, quite the opposite of you. What was your household like? What were your family and parents doing? Dan Levitt:So, one, my parents are both from South Africa. They moved to the US in, I think, '77. My dad went to school for engineering, and then got a job in Boston, and then eventually started his own software business that really had a bunch of ups and downs. Mostly ups, and then fortunately sold to IBM right before the big bubble burst there. So, the timing was fortunate. Dan Levitt:And then my mom was artist. So, had all kinds of different things she would do in the art space, be it theater, be it actual prints and displays and stuff. Chris Erwin:Okay, very cool. It's funny. I've known you for about a decade and I had no idea your parents were from South Africa. Look, you're an entrepreneur. You've built out an incredible talent management firm. We're going to get to that in a bit. But you have entrepreneurial roots in your family. Dan Levitt:It's interesting now. I remember my dad would come back ... I think maybe at the height, he had 50, 60 people. Maybe more. I remember growing up, he'd come back from work and we'd be watching a Celtics game. It was the most exciting game ever, especially, they were really good back then. Dan Levitt:And he would fall asleep, and I'd be like, "How in the world can you possibly fall asleep during this game?" And now, I'm like, "Yep, I get it." Yeah, I could totally get how you could be so wiped out the day that, no matter what is on TV, you're just out. Dan Levitt:I mean, what was really interesting is, my parents went through a kind of messy divorce. We don't need to get into that but that's a whole fun story. But what's interesting is, when they separated, he stayed with a friend for a bit. And he went from sleeping in the basement of a friend's house to selling his business to IBM in a year. Dan Levitt:There were a lot of times that people told him, because the business had some challenges over the years, there were a lot of people that told him that he should declare bankruptcy with the business. But he stayed with it. And eventually, it worked out for him. I'm sure, hopefully, some of the resiliency I have, learned from him. Chris Erwin:Wow. Awesome. I have to ask. Being from Boston, a lot of media professionals from Boston have a pretty strong Boston identity. I think of Dave Portnoy in Barstool Sports, and Bill Simmons from The Ringer. Do you think of yourself like that, or your total West Coast transplant now? Dan Levitt:It's not just specific to Boston, but especially in the Northeast, there's a certain intensity and, I think, an edge that you can have, where in Boston, in traffic, if someone cuts you off, you scream at each other. And that's just acceptable and that's how you vent, right? Dan Levitt:In LA, it's much different than that. I'm in LA now. On the West Coast, people are more scared of confrontation. If you scream at someone, that's a really big deal. I think there's just a certain firm mentality that you have where it's pretty hard to bother me or get under my skin. Dan Levitt:I have thick skin. I do think part of that is just growing up in a culture where people are so up front with that. I also think, to a certain extent, growing up in cold climate where the weather is pretty brutal, and you just have to plow through it, does give some sort of mental toughness. Chris Erwin:I think that's totally right. I think there's this saying. I hope I'm not butchering it. But it's, "In New York, when people are saying, 'Fuck you,' they're saying, 'Good morning.' In the West Coast, when they say, 'Good morning,' they're saying, 'Fuck you.'" Dan Levitt:Yeah. I mean, but it's more so ... I remember in one of my first PA jobs in LA, I had a disagreement with another PA about the way things should be done. And then later on, I was brought into the office by my supervisor and they're like, "Dan, you were screaming at them. Why?" Dan Levitt:And I was like, "I wasn't screaming at them. I was telling them something they didn't want to hear in a certain tone. If I was screaming at them, they would know. Everybody would know." So, that was really the first ... I just moved to LA and I was like, "Shit, I got to really be cognizant of how I talk to people out here. They're going to think I'm a fucking lunatic," which, to a certain extent, is true. But maybe I need to slow play that a bit. Keep my response- Chris Erwin:It's part of your je ne sais quoi, as they say. Nothing- Dan Levitt:Yeah. I mean, you know me really well. But for people who just meet me, I can be a lot. Chris Erwin:Yeah, so let's actually talk about how you got to where you are today. I think, trying to get a sense of, was there a glimpse in your early days of you entering entertainment, becoming a talent manager? I think about things that you had mentioned that you were looking at unsigned bands in high school in the '90s. Tell me about that. Dan Levitt:My skillset is, I'm really good at seeing patterns and seeing where things are going, right? Before they get there. So, I think that's what I'm best at, be it entertainment or trends. I've done okay in the stock market, investing and stuff. So, specific to your question, yeah. Dan Levitt:My first real strong passion was music. I heard Green Day and it changed my life. And I was like, "This is it." And then I definitely have the personality type where if I'm into something, I'm all the way fucking in. So, if I like Green Day, okay, I need ever record they've ever had. Dan Levitt:So, I started, the mid '90s or so, music was starting to shift to digital, right? So, you used to discover bands on the radio, and then around that time, there started to be primitive websites. Around when Napster first came out, there started to be people who would put MP3s online, right? Dan Levitt:So, now here are these blogs that are hosting MP3s. So, they would be posting bands that would be signed to record labels. And I would like these bands. I'd find then, I'd like them, and then they'd get big a year later. It was like, "Oh, I'm pretty good at knowing which bands are going to be big later." Dan Levitt:And then, one site in particular started focusing on unsigned bands, and I said, "Oh, these unsigned bands are pretty good. I think they're going to make it." And then they would get signed and they would make it. So, I saw, "Hey, I'm pretty good at ... " Dan Levitt:And I started learning more about the industry. And at that point, originally, my job was to, "Hey, I wanted to work as a music direct on the radio helping find the songs." And then I realized, "Hey, actually the best way I can help musicians is to work at a record label." So then, it was my dream to be an A&R guy to sign a band and help them break. Chris Erwin:And any genre focus? What types of music were you listening to? Was it Green Day punk? Stuff like that? Dan Levitt:More like the new metal, like the Korn. I know you're obviously a huge Limp Bizkit fan. That kind of stuff. Chris Erwin:Three Dollar Bill, Y'all Dan Levitt:Sure, exactly, right? Around that time was the Linkin Parks of the world and that kind of stuff. That was really the scene that I was into. I still had an appreciation for more pop music and stuff like that. But really, the rock, I would say, is the genre that I was into and certainly having a great moment then. Dan Levitt:Yeah, so then there were a few sites. And I remember trying to email people, and bands, and managers, and see what I could do. But I was just a kid in high school. Again, this is, I'm downloading songs over a dial-up modem. Chris Erwin:DSL. Dan Levitt:Yeah, exactly. This was not how easy it was today. That was the dream. But I didn't know anyone at entertainment. There was no path to it. I was like, "Could I start my own record label and fund it?" But that seemed so far from being feasible. Chris Erwin:Yeah, were you reaching out to any of these bands direct, or was it, you're just thinking about what you want to do after college? Dan Levitt:Yeah, I had a buddy from summer camp who was, at the same time ... This is the late '90s. He started interning at record labels in New York and started getting a bit of traction. So, we were talking about, "Hey, maybe we should start our own label." And there were one or two bands that we approached. They didn't really respond. It didn't go anywhere. Chris Erwin:Oh, I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall to hear the pitch of you pitching a band in high school to sign with you. Dan Levitt:I forget what the value proposition was, but that band didn't really go anywhere. They probably should've given us a shot. Chris Erwin:You're doing this in high school, and then you end up going to Temple University in Philly. Does the dream start to take form there? What happens? Dan Levitt:No. I wanted to be a bit more conservative. And I was like, "Hey, I know I want to get into entertainment. I know I want to be on the business side. What's interesting to me is the intersection of art and commerce. But these jobs are going to be really hard to get. So, as a background, why don't I get a business degree, just to give me some kind of stability and baseline of knowledge?" Dan Levitt:So, I went to school at Temple. There's all kinds of story. My dorm room burnt down freshman year. Just the craziest shit happened. Chris Erwin:Wait, did you cause that or was it somebody else? Dan Levitt:No, no. Well, it's a point of contention. My roommate was lighting candles for some reason at 10:00 in the morning. But the fire marshal said it was electrical outlet. It's a whole thing. But anyways, went to Temple. Actually, before I left, I interned at a radio station in Boston. Then I interned at radio stations in Philly because that was really the only ... Dan Levitt:There weren't record labels in Boston, at least that I was aware of, in Philly. So, I just interned at radio in hope that I could make my way up there. But then I saw, man, the radio jobs ... I mean, and this was back then. I could only imagine now. Radio's not glamorous at all. It's really bare bones. The budgets are next to nothing. No one leaves these jobs. The jobs didn't pay great. Dan Levitt:So, I realized, "Hey, I thought I wanted to do radio, but this is not for me." And then that was more like, "Okay, I want to work for a record label." That was the dream. Be an A&R guy. Chris Erwin:In graduating Temple, which I think is around 2004, do you go immediately ... Do you have a job lined up? Like you're going to a record label. You're pumped going to the big city? Dan Levitt:I don't know why. I wasn't really actively hustling for a gig. I guess I assumed, "Oh, the college sets up some interviews and stuff." Nothing. So, a couple of my buddies went there. Temple has a really good film program, so most of my friends actually weren't on the business program. They were more on the film side. Dan Levitt:So, a couple of my buddies were moving out to LA to get started in their careers. So, I knew the music industry at that time was really New York or LA. And the last winter in Boston, the high was like eight degrees. I'm not one to complain about the cold, but I was too fucking cold. Dan Levitt:So, I was like, "Do I move to New York with no gig where it's crazy expensive and the weather's brutal, or maybe I should I try LA and see what it's like over there." So, I moved here without any job, and hoping that I'd figure it out. Chris Erwin:So, you're showing up without a lot of savings. No clear job prospects. Moving with a couple friends but don't really know anyone on the West Coast. So, there's a timeline here where it's like, "Hey, I got to figure something out probably in the next couple months," right? Dan Levitt:Totally. Maybe a couple grand. Thankfully, at least rent back then was a lot less than it is now. I think me and my buddies got a house in Glendale ... well, maybe Eagle Rock area or Glassell Park for maybe $1,000 between us three. It was pretty inexpensive. I had some cost but I had a little bit of room to work with there. Chris Erwin:Yeah, so you show up with maybe a couple suitcases. You're in LA. What's your mentality? Are you pumped? Are you excited? Are you also scared? And then what do you start doing to sow your roots? Dan Levitt:Really, it was just like, "Okay, I have a business degree. Surely, I can get an entry-level job somewhere doing marketing." And just nothing. Barely interviews. Fucking nothing. So, I was just like, "All right, let me just ... " Couple of my buddies started PAing, so I did some PA gigs. Dan Levitt:But even in those gigs, you really have to hustle. You have to networks. And the gig ends and then you've got to get another job. And then that one ends. You got to get another job. I didn't really want to jump from job to job. There's late-night shoots. It would mess up my sleep schedule. Dan Levitt:I was a much different person. I was a lot lazier. I didn't think things would come to me. I just thought it would be easier. Chris Erwin:It's funny to hear you say that, because who you are now, who I have seen you evolve from since the Big Frame days in 2013, right? When you left. You are such a go-getter. Eye on the ball. Laser focus. Massive hustler. So, I guess this was an important experience for you to train that muscle and change your mentality. Dan Levitt:For some background, I am not a type ... Now, I'm probably type A, but I promise you, I was not type A. For context, I don't know what my GPA was in high school. Maybe a 2.3. It was not good at all. At all. I was a bad student. For context, in second grade, I already wasn't doing homework just I couldn't be bothered to do it. I could do it. Dan Levitt:I could pass everything and do it well. For some reason, it wasn't interesting to me. Probably wasn't until after I left Big Frame when I really had to figure stuff out for my own. But I had to really flip that switch and become that person. There's some people who just born type A. That's been a constant evolution for me. Chris Erwin:But your first job, you do get an A&R job at Columbia Records, which is part of Sony Music, I think in March 2005. How did that come to be and what was that experience like? Dan Levitt:Oh, this is a great story about how this ends. The buddy I mentioned earlier who was interning at record labels, he was able to move up. I think he was actually probably the youngest A&R guy in Sony history, at least at the time. He helped get John Legend signed and Coheed and Cambria. So, after John- Chris Erwin:Favorite band, Coheed and Cambria. Jersey band in the metalcore punk-ish type scene. Love them. Dan Levitt:Yeah, I think that was one of the first things he got signed. And then after he helped get John Legend signed, who they had passed on maybe five or six times, then they started, "Oh, maybe we should listen to him." He got promoted. At the time, the music industry was really going through an interesting transition. This is 2005. Dan Levitt:So, this is after the height of the boy band and rock. CD sales are declining now, relative to all-time highs. What was happening was, you were seeing a lot of executive turnover. So, a lot of execs who got these amazing lucrative deals in the good old days were getting or not renewed. So, there was a lot of turnover. Dan Levitt:So, what happened was, at that time, most of the A&R people for Columbia Records were in New York. But they needed someone lower level in LA to go see shows for them, especially at that point, the live shows. Especially in rock and other genres is a big part of a band's success. Dan Levitt:They didn't really have anyone lower and my buddy knew that I was still hustling. I'm working retail at that point. I'm working at The Vitamin Shoppe just to pay the bills, right? Because I didn't want the hustle of the random PA gigs. Keep in mind, I'm still applying for marketing jobs at a Nestle's and other more consumer products. Dan Levitt:I'm applying at entertainment too, but everyone is entry ... And this is even worse now. An entry-level job, they want you to have experience. I didn't have any work experience. I had a couple internships. So, I'm just working retail. My buddy is basically able to get me a job working for Columbia Records, but part-time, right? Dan Levitt:So, I'm basically working at The Vitamin Shoppe during the day, and then at night, going out and doing A&R for Columbia Records, albeit, in a part-time capacity. And I'm just fucking praying that no one I know from the music world comes into the store. Dan Levitt:So, it's really a one foot in, one foot out. And I'm basically just trying to do what I can to find the next great act for them to sign. So, that I can get recognized, and that I can do this full-time, and quit the soul-sucking day job. Chris Erwin:How much were you making as an A&R exec at this point? Dan Levitt:I might have been making maybe $125 a week. I think it was definitely between six and seven grand a year. So, not by any means enough to pay the bills, but not terrible, especially back then as a side. Keep in mind, if you look at it from an hourly perspective, I'm not really doing much. Maybe I go to one or two shows a night. Dan Levitt:By the way, I'm on the guest list for shows. I can walk into The Viper Room and the people there know me. I can just go in. So, I'm seeing amazing shows. I'm meeting people in the industry. I'm meeting managers. Meanwhile, anyone I meet, I'm trying to see if I can work with them. Dan Levitt:I'm applying for job after job. Entry-level manager assistant, $24,000. I'm applying. At that point, I have Columbia Records on my resume, and still barely getting bites. Even then, for whatever reason, I wasn't getting the gigs. It was a really, really tough time. Dan Levitt:It's worth noting, this was before the tech started. This was before SoundCloud. This is before some of the first music startups. So, there really wasn't much opportunity to get a gig somewhere. I interviewed at some of the music marketing companies like Streetwise. Dan Levitt:And this is building street teams and digital street teams. I wanted to do all that shit. I had some experience and still couldn't get in. Columbia Records. So one, it's kind of laughable now, but I discovered Arctic Monkeys extremely early. They only had three songs online. No one had heard of them in the US. No sales. Nothing. Dan Levitt:So, I have a bunch of buddies that I would send songs to. This is when The Strokes are first hitting, right? I find them on one of the music blogs that I like. These songs are ... I'm into them but I don't love it. I send it to a bunch of buddies and universally, everyone of them were like, "This is the best thing you've ever sent." Dan Levitt:And I was like, "Really? Wow." So then, I pitched them to Columbia Records and they're, "Oh, this is cool. It's this cool indie rock thing. But it's three guys in the UK. There's no sales. There's no history. It'd be really hard for us to fly them back and forth. But thanks for bringing it up." Dan Levitt:I didn't really know that I had to keep following up. "Hey, there's starting to be some noise." I didn't know. No one taught me how to do A&R or how to pitch, had to follow up. Again, it's not like I'm going into an office. I'm just remote because I still had the day gig. Dan Levitt:So, anyways, eventually there were Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen, a few things that I pitched that ended up hitting eventually. And then it got to the point where Sony Music was having a weekend where they were bringing in ever Sony Music employee to New York to do this whole song and dance about their roster. Dan Levitt:So, I basically request vacation time from my dad gig to go to New York. Again, Columbia Records is paying me $125 a week, but they're flying me to New York and put me up in a fancy hotel. Chris Erwin:It's like half your salary. Dan Levitt:Oh, no, by far, they spent way more on this. I mean, anyways, it was a weekend in Greenwich, Connecticut with the A&R team. So, I get called into the head A&R's office on the Friday. He's like, "Hey, Dan, I have some great news for you. Thanks for everything you've done. We're going to make you full-time. We're just waiting to hear from accounting on how much that's going to be. We'll get back to you." Dan Levitt:And I'm like, "This is what I've been fucking working my whole life for." And then right afterwards, we get on the bus to go to Greenwich, Connecticut. And Columbia had just brought on Steve Lillywhite, the producer who produced all the big U2 records, Dave Matthews. Albums I fucking grew up on. I'm shooting the shit with him now. Dan Levitt:We go to the head of the label's house, and there's all these Korn, and Rage Against the Machine, and all these albums that were so meaningful to me. All the plaques. It was a weekend where I felt like I was one of them now. My whole life, I've been trying to get in, and now I'm finally in. Still today one of the best weekends of my life. Dan Levitt:And then I fly back and it's Monday. And I'm back in the day job. And I'm just waiting for the phone call. I'm just waiting for the phone call about how much more money it's going to be. I'm so fucking ready. I get the call. "Hey, Dan, we have some bad news. We're not going to have room for you anymore. Sorry, but thanks for everything you've done." Chris Erwin:Wow. Just fast like that? Almost no emotion? Just, boom. Dan Levitt:No, no, to his credit, he was really apologetic. But I was fucking shellshocked because the call I got where I thought, "Okay, this is the phone call. I'm about to quit. I'm about to quit day job," was just the carpet ripped out from under me. Dan Levitt:I had the day job but at least I was grinding at night, hoping to get somewhere. Now, that was taken from me. And now I'm like, "Fuck, I'm about to be 25 with a business degree, working retail. This is not how I thought shit was going to go." Dan Levitt:So, it ends up being revealed later on, it wasn't clear at that time, but basically, Columbia Records was bringing on Rick Rubin and he wanted his own people. But it was just a gut shot at the time. Chris Erwin:So, Dan, you get into a few side hustle. And I think one of them culminates in you doing chat room marketing for cream cheese. But tell us a couple highlights here because I think some of these side hustles, like swap meets, is still involved in your life today. Dan Levitt:It's always fun for me, trying to figure out new ways to make money. It's a lot easier now with the internet and stuff. It wasn't back then. I was a big focus group slut. I would do anything. Promote anything. So, I would get really good at filling out focus group surveys. Dan Levitt:I knew how they wanted you to answer, and so I would do ... For example, I've been paid to eat tofu. I've been paid to eat gum. I've been paid to eat McDonald's breakfast sandwiches. I got paid to play a Xbox Kinect before it came out. I've been paid to look at marketing materials. Dan Levitt:I've been paid to play with phones, and gadgets, and look at Cirque du Soleil. All kinds of stuff. Especially in LA, I'm sure this is the case in maybe a lot of big cities, but there's a lot of companies that do focus groups both in person. And I was just a maniac. Dan Levitt:There were a few Twitter accounts that popped up from those. It's like, "Hey, if you're this and you're this, fill it out." So, I would just ... whatever I could to try to get in. Chris Erwin:And this was paying the bills for you, so this was important. Dan Levitt:I think one year, I made maybe eight grand doing it. My first couple years in LA, I might have made only $20, $30 grand, so it was pretty significant. There was a store in LA that, on Sundays, would sell clothes, some vintage, some new, for a dollar. Dan Levitt:I would go and I'd buy most of the men's stuff. I'd list it on eBay. Basically, anything I sold it for was profit. I ended up getting fired from The Vitamin Shoppe. That's not really an interesting story. There was a company doing ... This would be summer 2008. They were doing experimental digital marketing. Dan Levitt:So, they were basically going into chat rooms essentially spamming message points. But then also, you had to have one-on-one conversations with people where you'd have to work in talking points, which was really fucking hard. Especially, how do you work cream cheese into a conversation organically? But I got fucking really good at it. Dan Levitt:So, within two days, I got so good at it that, by the end of the first week, I was promoted to the night shift manager. So, you would drop the campaign talking points into the chat. But really, it was all about these one-on-one conversations because basically, this agency would take those conversations, chop them up, make them clean, and then share it with the brand, and, "Hey, look, we're doing this subtle marketing for you." Chris Erwin:What was one of the lines that was something that you custom crafted that you were known for? Dan Levitt:This is really interesting psychology. What everyone else would do was, they would try to hit up a million people to try to find one, and try to work it in. They would brute force it. I took the opposite approach. I was like, "I'm going to ask other people online about themselves, and then just as conversations go, they'll flip it. And they'll ask me about myself." Dan Levitt:And then I'm like, "Oh, yeah." Put one of the common ... "Oh, what do you do for work?" I'm not going to say the brand's name but it's a city where I went to school. But it's like, "Hey," we couldn't say, "I work at." We had to say, "I work with X cream cheese company." "Oh, really? I love cream cheese. Cool." Dan Levitt:And then it's like, "Oh, what do you use it on?" "Oh, I can use it for cheesecakes or stuff like that." Or there's another site that's harder to use but you could actually see people's images. Think Myspace era. It wasn't Myspace but similar. Dan Levitt:So, I would identify people that I thought, based on physical attributes, might be interested in cream cheese. And I'd just message them and chat with them. But man, that was one of the funnest jobs I ever had, more so because, as a guy, it's not so bad. You're mostly talking to girls. As a girl on the internet trying to talk to guys about cream cheese, the kind of shit that they would hear was just- Chris Erwin:Probably a dark rabbit that we will not go down. So, Dan, then you head to A&R at Disney around September 2008. How did that come to be? Dan Levitt:My roommate used to do HR for Disney, right? So, keep in mind, at that point actually, I'd left the cream cheese job. And I'm working in a movie theater. I'm making $8.50 an hour. I got my side hustles. So, I see a job posting for A&R coordinator. Dan Levitt:I ping my roommate and I'm like, "Hey, do you know the recruiter for this gig?" And he did. It was someone he used to work closely with. So, I was able to customize my resume and it went directly to the recruiter from a friendly ... I remember the weekend I saw the job, I was in Chicago for a wedding. Dan Levitt:And I remember holding back my friend for an hour, so I could tweak it before we went and got pizza. I applied on a Friday. And then I got back and basically, I think that day, the recruiter called. I had a phone interview. And basically, the next Friday, I had a gig. Chris Erwin:Wow. That moved very fast in contrast to your other stuff. Dan Levitt:Unheard of for Disney. And the salary was in the mid-40s. Again, I had a Columbia Records gig, but it paid next to nothing. And now, I have an A&R job at Disney with a real fucking salary and amazing benefits, and it happened so quick. And I had been out here for five years grinding. Just grinding. Chris Erwin:Did you feel you had made it at that point, like, "I've made it. I'm here"? Dan Levitt:It wasn't that I made it. It was that I made it out of retail because to this day, I ... There's absolutely nothing wrong with working retail, I did it forever, but I don't want to do it again. I don't want to interact with the public. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how fast it happened. And just like that, my whole world changed. Dan Levitt:I was so appreciative and so thankful to have a gig that provided some stability that was in a industry that I wanted. You meet someone, you tell them you work for Disney, it changes the perception of you, right? And certainly for me, who'd been trying to get a real industry gig, it was fun to ... I knew that I had the chops, and it was finally someone recognizing it. Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you could give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody. Let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:After this, you end up going to, call it, the YouTube revolution of Big Frame. So, I'm just curious, while you're at Disney, was there anything about emerging media, digitally native artists that you were focused on during those four years? Trying to sense a through line here. Dan Levitt:After I left the Columbia Records gig or got let go, I saw these people who had these music blogs that were starting to go with their own reputations as tastemakers. So, I thought, "Oh, maybe I should do that for myself. Maybe instead of working for a record label and being a tastemaker, maybe I should do that on my own, with my blog or something." Dan Levitt:But I didn't really have the technical prowess to do the blog stuff. It seems like, "Oh, it should've been easy." Blogs and stuff were not easy back then. So actually, I started doing online video. I bought an HD camera. This must've been very early YouTube days. Dan Levitt:But I actually, with a buddy, recorded some HD music industry podcasts where we talked about music industry news and stuff. But I think I would post it on YouTube, but sadly and stupidly, because YouTube didn't monetize then, I put it on Revver where they did monetize. R-E-V-V-E-R was sort of a YouTube competitor at the time that did monetize. Dan Levitt:And I was like, "Oh, I want to make money doing this," so even though there's more audience on YouTube, I put it there. And nothing happened that I didn't ... It was hard relying on my buddy, who was great to schedule this. I didn't stick with it. So, I didn't stick with it. But I was doing it semi-consistently. Dan Levitt:But then when I got the Disney job, I asked if I could continue doing it, and they were like, "No, you're doing A&R for us. You obviously can't be talking about acts that aren't signed to Disney." So, I put that on the side and then I saw the early podcast boom. Dan Levitt:Again, I'm listening to Bill Simmons. I'm listening to Carolla. Saw the podcast thing happening. So, while I'm at Disney, especially I'm a couple year in, it was a decent job but my department is pretty strict. I wasn't given the freedom that you would think an A&R guy would have. It was a lot more administrative. Dan Levitt:It was a glorified assistant, right? It wasn't an A&R role. They truly did not care about my opinion for acts in my estimation, especially the label side. I worked for the publishing side. I tried to get in with the label guys and it didn't really work. Dan Levitt:A couple years in, I'm starting to think, "Okay, I got to get out of here." This was great, but I'm like, "I'm going to be a 30-year-old A&R guy who's never got anything signed. And if lose this gig ... " And again, this is the industry especially 2008, 2009, 2010, sales are going way down. Dan Levitt:This is when streaming is just starting. So, I'm trying to meet whoever I can, right? So actually, this is when SoundCloud first starts. I was up for a gig there. I had some friends record some messages recommending me. I had a great relationship of amazing songwriters and artists that I was an advocate for, that hadn't really made it or were just starting to. Dan Levitt:I tried to get at SongKit and all these things that were starting. I actually tried to get a job at Spotify. I'm actually one of the first 500 people in the US to have a Spotify account. I had an account for two years before it launched. Chris Erwin:I think what I'm hearing is that you've also applied to every single music company, I think, in the world by this point. Dan Levitt:Yeah, but especially the good ones, right? I loved what SoundCloud was doing. Really at the time, they were so innovative. And they were solving their big problem, which was hosting audio. The role that I wanted was helping artists get on the platform and figure stuff out. Dan Levitt:So, around that time, again, I always believed in YouTube. I was doing it for myself. And then obviously Justin Bieber broke. And I'm looking on YouTube and I'm seeing these kids who are doing mid-tempo acoustic ballads, because that's all they can do, because that's what you do when you start. Dan Levitt:But they were doing covers and building an audience. And I was like, "The originals aren't that good. And I know all these amazing songwriters and producers that right now getting cuts in a major label system, because it's a fixed game, because the heads of the A&R start separate publishing divisions. And those people get the singles." Dan Levitt:So, I was like, "What if I actually brought some artist development into this YouTuber space where these people have done the hardest part. They've built an audience,"
Damian Pelliccione — CEO of Revry on Launching a Queer TV Streamer, 4x Founder Diversity, and Grassroots Power
Jun 24 2021
Damian Pelliccione — CEO of Revry on Launching a Queer TV Streamer, 4x Founder Diversity, and Grassroots Power
Damian Pelliccione is the co-founder and CEO of Revry. We discuss saying no to his family cheese business, being an early expert in live video for car shows, launching the 1st Queer streamer network from his living room, how a delayed mortgage and the launch of QueerX festival almost bankrupt the company, the power of grassroots marketing during SF Pride, how diversity inclusion starts with ownership, and changing the narrative for the Queer community.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Damian Pelliccione:Cut to November, around Thanksgiving of 2015. I was playing a new Apple TV. You install it on your TV and you search for apps of apps that are of interest to you. I searched lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer. Nothing came up. I was like, ding. The light bulb went off. This is it. We're going to create the first LGBT streaming network. I had Alia, LaShawn, and Chris in my living. I said, "I have this idea. What do you guys think?" They were like, "Yeah, let's do it. We're all in." Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Damian Pelliccione, the co-founder and CEO of Revry. Damian was born in Canada, and since a young age had a passion for the creative arts. So he passed on taking over his family's large cheese and food distribution business, and moved to New York City to study acting and production. But after the tragic events of 9/11, Damian decided to move to LA and became an early mover and shaker in digital video. He did it all, from early web streaming and YouTube production, to producing live streams at car shows, and even running his own digital workshops. Chris Erwin:In 2015, Damian was sitting in his living room with three friends, frustrated by the fact that there wasn't any queer streamer apps on platforms like Apple TV or Amazon Prime, so he decided to change that and soon after launched the first 24/7 queer streamer network, Revry TV. Chris Erwin:Damian and I get into a lot of different things during our chat. Some highlights include how a delayed mortgage and the launch of the QueerX festival almost cost Damian the company, the wild success of grassroots marketing at San Francisco Pride, why Damian was such a standout at one of my executive dinners in LA, and changing the narrative for the queer community. Chris Erwin:All right, I'm pumped that we get to publish this episode during Pride month. Let's get to it. Chris Erwin:Damian, thanks for being on the podcast. Damian Pelliccione:Thanks so much, Chris, for having me. It's exciting to be here. Chris Erwin:Awesome. Let's rewind a bit. Why don't you tell me about where you grew up and what your household was like. Damian Pelliccione:Yeah, so I grew up actually in Canada. I'm from Toronto, a suburb of Toronto actually called Unionville, which is a small town, colonial, turn of the century, Victorian home that I grew up that was built in the later 1800s. It was a wonderful place to grow up because it was extremely multicultural. There was definitely not one of anything in terms of race and culture. Ironically enough, even though my family is extremely Italian, my father was actually born in Italy and immigrated at six years old to escape World War II. He was the youngest of six. Both my nonna and nonno, which is Italian for grandmother and grandfather- Chris Erwin:Oh, I'm Italian as well. Damian Pelliccione:Really? Chris Erwin:My mother was born in Italy, in Trieste, on what used to be the Yugoslavian border. I know nonna and pop pop. That's my grandparents. Damian Pelliccione:Parli Italiano? Chris Erwin:No. My mom spoke Italian growing up, and spoke it with my grandmother, but never taught the children. To this day, we always give my mom crap about that. Damian Pelliccione:[inaudible 00:03:33]. This is where my talking with my hands, that is completely my Italian [crosstalk 00:03:39]. Chris Erwin:It's all coming together now. Damian Pelliccione:All coming together, yeah. My family, my dad, was from [inaudible 00:03:46], which is in the [inaudible 00:03:49] province of Abruzzo. Unfortunately it was ravaged by a massive earthquake in the early 2000s. Since recovered, but we still have family there. I have cousins actually there. My dad... cross section of Damian is my dad was the entrepreneur in the family. Him and my uncle started the family business, which is huge in Canada. We're, I think in the top five biggest Italian cheese distributors to Canada. Chris Erwin:Wow. Damian Pelliccione:They obviously distribute to the United States as well. They built that from scratch, my dad and my uncle, and now all my cousins run the company. I had no interest in selling cheese. Chris Erwin:Was the opportunity was available to you and you were just like, "Ah, pass"? Damian Pelliccione:Of course. In a big Italian family, the opportunity was given to me and my sister. Both of us past. My sister, Kelly, was definitely going into a different sector than sales and cheese distribution. It's ironic, because I'm in distribution, but I'm more on the film and TV side of distribution, not the food side of distribution. Definitely was very inspired by my father, who was a tremendous salesman, and an entrepreneur who ran his own businesses and obviously started the big family business with my uncle. Damian Pelliccione:Then, ironically enough, my mother is also Italian, but she is third generation. Her and her parents were born in Canada. Her grandparents were born in Italy, a different part of Italy, too. Calabria, which is the heel of Italy, just across from Sicily. It's a little bit different in terms of Italian traditions between the two families, but obviously my mom and my dad are wonderful people. My mother was a politician. She was chairman of the Catholic school board. So was my father, actually, before my mother was. She ran the race relations committee in our city where we grew up. You can see, my mother was a politician, and my father, the entrepreneur, and out comes Damian. Chris Erwin:Yeah, I was going to say, I was like, it makes total sense because I think about, you're the ultimate showmen. You have incredible charisma. I remember that from when we first met at one of our executive dinners. Then the entrepreneurial bend, now I know where that comes from. Yeah, totally get it now. Damian Pelliccione:One of the biggest things, you know Toronto. Most of my family lives in Woodbridge, or Vaughan, which is extremely Italian, predominantly Italian. My mother and my father were very much, this is instilled in me and my sister growing up, about being respectful and understanding and learning about all races, religions, and cultures and walks of life. They chose Unionville, which is a part of town where it was very eclectic. I had friends from all over the world, whose families were immigrants from all over the world. I had so many different cultural upbringings. My parents even made me and my sister, even though I was raised Catholic... I'm not very practicing myself. I consider myself Agnostic, but made us go to all the different: Hindu, Jewish, Islam, all the different sects to see what that religion could provide. Chris Erwin:Would you actually go to their places of worship? Damian Pelliccione:Yeah. I went once or twice to multiple places of worship my mother would take me and my sister to because she wanted us to experience everybody. I think that is where, at least for me, it was instilled at a very young age, were authenticity, diversity, and inclusion, before it was even a thing. This is the late 80s, early 90s. I'm 40 years old now. That was always a part of my upbringing. I think it's ironic where you have a mother politician, father, entrepreneur, and very inclusive family in terms of how we were raised and outcomes Damian and Revry. Chris Erwin:Your mother was super ahead of the times giving you exposure to these different religions and different cultures early on. I get that. I see that as a seed for what you're doing for the overall queer community, trying to drive awareness and inclusion and change the message around queer culture. I think that's brilliant. Chris Erwin:I think that you are involved in the dramatic arts and the school for film and TV at an early age as well. Was this something that came out in your teen years, or before then? When did that start to be? Damian Pelliccione:I was a scene stealer before I was even five years old. I think my performance started at family functions where I have some cousins, and we're all born the same year. I would direct and create the family productions. The kids would get together and we would put on some kind of a show, where it was a musical number, a comedy, or whatever. We would perform for the whole family in the living room. I did this growing up, I think until the time I was 10 or 12 years old. We made that a fun family activity. Of course that led me into being an actor, and I started with community theater, just like anyone else does in Unionville or Markham, Ontario, where I'm from. Damian Pelliccione:From there, I auditioned for the Arts York program, which is part of Unionville High School. Unionville High School ironically enough had this arts program that was to take kids from all over the region, so not just by town, but other surrounding townships who specialize in music or dance, or visual arts, or drama. I was accepted to the drama program and had the most amazing inspirational teachers. These folks are still family members of mine. They inspired me in so many ways to stay in the arts and stay in drama. My passion when I was a teenager and into my early 20s was to be an actor. That's what led me to New York City. I got into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and graduated from that program in 2001. Damian Pelliccione:Then 9/11 happened, and I had already booked a gig in Los Angeles. I was going to do this actor showcase for agents and managers and casting directors. I had a really good friend, one of my good friends from high school, is Hayden Christiansen, who is, as you know, Darth Vader. Hayden, like, come to LA, you should come to LA. I came to LA. Did the showcase, stayed on his couch I think for one or two nights and at a hotel and with other friends. Before the end of the week, I had been booked. I had been booked on a short. Got a commercial agent, got a theatrical agent. Chris Erwin:Okay, interjection. Along this journey, was your family supportive, or were they increasingly questioning, like, Damian, we have ae family cheese business, why are you not involved? Everyone else is here, what are you doing? Damian Pelliccione:No, they've been supportive the whole way through of my career. I am very lucky and blessed. They've been supportive of me, as a queer man, and they also have been supportive of Chris and I, my partner. They've been extremely supportive of my career. They knew, I think, what they were getting into at an early age, that this was pathway, was to be in entertainment. They helped my entire journey, both financially... I was very lucky, and I'm blessed that I had that opportunity. And even my immigration to the United States, because remember, I'm not an American citizen. I am now. I only became an American citizen three years ago now. They have been extremely supportive of my career the entire time, and supporting me early on and when I was in college, obviously financially, and then also with my move to Los Angeles. And then from there, I did what every other actor does. I waited tables for probably almost 10 years. Chris Erwin:You're at Hayden Christiansen's, on his couch, and then all of a sudden you start getting booked. You get an agent, so you're like, okay, this is happening for me. My career is taking off, right? Damian Pelliccione:Here's what's funny. After I finished school in New York, which is a two year program at ADA, I made a deal with my parents. I had been accepted to Concordia University in Montreal for philosophy, which ironically enough I had failed in high school. I'm like this is kind of funny that they accepted me for philosophy. I packed up my apartment in New York. This is, again, a month after 9/11. The decision was if I don't book an agent or manager or things don't start to feel like they're going to pick up in Los Angeles, then I'll go to Montreal, and I'll tell the movers to take my stuff to Montreal, or take my stuff to Los Angeles. Damian Pelliccione:I got lucky. They took my stuff to Los Angeles, and that was October of 2001. It was a crazy time to be in Hollywood. It was an exciting time to be 20 years old and moving to LA, and just hitting the ground running. I think one of the biggest things is that I've always had commitment to everything that I do, good or bad. I think that that has been my greatest life lesson. It was an exciting time. It was back when there was still pilot season, and you test for pilots. I tested for a bunch of pilots, and back when the casting process wasn't about your Instagram influence or your Facebook, or your YouTube. It was well before all those times. It was the old school... I think I even still have my black and white, 8 x 10 head shots that they had from that era. It was an exciting time. Damian Pelliccione:Look, when you're 20 years old, and I was also coming out at the time as gay and queer, it was a great place to be for me, both professionally and socially. Chris Erwin:In terms of pursuing your career, where do you start to hone in, which is like okay, of all the different types of acting or genre or projects that I can do, where were you starting to lean into more? Damian Pelliccione:Like I was saying, my early 20s was all about acting. I auditioned for a bunch of things, worked with agencies. My biggest booking to date was the Gilmore Girls. I actually had one pretty big scene with Alexis Bledel, and a character whose name was Lance. It was season five. I still have... well people and friends and family who watch it on Netflix, marathon watch it. They're like, "Oh my God." They'll screenshot it with their phone and send me a text. I still get residual checks from that show, because it's such a legacy project, right? It was wonderful to do that. I had done a bunch of independent. I had done a bunch of commercials. I had a pretty decent resume as an actor, but then the writer's strike happened in 2009, and it changed. Damian Pelliccione:That's when there was a dramatic shift. My roommate at the time, Deanna Nicole Baxter, who is a true inspiration of mine, had started to create a web series. This is 2006. Remember for context, YouTube launched in 2005, 2006. Chris Erwin:Is this like lonelygirl around that time, too? Damian Pelliccione:Before. Chris Erwin:Before, wow. Damian Pelliccione:This is [inaudible 00:13:44] 88, which won the first daytime technical Emmy for best broadband drama. I saw Deanna do it, and I was completely inspired by her commitment for work and the team that she had. I was like, oh, she can do it, I can do it. I'm always inspired by other people. I surrounded myself with amazing like-minded friends who I still have today, who have always been supportive. We've always supported each other's work along the way. This is my chosen family, as we say in the gay community. It's also, we need to inspire each other to push ourselves to do more. Deanna was one of those, and still today, is a big inspiration for how I lead. Seeing her win the first ever Emmy, was, hey, if she can do it, I'm going to do it. I created a web series vehicle for myself, called Homolebrity. Chris Erwin:Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Homolebrity? Damian Pelliccione:Homolebrity, yeah. It's not a very PC name for today, but the idea was to play off the reality boom at the time, and queer celebrity and the reality boom. I remember I was pitching it to Logo, which had just launched as well in 2007 in hopes that we'd get our own TV deal. Bright eyes, big hopes. The whole thing was, regardless of it just going to the web, we did it. We did another one. We did a superhero fantasy show called [inaudible 00:15:04]. We just, I kept producing and producing and producing, and eventually I wasn't putting myself in it, because people are like, "Oh, you're a great producer." Chris Erwin:Were you self distributing, or were you distributing through third-parties? Damian Pelliccione:Oh yeah. No, we were self distributing, just like everybody else. You would call it, I guess user generated content, but we were doing it on a bigger scale and a lot more scripted. It was a really exciting time, and I just got really good at producing. Here's where the transition happened, and I transitioned out of being an actor and being a producer. I produced for other people, and more projects. Damian Pelliccione:I started our own little production company. I remember my first office, which is right at 5th and Spring, because I had a loft in downtown. This is now, cut to 2007-2008. I had a couple of friends. One was an editor and a shooter. The other one was a producer as well. We had this office that was 150 square feet, one room, [inaudible 00:15:58], and three desks. We were like, we're going to be a production company. We just started producing stuff. We produced things for broadband TV and we produced things for YouTube. Some of them we got paid for, and some of them we didn't. We produced Illeana Douglas with Easy to Assemble. I think it was her second or third season. It was a lot of folks who were, they saw and recognized our skillset for user generated content and specifically the web. That was our first office. Chris Erwin:You transitioned from an actor to a producer. Then you're having more and more projects. Some you're getting paid for. Where do you think this is headed? In this moment when you're like, I'm on my way to be a film producer. Damian Pelliccione:That was literally what I was thinking. I'm like, I'm on my way to be a film producer, and I love the journey, and I love production. Even just now, I produced something in house for us last week and every time I get to be on set it reminds me about my passion for even just being a producer and how much fun it is. Then afterwards, we did this for awhile and produced a whole bunch of work, a lot of editorial content, broadband TV, when broadband had been around different areas and different cities. Damian Pelliccione:You could bid for different stories or pitch them stories, very much like a newsroom. That was really exciting. We did a bunch of different op ed pieces and exciting pieces. We even, I remember covering the... this is so funny. I was covering Prop 8 in the 2008 elections, the proposition for equality marriage. There was this big rally in downtown Los Angeles, and it was a lot of Yes on 8, and for context, Yes on 8 was you're anti gay marriage. No on 8 was you're pro gay marriage. I was at a Yes on 8 rally, and I thought I was undercover. I was with my friend, Logan, who produced a show called The Yellow Mic. I was interviewing people and asking them questions about why are you voting yes, and tell us your theories, and collecting the other side of the story, which is really interesting. Damian Pelliccione:Then all of a sudden, the police are like, "We're going to put up blockades in the No on 8 people." They stopped the intersection and there was Yes on 8, No on 8 people across the aisle yelling and screaming and holding up their signage and marching. All of a sudden, Sacha Baren Cohen shows up. He did a film where he was the gay character. He shows up. No one knows who he is, and we were the only who had cameras. I'm like, "Oh my God, that's Sacha Baren Cohen." We got him doing it. We were the only ones with cameras. I remember the next morning we sold it to the news and TMZ. That was my foray into being a paparazzi, which was kind of exciting. It ran on, I think KTLA even and TMZ the next day. Chris Erwin:Oh wow. Where does this lead you, Damian? You're being opportunistic. What's the next major step as you're working your way to eventually be the founder of Revry? Damian Pelliccione:The next step was I worked at Dogma Studios, [inaudible 00:18:41] who was my CEO there saw something in me. Started producing a lot of great content, did stuff with Taylor Dane, Taylor [inaudible 00:18:48] who has since passed, and some great comedians. Dogma, of course, happened during the recession in 2009. I only got to be there for a year, and Scott cut our department. But Scott's like, "Hey, we have this great space. Do something with it." The next thing that I created was with Deanna, which was web TV workshop, which was literally, we're like, hey, what do people do in a recession? They go back to learning new skills. We created our own, tried to produce content for the web with an Emmy award winning actress, writer, director, Deanna Nicole Baxter, and Damian Pelliccione, entrepreneur and web producer as well. Chris Erwin:Was it an early master class, like you sold these as tutorial videos? Damian Pelliccione:Not even videos. We did videos a year later, but we were doing it brick and mortar, where on Tuesday nights every week, or Tuesday/Thursday nights, and we had [inaudible 00:19:36] speak and then [inaudible 00:19:38] speak. [inaudible 00:19:38] we had speakers... like lonelygirl from [inaudible 00:19:41]. Everybody, they all come and speak in the class and we would have different topics ranging from production, all the way to the distribution and understanding the technology and YouTube. It was an eight week course. We were packed. We were full. We did that for a year, and then we created an online version, which now you can still on [inaudible 00:19:58], which was shot, I think in 2000, oh my God, '10 or '11. They still use it on their website. Yeah, it was an exciting time, and that took us into technology. Damian Pelliccione:From there, just to bridge the gap to Revry, Deanna and I were approached an Israeli casting startup called Audish, which was a self casting website, because now we're going into the world of not having to do self casting, which is now the norm, and shooting yourself and making sure it's all final. I was head of business development and user experience. Deanna was head of sales and marketing. Chris Erwin:Is this the first time that you're working for somebody else, or a startup? Because before it's like these are your own projects. Damian Pelliccione:Yeah, Dogma was, they were more of a post house, and I worked for them. They were established. They were not a startup, but yes, this was the first time working for a startup. It was Audish. It was super fun. We'd work at the founder's house in West Hollywood in the Hills, and we were this small team. We just loved it. Then from there we got approached by another startup, which was kind of doing something similar, another Israeli casting startup called eTribez which still exists. Then from there, I got approached by Chevy and Cadillac to do auto shows, both domestic and abroad. In the auto shows I was doing, I was product present. They put me on stage on what those rotating stages to talk about the cars. Chris Erwin:How did they find you? How did Chevy and Cadillac say, "We think Damian's going to be a great showman to sell our cars?" How does that come to be? Damian Pelliccione:I had a friend who worked for the agency, and the agency saw some of my work and said, "Hey do you want to do this?" I'm like, "Hell yeah, I get to travel the country." It was good pay. Then through that work, I suggested, "Hey, you know what you should do? Put a camera up connected to your GM website." Then all of a sudden it became this whole big thing about streaming these presentations. I was the first one to suggest this. This is 2013. You got 250,000 people coming through the Chicago Auto Show or the Detroit Auto Show. Put a camera in front of it and show the rest of the world what's happening here. That was huge. Then from there, they sent me to Geneva. They're like, "Oh, can you go do this for Cadillac in Geneva?" I'm like, "Sure, yeah. Why not? I've never been to Switzerland." I did it for a year. It was really exciting. GM is super, super corporate. I'll leave it at that. Damian Pelliccione:Then I found myself back in startup. The startup that I ended up leaving GM and Cadillac for was a German streaming company called Make.TV. I promise, this is the last one before I get to Revry. I'm giving you my entire resume right now. Chris Erwin:No, it's a great story. Damian Pelliccione:Make.TV, which has since been acquired by LTM group, I was head of VD for North America. Then someone got pregnant in Germany and they get a four year option. They gave me Globe. During my time there, I created a partnership with YouTube Space LA in New York. I actually trained creators at Space LA and Space New York on how to use this proved technology. It was a proven vendor of YouTube on how to stream live, and using multi cam and all that great stuff. I really got my feet wet with SaaS, and SaaS tech ed. I knew everybody in the YouTube market, all the influencers, all the execs, all the players, all the Space people in New York and LA, even in Space Dubai and Space Japan. It was really cool. They sent me all over the world. I went to Dubai for [inaudible 00:23:08]. I went to Singapore for broadcast Asia. Of course I was always at IBC in Amsterdam. I always at NAB here in Vegas. I went to all the entertainment tech shows and met everybody, and really understood the technology in a way and where it was going. Damian Pelliccione:I did that with Make.TV up until 2016, so almost three years, two and a half years. Chris Erwin:Were you developing a relationship as, okay, Damian is one of the preeminent digital producers, also with a specialty in live streaming as well? That was the brand you were creating for yourself. Damian Pelliccione:And understanding the technology, first and foremost. Going to all these technical trade shows, you're in front of all the new SaaS tech players, which used to when you went to NAB, a small section of one of the convention room floors. Now it's multiple floors, because it's all software. It's no longer hardware. Software and SaaS obviously in streaming is so huge. We were very OG SaaS tech streaming technology. Definitely carved a space for my knowledge. I just love this stuff. It was combining my love of technology and producing and content and entertainment into distribution and understanding really the ins and outs of how technology effectuates the consumer experience, and how that was my vision of how that would shift. Of course all of the things I thought of back then are all now definitely coming true today, or are already at fruition. Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners. This is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody. Let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:Damian, I think next up is that you found Revry with three other co-founders. Tell me about that. Damian Pelliccione:Ironically enough, I was in Germany prepping for IBC in Amsterdam. I only speak a few words in German, and there's nothing to watch. There's not that much English content on TV that was in my hotel room. I watched the Apple broadcast every September, and then even when it was... before I'd even watch it every September when they had the new product launches with Steve Jobs, who's a hero of mine. Damian Pelliccione:I saw the announcement of the Apple TV, and specifically TV OS, the new operating system. I was like, wow, this is going to be huge. This is going to change TV. I see something here. I want to build something. I was inspired to do something. Of course, I didn't know what right away, right? It hadn't dawned on me. Damian Pelliccione:Cut to November, around Thanksgiving of 2015. When Chris, my partner, broke his iPhone, the glass on the iPhone. You used to go to the Apple store and they'd fix it there for you. Apple Care. I was playing a new Apple TV, and Alia, who is now my co-founder and our COO, she had gotten it in October when it came out. She's like, "It's super cool. You should get it. You should get it." Damian Pelliccione:I bought it, and you install it on your TV at home, and you search for apps, just like when you get an iPhone that's blank, of apps that are of interest to you. I searched lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer. Nothing came up. I was like, ding. The light bulb went off. I was like, this is it. We're going to create the first LGBTQ streaming network. I had Alia, LaShawn and Chris in my living. I said, "I have this idea. What do you guys think?" They were like, "Yeah, let's do it. We're all in." Chris Erwin:That just sounds so easy, because many people will say, "Oh yeah, I was recruiting them and they had different jobs, and someone just had a baby. They have financial obligations." But you guys, you're sitting in a room. You tell them the idea, and they're like, "Yeah, let's do it." Damian Pelliccione:I think everyone, besides... I'm just an entrepreneur who's crazy and has all the ideas. One of out of ten works. This is the one that's worked the biggest, in the biggest way. Alia wanted to be in entertainment. She was an attorney, went to law school with Chris. Her background is more small business and startup and employment law. I think she was over working at the firm she was at. Damian Pelliccione:LaShawn, besides being an Army veteran, woman of color like Alia, she is a graduate of the American Film Institute for editorial. She knows all the editorial, and she's our Chief Product Officer, is amazing at what she does in terms of spinning up channels. She was working on a freelance project, editing a film at the time. She was ready for the next big challenge. Damian Pelliccione:Chris, who was I think the most interesting story, he was the attorney for Shark Tank, and even worked on People's Choice awards. That was his biggest legal job. Prior to that he was at Original Productions doing a lot of the reality TV production contractions. When you're on a studio like that, it's not necessarily the most exciting thing. Depending on who your bosses were at the time... that's all I'm going to say about that. They're not necessarily the nicest people to work for. He was ready for a change. He's like, "This wasn't what I thought it was going to be." Damian Pelliccione:It's also difficult when I'm the one that's all over the place doing a whole bunch of different jobs. I'm like, "Let's quit both of our jobs, make no money for five years, and start this startup." Chris will tell you, it's the greatest decision he's ever made his entire life, the same with Alia and LaShawn. What we have built and what we have accomplished in five years consumer basing, this June, when we first started marketing our product at San Francisco Pride in 2016, drove ourselves up to SF, because gay capital of the world. Bigger Pride than Los Angeles, of course. We had a lot of friends up there that were going, so we're like why not? It's going to be a fun weekend. Self printed pink tshirts with a horrible old Revry logo on it. Giant postcard size fliers. I don't know why we thought that was a good idea. We hit the streets handing out the fliers. Chris Erwin:What were you promoting? Damian Pelliccione:Download our app, download our app, download our app. Just download our app and watch some great content. For those who you know, San Francisco, everyone parties in Delores Park on the Saturday before the Sunday of the parade. We were just walking through Delores Park handing out fliers with these hideous pink tshirts, fuchsia tshirts on with the Revry logo, old school Revry logo. People are like, "Oh, what street marketing team do you work for?" I'm like, "No, that's the CBO, that's the CPO, that's the COO. I'm the CEO." They're like, "What?" They're like, "You must really believe in what you do." I'm like, "No, we totally do." We were positing it on the porta potty stalls. We were trying to stick them up to walls and on posts. Damian Pelliccione:By the end of the weekend, we ended up getting booked on Oakland News. Two days later, San Francisco News. Bay Area News. Chris Erwin:What was the reception as you were telling people in the streets in Delores Park about Revry? Did they immediately get it? Were they confused? Damian Pelliccione:They got it, and they downloaded it, and they were watching stuff. They were subscribing. Again, this is the easiest sell, because it's queer capital of the world and San Francisco, tech capital of the world. They totally were in it to win it. I think they were just more astounded by our commitment, and that we're doing it in a very nontraditional, grassroots way. Damian Pelliccione:By the end of that weekend, had a friend of a friend of a friend who introduced us to Mac World. He was queer. He was a writer for Mac World. He's like, "I got to do a story on you." He did the interview that weekend. It didn't come out until about a month later, but once it was published, it was instantaneous downloads that rippled into 10 different languages and 100 different media publications, because Mac World is such a major player that we were the first LGBTQ TV OS app ever created for Apple TV. Damian Pelliccione:Even today, I will say we are bound to be featured again on IOS this next month in June. Everyone at Apple are big fans of Revry, and they keep featuring us, which I'm very happy about. I said it in this interview. If Tim Cook is listening, my ultimate dream is to have lunch with him in Cupertino at the Spaceship. I would fly up there in a heartbeat if he said yes. We'll see. You never know. Dream. Dream big. Chris Erwin:I think that's something I've seen in tracking your business over the last couple years since I first met you at that dinner, was that your resilience, persistence, and passion just always pays off. You've gotten a lot of nose in raising money and pitching partnerships, but then you call me three, six months later, and you're like, "I ended up getting that partnership. Yeah, we just got a check. Yeah, we just closed that round." Feels like the Tim Cook lunch in Cupertino is coming up. I'm excited to get that call from you. Damian Pelliccione:You'll be the first one to know, for sure. Chris Erwin:You mentioned that you launched QueerX in 2016. I want to hear about that, and then there's a pretty crazy moment in 2018 when you were running out of money. You had to do some unique financing structures to figure it out. Tell us about that. Damian Pelliccione:We're crazy. We launched two things at the same time. The former name of it was Out Web Fest. Then we rebranded to QueerX in 2019. We launched our own festival, kind of playing off the LGBT film festival circuit, but more focused on the short form side. Digital content, shorts, music videos, things that are typically not as publicized as feature films in the LGBTQ film festival consumer markets. Damian Pelliccione:We wanted to carve out that space and really highlight these new up and coming emerging voices. The big caveat to this was this is a great way to connect, create, an experiential event, create community, and also find content for Revry. At the end of the day, this is how we even seeded our application at the early stages, because folks were excited not to play in the festival. I would say about 50-60% were also excited to license us their content. It became a tool to curate content for our platform. Damian Pelliccione:Cut to 2018, an investor didn't write a check when we thought they were going to. That was going to be a thing that was going to float the festival. I was two weeks out from the festival, freaking out trying to figure out how to raise $10,000. I ended up getting a creative mortgage. I say that because it was a hard money loan, and not that it has interest... not terrible. I think at the time it was only 6%, but definitely- Chris Erwin:That's pretty good for hard money. Damian Pelliccione:Yeah, definitely on the high end, but because my credit wasn't the greatest, because when you start a business your finances drop a little bit. You're not making as much money. You're taking a pay cut. That was the only available loan to me, but I was able to close it quick enough to be able to float what we needed for the festival. I remember how stressful that was and tears and joy when it did all come through. That's I think the testament to our resilience. That's just one story. There's multiple stories on how... not to get too down in the weeds, but how anytime we were close, and this is any startup has this problem, running out of money or close to the end of your burn or your runway, and you're like, "Oh shit, when is the next check going to come in? Is that investor really going to come through the door and cross the line? Are we going to get the revenue we need?" These are the stressors of your first five years. Damian Pelliccione:Then eventually as time goes on and you sustain, you get... this becomes less and less of an issue. I can count at least two or three moments in time
Matthias Metternich — CEO of Art of Sport on Being a 5x Founder, Skincare for Athletes, and Pitching Kobe Bryant
Jun 3 2021
Matthias Metternich — CEO of Art of Sport on Being a 5x Founder, Skincare for Athletes, and Pitching Kobe Bryant
Matthias Matternich is the co-founder and CEO of Art of Sport. We discuss growing up as the son of a German ambassador, starting his first company at 14, when Brexit devalued his investment capital, selling women's smimwear, pitching Kobe Bryant, his 500 mile trek in the Alps, and redefining body and skincare for athletes. Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up. A podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Matthias Metternich:I remember Brian and I thinking, well, who represents the kind of tenacity, and focus, and mental and physical commitment to being the best version of yourself possible. Done so successfully that they've transcended their sport. And it really took us almost no time to say, well, that's Kobe Bryant. And we asked ourselves, "Do we think we could get him involved?" And our path took us to his door. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Matthias Metternich, the co-founder and CEO of Art of Sport. Matthias was born in Germany. And because his father was an ambassador, he had lived in nearly 10 different countries by his teens. And he began coding at age seven, and began pursuing it seriously a couple of years later while living in Mongolia, as it helped him pass the time during the harsh winters. Soon after Matthias' entrepreneurial streak kicked off. He started his first company at 14, and since then started over five businesses, ranging from women's swimwear and enterprise software to his current company, Art of Sport, where he's redefining body and skincare products for athletes. Chris Erwin:So this interview is a bit on the long side and covers more topics than most. It's because Matthias' intellect and passion is far reaching. We discuss why he's not a good video game developer. How the founder of MySpace became his mentor during undergrad, how Brexit devalued one of his companies, and what it was like to recruit basketball legend Kobe Bryant as a co-founder. All right, let's get into it. Let's rewind a bit. You had told me that you originally grew up in Germany. Tell me about that and your household. Matthias Metternich:I grew up in Germany until about the age of eight months. So it wasn't my whole life. It was a very short moment. I was born there and then my dad was in the foreign service. So every three years we would get posted somewhere else. And so, from the age of eight months onward until really, I mean, even to this point, I've been moving around the world every two to three years. So we moved to the Soviet Union and I lived in Leningrad, then we moved to Los Angeles, then we moved to Mongolia, then we moved to the Middle East. And so there's been a lot of transition in my life. So that was a very interesting experience, that was quite formative for me. Matthias Metternich:But went back to Germany for high school for about two or three years for boarding school. And then I continue to... I went back for college for a very brief period, and then always go back whenever I have time to see friends and family, but I'm a bit of a nomad. Chris Erwin:What was your father doing in the foreign service? Matthias Metternich:My dad was an ambassador. He represented the German government in different countries. So that meant that he would often be the man in charge to present German interests, build relationships politically, economically, drive through cultural agendas. And it was an interesting time because that was really... His formative years in the service were deep within the cold war era. So there was a lot of really exciting espionage, nuclear proliferation, all kinds of stuff like that is what I grew up with. And I do remember it was even a period where if your listeners remember their history, there was an east and west Germany for about 40 years. Matthias Metternich:And so east Germany had embassies in countries that west Germany didn't. But when the wall fell and east and west Germany came back together, my dad was responsible for actually going to these places in these countries that west Germany didn't have a political presence and taking over those embassies. So I remember a lot of the places I lived was right next to the "access of evil" types of Eastern Soviet bloc embassies, like North Korea and whatnot. And if I kicked the ball over the fence in the wrong way, there would be a military procession where they'd pass the soccer ball back to us. Chris Erwin:What a unique childhood. Now, did that peak your interest, and did you think about going into government or the foreign service? Matthias Metternich:So my family has been in the political arena for several hundred years, and there's a lot of tradition there that I think my father [inaudible 00:04:25] spouse. But I think he was actually quite remarkably aware of how the role was changing in a more and more connected world. And what does a public servant, government figure head do in a foreign country where now you have video conferencing, you're on a jet, you're there in a couple hours. So there's diminishing opportunities over time as we become more and more connected. And because of his role, he was also always interfacing with and exposing me to really remarkable walks of life, business people who are sometimes coming to China for the first time, like large industrialists, well-known household names who would be coming and stopping through the house and having dinner with us. Matthias Metternich:And you'd hear their stories about this global world that was changing and forming. And in that context of the diplomats role diminishing over time or sunsetting a little bit on golden era of what that diplomat would do. And I don't want to take anything away from those folks doing that. It's still a very important part of the civil society and political arena. But with that sunsetting and this coming online of this connected industrial world, for me as a kid, I saw very clearly the writing on the wall that committing my time to something that was sunsetting versus something I was actually passionate about, which was shaping the planet or trying to shape the planet in some way, that's where my future was. Chris Erwin:And so speaking to that theme, which I think also relates to the compression and changing of information cycles and dynamics, you mentioned that at a pretty early age you had bought your first computer or connected to the internet and you were coding very young? Matthias Metternich:Yes. Chris Erwin:When did that first happen? Did that start in Mongolia or another country? Matthias Metternich:It started in Los Angeles. My parents bought it, and I was about seven but really I appropriated it fully when I was nine. And we moved to Mongolia, and Mongolia as a really pretty horrible.... Really beautiful country, but it has a very harsh winter, which can last upwards of six months. And so when you're in a place like that, there's only so much your parents are willing to entertain you. I found a lot of entertainment from the computer, and folks in the embassy who knew their way around this. And there was one guy in particular who was a bit of a hacker gadgets guy. And so, he gave me a running start at it, but I taught myself how to code because I wanted to make games for myself. I had exhausted the two games that I had. Matthias Metternich:And that took me on a journey into figuring out how to connect to the internet, talking to people all over the world at a time when very few adults knew how to do this. I felt incredibly empowered. And then I had the tools to come up with ideas and articulate those using code and using design. And I realized very quickly that my video games were pretty shitty because I was actually not a very good storyteller, but I was good at some of the code. And that's where I started to lose myself in the world of storytelling, and design, and empathy, and understanding what connects with people and why people get inspired or sad or happy or excited. And I tried to weave that into my games. Matthias Metternich:So in a way it was a little bit of a workshop for me. I was a craftsman honing my own craft at my own pace with the world's information, gradually coming online and being available online for me to learn from other people. It was a really powerful period for me. Chris Erwin:This reminds me of another interview that we did on the show with Christian Baesler, who is the president of Complex Networks. He was born, I think, in the late '80s in Germany. So there must be something in the water there, because he also began coding at a very young age himself, or his uncle had bought him a computer. I think he was born within a month of the Berlin Wall coming down. And he was in a small town, and he felt the need that through his computer he can express himself through coding, developing games, and also through the internet, connecting with people that were outside of his community, craving that need for connection and new information and exposure. Matthias Metternich:Yeah. Very similar stories. Chris Erwin:After this, you then go and you do your undergrad, and that's at... Did you say UCLA? Matthias Metternich:Yes, that's right. Chris Erwin:You do your undergrad at UCLA. And what's going through your mind while you're there in terms of fast forward, you clearly have a very impressive entrepreneurial career, which leads to founding Art of Sport a few years back. Was this in your mindset when you were going through undergrad as well? Matthias Metternich:Yeah. So I started my first company when I was about 14 years old, and it was out of necessity. It was really not necessarily... I mean, I always had an entrepreneurial bent. I was intrigued by money, but it wasn't a means to an end for me. But the idea of having something that someone wanted and being able to charge for it, was an interesting idea to me. And I remember, I mean, my first businesses were trying to sell my video games, and then it was actually building out a bigger video game library, where back in the day, it was fairly easy to just copy CD ROMs and sell those. And that was illegal obviously. But buying a video game for $35 and then selling a piecemeal for $5 a pop to a 100 kids was pretty lucrative. Matthias Metternich:It then snowballed into my first formal business, where I refurbished and sold computers in bulk to schools and to small businesses. And I would have ongoing service contracts where I would keep them updated, and fix those computers. And it was a really, actually pretty easy job for a kid in high school. And the pocket money was really good. Chris Erwin:Wait, so I have to pause there. So did you have a team that was helping you to do this or was it all by yourself? Matthias Metternich:It was all by myself. I didn't have a driver's license. So I would have to ask older friend in high school if they could drive the computers around in bands and stuff like that to get places. But I never employed anybody. It was just myself. And then I was part of the Computer Lab Society and whatnot. And there were folks there that were just excited to help. And I also was on the basketball team. So I sold these computers to the schools I was playing against. And so, sometimes I'll try to put the computers on the team basketball bus and transport them that way. But no, it was a great to work. It was a great way to learn. And then that's snowballed into one day walking down to my local staples and I needed business cards. Matthias Metternich:I realized I needed to have some way for people to call me. And so my parents were kind enough to have set up a dedicated line in my room. And so I went down to staples and had these business cards printed, and I didn't have that much money. And there was this offer, I think, for small businesses for 10,000 business cards or whatever for $100. It was a special or something like that. But you had to let them put the staples logo on the back of the card. And it was essentially their version of us know co-marketing that day. And I took it because it was the cheaper route. But then when I started putting those through mailboxes and small businesses to help them build websites and stuff, people thought I worked for staples and they actually called me back. They called me back probably at a higher rate than if I didn't have the staples logo on the card. Chris Erwin:That logo gave you legitimacy. Matthias Metternich:Gave me a legitimacy. And because I was doing so much of this remotely, they very rarely... Fortunately puberty hit me when I was about 14. So I had a voice that occasionally cracked, but sounded a little older, and they had no idea who they were working with. So I then started building websites. And by the time I got to college long way of telling you... Long story here, but by the time I got to college, I had a few businesses under my belt that I was running. I felt it was the most empowering and exhilarating experience. I had done lots of mixed media things, where I tried to make music, and produce music, and made websites, and build computers, and tried build apps. Matthias Metternich:And so, for me, it was very strange to think of studying something to go within into a function, into a single domain, or expertise, or functional expertise, or focus, when I was already relatively fluent. I'll be amateurish across all these different buckets that I felt were... When you paired my experience back to how that manifested within academia, those were all separate degrees and people were studying those things separately. So, I fell out of water. I felt weird about what I was doing in college. I felt like a complete fish out of water also just culturally. It was tough for me to connect with kids who had probably mostly grown up in the same town or same city, and were going to college in their same city. And I started another company while I was in college. So to answer your question, yeah, the intention was always to build businesses, but never just to build businesses. It was because I loved the process of making things and seeing opportunities, and asking myself questions about where the world was going, and then try and articulate those. Chris Erwin:Wow! So when you say that you had fluency in a lot of different, call it the capacities and how you build a business and how you run a business, and that you felt that those were modularized when you were in undergrad and that's not how you looked at it. What did you perceive as those core competencies that you had already figured out by your undergrad years? Matthias Metternich:I don't want to overstate it. I mean, I still knew nothing about very much of anything, and probably still don't know anything about anything. Chris Erwin:Beginner's mind is a good place to be. Matthias Metternich:Yeah, absolutely. But look, this was still a time in an era where somebody who could use Photoshop fluently and design something leaks ahead of entire digital agencies that were just starting to become proficient in digital stuff. I mean, this was 2004. And so, I don't want to overstate my skills, but by that point I was fluent in Excel, and basic financial modeling, building up PnL, and managing that, and forecasting and that sort of stuff, pretty rudimentary arithmetic. I was fluent in designing things, both physical and not structural design, but physical media billboards, or postcards, or whatever else. I was packaging and so on. Matthias Metternich:I was pretty fluent in designing digital products, whether those were app style products or just informational websites. I've had experience copywriting and telling stories that I thought could lead to consumers clicking on things, and seeing things. So I had some proximity to search and search optimization. I was fluent a little bit in having talked to people who were open to putting some money into my projects, which at the time I wasn't really familiar with institutional capital, institutional investors, or even angel investors, but I understood what that- Chris Erwin:You had bootstrapped everything yourself to dig, right? Matthias Metternich:... totally. Yeah. Bootstrapped, but also with the luxury of safety net for my parents. I wasn't paying rent. So, it was the best time to be trying things, because I still was fed at the end of the day. And so, when I looked at college, it was a case of saying, okay. Well, there's, there's an accounting degree, there's an economics degree, there's a bit poly-psy, which I felt like I had from home. There's the design school. Okay. That seems pretty limited. And where does that lead from a career perspective? And then none of those things had really tentacles that led out of the institution into the real world. Matthias Metternich:So all these kids were studying this thing within this echo chamber and then going to a job fair. And I just thought that seems so backwards. You'd want to accelerate your craft and accelerate your learning into something actually relevant in the real world. Those things shouldn't be distinct, where there's a learning center and then there's the real world. Those things are probably the same space. And there's no reason why you can't learn on the job. Chris Erwin:And speaking of reaching your tentacles out into the real world, is this around the same time when you sneak into, I think a speaking event of the founder of MySpace, Brett Brewer? Matthias Metternich:Yeah, it was. It was actually my... I want to say it was my sophomore year. And UCLA business school, these are young executives or corporate leaders coming back to get their MBAs. And here is this 19 year old kid who's loitering around their departments and walking into the buildings, and just walking into different classes. And there was a business plan competition for its students. I think the best business plan was going to get $10,000 or something like that. And I went around asking different MBA students if they'd be willing to let me join their team, because I personally couldn't really apply myself to this. I wasn't a bit in the business school. So I could be part of a team, but I couldn't be leading it. And two guys were kind enough to take me on. Matthias Metternich:And basically then I worked with them to come up with a business plan and design the deck, and do the financials, and do it all with them. And during one of the mentor classes, Brett Brewer was speaking. I'd snuck in to attend this. Again, I'm never really allowed to be present in these spaces as an undergrad. And Brett Brewer was standing on stage and he was being interviewed, and he went to UCLA as an undergrad. And the moderator said, "Tell us about your college experience." And he said, "I snuck into the business school as an undergrad. I met somebody who was talking on stage and that person was able to help me enter into the internet space as I was running a company from my dorm room." And of course that spoke to me perfectly, because that was me. Matthias Metternich:And I felt almost like he was talking to me and inviting me to come talk to him, which I did afterwards. And I walked up to him and I told him this, and he was incredibly gracious. And I bumped into him since a few times and I never let him forget it. But he was my first real person that had built internet companies, built successful internet companies, embodied in a person, and was willing to talk about the inner workings of the tech industry. And at a time when very few people were trying to be tech entrepreneurs. Now every day there's a new startup. But then it was really hard to get an understanding of, how do I enter this space? Who are the players? What are the rules of the game? How does it actually work? Matthias Metternich:And at least what he did was, he looked at my business plan and I showed him the products, and he saw talent and he made introductions. And he made some introductions to some very interesting people who have become tech Titans and were tech Titans then, and have continued to be tech Titans now. But that was one of the most formative moments for me, where it was really a validation of, okay, someone great things that I can play ball. And I felt like I had been basically recruited onto a team. I wasn't a starter, but I had at least made it into the NBA. And the question was like, what do I do with this? Chris Erwin:My next question is, so you graduate from UCLA. And in terms of your next step, was it directly inspired or related to your relationship with Brett or something else? Matthias Metternich:I wouldn't say it was directly inspired. What I was doing in college, my company was essentially a creative digital agency. But I only did that so that it could cash flow into my real passion, which was to incubate our own products. And I did that because I didn't really want to be dependent on outside capital and raising capital. And I wanted to actually have good bread and butter work coming in, people getting paid, and then use whatever leftover cash to come up with our own products that we owned entirely and can scale maybe into an internet company. And that was the real business model. And in a way, because of my proximity or at least my exposure to Brett and his way of thinking, and then all these other folks. I don't want to overstate the relationship at the time, but definitely he was an inspiring figure locally. I continued to build this agency with an aim to try and launch new products. Matthias Metternich:And right at the time I was graduating, there was an opportune time for me to exit the agency and sell it to my partners. But also I had heard of a couple of agencies in London that were really remarkable working with really big clients, and were the ideas of the digital arena. These think tanks that were also creative. They knew about marketing, but they were also about creating valuable products and services. And these were bigger agencies. And I hadn't really realized there were big agencies doing this. And so I decided to move to London and joined those firms, and then start firms like that with them. And so that gave me exposure to a ton of global brands and really big brands and exciting big projects that I would have never ever done in my small studio. But I was serving global clients very quickly at a young age, working on some very challenging and complicated platforms and services and products across insurance, across consumer goods, across whatever it was. And so I had some really remarkable opportunities in that context. Chris Erwin:I think that your agency/incubator was called Popsicle Vision. Matthias Metternich:That's right. Chris Erwin:And so did you end up selling it to a London-based incubator? Matthias Metternich:No, I didn't. I sold it to my local partners in California, and then I moved to London to join this firm. Chris Erwin:You move to London, you kick off this journey. Is this your first career moment where you're actually working for someone else? Matthias Metternich:Yeah. Chris Erwin:It's not a business that you had founded? Matthias Metternich:Yes. That was the first time working for someone else. And I had the opportunity to sit down with the partners of this firm, and they had no idea what to do with me. And I had no idea what I was going to do there. And credit to them they said, "Well, why don't you just hop a board and see what happens? And you can help us with the business and help us think about building the business because we're also stuck serving all these clients. Maybe you can pull out to [inaudible 00:21:24] and help us understand what services we're offering, what should we should be doing more of, whether it's intellectual property that we could maybe build out." And I was thinking very much from Silicon valley startups, building tech companies, building products and services. And these guys didn't really have proximity to that in London. Matthias Metternich:I was put in a role that was very fluid and they gave me a lot of runway to do whatever I wanted. To the extent that one day I got a call, and I could barely understand. It was a very thick accent. And I hung up a few times, and they kept calling back, until they finally said, "Hey, we're a publicly listed $10 plus billion telecoms company based in Istanbul. And we'd like to fly you out to Istanbul." And I looked over at one of the partners and I said, "I think I'm going to go down in Istanbul and talk to these guys. I have no idea who they are, what they want, but it sounds fun." And I got on a plane and I went down there. And sure enough, it was the biggest company in Turkey, 90 million plus subscribers. Matthias Metternich:It's Turkcell, it's the largest telco company down there, huge offices, beautiful offices, huge budgets, massive projects, total desire to transform their organization, build all these new products and services, and no real domestic talents, no real Turkey based agencies, able to pull any of this stuff off. And so there I was feeling like a kid in a candy shop, and also feeling really comfortable in that environment, having lived in all these different countries, where I basically called the partners back in London and I said, "I'd like to build the agency here. We'll share the business. And I'll drive business back into London. I'll use the portfolio and we'll see where it takes us." That was a chapter that moved me from London to Istanbul. Chris Erwin:So I have to ask Matthias, if I'm following your timeline right, you're right out of undergrad call in your early 20s, maybe mid 20s max? Matthias Metternich:Yeah. Chris Erwin:I assume that in the London office, looking around the different cubicles, you have people that are right out of undergrad analysts, junior level, and you're getting calls from major executives in Turkey that are then flying you out. So it feels like your role is more like that of a partner. Is that what it felt like to you and did that felt natural? Matthias Metternich:100%. Totally felt national. It wasn't pretentious on my part. It was just that I also wasn't... In some cases I was noticing these junior staffers or mid-level staffers were vastly more proficient in the one skill they'd been honing for years. So I wasn't going to compete with them. And also I didn't want to compete with them because I wasn't wanting to work within that silo. And I didn't see myself progressing from a junior level person to a mid-level person, to a senior level person within that function. And then maybe get into graduate into the executive suite that never really made sense for me, because I was perfectly proficient by that point to speak relatively fluently with partners about some of the actual business challenges and some of the business logic, and what we should be going after or not going after. Matthias Metternich:And so, when you're in that growth mindset of making things and creating things that isn't limited by the bread and butter of what you already do, then you'd just by definition, get to live at a more fluid state. And by the way, it wasn't just me being exceptional or anything like that. Consultants have the same privilege. There are a lot of second or third year analysts out of college who work at McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group who have exactly the same experience. Because that's what they do. They get to parachute into an organization and work with the senior leadership on what the future should look like. So it was unique to me, but I was doing it within a function that wasn't necessarily the big four cost and consulting or McKinsey type places. Chris Erwin:I think you assumed this consultant advisory role for around five years after undergrad, before you returned to the US. Is it true that you bounced around to a few different companies? And I'm probably pronouncing this wrong, but Poke MEA and a global partner at Aqua. Matthias Metternich:Yeah. AKQA. Chris Erwin:Okay. AKQA. Matthias Metternich:Yeah. So these are two of the sort of leading digital transformation agencies. And I worked with clients across the gamut of industries. But when I was sort of tired of doing that because we sold the agency to publicists and then AKQA had been sold to WPP, I wanted to go back to building products cause that's what I was doing, advising clients, that's what I was helping them think about. So I wanted to go back to building my own company. So I started an enterprise software company that was backed by a bunch of venture capital funds in London, and spent three years building that. And that was an enterprise software business in the FinTech and marketing automation space. Chris Erwin:And what was the name of that company? Was that Believe.in? Matthias Metternich:Yeah, that's Believe.in. Chris Erwin:I look at what you're doing now at Art of Sport, which is you're disrupting the body and skincare industry. And there's also a major intersection of media around the talent network that you're building out, very different from enterprise software. So was your heart in this product that you had created back then or, hey, you perceived opportunity, you had a unique set of skills. There was a moment in time.? Or was it something that you were generally very passionate and interested in as well? Matthias Metternich:I can be very quick to fall in love with opportunities that don't exist in the white space. And so because I think the world of having built different things in the fluid nature of digital businesses and products and servicing all these different clients, and some might have been banks, or insurance companies, or race teams, or Skype, or [inaudible 00:26:37], seeing all these different types of companies, I think you come away with an appreciation for different types of businesses, at least a fidelity of understanding what the rules of the game are within those different verticals. Matthias Metternich:So when you see, hey, I can bring this design thinking, or this distribution differentiation, or this ability to scale to something that hasn't been done before, I tend to fall madly in love with those. So I love B2B businesses, I love B2C businesses. But with Art of Sport, it was a very clear white space to go after, creating the first sports brand to define application what you put on your skin every day. And so I took inspiration from Nike, and Nike did that for decades with what you wear. Gatorade did that for decades with what you drink and defined what that should look like. And really built a team that was focused on the athlete and creating real cultural residence, but no one had ever done it in the skincare space. Matthias Metternich:And I felt that was a huge opportunity having played sports my whole life, and knowing the category, knowing very well that consumer who chooses a brand tends to stick with that brand for decades. And that to me, was a very powerful opportunity to not just define what the Nike of skincare should look like, but also have that proximity to a consumer who applies this to their skin every day for the rest of their lives. Chris Erwin:And before we go deeper into art of sport, actually want to go back to when I think it was the early days when you were actually really interested in the intersection of culture and commerce. You had founded, I think a digitally native brand called COCODUNE back in 2014. What's the story behind that? Because I felt like that kicked off your artist sport journey in a way. Matthias Metternich:It did. I mean, it transitioned me back to the United States and I saw an opportunity where I want him to get in on the e-commerce game. And what I liked about e-commerce compared to software was, I liked the idea of a physical asset. And I liked understanding the balance sheet from the perspective of future earnings and lifetime value of consumers to individual one-off orders, where you're selling a product, and you're making it for X and you're selling it for Y, and you have the potential to scale that business off of that model. And so I was very intrigued by the fundamentals of e-commerce. I was very intrigued by what I was seeing in the social media space. And I was interested about every product having its own set of variables that expresses what I call the physics of that opportunity. Matthias Metternich:So certain products weigh a certain amount, certain products you can sell for a certain amount, because there's ambiguity about the actual cost of making them. Certain products are hard to shop for in the real world, therefore they're more suited to online. Certain products haven't seen a lot of innovation. So there's a lot of really interesting questions to be asked about a category. And I honed in on what I thought was a very interesting one, which was swimwear for women. And it sounds crazy. And I certainly had a lot of people in my world who thought I was crazy going from all the things I was doing before to bikini's. But there was something really interesting in the fact that, okay, this is a product that weighs almost nothing. It's a product that sold for 350, sometimes, dollars. It costs about between six and $10 to make. Matthias Metternich:And paradoxically, the less fabric there is the more expensive these products are. There were all these friction points that I saw, plus all of these variables within swimwear that I thought, "Hey, this might lend itself very well to be commerce, especially if we can predict the integrate, especially if we can create a really seamless experience for the consumer trying this product on at home, free shipping and free returns. Maybe we send them a several sizes so that they can find their size without friction, and they could send back what they don't like, because there's that lower weight." And so therefore the shipping rates aren't going to necessarily be arbitrarily that much higher or lower, depending on if we send them actually more inventory, we can always bill them retroactively. In some cases. Chris Erwin:That's like the Warby Parker model in a bit. Matthias Metternich:Exactly like the Warby Parker model, except with eyewear you choose one model and you stick with that. You don't really explore things. But with fashion, you might go with the polka dot one, you might want the black top, and you might also want the striped one, and you might want this color, and so on. So there was a lot of opportunity for cross and lateral selling. We also were making silhouettes that were sometimes very fashioned bourbon. And then sometimes we were making them a little bit more sporty. And people who are swimming or going on holiday, in some cases, were buying four or five, six, seven, eight, nine pairs of swimwear, and then those fade, and then you buy them again for the next season. Matthias Metternich:And so, there was a very rationalized construct behind why I did this. And one thing that I had learned from that business that was so interesting was, one, people buying things online and what triggers them. But two, we had a, surprisingly, very successful offline business through wholesale. And I remembered we had these two young women who were hosting a pop-up in Nantucket of all places. And they have this tiny little store, and they asked if we could send some product. We sent product, and the next day it was gone, sold out. And then we sold more and it sold out. We sold more, it sold out. And we were doing tens of thousands of dollars for this one, tiny little pop-up in Nantucket. Matthias Metternich:And I remember thinking to myself, this is actually putting some burden on our inventories, it's annoying actually. I mean, it's great that we're getting this revenue, but we're trying to build an e-commerce business. And I remember ignoring the wholesale business. And I remember thinking to myself, the offline business is not what I want to be building because I was buying into this mantra that it was all about pixels and not bricks. And have everything centralized in the warehouse, low cost of operations, warehouse vertically integrated and ship it. Have those DTC metrics really prove out because you can scale it into a unicorn. Matthias Metternich:And I was never delusional enough to think that I was going to be as big as Warby Parker, but I did remember hearing that Victoria secret had a $500 million swimsuit business, and they were discontinuing swimwear. And I thought to myself, there's a big of an opportunity to get something like this to 100 or 200 million revenue, except I can't get distracted by wholesale. And so I remember as we started to try and rationalize the business and figure this business out, we neglected the wholesale business. We also found that the cost of acquisition was creeping up because social channels are really saturated and becoming more and more saturated. And so we ended up leaving that business where we were selling it for... We sold it for parts. We had different types of attributes and assets that were interesting to a different parties in different ways. Matthias Metternich:And that's how we moved off of that business. And it was also an interesting time not to get too lost in the weeds here, but I raised a bunch of capital from fashion and tech investors in London because I had been in London and I was operating out of California. And my capital was partly held up in pounds, in British pounds, Sterling. And when Brexit happened, the pound massively devalued against the dollar. Part of the reason we ended up selling it for parts is because we were in a position where an enormous amount of our runway basically disappeared overnight with the de-valuing of the British pound when Brexit happened. Chris
Kevin Jones — Founder of Blue Wire on Getting Fired for a 49ers Tweet, $3.5M from WynnBet, and the Future of Sports Podcasts
May 6 2021
Kevin Jones — Founder of Blue Wire on Getting Fired for a 49ers Tweet, $3.5M from WynnBet, and the Future of Sports Podcasts
Kevin Jones is the founder and CEO of Blue Wire. We discuss getting fired over a 49ers Tweet, when it makes sense to be a bad Facebook employee, why 500 Startups first turned him down, his groundbreaking new WynnBet partnership, and why Kevin wants to be the Ted Turner of this generation.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up. A podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Kevin Jones:What once was a prestigious job at a radio station is now not. They don't develop young talent and it really came to a head for me in San Francisco. They have not developed young personalities the last 10 to 15 years, everyone there who has a show is in their 50s or above. A year in, I realized there's no chance of ever getting a show here. The culture is so backwards. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Kevin Jones, the founder and CEO of Blue Wire. Kevin grew up in Virginia, about 30 minutes outside D.C. in a family that lived and breathed sports. From a very early age, Kevin was known for having a very distinct point of view about the teams that he followed and cared about and became a regular caller into radio stations at just 15 years old. Naturally after undergrad, Kevin goes into sports media and builds a large Twitter and podcast following. But Kevin kept butting heads with ownership, as he felt that young talent who are defining the future of sports media coverage are not listened to nor supported. He decided to do something about it and launch Blue Wire. One of the most exciting modern sports media companies up today.Kevin has an insane amount of stories. A few we'll get into include getting fired over a tweet about the 49ers. When it makes sense to be a bad Facebook employee, why 500 Startups first turned him down, his groundbreaking new WynnBet partnership, and why Kevin wants to be the Ted Turner of this generation. All right, let's get into it. Kevin, tell me where you grew up. Kevin Jones:Chris, I grew up in Chantilly, Virginia, about 30 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. and then 10 minutes from Dallas airport. I was lucky to grow up in a diverse area, Northern Virginia, heavily populated with just diversity. Honestly, I went to college in North Carolina, at East Carolina, where it was really all white people and black people. And now looking back, growing up in Northern Virginia, it was a really eclectic place to grow up, close to the government, lots of just different types of people. So super fortunate to grow up in Chantilly. Chantilly Charger, that's that's my high school. So shout out to the Chargers. Chris Erwin:How many people were in your town? Was it a few thousand or bigger than that? Kevin Jones:40,000. It's a nice little suburb for sure. My high school had 3,500 kids graduating class of like, 800, 900 kids. It's a healthy suburb, Fairfax County, huge school district in Northern Virginia. It's a nice place to grow up for sure. Chris Erwin:Is that considered part of Appalachia? Kevin Jones:No. We're basically D.C. It's the suburbs of D.C. Chris Erwin:Got it. What was your household like in terms of where you grew up? Kevin Jones:I would say sports was very center to my life. My parents would put the Washington Post sports section in front of my breakfast every morning, where I read Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, before they became TV hosts. Watching what was then the Redskins and the Wizards and the Baltimore Orioles before the Nationals arrived. Caps was never a big thing till Ovechkin came, but they were always around. And then there was D.C. United winning. Chris Erwin:You said Caps. You have to excuse my limited sports knowledge, who are the Caps? Kevin Jones:Washington Capitals. We name our teams, Caps, Wizz, Nets. We keep it short. I think that's because like CIA, DEA. I think we're used to just abbreviating everything, being close to the government. All the parents jobs are like, not mine specifically, but friends growing up were in the government. I was a news junkie as a little kid in a bizarre way. My parents, our daycare provider, I had a separate room upstairs. I would bring video tapes of the Masters. I would rewash games of the Redskin season, NFL films. I did their yearly yearbook. The sports obsession was really real as a young kid. I loved information. I loved new information, having information, sharing information with adults about sports. And so I always knew I would end up in sports. Kevin Jones:It always felt I was operating at a high level, consuming that information, sharing that information, whether it was newspapers with friends, et cetera. Chris Erwin:You said your parents were also really into sports. Did you guys watch a lot of games together? Kevin Jones:Yeah. I would say for sure. Redskins was number one in my house. My dad grew up in a nearby town, went to the Superbowl, the first one the Redskins one in 83 in Pasadena, flew himself out there as a young man. The Redskins won three super bowls in the 80, and that culture was really instilled in kids my age. Redskins fandom, even though it's really tailed off, the organization's poorly run by Dan Snyder now. That was the highlight from September to January, every Sunday, making feast and watching the game, analyzing the game, thinking about the game afterwards. I felt like I was recording a podcast with my dad and my friends all the time, looking back on it. But I think baseball was huge for me. Cal Ripken was a big figure and then I played basketball. It was probably my best sport. So always had the Wizards on too. Chris Erwin:It seems that was the next logical question, is like, did you participate in these sports as well? Or did you more enjoy observing the commentary, the stories around it? Kevin Jones:Wasn't the most athletic, was definitely one of the most passionate. Anyone listening, I compare myself on the basketball court to maybe a Joakim Noah, clapping a lot, I'm talking a lot of crap. Definitely not the most athletic, getting a lot of rebounds, definitely tall. I was shy, I didn't try out for the team. I didn't want to get cut. I played in the youth league. We had a really competitive youth league. My team won the championship. I won the MVP. I regret looking back now as a 30 year old, should have probably tried out for the high school team. I was the captain of the stands, we treated our stands like it was Duke, we have the fingers in front. We were trying to be the Cameron crazies. We called ourselves the Purple Platoon. Our high school had the colors purple. Kevin Jones:I really actually leaned into that. I became the student government association president, really got the buy in from the community and it was a tough place to play, Chantilly for basketball and really wanted to own that. I play softball and I'm still competitive, but now getting that competitive outlet through my business, Blue Wire. Chris Erwin:I like how you said captain of the stands. I haven't heard that before. And then that's a logical segue, grassroots, man of the people going into student government president. I see it. Kevin Jones:100%, One by one, getting people to buy in. This is how serious I took it in high school. I would stand in the middle of the stands, not the front where all the seniors would be in the front. I would make sure the sophomores and freshmen were cheering as loud as they could. I always took this onus of being the group's leader for sure. Chris Erwin:You're like a hype man, right? Before a comic comes out on stage. Every CEO is a hype man for the company and team and mission. Kevin Jones:100%. I compare Blue Wire to, it's 1995 and I'm a rapper in New York on the streets handing out CDs. I'm definitely that hype man. Chris Erwin:That's awesome. You had also mentioned that in your teenage years, I think your radio personality started to come out. You were calling into radio stations to talk about sports. Right? Kevin Jones:Definitely. The sports junkies gave me a little bit of a platform as I was just starting to get my feet, high school summers home from college. I was writing some articles, at the time RG3 was getting big. They would let me call in even for 10 minutes at a time here, instead of just the typical, all right, let's go to Kevin and Chantilly. It was like, all right, coming up next, we've got Kevin Jones, up and coming blogger, D.C. young guy, follow this guy. Some of it was late at night. I think that's when I realized, wait a second, people are listening to what I have to say. I'm saying some different things. Then I started naturally gravitating. Okay. How can I start building my own voice within media? I think this is possible. Chris Erwin:Wow. So you were becoming a known personality. You were not just a one-time caller. Kevin Jones:I would say I turned that into a job at my first role at WUSA9, they had heard of me. I had a few thousand Twitter followers, mingling with the radio host on Twitter. This was 2010. Twitter was very nascent and young, but it was gravitating towards that platform. Wait a second, the radio show doesn't end. I can actually message the host right now, directly, we're texting. And so that kind of phenomenon, I really leaned into Twitter and WUSA9, who was a CBS connect affiliate at the time in D.C. I became the high school sports producer there. They were like, all right, we see you, Kevin, you're making noise. Here's a way in the door. We need you Friday and Saturday nights to work at the station. These high school coaches are going to be calling in or texting, here's the scores. Here are some of the stats. People are going to be feeding random video clips in, you got to help us put this together. Kevin Jones:That was my first getting thrown into the fire. I knew I wanted to be talking to the Redskins. I knew I wanted to be talking about other things, but I got my foot in the door and I started working fall 2011, high school nights. Then I started coming in Sundays as well. Hey, can I watch the Redskins games here? Would you guys mind? Do you guys mind if I write an article about the Redskins? That was a part time role that eventually turned into a full time role. They were like, Kevin's making too much noise, we have to add him to the team. Chris Erwin:And as you got more involved in the actual, the business side of it, where you're being hired by radio stations and networks, was that increasingly exciting to you? Or were you seeing a dark side, where like, wait a minute, this is not what I expected? Kevin Jones:No, it was not what I expected. My journey is about this realization that being the sports guy is going away of going to Syracuse, moving out to Wyoming and getting all these reps, that's going away. Now, you build your own audience on Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube, and then you can present it to brands yourself. What has happened, Chris, is pretty obvious. The world used to be a bunch of newspapers, 20 or so radio stations in town and a hundred cable channels. Now the world is 33 million YouTube channels, a million podcasts. Choice is now available. And what once was a prestigious job at a radio station is now not. What I ran into Chris, is they don't develop young talent. It really came to a head for me in San Francisco, my last stop in traditional media. KNBR is a legendary station at San Francisco. 680 AM, they've been around since the 60s. Kevin Jones:They were one of the first ones to really lean into sports radio as a genre. They developed great personalities, but they have not developed young personalities the last 10 to 15 years. Everyone there who has a show is in their 50s or above. I got in the door there to revamp their website and call into these shows as I had in the past, with the goal of one day, getting my own show. A year in, I realized there's no chance of ever getting a show here. The culture is so backwards. They're valuing people's voices and ratings that they deliver on radio and don't care about social media profiles. Don't care about none of that. The way radio is thinking about the future was not the 33 million YouTube channel, 1 million podcast model. It was, more big bad KNBR people are going to listen him no matter what. Kevin Jones:Tom Tolbert has been in town for 20 years, everyone listens. And so I realized, wait a second, Radio is about to hit an iceberg. They have no talent here, and people are going to literally leave the platform, leave the dial. The technology is all changing. There's a lack of innovation in radio, because everyone's a fat cat. Hey, it's not broken. We're all making a lot of money, but it's clearly not the future. And so that was my big aha moment. I'm never getting a radio show in San Francisco. This is my dream job. I'm in this big market way cross from D.C. I've made it technically. And then I was like, wait a second. I have not made it at all. I want to have a radio show, grow. There's no opportunities to really grow within those stations. Chris Erwin:We're going to get to talking about how that's the impetus for the founding of Blue Wire, but we're going to rewind back a bit, Kevin. I think that you have this, after undergrad, I call it the post undergrad bounce, where you're bouncing around to different teams and radio stations and sports media companies after you graduate from East Carolina in 2011. So I'm curious to hear during that journey, you go before San Francisco, you're in D.C. area, you're in Cleveland. Tell me a little bit about that story, right? As you come out of undergrad, you have the special moment in conversation with your dad where he tells you to go to Cleveland. Kevin Jones:My dad was one of the inspirations behind Blue Wire. Obviously got me into sports. He got very sick, actually right after I graduated from college in 2011. He had cirrhosis of the liver. He was a long time alcoholic and needed a liver transplant. Like the movie John Q. I was like, should I go? I need to do something. It's a really helpless feeling when a family member you know needs an organ transplant or really dying right in front of you. That was going on. While I was at the TV station in D.C. what I was talking about, I got my foot in the door, my dad was sick. I would drive up to Baltimore at night and sleep in his hospital room actually, at Johns Hopkins and then drive the next morning to Washington D.C. I was living still in Chantilly. My mom's house. My parents were separated at the time, but back and forth all three. Kevin Jones:Looking back on it, it was a really challenging time. My dad actually did get the liver transplant and then unfortunately actually started developing a really bad drinking problem again, after the transplant. It's so tough to watch that happen. He was on his death bed really and I got this job offer from Cleveland. I was a little torn, because I wanted to be there for his final few months, but he really encouraged me to go. I went, he passed away a month after I took the job in Cleveland, it was really tough. I drove back and got to his room where he was at. He had one of my articles up from the Browns on his iPhone. Chris Erwin:Wow. Kevin Jones:It's crazy. My dad had a little bit of money, I ended up never using it to go to Europe, never using it to go on vacations, buy cars. I use it to fund Blue Wire eventually years later. Crazy story, man. And then he died and I jumped right back into the Cleveland Browns where this was a huge role for me, because I was on the radio everyday representing the team. I couldn't actually say everything I wanted to. I had to be a good steward for the team as a 25 year old. It was amazing role and very challenging, I think personally, now looking back seven years later, like, wow, I was going through quite a bit losing my pops and thrust into this first really big job. I think it's only made me stronger. You do have connections with certain people who've lost their parents. Kevin Jones:There's a bond you have with a lot of folks who have been through a lot. I think when you lose a parent, it's definitely probably the most devastating thing you can go through if you have a good relationship with the parents. For me I feel I can go through anything now, if we're late on a deadline or the investor's mad at me, it's like, hey, I've been through a lot more than that this. Chris Erwin:I'm curious, was your father very supportive of you entering sports media since an early age? And then so the second question is, with him passing, did you feel that that energy support, that there was a void there afterwards? Kevin Jones:He was supportive for sure. He was more of a realist actually. I think if he was alive, he would think Blue Wire is too risky and I shouldn't be doing this. It's a catch 22 here. His death gave me more opportunity in maybe believing on myself. When you have the parent here, they sometimes talk you out of doing things that are risky. I think as weird as it sounds, I wish he was here to see all this, but it might not be if he was here. Everything happens for a reason, I would trade Blue Wire to have him back. But I think he'd definitely encouraged me to pursue my passions. He was a mechanic who rose up and became this manager of a bunch of mechanics where he was at. Blue collar dad who was definitely in my corner. Kevin Jones:And then I really took the anguish of losing him and saying, hey, I'm going to found a startup. What the hell not? Everyone says, this is the hardest thing you can do in your life. I feel I've been through so much. I can do this. And that's where I lean on in my story of, hey, it was dark, but I tried to turn that into light. Chris Erwin:It's amazing to hear you say, you would trade Blue Wire in a heartbeat to have your dad back, yet your dad's passing actually created space for Blue Wire to exist, what an interesting dichotomy. Kevin Jones:Yeah, I know it's not a apples to apples thing here, like, he would be here cheering me on. It probably wouldn't be as weird as that is to say. Chris Erwin:That's amazing. But I do think that you express that your mother was more of a risk taker, because she was actually an entrepreneur. Right? Kevin Jones:My mom, Bonnie, was a recruiter for her whole career and eventually got tired with a boss, on top of just treating people terribly, bad breath in your face. It's just like this whole combination, I don't want to be around this person at all. My mom in high school went out on her own and started Bonnie Jones Associates. She took her recruiting clients. So she recruited for law firms, different government agencies around D.C. and stepped out on her own. I don't know how much of her own money she invested, but still operating today, still thriving today, strong, yearly six figure business that has supported her and my family for a long time, of her just being an outsource recruiting department for a lot of different places. Chris Erwin:Is she very supportive of Blue Wire? Let's like, hey Kevin, this is your destiny, go forth? Kevin Jones:Oh yeah. She was like, I knew you were going to do something. It was hard to figure out what exactly that was going to be as a kid. You were an eight year old at a dinner party for two hours talking with the adults. And they were coming back to you, trying to learn more, it was just strange. I want to call myself an old soul, but it's a little limiting I think in that context. But I think she knew I was destined for more once I became the student government president, was on stage at the high school all time. I've wanted this, for sure. I was scared of business man. I never knew I was going to be a startup. I thought I was going to become a big media personality, be on TV, write magazine stories. I was scared of numbers. I was scared of math. Kevin Jones:In college, I knew right away I was communication major. I was like, I actually don't want to be a sales person. That seems like a bad life. So complete role reversal when you're selling something you believe in. And it's a media company, it makes a lot of sense now. Shout out to my mom, she'll definitely listen to this. This is the longest answer I've ever given about her. She's definitely my support system. She's a solopreneur. She's has a couple of collaborators, but I can go to her for mom's stuff, not the entrepreneur stuff of having a 30 person team team now like we do. Chris Erwin:This is actually a good segue then into, you were talking about your experience at KNBR. The frustration there that you're never going to have your own necessarily radio or TV show you were saying. And so you felt like you have to build something different, but what you just said, Kevin was, you thought you were going to be a sports broadcast or a media personality, not necessarily a company builder. When did that thinking in your brain change? Kevin Jones:Actually got fired from KNBR. It was my doing, I was creating this atmosphere. I was creating the best content at the station, my opinion, non radio, which was, I got our website up to 2.5 million monthly uniques. I inherited something like 200,000. I completely rebuilt their entire website, had a great content strategy role. It was making $50,000 a year. I was covering both the Warriors, 49ers and Giants as a part of this content strategy and was really running myself ragged for nothing, basically. They were taking profits from the website and not giving me any. They were selling all these segments on the website that I basically built. I was like, this is complete bullshit. I would like to be paid 80 to 85,000, a normal livable, barely livable wage for a journalist in San Francisco. Chris Erwin:What were you actually making at the time? Kevin Jones:$50,000. I took the role from Cleveland to come here, because I really thought it could be my big break and that I could meet the right people in the building and shake the right hands and get a radio show. And I realized, it ain't like that at all. I needed support from my family to even make it in San Francisco on that salary. It was becoming so untenable. I completely rebuilt their website. I was developing a crazy relationship with the 49ers. I was breaking news. Jed York, the owner did not like me and my coverage. He pays the bills at KNBR. They have a big partnership where he pays the station a lot of money for the 49ers coverage. There's a lot of money exchanging hands for different things there. But essentially 49ers did not like my coverage. They're in bed with KNBR. Kevin Jones:This happened to be a tweet I sent that a training camp where a player got hurt in the ambulance came on the field. I tweeted out a picture of the ambulance on the field. There was also fans there that day, tweeting pictures of this. They said, no media is ever allowed to take pictures when anything like this happens. In hindsight, it was bad a player was hurt. But I posted it. I was like, this isn't China. Literally you have fans in the stand posting the same content. You're saying that journalists here can't do this. Call my bosses, do whatever. And they did. And they all threw a fit. They're basically like KJ. We don't want a report in this role, we want a robot to just be the post-contact, don't ask hard questions at the press conferences, don't have a personality. Kevin Jones:I was like, all right, cool. We're done. This is great. I tended to say, I got fired. It could be, I quit. But I say that to be like, they fired me. They're fucking dummies. Chris Erwin:There was intense energy around the separation. Kevin Jones:Yeah. I was throwing myself out there, basically you'd be like, this is just such bullshit. You're underpaying me. I'm going to be taking a lot of chances and risk here, because I'm going to be a journalist. What you hired me to do. I'm not going to be a robot. I used them as chip on my shoulders without question. Jeremiah Crowe, the boss who fired me there, Justin Hawk, those people will never go away in my mind, even though it was not going to work out with me there. They didn't understand my talent and couldn't harness that energy of like, this is something special. Total flame out. And so got really confident that I could get any job. I almost took a role with the Brooklyn Nets. Almost took a role with TMZ Sports, almost took a role with the SB Nation. It was interviewing for months. Kevin Jones:Took a role at Facebook. I was like, you know what? I hate sports right now. I hate the industry. I'm not going to make 50K anywhere else, anymore. I have to start valuing myself. Facebook was finally making six figures. I was a content strategist on the help team, help content. You log in, there's some advertising help center. How to make an ad on Facebook. I would write different types of content for that. It was obviously completely boring. I was still tweeting about the 49ers and podcasting all the time about them. I was like, I don't need KNBR anymore. I have 15,000 Twitter followers. I can just feed them. I was growing that, and got the idea for Blue Wire, really sitting at Facebook being like, this is not the longterm for me. This is what I want to be making or more money. Kevin Jones:I was surrounded by smart people at Facebook. I was like, wow, man, not terrible bosses here. I do like the people, they're thoughtful. There's good people that exist. I did like the organization. Sports media is chaotic. Everyone's running with their hair on fire. Facebook obviously is a machine. They assign you tasks. 3396, it's do 21 days from now. Please send a progress update to Tanya, on how everything's going. It's like, holy shit, they have scaled the whole organization. Every task is being filed. Facebook awoke me to, hey, I can't build a Facebook, but I could build something around podcasting, is what I landed on. Chris Erwin:It seems like, you can bring some organization to a scaled media business better than where it's at. It seems like there's some low-hanging fruit to make it better. Kevin Jones:Exactly. Listeners were leaving radio, and now I gained the confidence by being inside of Facebook. I can run an organization confidently, because Chris, before this, I never sat at a desk, the eight years before Blue Wire and Facebook, I was at the scene talking to players every day. I'd never really, I'd been in some community relations meetings at the Browns, but I'd never done that nine to five thing ever before Blue Wire. I think that's the crazy part about this. Chris Erwin:Did you have a podcast at this point? Had you launched your own podcast yet? Kevin Jones:I actually brought it from Cleveland to San Francisco, and KNBR was like, we don't care about it. It can be your pet project. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know how to monetize it. And I was like, okay. I just continued to record. Eventually I found my footing in San Francisco. I became the 49ers guy. I went to Warriors games. I went to Giant stuff and I participated. People came to my Twitter, our website, for my thoughts on the 49ers. They were two in 14. They didn't have a lot of attention at the time. A lot of the 49ers reporters are the same. I say that in a good way. They're good guys. But they just report the facts of the day, that was giving opinions and different, hey, this is what they should do in 2020, a few years down the road, it was just different coverage. Kevin Jones:So kept podcasting two times a week on the 49ers. It was called the Kevin Jones podcast at that time. Post game would do a show and then mid-week would do a show, roughly half an hour, sometimes at our guests. I tweeted and I treated my tweets as articles. I would take 10, 15 minutes to carefully craft the tweet and would tweet two to three times a day of what would have been blog posts, here's my opinion on Rubin Foster. Here's my opinion on John Lynch. Those were getting a lot of engagement. I just looked around the rest of the internet, man, I was like, there was a Warriors guy named Sam. There was a Raiders girl named Fallon. They're doing the same thing I'm doing right now. They're not on a team, we should band together. Chris Erwin:When you left Facebook, did you know that you are going to start this company or did that just come together? Kevin Jones:We were going at Facebook. I founded it before Facebook, there's this legal loopholes. I technically founded it before I got to Facebook. So they don't know any of my IP. I was working on it at Facebook and I started telling coworkers about it, at Facebook. I was a contractor there luckily, not a full timer. Facebook has a lot of contractors, on an eight month contract, so I could have other projects and openly talk about it. It's so cool there, looking back, I had some people take, I was creating content. I signed my first big deal ever. I was negotiating in a room at Facebook and I saw some random person take a picture of you signing that paperwork. I posted it. I was actually the first six months. I took a second job at Salesforce after this ran out, the contract at Facebook. Not many people know this. Kevin Jones:I was contracting up until I got into 500 Startups to keep paying the bills, because I made no money in radio. Now I put $17,000 of my own money in Blue Wire. I barely had enough to pay rent every month. Chris Erwin:Geez. Kevin Jones:And so yeah, floating by on the skin of my teeth here just a couple years ago, the Facebook thing ended in December of 2018. I luckily got a new contract position at Salesforce, which was fully remote and I didn't have to go into the office, which was a game changer for me. I was barely making it by, I was not a good contractor. I was abusing Zuckerberg and Marc Benioff could, can hammer it and yell at me now, I did not work 40 hours a week. They can come back and sue me, I guess. I was definitely building my startup while I was working in tech as a contractor. I actually really recommend that model for people founding a company. Chris Erwin:So you knew that Blue Wire was a future for you, but you were just saying, I don't have enough cashflow coming in yet. I'm going to subsidize using contractor jobs, but I'll get there. And then summer 2019, you get into a batch of 25 at 500 Startups. Kevin, I just want to commend you because I really liked the notion of you're burning the candle at both ends a bit, but you are taking this contract to work, to fund the beginning of Blue Wire. Knowing that there's some things that you needed to prove out in the model, make sure you had product market fit, build out your content portfolio, get some maybe advertising partners in the door. Knowing that that's probably going to give you a little bit more focus and clarity of what you want to build and what's working, and then also get into the incubators or to raise funding and have more leverage over that process. Chris Erwin:I think that's smart where sometimes people have an idea, but they just want to raise money, but don't want to prove it out. But I think you went after it in a really smart way. Kevin Jones:Bootstrapping to me was exciting. I'm a ready, fire, aim type of person. I don't like aiming all day. I thought if I was going to plan this thing for months and months and months, I would never do it. I think that was big. And then Chris, the point of contracting, the tough thing about podcasting the business model is, ad revenue comes in 90 days after a campaign usually. I had to give people my own money at the start of this. We really like to pay our podcasters after that month of content, we've kept it that way as our business model. First of all, we didn't close an ad deal, because we didn't have any content at the beginning of this, we didn't close our first ad deal till February or something. Kevin Jones:There was 17K, my own money to pay some of the podcasters. There's a little to come on the team. And then almost just to pay them a little bit monthly at the start of this, like, hey, I promise more is coming. I really didn't know if it was, but basically I was going to take a shot that we could figure it out. Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down. If you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating, whenever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work. It also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody, let's get back to the interview. So were you scared? You said you were making $50,000 a year in San Francisco. It goes up to maybe barely six figures at Facebook, but still seems you're living by the skin of your teeth. That's an expensive city. And now you're fronting 17,000 to podcast partners saying this might work, but that money could also totally go away. Kevin Jones:I think my mom was terrified. We'll have to get the real truth from her now that there's success. I think she thought I was a little crazy that I shouldn't be doubling down on sports media, that I should actually be moving home to Virginia, going to work at Deloitte or something. That my background as a writer is going to be received really well. People are like Blue Wire man, looks cool. Congrats. I think people are just a little like, okay, Jay's is going to try something, I guess. It was risky because I didn't have the full support of everyone around me. Publicly I did, but I could tell, they weren't asking me questions about this thing. They were just like, oh cool. Let me know how it goes and not like, holy shit, Blue Wire, no one saw my vision. Kevin Jones:I ran an article about Entercom at the time, they rebrand it to Odyssey, right? As I was founding the company invested a bunch into Cadence13. I kept seeing that company name. Beyond, I knew Barstool and Ringer. Everyone knew those two at the time, but cadence 13 was the company for me. I was like, they're making this happen. They're making content. They have advertisers. They have investors. And to me, when people were doubting me, I was like, there's other people doing this. There's a few others ahead of me. I'm not the first person to launch a podcast company. Chris Erwin:I remember that, Spotify had bought Gimlet and then Spotify had bought the Ringer. And then Entercom was being acquisitive as well. They bought Cadence13, and then I think also Pineapple Street as well, another podcast studio. You're looking at these and saying, hey, they're building content and they're up for sale. Maybe this is validating for Blue Wire. Kevin Jones:The first legitimizing thing that happened for us was, we were founded before Spotify bought Ringer. We had this vision before that happened. Hashtag Sports is a popular newsletter that came out. They had a headline that said, two peas in a pot. And it had picture of Bill Simmons and it was talking all about Blue Wire. These two podcasting companies. We had gotten a lot of coverage from an awful announcing article. And then we started getting just looped into headlines with the Ringer and Barstool. All of a sudden it just started happening and people were like, wait a second. What is this Blue Wire thing? More creators, I just started signing more creators. I started showing the press like, hey, we're making moves here. And then all of a sudden, yeah, 500 Startups, man, really changed the game for us. Kevin Jones:This is how green I am. I didn't know Y Combinator or 500 Startups was a few months before I applied. I had no idea that those types of things even existed. I was Googling angel investing. I read Jason Calacanis's book as a self-taught way to try and figure out which angel investors to approach. I met this dude, Jarie Bolander and shout out to him. He'll definitely listen. He got me connected to Clayton Brian, one of the investors at 500 Startups, who had always been interested in sports and media, and they ended up taking a shot on me. They grill you for a couple of interviews. I thought they weren't going to say yes, 500 Startups, because they were basically like, how does this become a billion dollar company? I was like, it's not, it's not going to become a billion dollar company. They were like, okay, we don't want to invest in you. Kevin Jones:I was like, you're making a huge mistake. We're going to be one of the biggest brands on the internet, but just because we're not going to be a billion dollar company, doesn't mean this is a bad investment. I was learning the whole BC model, live on the fly there. I'm so green to it. Now I obviously know a little bit more, but they saw my passion, me fight back in that meeting. I was like, I would love to exit this thing for a couple of hundred million dollars. I can show you the path to that. I don't want to build technology and stuff. I want to be this content studio. Are you okay with that? We got on the same page. 500 Startups makes a bunch of investments, so they were like, this makes sense. It's podcasting, it's hot. Spotify is getting into it. Let's do it. Kevin Jones:And walked in day one, still working at Salesforce. It was now down the street from 500 Startups. I was going back and forth during the day. My mentor Taz was like, this is crazy. You got to pull the plug here. Eventually that contract ended in July and I was then full time at 500 Startups every day. Looking back, I would say a top three experience of my entire life. I have lifelong friends from it. I have, a couple of other entrepreneurs are now invested in the company. Shout out to Andrew Beatty, threw a really big check in. I learned so much, man. I learned, I can't even think about it, man. I'm getting like Russell Crowe - all these numbers in my head, how to stand up a business, everything it takes, how to deal with
Chris Ovitz — President at OK Play on Being a 3x Founder, Humble Leadership, and Reimagining Kids Screen Time
Apr 7 2021
Chris Ovitz — President at OK Play on Being a 3x Founder, Humble Leadership, and Reimagining Kids Screen Time
Chris Ovitz is the Co-Founder and President of OK Play. We discuss growing up in a Hollywood family, building technology-enabled media companies, life revelations during an Alabama roadtrip, "humble magnetism", launching a venture fund with the co-founder of Twitter, YouTube as a babysitter, and why the future of play is putting kids at the center of story and creation.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteListen to our weekly executive insights on Media x Commerce news: Mondays at 2pm PT on Clubhouse via @chriserwinFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.  Chris Ovitz:There's so much guilt in general for parents, and then there's all this judgment around screen time. And I think that we forget in our little bubbles, the whole no screens thing is a privilege, that YouTube is a babysitter is real, and it's a problem. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Chris Ovitz, the co-founder and President of OK Play. Chris grew up in LA. And like so many others, his first love was film. So he went to a Hollywood studio, but soon after, Chris became enamored with the intersection of entertainment and technology. Over the past decade, Chris has founded a handful of different companies. And most recently, him and his team are building OK Play where they're reimagining screen time for kids, and putting kids at the center of story and creation. We get into a lot of things in this episode, but a few highlights include what it's like growing up in a deeply connected Hollywood family, some life revelations during an Alabama road trip, his humble approach to building teams, and most recently, helping to launch a venture fund with Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. All right, this episode was a lot of fun. And Chris weaves in some pretty wild stories from his early career. Let's get into it. Chris Erwin:Let's dive back in time a little bit. Why don't you tell me about where you grew up and your childhood a little bit? Chris Ovitz:I grew up in LA. My mom and dad are both from LA. They went to UCLA. They met there. Pretty normal childhood in LA, as normal as it can be growing up in LA, lots of after school sports and just hanging out with friends, skateboarding and roller hockey and football and all sorts of stuff like that, lots of video games and film in my family. And it was a pretty traditional childhood. Chris Erwin:Okay, you are a skater as well. I was a skater growing up, I played some soccer and tennis. And then when I started hurting my ankle skateboarding, my coaches were like, "All right, that's it. Enough for you." Chris Ovitz:You were probably a much better skater than I was. I never actually got good at it. But I loved it. Yeah, I definitely spent a lot more time playing, baseball was my sport. So I played a lot of baseball growing up. Chris Erwin:Okay, cool. You mentioned that you were passionate for gaming and for film. Were there any games that you liked the most? Chris Ovitz:So I was about 15 when PlayStation 1 came out so I think that was probably the core part of my childhood gaming love and I would say Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil. Earlier than that, I played really Super Bomberman and Mario Kart on the SNES, lots of Street Fighter, things like that. Chris Erwin:Yeah, I remember Street Fighter 2 with like Ken and Ryu and Hadouken and all that. I was like, that was a real favorite for me. Yeah, I also like being Zangief, the Russian wrestler, whatever. Chris Ovitz:Funny story, I always played as Ken Masters. And that was the name on my fake ID in high school, so yeah. Chris Erwin:Your father was in the entertainment industry. I don't know if your mother was in the entertainment industry as well. But was there any kind of like inspiration for you of the path that you want to go down as you were thinking about going to school, before you went to Brown and UCLA? Chris Ovitz:So yeah, my father was in entertainment. He started a company called Creative Artists Agency, which was one of the biggest agencies around and so it was amazing to watch and to be around. And I always thought that that was kind of the path for me. But as I got older in high school, and he had left CAA to do other stuff, he kind of left me with this big question mark on what I wanted to do. And I was like, I didn't really know what my passions were. Chris Ovitz:And so it started me on my journey. And my journey from about 18 through my late 20s was kind of a bit all over the place, but I wouldn't be who I am today without it. And my father was incredibly talented pioneer and many things in entertainment. And had I been a little more mature at 18, I think I would have realized that he was probably right, and it was best for me. So I ended up, I was fortunate enough to be accepted to Brown University. That's where he wanted me to go. I always wanted to go to UCLA because it was what I knew. Brown was amazing. I have incredible friends there. I learned a lot there. But I ended up transferring back to UCLA. I told myself that was where I wanted to go, but if I'm being honest, it was probably because I wanted to see about a girl. Chris Erwin:Okay, did you transfer like your sophomore junior year? When did you go over? Chris Ovitz:I transferred my sophomore year. So I did a year, Brown my freshman year, and then started at UCLA my sophomore year. Chris Erwin:And was UCLA what you had hoped it was going to be? Were you pumped to be there? Chris Ovitz:Yeah, it was amazing. UCLA is a great school. I had a blast. I was a history major. I just loved learning about different cultures and I studied a lot of Roman, ancient Rome and medieval history that I found that fascinating. Chris Erwin:When we were talking earlier, you said that there was some poor decisions were a pattern of your youth. So, I mean, do you bucket in like going to Brown and then going to UCLA as part of that or are you referencing something else? I'm very curious there. Chris Ovitz:For decisions, I say that a bit jokingly. But I think what I mean by that is Brown is an incredible school, and everyone would kill to be able to go there. And had I stayed there, I think it would have been amazing. But look, I was motivated by girls at that age, instead of being motivated by a passion for what I wanted to do with my life. So I think that's kind of what I did, whether it was transferring to UCLA because I had a girlfriend there at the time that I had met on winter break from Brown. I would make decisions like that, without thinking too far ahead. And I think as I got older, that's not happening. You start to think through each decision with a little more thought for the future. Chris Erwin:Well look, if there's any point in your life when you're going to be a little bit impulsive, doing that in your teens and early 20s, that's a good thing. Get that out of your system, and I would also say that having a little bit of impulse ability, or whatever the right word is, as you get older, versus not having to be so calculated all the time based on societal pressures, that's okay. Okay, so you transfer to UCLA, you graduate, and then how do you kick off your career? What type of work do you start getting into? Chris Ovitz:So again, it comes back to this really not knowing what my path was yet, not knowing what I wanted to do. I knew I loved film. The entertainment industry was in my DNA. And I knew that I wanted to be a part of it in some way, at least at that point in my life. And so I actually applied to film school. I didn't tell anyone in my family. I applied to the theater, film and television program at UCLA. I decided I was only going to tell them if I got in. I ended up getting in and had an idea that I thought I wanted to be a director. And after about a year in film school, I realized I didn't want to be a struggling artist. So I dropped out and I wanted the income. I wanted to get to work. Unfortunately, at the time, I also had suffered a really bad herniated disc and had to take some time to get a pretty significant back surgery to correct that and rehab it. And at that point, I decided to take a job. It was pretty awesome. I got the opportunity to be one of the first employees as an assistant at Paramount Vantage working for a guy named John Lesher, and that was my first real job out of college. It was an incredible experience. Chris Erwin:Awesome. And what was Paramount Vantage? Chris Ovitz:Backing up a second, John Lesher was an agent at Endeavor at the time before it was WME, and he represented clients like Scorsese and Judd Apatow and Alejandro Inarritu and all these amazing filmmakers. And he was asked to go over and run Paramount Classics, which was Paramount's independent film arm, and he was asked to rebrand it and basically start their new art house film division. I got to see him build it from the ground up. And I got to see him go through the process of building the brand, picking the brand, naming it, designing it. And there I got to really learn how important a talented team was. He had gone out and just picked the best in the industry. And then I got to watch as all these projects came together that went on to be some Academy Award winning films and really well highly, highly acclaimed films. While I was there, we were developing No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, all these really exciting films. But mostly, I drove the golf cart around for the most part. Chris Erwin:What a great experience I feel like right out of undergrad, and it seems that you also have some really great stories from working there about Kanye West and Judd Apatow and a few others. So please do share. Chris Ovitz:Yeah, I mean and the Kanye one's probably less interesting, but just funny. I remember him coming in for a meeting, I had to pick him in his entourage up in the golf cart and make multiple trips. And he told me he was hungry. And he asked what was on the menu, and so I had to go get him the menu from the commissary and he said he was really in the mood for grilled salmon. And so I got him some grilled salmon and brought it into the meeting and my boss was like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "Kanye wanted some food. Here it is.", and he shoo-ed me out of the office. And then the Judd Apatow story, backing up a bit. Jonah Hill was actually, before he was Jonah Hill, when he was Jonah Feldstein was in my student film at UCLA because I knew him from growing up in LA. Chris Ovitz:And Judd Apatow had come in to pitch his latest project. And I had read the script because that was one of the perks of working there. I got to be on the weekend read team and give my opinion on the scripts that they were reading. And I told Judd, and Judd had no idea who I was. I was just a kid driving a golf cart. And I said, "You need to make Jonah Hill the lead in this project." And so I'd like to think that I'm responsible for Jonah ending up in Superbad, which is probably not true. But it was funny because I was the only one, it turned out Vantage at the time, that thought we should make that movie. And so my boss John was like, "Well, if you like it so much, go and write a letter to the heads of the studio on why we should buy this film." And I did. And I was like, "This is the greatest thing ever." Chris Erwin:Hold on a second, you wrote a letter to the head of the studio for why they should buy the film Superbad. Chris Ovitz:Exactly, yes. Chris Erwin:Okay, what did you say in that letter? Chris Ovitz:I just explained why I thought it was going to be a hit. It was a very genuine, authentic letter from a nobody assistant at Paramount Vantage. But my boss respected my opinion. And he sent it to Brad Grey, who knew me and Brad was the CEO at the time. He was just a fabulous, fabulous guy, unfortunately passed away a few years ago. And they appreciated it. But they passed and it actually ended up being Warner Bros.' biggest hit that next summer. So that's my little claim to fame and moment I'm most proud of in my first job. Chris Erwin:That's an amazing story. I love coming of age movies, and Superbad is definitely very high on the list. Chris Ovitz:Yeah, I was obsessed. It was so well written, so funny. Seth Rogen, he was coming up, but he wasn't established at that point. It was a really fun read. And I was really happy to see that Jonah got cast in that part. Again, I'm pretty sure that was because of me. Chris Erwin:So that's an amazing experience. But I think you realized that entertainment wasn't for you. And you kind of changed your career trajectory a little bit. So what happens next after that? Chris Ovitz:So I think I wanted to do something that was a little more meaningful. Traditional entertainment was fine. I love stories. I think one of the reasons I started thinking about moving away, I didn't like the behavior and entertainment. There was just a lot of yelling, a lot of disrespect. It's one of the last industries where there's a true apprenticeship, which I do like about it. But everyone was kind of becoming bad Xerox copies of the bosses they had before them, and just picking up bad habits. And so there were all these things that were accepted that I didn't like, like yelling at your employees. Chris Ovitz:And so that got me starting to think about what was next. And I was fortunate enough to get hired to run business development at a early virtual world company. And this was really interesting to me, because I always loved building communities and connecting people. And this opportunity played into that in a big way, because you would, this is by the way, in about late 2005, early 2006. And we built this virtual world where you could go to virtual host virtual parties and screenings and shows, and so I was producing virtual concerts with artists like Maroon 5 and the Pussycat Dolls, Kenna. We'd set up virtual storefronts. And this is all before things like Oculus. So it was, way ahead of its time, and a lot of fun. But ultimately, it ended up being like World of Warcraft with nothing to do. It didn't really work out. But it was fun, because we were doing things like I don't know if you saw what Fortnite did with Travis Scott and other artists, these big virtual concerts. Chris Erwin:Yeah, Marshmallow and all that taking off. Chris Ovitz:Exactly. But we were doing stuff like that in 2006 at a much, much smaller scale. Chris Erwin:You mentioned how you got the job, there's a unique story behind that, right? Chris Ovitz:Yeah, so my father was quite influential, obviously. And he knew my boss at Paramount. He'd call me. He's like, "Hey, I got to borrow my son for the day." And I was like, "Sure." And so I go and fly up with my father to a couple meetings in San Francisco. My father liked to invest in tech. And he knew that I had a strong opinion about games and tech and digital media. And so he wanted me to sit in on a couple of these meetings and give my opinion. And as we're arriving at this meeting at this particular company, which at the time, it was called Doppelganger, we later changed our name to vSide, rocking small startup, only about 20 people, everyone's in the room, and they're about to make this big presentation to my father. And he's like, "I want you to observe, and then give me your opinion after Do not talk." And so of course, I talked the whole time, like, "You need to do this. I can introduce you to this person. I can help with that." I walked out of the meeting with a job offer, which was awesome. And so ultimately, my dad was happy, but he looked mortified the entire meeting. Chris Erwin:Were you intentional that you wanted to speak? Was that like acting out against your father? Or did it just naturally come up? Chris Ovitz:No, that was just because I can never keep my mouth shut. Chris Erwin:So then, right after that, we're going down this journey where you become a serial entrepreneur, I think in a few years, which we'll get to, I think a major stepping stone to that was that you went to go work at Adly, which was founded by Sean Rad, who became the founder of Tinder. So what was Adly, and what were you doing there? Chris Ovitz:Yeah, so Adly was one of the first companies to monetize the social streams for influencers, so getting Kim Kardashian to tweet on behalf of a brand. And they were pretty much the pioneer in that space. And so I knew I wanted to work in tech, but I didn't want to be in SF. The city unfortunately just wasn't for me. And I really liked my life in LA. And I was probably onto something because everyone seems to want to move down here now from up there or to Miami it seems now as of last week. Like you said, I met Sean through Dana Settle from Greycroft, who was a friend and she suggested that we think about working together, and we hit it off. And Sean's brilliant, and I was inspired by him. He's a young entrepreneur built with big, big ideas. Chris Ovitz:Obviously, I was right, in seeing something and then he moved and went on to start Tinder. But unfortunately, when we were at Adly, Facebook and Twitter weren't too excited about us monetizing their social feeds. It was ahead of its time a little bit as well. We got blocked. And that's kind of when everyone saw the writing on the wall. So after just about 10 months, that's when I departed and was lucky enough to meet my current co-founder and my co-founder of Viddy in JJ. He took a chance on me and invited me to co-found Viddy with him. And that's where my journey really gained some traction. Chris Erwin:I remember the days of when the large social platforms and tech incumbents were blocking their peers. So yeah, at Big Frame, we have built like a programmatic marketplace where our different influencer and talent clients could promote one another. YouTube shut off access to their API very quickly once they figured out what we were doing. So I definitely get the challenges there. Chris Erwin:So after this stint in Adly, but it seems like you had made the transition from like a pure play entertainment studio industry, now going into kind of like tech that's like tech talent, intersection with media as well and social. And were you feeling at this point like, "Yes, this is the path that I want to be on, that this feels much more right than where I was before this"? Chris Ovitz:Definitely. I realized that I think at that point, I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I watched guys like Sean, and I was like, there's no reason I can't do this. I love creating things from scratch. I had some unfair advantages built in in the network that I had acquired and had built. I realized pretty early on that I was really good at surrounding myself with people much smarter than me, much more talented than me. And I realized that talent was everything. Chris Ovitz:I use my network to almost be an agent for the businesses that I was building or involved in. And I was able to do that at Viddy in a big way. I saw that we had something. I saw that we had a product that had market fit. It worked. JJ is one of the best product designers I've ever had the pleasure of working with. And he built a beautiful Instagram for video type product at just the right time, when everyone was craving that, when investors were craving that type of product. We met in the end of 2010. And then basically January 2011, we were starting to work on it and then we launched in April of 2011. And that's literally when Flip Cam, if you remember those handheld camcorders, they shut down in April, and we launched in April. And so it was kind of like with the death of Flip Cam was the rise of Viddy and the social mobile video wars, by the way, like our biggest competitor was Socialcam, which was started by the Justin TV guys, which ultimately became Twitch. And it was just an all out like bloodbath between us and Socialcam seeing who could grow the fastest, wild ride, wild west, extremely interesting time to be in the video space. Chris Erwin:So being a first time entrepreneur, what kind of caught you off guard or by surprise in that first experience, in going through those motions? Chris Ovitz:Once you're a founder, it's a very lonely, lonely job. And so just dealing with the emotions of the roller coaster that it is, like video ultimately was only two and a half years of my life, but it felt like 10, and so the ups and the downs. And then I think realizing how quickly you can grow something by leveraging the power of your network. We went from zero to 50 million users in a year, granted a lot of that growth came off the back of Facebook and Open Graph. Us in social can have the benefit of that. But we were the first video app to have access to Open Graph. And that was because of a relationship that we had, just shows the power of relationships and how you can use those relationships to grow things. Chris Erwin:Yeah. You mentioned that when you were at Adly, and you saw, you observed Sean, you're like, "Oh, Sean is founding these companies.", you felt empowered that you could do the same. And you felt that you had this powerful network, you had good energy to bring to the table and a certain skill set, but also awareness of what skills he didn't have. Being at Viddy, did you observe skills that you're like, "Hey, for my serial entrepreneur career to continuously progress, here's something that I really want to work on."? Chris Ovitz:You know, it's funny. Things that I really want to work on, I think what Viddy taught me was actually to focus on my strengths and not my weaknesses. So many people say you should, I just read a quote about Tom Brady, sorry to change the subject. But talking about how he's achieved the level of success that he has. One of his big tenets is focus on your weaknesses. And I used to do that too much. And so I think at Viddy, working with the team there, I realized that everyone was so good at what they did. If I was focusing on my weaknesses, there was always somebody that was going to do it better, be able to do that better. And so I spent my time focusing on my strengths. And that's when I think good things really started to happen. That was probably my biggest learning at Viddy. Chris Erwin:I agree with that very much, Chris. It's a lot easier to go from good to great versus going from bad to good. And as a leader, I think strong self awareness is really critical in saying, "Okay, here's where I'm good, here's where I'm not." But your job is to build a team, to resource a team, to build towards the bigger vision that the company has. And I have learned that there's a lot less friction, you can move a lot faster. And also just build a team where people are more complimentary and happy coming to work every day with that mindset, going from good to great. Chris Ovitz:Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. Chris Erwin:So Viddy though, you do end up selling to Fullscreen, is that right? Chris Ovitz:We did, yeah. So we were acquired by Fullscreen. In full transparency, I left before the acquisition because it was quite a roller coaster ride, and I was ready to move on and to figure out what's next. But we had built a relationship with George, the CEO and founder of Fullscreen early on. He was a friend, and we were always trying to find ways to partner together. So when things got tough at Viddy, it was just a natural home for the company. They had SVOD ambitions, and we had one of the most talented product and engineering teams around with expertise in video. So it was a no brainer. And as I said, I wanted to move on to what was next and I was pretty burnt out from that roller coaster. And at one point, we were the number one app in 49 countries. And then one day we weren't. And so I was just ready. I was ready for what was next. But it was great. Look, JJ went on to be the Chief Product Officer of Fullscreen. And Ken, our CTO went on to run their engineering team. But unfortunately, actually I'm working with them again today, which is really, really awesome. But we can come back to that. Chris Erwin:I think Fullscreen leveraged your technology to launch a streaming service, I think three to four years back. I remember that because I think there was like a lot of different Fullscreen talent clients are on it. And I think they also were licensing Friends and maybe Seinfeld. It was an interesting juxtaposition of content. But I think everyone's been learning what users actually want and don't want over the past half decade. All right, so after that, you do end up starting another company called Workpop, but you did a brief stint at Scopely. What was that pathway like? I think you said you were scratching this gamer itch that maybe you had but led quickly to something else, curious to the journey there. Chris Ovitz:Look, I always had the gamer itch and I'm always going to have the gamer itch. I love games and anything related to games. And the Scopely thing was interesting because I had promised myself since I was burnt out, I was going to take some time to recharge. But I was having lunch with a friend of mine who was at Scopely. And he was telling me how great it was. And they were going after all these big licenses. And frankly, it just sounded fun. And he was like, "Why don't you come join us?" At the time, they were still small, 50 or 60 people. And they had just come off this big hit for them, Mini Golf Madness, which I had kind of fun playing. And I also knew Walter Driver pretty well from back in the day. And I knew Eytan as well. They're the founders. And I figured that it would be a really fun place to go and join until I decided what was next. Chris Ovitz:Unfortunately, in a twist of fate, unfortunately for them, not for me, but they've done fine since anyways, but they roomed me and my co-founder from Workpop together on a company off site. He was the new VP of Product that they had hired out of Zynga. He used to run the With Friends platform there, and we hit it off and he's still one of my best friends. And we basically decided that night that we would eventually leave and start something together, we just didn't realize how soon it would be. Chris Erwin:This is like one of the first nights with a company at an off site, and you meet a new colleague, and you decide then and there like, "We're going to start a company together." That's pretty fast. Chris Ovitz:Basically, we hit it off, and we're like, "We need to do something." And I just had no idea that it would be that quickly. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Why do you think you guys vibe so well? What was special about him? Chris Ovitz:We had really complementary skill sets. He's extremely talented product executive and entrepreneur. He actually just launched his company yesterday called Mojo, which is a sports app for kids and actually to make coaches better and improve the youth sports experience, which I'm actually really excited about. And he's super talented. And yeah, we just knew it. Do you ever meet someone and you're like, you know you're going to be good friends and you know you're going to work well together? That's what it was like. And so we had fun working together at Scopely and we worked on some really fun products together. And then ultimately we decided to go into enterprise software. Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you, if you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guest, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work. And it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody. Let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:In under a year, you end up founding what's called Workpop. What was Workpop? Chris Ovitz:Back then, mobile job search was almost non existent. And so we wanted to build a better hiring experience for essential workers. So back then, most of the hiring platforms were really focused on building for the employer, and not the job seeker. And so we decided we wanted to build a better experience. And it was a great idea, started with great intentions. I went into that space because I wanted to prove that I could do something that was completely outside of media and entertainment. I wanted to show people that I can build a real company. Chris Ovitz:And I did that. But along the journey, which took me to places like selling door to door in places like Birmingham, Alabama, nothing wrong with Birmingham, Alabama, but I realized that wasn't where I wanted to be. And I realized that I needed to be passionate about the space. And I thought I could build anything and be excited about it as long as it was my team. I was super excited about the team, really enjoyed who I was working with. But at the end of the day, these companies take on a life of their own, and you need to be in a space that you truly, truly love. Chris Ovitz:And so that was probably my big learning with Workpop. Further, we went down the stack. It started as job seeking, and then it became hiring software. And we're building HR software. And then we were like smack in the middle of the HR tech space. And that's when I realized it wasn't for me. We were building a product for small and medium businesses, and it's just a really tough grind selling into that segment. Chris Erwin:You mentioned that you went to Birmingham, Alabama for a sales trip when you were at Workpop. What's that story? Chris Ovitz:Look, this is where I realized that I needed to get out of the enterprise software business. My partner and I were on a plane, and we were flying to Birmingham, and the only thing we were excited about was going to be the food we were going to eat in the south. We both looked to each other and kind of had this moment where it's like, "Do we really?". We were both media guys. He came from the game world, and we both kind of ended up in this space, because we had a good idea. And we landed in Birmingham, and we were staying in a motel and we were there to sell a Papa John's franchisee. And we're going in and we met with the HR team was run by this very nice, but like 80 year old woman, and really didn't understand how technology worked. And so we found ourselves selling to a lot of those customers, and it was draining. And when we both looked, we were like, "Where are we? What are we doing right now?" And I think that was the moment. Again, I don't want to take anything away from Birmingham, Alabama. But it just wasn't where I wanted to be in my life. If I was going on sales trips, I wanted to be in New York or Chicago or San Francisco or places like that. Chris Erwin:Yeah. When you landed and you were doing these sales meetings in person, did you guys feel like immediately out of place? What was going on there? Chris Ovitz:Yeah, we definitely felt out of place. And it just felt like we could never do enough. I mean, we were running the business but we were also selling the product. We didn't have some huge sales force. And so it just took a lot to gain even an inch. We felt like we were running miles to get those small wins. And so whether we are in Birmingham, Alabama, or Orlando, Florida, it was just all over the country selling software. It just wasn't what I was into. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Well, Chris, I want to go back to something that you said where when you founded Workpop, you wanted to prove that you could build something that's not in media entertainment. So it's interesting, because you start in the core of the media entertainment industry, you're working at Paramount Vantage for a very seasoned studio executive and talent agent. And then you do start working in and then founding some companies that are at the intersection of tech and media. So the sentiment that you wanted to prove that you could do something different, was that for you or was it for someone else? Chris Ovitz:I think when you have a successful father, at the end of the day, you have a bar that's set for you. And so you're always trying to live up to that bar. And everyone always has preconceived notions of how you're going to be or expectations of you. And I think everyone expected me to do something in media entertainment, expected me to use my network to bring influencers into something right or do something influencer related, and I didn't want to do that. And I needed to scratch that itch. And I'm glad I did it. And it taught me a lot and led me to where I am today. Chris Erwin:So what happens with Workpop? Do you stay there through a sale to another company or you depart before the acquisition? What happens? Chris Ovitz:At Workpop, about five years in, one of our investors Cornerstone was interested in acquiring the company and the team. There was a natural fit, and they had an SMB product that they wanted to expand on and it was a perfect fit. And so I stayed on through the acquisition, but I knew that I wasn't going to stay and run technology partnerships. A big public enterprise software learning management system company, that wasn't in my future, it wasn't for me, incredible company, really a big fan of the Cornerstone team. And Adam Miller, he's a great advisor to us. But if I was being honest with myself, it wasn't where I was going to continue my career. So I took some time off. I was a new father, a relatively new father. My son was about three at the time, and really started thinking about what I wanted to do next. Chris Erwin:Yeah, it's interesting to hear you talk about your realization moment there that hey, this is not where I want to be like in terms of your career and work. In an interview with Chas Lacaillade, who's the founder of Bottle Rocket Management, an influencer management company, on our podcast, he was on a road trip in Louisiana in the Bayou. He was selling water pumps. He was in LA. And then he was working for a water pump company out of Orange County. He was on this sales trip and realized there in a conversation with his coworker Buddy in the car, like, "Hey, I need to get back to LA. This is not the right industry for me." So you guys definitely have parallels in your story there. Chris Ovitz:Definitely a wake up call for me. Chris Erwin:Yeah, all right. So after Workpop, you then launch OK Play, which is the company that you're at right now. So what's the story of how OK Play came to be? Chris Ovitz:I mean look, it sounds cliche, but I wanted to create something for my son. I was a relatively new father. Son's three years old at the time. I was watching one day while he was a preschool, I was watching Won't You Be My Neighbor, which is the Mr. Rogers documentary. And I became incredibly inspired. This was a man that knew how to reach children, how to talk to them in a way that they felt heard and understood. He didn't treat them like little kids. He treated them like real people, just smaller people. And I thought that was fascinating. And the way he used the television to reach a very, very large audience was very similar to the way that the mobile devices are ever present and not going anywhere. Chris Ovitz:And so in the way that I learned how powerful community was in Viddy, I thought that we could do something similar with the mobile devices and kids today. So I think that there's so much guilt in general for parents, and then there's all this judgment and guilt around screen time. And I think that we forget in our little bubbles in our world is that the whole no screens thing is a privilege. And the YouTube as a babysitter is real, and it's a problem. And I think at the end of the day, balance is key. And I think that there's no reason we can't reimagine screen time. These devices aren't going anywhere. And so I wanted to create something. My partners wanted to create something that was screen time that wasn't leaned back, that really puts kids at the center of the story and the creation. Chris Erwin:I like how you just phrase that, where I think a lot of people look at kids' content consumption as a problem that plagues the U.S. and all these other countries. But how do you put kids in the driver's seat of that content, that story to make it productive and helpful? I really like how you position that. So you have this vision. And so then how does this start? Where do you begin building and with who? Chris Ovitz:So I immediately called JJ, who was my co-founder of Viddy. And he was at Headspace at the time consulting for them, actually. And I was like, "You got to watch this documentary." He did. He was like, "Oh my God, this is awesome. I totally see what you mean. Let's start thinking about what this could look like." We reached out to our former CTO, Ken Chung, who's one of our co-founders, and he was running a big engineering team at Snap. So he was in charge of the camera team there, very talented engineer. He was at Fullscreen as well. And he's a new father. And so he got super excited about the potential. Chris Ovitz:And then we just kept building from there one by one, reaching out to people in our network that were extremely talented, that had young kids that could get excited about this. And so it really went from that is how the idea started to when we brought a gentleman named Travis Chen in, who's an interactive play designer. And he was the Chief Game Designer at Scopely, which is where I met him, super talented guy. And he was the one that really brought the play into the mix, and how we really started thinking about learning through play as the mechanism for which we were going to achieve our
Aditi Dash — Partner at CircleUp on Surprise FDA Visits, Clubhouse, and Consumer Investing
Mar 17 2021
Aditi Dash — Partner at CircleUp on Surprise FDA Visits, Clubhouse, and Consumer Investing
Aditi Dash is a Partner at CircleUp and invests in consumer brands like Beyond Meat, nutpods, and Black Medicine. We discuss emigrating from India at age 8, being told to "not sit at the table" while working at Morgan Stanley, taking the advice to "get out of the building" during a surprise FDA visit at La Colombe Coffee, and why hormone health and the convergence of Media x Consumer excite her as an investor.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteListen to our weekly executive insights on Media x Commerce news: Mondays at 2pm PT on Clubhouse via @chriserwinFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.Aditi Dash:The FDA showed up at the plant that I was running, and I'd had almost a meltdown, and I was freaking out and was given the advice to, "Hey, you just need to leave. You need to trust that the production manager and the warehouse manager have everything under control, and that the processes that you've put in place by this point are going to work." Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Aditi Dash, a partner at CircleUp. CircleUp is a consumer investor in companies like Beyond Meat, nutpods, Rebel, Black Medicine and more. Aditi was born in India and came to the US with her family at the age of eight. They spent time in Boulder, Colorado, then she went to the East Coast. After undergrad, she joined Morgan Stanley as an investment banker, and in her first week received the shocking advice of, "Never sit at the table."After a couple of years in banking, she went to the buy-side and was a consumer investor at Stripes Group. But while there, she felt disingenuous sitting across the table from founders, realizing that she wanted more operating experience so that she could give better advice. So she went to business school at Harvard, and shortly thereafter joined La Colombe, a coffee manufacturer. She has some pretty crazy stories from there, like when the FDA gave one of her plants a surprise visit, almost caused her a personal meltdown until her team told her to just get out of the building and trust the processes that she's built.Afterwards, Aditi went back to the buy-side and joined CircleUp as a partner. So at the end of our interview, we talk about what investment themes get her excited for 2021, like hormone health as purchase criteria and the convergence of media and direct-to-consumer brands. We also talk about why so many people don't get the basics of business and why Clubhouse is so exhausting. All right. This was a super fun interview with Aditi, I'm pumped to tell you her story, let's get into it. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up. What was your household like? Aditi Dash:Sure. So I grew up in a few different places. I'll start all the way at the beginning. I was born in this town called Dhanbad. It's in India, it's in Eastern India, and it is the coal mining capital of the country. Think West Virginia coal mines, a lot of the coal in India comes from this town, and that is what this town is known for. So I was born there at my grandmother's house, on my maternal grandmother's house, and lived there for a little bit, and then my family moved to Calcutta, which is now known as Kolkata. And that is the first real memory I have of a household. Aditi Dash:I lived in an apartment, two bedroom apartment with my parents. I have a younger brother. It was as far as I can remember full of joy and fun. We were middle class in India, and we were from a small town in a big city. So I guess the reason I'm saying that is that it felt like even just being in Kolkata was a big move for me and my family. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Totally. How old were you when you came over to the US? Aditi Dash:I was eight years old when I came to the US. And we moved to Milpitas in California, which is in the Bay Area. And it's like a tech hub today, it's in the center of Silicon Valley. And my dad was brought here in order to work in the tech industry. Chris Erwin:Was your father working in the technology industry back in India? Aditi Dash:Exactly. He was working in the tech industry back in India. I guess it's the reverse of outsourcing, but the- Chris Erwin:Insourcing. Aditi Dash:They insourced him and then three months later my mom and my brother joined him in California. Again, we had this great apartment in Milpitas. It was a two bedroom apartment that I recently went back to the complex and realized how tiny it was. But it was big in my eyes and my dad worked at Sun Microsystems, my mom was stay-at-home. I had a lot of fun, interesting memories from that point, but it was very community-driven. In that apartment complex, my parents got to know all the other Indians, and we hung out almost every single day if not every week, and it just was a really strong Indian community within that apartment and some of my parents best friends to this day are from there. They still see them on a weekly basis, which is kind of crazy. Chris Erwin:Wow. My mother was born in Italy, and then she migrated to the US. And I think they first landed in Erie, Pennsylvania when she was four years old. And a key part of that was that there was a lot of other local Italian community nearby to help to ease the transition and the logistics, and then just to feel that there was a support network. So did you actually move with whether other family members or other people from your Indian community back in India, when you made this move at age eight? Aditi Dash:No. It was a new community here. I think my dad may have had some friends that he was working with in India that also moved here at the same time, but for me it was a completely new thing. Chris Erwin:Do you remember being really excited or were you scared? What was going through your mind? Aditi Dash:Yes. I was really excited. I had a shirt that I would wear all the time that said baseball on it. I couldn't wait to move here. Just the things that were super exciting once I got here were like carpet. We didn't really have carpet in India, and so it was just I remember being fascinated by it, and volunteering to clean it whenever I could. Chris Erwin:That's a rare thing for a kid at that age, wanting to do chores like clean the carpet. Aditi Dash:Yeah. It felt like an adventure, but I'm sure that my parents telling me something along the lines of "Hey, this is going to be fun," had something to do with that. Chris Erwin:And so I know that you then end up at Brown, but in that interim period, what were you getting into a groove in? Were there certain sports or like now you're a consumer investor, were there any glimpses into your current career back then in your childhood? Aditi Dash:Yeah. A few things. So at the age of 12, we moved to Boulder, Colorado. And so in Colorado, in Boulder is where I really had my formative years, my rebellious years, my years to just figure out who I was. And weirdly enough, Boulder today is a hub for consumer products and for consumer products businesses, especially in the world of food and beverage. And I think that part of the reason that it became a hub is encompassed in some of the glimpses that I saw back then of this desire to live a healthier life, people even back then were very focused on natural ingredients, knowing where products came from, local, and then health and wellness, like running, yoga, skiing, physical activity. There was just a big focus on continuous improvement at least for the body and soul, that I just think that it impacted me in ways that maybe I didn't get, and attracted me to the world of natural foods, natural products, natural living and just consumer in general. Chris Erwin:Okay. It's funny, there's this like big westward migration from India to California, and then it's Boulder, Colorado, and then it's- Aditi Dash:Yeah. It's off to Rhode Island and Brown. Chris Erwin:Okay. And when you went to Brown, what was in your eyes then of what you wanted to do with your life? Aditi Dash:I filled out all my applications that I wanted to be a biomedical engineer, but I had a few different things that I wanted to do. I was interested in potentially doing something more political. I was working at the senator's office in Colorado, when I worked there. I was interested in potentially becoming a doctor, which is what I had always thought I'd want to do. I was really into writing as well, and I'd written my essay to apply to Brown about hamburgers and hot dogs and moving to America. So I wanted to do a little bit of something in writing. But I ended up starting as a engineering major, and I finished as an engineering major, and I studied economics as well. Chris Erwin:Aditi, before we move on from Brown, I just saw that on your LinkedIn that you founded I think a tutor network called BearPaw Tutors. What was that? Aditi Dash:Yes. Two of my best friends from engineering lab and I founded this company called BearPaw Tutors. And it was really fun. But basically, it was a business that would hire tutors from Brown and pay them $1 more than they could make tutoring Brown students, and then go out in the community starting with private schools, and find parents that were looking for SAT tutors for their kids and charge them less than they would have to pay Kaplan. Our costs were really low, because at the time, I think Brown students could make $8 an hour tutoring, and so we'd pay them $10 an hour. And then the parents were paying us like $30 an hour for the tutoring. And so we'd make a pretty good margin on that relationship, and our kind of angle was that we would allow parents to book online, pay online and leave a review online. So it was early in just doing all this online tutoring, and it was local and it was profitable, and it was really, really, really fun. Chris Erwin:Yeah. That's a pretty good spread for a business that kicks off in college, so kudos. Aditi Dash:Yeah. And so my friend Matt, who was the CEO and it was his idea, and he now works at Square. And my friend Tito, who was helping with just kind of building out the basic tech side of things is now an air miner. Chris Erwin:What's an air miner? Aditi Dash:An air miner, his vision is to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into carbon-based products. Chris Erwin:Is that kind of like carbon capture in a way? Aditi Dash:Yeah, exactly. Carbon capture. Chris Erwin:Got it. Cool. So after Brown, you go to investment banking at Morgan Stanley in New York City, and I think you start in the TMT group and then you go over to healthcare. But I'm curious, why did you want to go to banking in New York? Aditi Dash:I didn't know much about business or finance, but I had so much fun doing this BearPaw Tutors thing, that I was trying to figure out what I should do. And the advice I was given was, "You got to go into banking or consulting, if you like business." And so I started applying to all the consulting and banking firms and was lucky to get an internship at Morgan Stanley. And honestly, I didn't know what I was doing. I did not know what LevFin was, I didn't know what high yield bonds were. I felt like I just walked into this crazy finance party, and I was like, "This is great. I can do this." It was a blast. I had a great time. Chris Erwin:Okay. Yeah. You're definitely not learning like LevFin and LBO models when you're an undergrad. You're learning like trade theory and very abstract concepts. Very different. So you're there, and is the experience what you expected? I think you were there for maybe two to three years. Aditi Dash:The experience was not what I expected. I expected cubicles, but I was placed on a trading floor because that's where the leveraged finance TMT team was, so TVs everywhere, rows and rows of desks and no privacy whatsoever. So not just for me, but for anybody. Incredible learning experience. Whether I liked it or not, I was on like all the calls with important clients, because they were happening right next to me. I sat next to my boss, and I got a lot of responsibilities, I got yelled at. And at some point, and it was just, it was wild in that way. And then I also didn't expect the market to crash and people to lose their shit, because to me it was the first job, and I didn't realize how historical the Lehman bankruptcy was when I first started the gig. So I didn't realize the impact that it was having on individuals across the US. I didn't internalize that. Chris Erwin:It's interesting you say that, because I was also in banking from 2005 to 2010, pre-business school. So I was there during the whole debt crisis and market downturn. And I remember we were working on these really big landmark transactions, our buyers couldn't get the debt to complete them. So the markets fell through, and it was devastating. But I don't think I realized like not until hindsight, because I was kind of in my mid 20s. I don't think I fully acknowledged how severe the situation it was and how difficult it was for so many people. I was just concerned about myself and being like, "Oh, my comp is impacted." And I was like, well, in retrospect, so many people are losing their jobs, these venerable institutions are going away, like this is a really big deal. Do you feel that you felt what was actually happening in that moment or not? Aditi Dash:No. I was too young to feel it, and I don't think I quite got it. And I just hadn't seen enough, and maybe I still haven't seen enough of how the world works. Chris Erwin:Totally. So you mentioned, Aditi, in another chat we had that there was a piece of advice that you got about sitting at the table from an associate. Why don't you talk about that? Aditi Dash:Yeah. So I think this is on one of my first days at Morgan Stanley like post-training, and one of the associates told me, "Never sit at the table." And that was the first thing that he said to me, because we had our start date on a Monday and every Monday started with a Monday morning meeting. And so I showed up and I was told, "Hey, never sit at the table." And as I look back on that, I didn't think it was a huge deal. I was like, "Okay, I'll sit on the sides." But as I think back to that moment, and I think about every individual that has gotten into a job like that, and the first thing they hear is, "Never sit at the table," I get a little bit upset to be honest, because I don't think that's necessarily the message that we want to be sending to people that are starting new jobs. Aditi Dash:I think that we don't have to say, "Hey, sit at the table and say something," it's important to convey respect and know what you know and know what you don't know, but I don't think that just having a consistent never sit at the table messaging leads to confidence or people speaking up. I think you have to break out of that in order to be successful. Chris Erwin:Yeah. I think you also said it sets you up for second guessing yourself. And in life where you can second guess yourself everywhere, but you need confidence. And that if you feel that you have researched the topic, have spoken with credible advisors about something, that's like you have to go forth and trust yourself. Just hearing this story, there's a few layers to it, where it's almost like, "Hey, one, we don't want to hear from you. Don't sit at the table, your voice doesn't matter." But two, also like, "Maybe we don't want you to hear everything that we're saying as well." What a terrible message for someone that's just entering the workforce? Aditi Dash:Yeah. I think it goes both ways. And I think that it's also part of the culture of banking, or it was back then. Chris Erwin:I think you transition from TMT and then into healthcare, but then you make a transition to become part of the growth investment team at Morgan Stanley, and you move west to San Francisco. I think you went to Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. So what was that move about? Aditi Dash:So at the end of three years of banking, most people have to decide if they're going to stay in banking or leave banking. And for me, I liked banking but I had this feeling in the back of my mind that maybe there's something that I could like more. And so I told the banking team, I was in the healthcare group at the time, that I would be leaving. And so they were gracious enough to help make introductions, and it's a whole process where the analyst then starts being able to have time to go on interviews and interviewed at some funds, and tried to find a good gig. Aditi Dash:And then this was an inbound opportunity. It came in through somebody I knew at Morgan Stanley, who said, "Hey, I know you're looking to move to the buy-side, and we're rebuilding our team. It used to be called Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, now it's going to be called Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. We're rebuilding our team, and we need our first associate to join." And so I had wanted to move to California for a little bit. I had lived here as a child, and I had gotten in my head that I didn't like California. But I wanted to just test it out and see if that was actually true or not. Aditi Dash:So I interviewed for the job and thought, "Hey, this is a great way to learn investing." And my future boss gave me this advice that, "Hey, don't change more than two things at once," which I still try to do today. So he said, "If you're changing job and changing city, try not to change company. Or if you're changing company and job, try not to change city, because it's really, really hard to change more than two things at once." And that made a lot of sense to me. So I said, "Yeah. I'm going from banking to investing, and I'm moving cities, it would be good, it makes sense to stay at Morgan Stanley." So I was lucky enough to get that gig and moved out to the Bay Area to work for some incredible people on the investing side. Chris Erwin:Got it. I think clearly, this is the beginning of your buy-side career, because shortly after this, you then go to the Stripes Group, which is back east, which was a buy-side fund focused on tech, consumer and healthcare. And there's probably a point where I assume that at Morgan Stanley kind of you're young associate, learning just how to prepare things for an investment committee, learning from the partners, understanding what the lens is for making the right investments. And then at Stripes Group, it starts to probably be like founder and relationship building and potentially even some deal sourcing. When you go to Stripes, why did you make that move, and how did your role change there? Aditi Dash:I made the move for I would say 75% personal reasons and 25% professional. So I was dating somebody, and this person who is my husband today, lived in New York. Chris Erwin:So it was a good move, it worked out. Aditi Dash:It was a good move so far. Yes. But I thought to myself, "I'm willing to move all the way across the country for a job, and this could be a much bigger impact on my life than any job that I have. So if this feels real, I should be willing to move to the other side of the country to kind of see this through." And he already had a New York gig lined up, so he could move out to California. And he hated California, still kind of does, I think. Chris Erwin:Why did he hate California? Aditi Dash:I don't know. I think that he's very much a East Coaster, so he likes the weather, he doesn't like the taxes. We could get into it. So I told my boss, I was like, "Hey, look. This could be the real thing, so I have to go back to New York to be closer to him." That's why I ended up just putting fillers out and had a recruiting firm contact me about a role at an up and coming fund called Stripes Group. And at the time, I think it was Fund II that they had raised, and my job changed a lot in that it became much more sourcing-based and diligence whenever I wasn't sourcing and bigger deals. So Expansion Capital was doing smaller investments at the time, and Stripes was doing slightly bigger investments. Chris Erwin:And what types of deals were you particularly sourcing? Aditi Dash:Mostly in tech, SAS, consumer and media. Chris Erwin:Was that scary for you? To say like in your younger career, it's kind of like you have a boss to tell you what to do, you go do some analysis, you come back to them. And if you do it with high quality work and you're organized, it's a good look. But now it's like, hey, there's not necessarily a playbook here that I know, you kind of got to figure it out for yourself, how to build these relationships. How did you approach it? Aditi Dash:I don't think it was scary. I think that it was overwhelming and draining at times. I still feel this way. I feel like I have to be on my A game. It's all about building a relationship, connecting with the people. Totally different skill set, trying to be helpful without draining your own time. So I think I kind of approached it as like, hey, I had interest areas that I was covering, so I was looking at some healthcare companies back then and that was a big interest area, so I just made it a point to get to know everybody at the companies that I was trying to target. Aditi Dash:I went to all the healthcare events, I got to know healthcare investors, I got to know hospital people, and just started just representing Stripes at these events, and just going to conferences, going down to Baltimore, to DC, to New Orleans, and just kind of pounding the pavement for lack of a better word. And then making sure I brought that back to the team and kind of said, "Hey, if these are good companies, we should be looking at them, we should be looking into them," and kept iterating things that I was interested in, things I wanted to do. I think it's as much about external sourcing and external relationships, as it is about internal relationships, and that's a skill that I think is important to keep building continuously. Chris Erwin:And we'll get into this question a little bit more when we talk about CircleUp, but what do you think your personal investor brand that you're building back then, what were you trying to be known for that was different from, call it associates or principals that were at other funds relative to you? Aditi Dash:I was trying to be known for one, being thoughtful in my approach and outreach. Two was making connections between people who might be able to help each other or people who might like to know each other. Three as the person that can identify some interesting trends. And so I love being the person that said, "Oh, XYZ reminds me of this, and nobody else has kind of made that connection before." So making unique connections, which I think help people remember me and remember some of the ideas that I have. So connecting sometimes totally disparate things is something that I'd like to be known for. And then back then the other thing was just, I was doing a lot of brand building for Stripes, too. So kind of being known as one of the people that was at Stripes at the time. So if you thought of Stripes, you thought of me. Chris Erwin:I have to ask in terms of identifying trends, hearing what you're saying, a lot of my friends who are current venture capitalists or investors, and particularly when they were younger, like coming right out of business school, everyone thought that those were the most glamorous jobs and most in demand. And they were in very high demand and short supply. But those peers, I've never seen anyone work as hard as them. It's like they had to be everywhere. They were getting up early, they were preparing for investment committee meetings, they were constantly on panels, attending different webinars and conferences. And I was like, "When do you guys sleep? This feels exhausting and wanting to be always available to founders or texting with them or emailing them. This always on mentality." And I don't know if a lot of people see that part of it. It's a very, very difficult role. Aditi Dash:I think you have to have fun while doing it, otherwise it gets draining. Work from home helps. Chris Erwin:But it's clear that you wanted something different or something more after Stripes, and you end up going to business school. Aditi Dash:I felt as myself really disingenuous when I was telling a founder, "Hey, I think you should do this." I don't think every investor needs this, which is operating experience or just some experience and having done a startup. I just was having a really hard time saying with a straight face, "Hey, one of the things that I recommend is X for your SAS business, or Y for your consumer brand, or Z." I felt like that's what I needed to get really good at if I was going to be an investor, actually giving advice that is helpful and actionable to founders when they need it. Aditi Dash:And so I told my boss, I said, "Hey, I don't think I can quite get there yet." And asked if he would write a recommendation letter for me to business school. And not just him but a few other people at Stripes as well. So I applied to HBS and Stanford, because I wanted to take a break from the investing side, explore a few different industries, hopefully make a move over to the operating side, and just get a little bit more experience before I started telling other people what to do. Chris Erwin:So then you head to HBS in 2014, and what is that first set of operating experience that you start to get while you're there? Aditi Dash:There were a couple of things. One was starting a small company and a product management class, so just kind of thinking about that. Another was an internship at Blue Apron, which was the last investment that I completed during my time at Stripes. And three was an entrepreneurship course that I took where we were building a startup idea for the healthcare space. And so just like testing these in real life and in test environments. Chris Erwin:So what did you feel that you learned from that operating experience that was revelatory to you? Aditi Dash:I felt like a lot of people don't get the basics, and that a lot of running a company comes down to some pretty basic things, and along the lines of, do you make more money than you spend, over can you buy something for $20 and sell it for $40? And are you giving the person who's buying your product what they actually want or need? And I just felt like a big disconnect between the investing world and the people who were actually like working in the Blue Apron warehouse, or the Blue Apron fulfillment center. And so I felt like some of those basic questions that a company was trying to solve at the high level, I thought different people couldn't answer them along the company ladder. Aditi Dash:I think that was eye-opening in that, I realized that operating experience isn't necessarily about learning these complicated things that nobody else understands. I realized that operating experience is more about simplifying the mumbo jumbo and the finance terms and the legal ease into basic business principles that really lead somebody to think about, "Hey, is this a good thing for the community, the country, the customer?" Chris Erwin:That's actually a really good point, thinking about how you take the focus of profitability and a sustainable business and good unit economics, translate that to a clear message, but then having that message permeate the ranks. Everyone thinks through every single decision with that lens. I remember, when I joined Big Frame right out of grad school, we had a part-time CFO come in, and his name is Steve Hendry. When he kicked off his work with our team, he said, "I'm empowering everyone on this team, from the CEO down to the support analysts, the producers, the editors. Think like an owner. Think about what business decisions make sense." Now, that was easy for him to do because we were a 25 person team and he could say that in a room. But for a really big company, how do you get that message to everybody? And did you learn any techniques while you were getting these internships of how to do that? Aditi Dash:I actually think it's very basic. I think it comes down to overcommunicating and oversimplifying. I don't think business and finance is and should be complicated. I think that it's important to go out of your way to not say ROAS, like talk about, "Hey, we're spending this much money on marketing, and it needs to generate more sales." So I think it comes down to simplicity and just consistency and overcommunication, but I don't think it's rocket science. I think anyone can do it. And I think I have to get better at it. It's weird, I feel like it's almost easier to overcomplicate something than to simplify it. But I was going to ask you, why did you decide to leave the world of investment banking? Chris Erwin:In my last year and a half that I was there, I was working with a lot of early stage technology and media startups. And we were helping a company, Ingrooves actually, with a capital raise that was based out of San Francisco. I loved working with that team, the founder was Robb McDaniels, shout out to him. I loved working with that team, I loved their energy. They were building something that was disruptive. But it was still early, and they were just grinding it out. And I was like, "Oh, I love this energy. This feels fun. I want to do this." Chris Erwin:In banking, I had just been as an advisor and operating outside the company, and I wanted to see the guts from the inside. And then I was also attracted to the West Coast. I was like a Jersey Shore kid for my entire life, so I wanted to switch up the terrain a bit too, that's why I did it. Aditi Dash:That's cool. Chris Erwin:Closing out that last point. I think you're right, that things can be a lot simpler. And I just heard this on the Shaughnessy podcast, I think he was interviewing a coach at Berkeley, if I remember correctly. And the coach referenced fence posting, where it's that notion of you put the fence post in so you make the point, you communicate something clearly, and then three feet down the line, you put another fence post in. And you just keep repeating the same message until it's drilled into everyone's brains. Can you just be as simple as that? I love that analogy. Chris Erwin:Okay. So you're at HBS for a couple years, and then you're getting this operate experience, and then you decide to transition to La Colombe, a coffee manufacturer afterwards. Was that still part of the same vein of like, "I just want deeper operate experience. This feels right," or was there something else you were thinking about? Aditi Dash:I had gotten interested in the coffee industry when I was at Stripes, and we'd started looking at a number of companies in the space. And I also was fascinated By the coffee supply chain. And so I took a class on just international trade relations and started diving into the coffee supply chain and wrote an interesting paper on it, and started just putting out into the HBS Universe that I really want to work in coffee like, "This seems really cool. I love the product. I think it's a really interesting area." And the Universe presented an opportunity to do so while I was at HBS. So I did this independent study with La Colombe and with Chobani, on potential ways for Chobani and La Colombe to partner with two friends at HBS. Aditi Dash:And Diana, Elizabeth and I worked on this project to help think about ways that Chobani and La Colombe could partner to create new retail concepts. And so just like a consulting project, where we didn't get paid but we got credit for doing the work. And through that process, I got to know the La Colombe team. And then the other thing is just before the project started, my husband was living in Philly, and he was attending Wharton, and I asked him to go to the Wharton career fair. And I heard that the La Colombe team was going to be there. And I asked him to give them my contact information and get theirs so that I could talk to them about a potential opportunity. Chris Erwin:So you're recruiting to Colombe via like a Wharton career fair? Aditi Dash:Yeah. So I said, "Hey, can you please go? And then just drop my name and then get their card so I can email them, so they know who I am." And then that happened right before this project started. So it all kind of came together at the same time. And then I ended up applying for a full-time role, and because of the project they'd already gotten to know me. And so I received an offer in July about two and a half months after graduating from HBS and accepted the offer to start at La Colombe working for the COO. Initially working for the COO, working on some new products, figuring out margins and demand planning. And then I transitioned to working for the CEO on new products innovation, and overseeing the pilot production facility. Chris Erwin:How big was the team when you joined? Aditi Dash:It was probably in the office close to 20 people when I joined, and it grew over the two years I was there because they doubled down on CPG distribution. So they created cans, and we were selling them in places like Whole Foods and Walmart and brought on a big sales team to support that. That happened around the time I was joining/right afterwards. Chris Erwin:Got it. You mentioned in our pre-chat that I think a big thing for you there was that you were learning how to launch new product. But you are making these pretty big directional decisions for the company with not a lot of necessarily data and insights. Talk about that. Aditi Dash:So my job was to just take any idea from any part of the company and try to bring it to life working with the team. And a lot of the ideas came from the CEO and founders mind. I mean, he was the kind of guy where he had gotten to where he was by trusting his gut and his gut instincts. And so some of the products he wanted to create didn't even exist yet, and it would just be impossible to get data or market insights on those products. Like there's nowhere I could look to figure out, "Hey, would this kind of product make sense in any way? Would Nitro juice make sense?" We were working on Nitro coffee, but he said, "The world needs Nitro juice." So there's just no way to search for Nitro juice. But you can actually create it and see if it sells, and go from there, which is what we did. Chris Erwin:Got it. Was there any other type of analysis like trying to extrapolate insights from other tangential product launches to kind of fill some of the early data gaps, anything like that? Aditi Dash:Yeah. We used a lot of data from existing product launches just to see hey, like a new can in our store sells this much, and we can kind of think about that. We looked at other products and adjacent or similar categories. At the time, we didn't even have a lot of Nielsen or IRI data, so we took what we could get from wherever. I think now the company probably pays for a lot more data than we did back then. Chris Erwin:You did launch this, remind me, this Nitro product. Aditi Dash:Yes. We launched a Nitro juice, Nitro lemon and Nitro orange juice that we created in the pilot production facility and went through like hundreds of suppliers and thousands of tests and iterations, and started selling it in the cafes and people like at least in the cafes, were obsessed with it. Chris Erwin:Yeah. In terms of getting that initial data upon launch, were you doing just kind of focus groups and surveys or just using the initial sales data? How were you getting that need in information? Aditi Dash:We'd do a little bit of testing and sampling in store. The cool thing about having just a physical space and working out of a cafe all day, is that you have instant access to customers all the time all day. And so we were leveraging those customers to test out new products. And that was like the easiest thing to do. And I think that was really, really great, and I recommend a lot of the brands I talk to today to find a channel or path where they can test that in. So some days, it would literally be, hey, like making the product, and then having the baristas taste it later on. Aditi Dash:I actually ended up leveraging the baristas a lot as well, just because they were part of the company, so we could use them to test different products and they would be able to fill out surveys or be required to fill out surveys, but they were also kind of consumers because of their day-to-day lives and their interaction with consumers help them understand people a lot more. So I think leveraging the baristas was one unique source of at least limited data. And then we would basically test online where the marketing team would post something and see how much engagement it got. And that would inform sometimes product names, sometimes product directions. Aditi Dash:We had the Instagram followers vote on the next flavor. Whatever you could to leverage existing customers in different channels, was important to testing out and gathering early data. And then once we got the process approved for making the juice by the FDA process authority, then we started making just a handful of cans and selling it, adding it to things like cocktails. So it just became part of, "Hey, let's just do this every single day to see how people are responding." Chris Erwin:And in this role, were you managing a team or was your role kind of spread across different