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I tweeted this out a long time ago.
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I said I have a new hero and his name is Dan Porter.
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You're here and today you're going to show people why that is true.
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Listen, me, I wasn't a gamer and I made a pretty popular game.
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I didn't know a lot about ticketing and I started the first live event ticketing company. I like sports. I'm not a sports wizard.
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I don't know, you just do [ __ ] You're fun as [ __ ] to talk to.
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Can you talk about a couple of the things that you did intentionally that you think helped build the brand?
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The one second piece of advice I would give is that I'll start with a few facts.
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Number one, this is a guest I have been waiting for to come on the podcast for years and the reason why is because I have Dan, you don't know this, but I've had all these fantasies, these entrepreneurial fantasies in my life.
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There's a part of me that's like, you know what?
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One day I'm going to make a hit social app and 100 million people are going to use it.
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I'm going to sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars. You've done that.
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I have this other fantasy that no, no, no, I'm going to go change education.
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I'm going to start a big nonprofit.
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I'm going to be the leader of that.
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I'm going to help grow that thing and I'm going to help change the way that education works in America. You've done that.
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Part of me wants to go to Hollywood and work with the power brokers, the people who are who are in that world. You've done that.
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Part of me wants to create a a brand that's like, you know, part of the culture that uh that, you know, in the in the world of sports uh takes off. You've done that.
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Part of me wants to own a sports league. You've done that.
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You have done basically all the things that I've ever wanted to do.
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I tweeted this out a long time ago.
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I said I have a new hero and his name is Dan Porter.
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Nobody knew who the hell I was talking about.
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Nobody knew why I was saying that.
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I didn't give any context, but you're here and today you're going to explain to the people, you're going to show people why that is true.
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Uh that's an amazing intro, especially for somebody whose Twitter game is as lame as mine. I I appreciate that.
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I would subtext with uh clearly jack of all trades, master of none.
2:02
Well, I want to start with the story uh cuz your stories are legendary.
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You came to our our basketball camp, Camp AF AF, and you didn't even play basketball, which is the best part.
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You were my favorite person there and you didn't even play basketball, which is the the funniest part.
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Can you tell the story of OMG Pop and what happened there?
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Yeah, so uh OMG Pop was a gaming website built entirely in Flash.
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Started with this incredibly creative guy, Charles Forman, who grew up playing Game Boys in his garage and was like, I wish the internet could connect us to play together.
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Uh and we made a ton of really fun games and we actually had success.
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And it's a weird story because in some ways like we imagine that businesses either succeed or fail, but what happens like if you're in the middle?
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And we had millions of people who played our games.
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The problem is that FarmVille came out and they had 100 million people who played their games.
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And all of a sudden millions of people who played your games was kind of way lamer than 100 million people who played your game on Facebook.
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And we we did our thing, but then the world changed and it was Facebook games and it was all these other things.
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And so at what point do you come back to the board and you're just like, well, we're you know, we're kind of running out of money and they're like, well, why do we want to invest in something that is good but not great?
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Uh and so I remember we went back and we were like, okay, so let's say that we cut all the snacks.
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Like, how much runway would that increase for us?
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Um and the answer was one day.
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And at some point you're just like, well, I am I in the runway extending business?
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Am I in the business of taking something that is good but not great and just continually taking money over and over over time?
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And so I think at that point you kind of have that realization and then the board is sitting around and they're like, oh, we can take we can raise money, we can borrow money.
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And you're just like, well, what happens if like we did some cool [ __ ] it just wasn't cool enough?
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And so yeah, we're kind of I just said like, maybe this is just kind of the end and we're just going to make some more games and see what happens and maybe we're going to go out of business and a couple million people will be sad, but, you know, not not 100 million.
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Uh and so that's kind of what we did and in that process I I just thought like let's make one or two more games and we had this one very big game that everybody in the company that was was working on, a more kind of complicated uh game.
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And so I said I'd like to at least try to make the last game that we make.
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Even though I'm not a game designer, I think I I've worked here and I've kind of like internalized it and I think that the cool as a sidebar, one of the cool things about working in the gaming space is it it change your mindset so that you're kind of one game always there's always one game away from something changing the trajectory of the company.
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And if you're in a website or an app or a product business, that's dangerous cuz you always believe like, oh my god, I'm just one feature away.
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If I just enable push notes, if I just add this other thing, then my app is going to be gigantic and that can be an illusion, which is which is challenging.
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But, you know, portfolio theory kind of a games company is almost like a portfolio of a bunch of smaller startups in some ways.
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And and even if you look at overtime, you know, we have basketball, we have football, we have a meeting media company and they all kind of roll up to some big vision, but they're also a portfolio of different types of bets in some way.
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And so I think that definitely impacted my thinking.
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But, I was just thinking, okay, like we're going to make one or two more games. Let's see what happens.
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How how much time did you have?
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Four months, five months left. Damn.
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And did you believe or where where was the belief?
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Cuz, you know, startups are a roller coaster.
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You you have the initial surge where this is going to be awesome.
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You have the the the trough of despair, the trough of sorrow where you're it feels like nothing's working and then sounds like you were at the end.
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Where was the morale at the time?
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I didn't get up on a podium and say, hey y'all, we're going to be out of business in five months, so polish up that resume.
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Uh and we had millions of users.
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I mean, our average time on site was like four and a half hours. And people loved us.
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It's just that the scale at which they loved us was not the scale at which was happening when Facebook transformed the gaming business.
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And of course like all the money is focused on you and then they're like, oh [ __ ] bright shiny objects and got FarmVille, anything that ends in ville and they all ran over there and you're like, hey, what's up?
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I got a couple million users and they're like, cool, cool.
6:48
All right, guys, really quick.
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So, back when I was running the Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called Trends.
6:53
The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and we created this sort of playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses.
7:02
Well, HubSpot did something kind of cool.
7:04
So, they took this playbook that we developed and we gave to our analysts and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download and it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends, for spotting different companies that are going to explode and grow really quickly.
7:20
So, if you want to stay ahead of the game and you want to find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea they exist, this is the ultimate guide.
7:27
So, if you want to check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now, back to the show.
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And so we're like, well, we made these web-based games, but it's about social games and it's about, you know, mobile games.
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And so, you know, you have 4 to 6 months left and then at some point I think you hit this point where you're just like maybe it is just going to go out of business.
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Like, you know, whatever they say on Wall Street, don't fight the tape.
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And like all we're going to do is do our best.
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Like, we're not going to mortgage the house and do all these other things like that to stay in the in business for the sake of staying in business.
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And you know, we got a we got a couple shots.
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We have this big game everyone's working on.
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And I think I'm just like, I'd like to make a game and maybe I can make a game and maybe I'm like super arrogant or really deluded or completely out of touch, but like we have this kind of fun drawing and guessing game that we've been making on the internet and like maybe we could make it as a social game off in the corner.
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So, everybody in this 50-person company is making a game and I'm in the corner with like an outsourced dev and two people on my team.
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And I don't know a ton about making games, but the the game seems fun and I just have this instinct that like, wow, the phone is a communications device and yet every game that's popular on the phone is basically a single-player game.
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And so we're back in this like, okay, everybody has a Game Boy, but they're actually connected in some way.
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So, could we do something social?
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And so I start trying to make like a version of this game, which was called Draw My Thing at that time, which I think might have been a little intentionally racy.
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And basically like every Friday we would make a version of it and I would try to play it.
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And I'm really dumb and I'm not good at games uh and I can't read instructions and I have a lot of limitations in that space.
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I obviously I clearly can't even hoop really.
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Um and so I just play the game and I'd just be like, how can this game be simpler?
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I don't really understand it.
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And I'd recognize every Friday when I played it on the subway home like, wow, this is really fun and I get it and and this isn't.
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And so we kind of get to that point.
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We rename it Draw Something and we're like kind of last gasp of the com- company uh and we try to promote it to our audience, you know, to our couple of million people we have.
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Hey, we got this new game.
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It's based on this other thing.
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And it's it's in my mind it is kind of this Hail Mary, but you can't run a company and go like, "Hey guys, we're going to be out of business in 4 months.
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And by the way, this is our Hail Mary."
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Or else literally everybody in the entire company would have a psychic breakdown.
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So, they're working on this other game with fighting and all this other stuff.
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And we kind of like release this game.
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And we give a lot of promotion so everybody knows about it.
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And the game kind of like climbs the chart, right?
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Cuz on day one, like 30 or 40,000 people download it cuz we give them our website to do that.
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And it flips up a little bit.
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And it flips up a little bit more, and then it kind of crashes down.
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And you're just like, "Okay, so what have we learned?"
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Dan Porter definitely not as smart as he thought he was.
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Probably not a real game designer.
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And looks like it's not going to save the company.
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Uh and that's the nature.
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And we try some other promotion.
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And before the weekend, like a week out, one of the back-end developers comes to me and he says, "I think there's something broken in the game because like there all of these calls being made in the game and like they're not going through."
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And he's like, "I think Chris and I," his name was Jason, "are going to stay all weekend.
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We're going to try to fix the back end of the game." Uh and I'm like, "Cool.
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Like, what's the downside of that?"
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So, they stay and they rewrite the entire back end of the game over the weekend.
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But then we have to submit it to the App Store.
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And at that time, you would submit it to the App Store and it might take a week or two for it to get approved.
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And so, I call a famous investor who uh everybody knows, who had written a seed check in us and wrote a lot a lot of seed checks.
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And I said, "Listen, I just need this one favor.
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Like, if they could actually review the game and put it up in a day or two, it might be huge for us."
11:42
And he says, "I I can help you, but A, you never get to ask me another favor.
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B, one day in 12 years, when you're on Sam and Shawn's podcast, you can't use my name so that other people don't ask me."
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So, blank blank, I'm not using your name.
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Uh and I'll see what I can do. He does it.
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It goes in the App Store. Uh he he uses his clout.
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And all of a sudden, it's updated.
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And what had been happening was that the game was actually spreading like wildfire, but nobody could download it and they couldn't play it once they had downloaded or they had downloaded and it didn't work.
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So, they fix it, whatever.
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And the thing just effing just like blows up.
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It just like goes through the roof.
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And all of the sudden, it's the number one game in Sweden.
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And the colors were blue and yellow.
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So, people were like, "Oh, they must be confused about the Swedish flag."
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I was like, "I think they're a smart people.
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Or maybe they just like the game."
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Um and it it it started getting really big there.
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And then weirdly, it started getting really big in small liberal arts colleges.
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Um and in Minnesota and all these other places.
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I think what happened was that we were really successful at two things: making a game that was really simple to understand and play.
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And ultimately, like grandmas played like it was super broad.
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And the second thing was making a game that really had just insanely powerful word of mouth.
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But word of mouth works in a very small tight-knit community.
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So, it works in a liberal arts college of 5,000 people.
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It works in a country like Sweden.
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You know, at a giant university or somewhere else, it doesn't.
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And so, it just starts to grow.
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And Well, what's the timeframe of this?
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I would say literally day by day.
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Like, in the first 9 days, we got to a million downloads.
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And then in the first 50 days, we got to 50 million downloads.
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The only app that was in front of us was [ __ ] flashlight.
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Cuz at that time, the iPhone didn't have a flashlight.
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And somebody make a minute. Every deck came in.
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I was like, "I'm going to [ __ ] kill flashlight.
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We got to be more popular than the flashlight is."
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And this is like uh in 10, 2010 or something? It was 2012. 12.
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Yeah, of course I played it.
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I mean, everyone played that game, right?
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I mean, how many users did you end up having? So, it it just blows up.
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It just becomes the number one game in like every country in the world for 6 months straight.
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So, I would say on a DAU basis, we had at least 25 million people playing every day, uh which was gigantic at that time.
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We ultimately were downloaded 250 million times.
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Uh and all of the sudden, it was just everywhere.
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And then everyone came to me and they're like, "We need influencers to make this big."
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And someone's like, "I know Cristiano Ronaldo's manager."
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And I was like, "That's really [ __ ] random, but like I'll do whatever."
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And then a week later, they come in and they're like, "Miley Cyrus is tweeting about it."
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And like all these celebrities are tweeting about it.
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It has nothing to do with me.
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It's like if you make something that's popular in culture, like everybody does it.
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And I remember I I end up making a game show with uh with Ryan Seacrest.
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And I was like, "How did you find out about this game?"
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He's like, "All the All the people who sat in the front of the studio, like secretaries and the assistants and the bookers, they were just playing it all day and they were laughing their ass off.
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And I keep coming over and I was like, "What are you guys laughing at?"
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And they're like, "This game."
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And so, in this weird way, especially in this influencer world, like there's this level of traction that you get where people just participate in it because it's part of culture.
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You were like the hot tua girl before before she was around. Congratulations.
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managed to stay around for 6 months as opposed to like 3 days on Twitter.
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Um but you could tell by watching on Twitter.
15:27
I I actually think that we were one of the first games that ever kind of broke on Instagram because it was so visual.
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If you Google Draw Something and look at Google Images, there's billions and billions of of images around it.
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And there were all these funny things about it.
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Number one, like we didn't put any sharing capability in it.
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So, there was just no way to share.
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And that was like the anti- antithesis of what everyone did.
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So, what happened was people just took screenshots of their drawings and they just texted and posted.
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And in this weird way, because you didn't ask celebrities to talk about it, they talked about it.
16:04
Because you didn't ask people to share, they shared it.
16:06
And I remember at some point, like I was walking through Zynga's headquarters and they eventually bought bought the game.
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And there were a bunch of developers and they were trying to figure out the game and trying to like map it so they could copy it.
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And one of them said to me, "Why didn't you put XP in this game?
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I mean, every good game has XP."
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And I thought, "Oh, [ __ ] You're right.
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I meant to do that, but I hadn't done it."
16:32
And so, it was it ended up just being this kind of organic game that we knew a lot about, but that was built by kind of a regular person and then just played by regular people.
16:42
And I'll tell you one kind of like geeky game thing about it is that I understood from our site that if you came onto our site and you played a game, if you and Sam played, and Sam won, 50% of the time, you would never come back to the site again.
16:55
So, let's say it was even checkers.
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The first time you lose at checkers, you're like, "Eff this site. This isn't fun." And you lose.
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So, what does that say to you about running a gaming site where literally somebody's going to lose and then you're going to lose them as as basically as a customer.
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And so, in my head, I was like, "I need to figure out this way that you could have a game where nobody loses."
17:16
And that's like some like That's like one of those riddles, like which is the door you knock on to get into heaven or hell or other things like that.
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What is the game that has no winners and losers?
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And so, one day, I was in Prospect Park uh with my son my younger son, Miles, and his friend.
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And they were throwing the football.
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And I was like, "Listen, if you guys can throw and catch it 50 times in a row, I'll take you for ice cream."
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Cuz basically, I'm just trying to get them to collaborate.
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And they were like, "Oh, it's like a streak.
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We're going to keep doing it."
17:47
And I was like, "Oh my god, there's no winner and loser.
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Like, they're both winners in this game."
17:53
Uh and so, I'm just like, "Oh, you're going to have streaks in Draw Something.
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Like, the more you can go back and forth and everybody's a winner."
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And all this other stuff.
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So, it's fun for everyone involved. Moments in life.
18:07
And and subsequently, somebody at Snap told me, "Oh yeah, we took that idea of streaks from what you guys had done in that game."
18:13
And it's not like I was like in some lab cooking up amazing like ideas about internet and the future of gaming.
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It was just kind of like I was just this regular person observing, trying to answer some of these existential questions and looking around me.
18:29
And I wasn't a gamer, so I didn't really use XP.
18:31
And I was like looking for the ways that What made people laugh and what made them smile.
18:37
And the biggest thing is, listen, if the first game was called Draw My Thing, what do you think people draw in the game? Like, this is not hard.
18:43
Well, well, that's something uh you and Shawn actually have that in common.
18:48
You have both owned uh social apps where uh drawing penises were was one of the main features. Yeah.
18:55
And I remember this very long board meeting where they were like, "You know, we're going to use optical character recognition.
19:01
And we're going to recognize every dick in the game.
19:03
And then we're going to blank it out."
19:05
And this other board member's like, "It doesn't matter whether it goes to the left or the right.
19:10
We're going to figure it out.
19:12
And we're going to just get it out of here."
19:14
And I just thought like, "Wow, that sounds really hard."
19:15
And it's like, here lies Dan Porter.
19:18
He He figured it out on his grave.
19:20
He figured out how to use like early artificial intelligence to spot, you know, DICKS in the games and stuff like that.
19:27
And so, ultimately, I just made this change where it's like you could only play with your friends.
19:33
Cuz I just figured like, "Okay, so like whatever.
19:36
You send your friend something like that, they either laugh or they're like, 'Dude, come on.
19:40
Just send me a real drawing.'"
19:42
And it's just kind of like one of these moments where it's like you're trying to solve this problem.
19:46
And the reality is is the solution for the problem is actually something that's like bigger in a way like that.
19:54
Like I'll tell you a really dumb story.
19:56
I had like terrible knee pain and it's like at some point I was climbing stairs and I started wearing like pads on my knees and I finally went to doctor.
20:04
I went to like an NFL doctor and he I think he's going to tell me I need knee surgery.
20:08
He does all these things to me and he says listen lie on the table.
20:12
It's like I'm going to touch your heels to your butt and I'm like it really hurts.
20:15
He's like yeah your quads are so freaking tight.
20:18
It's you have nothing to do with your knee.
20:20
What you think is the problem is completely not the problem.
20:23
You just need to stretch out your quads.
20:25
And I was like oh my god I just A avoided knee surgery and B learned one of the greater lessons in life which is you think it's this input output but there all of these things that are around it.
20:35
It's like not about recognizing you know the dicks in your game it's about changing some other structure around you.
20:44
Uh it's about figuring out to stretch out your quads.
20:46
I think we found your your biography title.
20:48
It's not about not about the dicks in the game. Yeah exactly.
20:51
Hey Gabe, were you I I know you had a business before this but were you financially successful before starting this company or was it like this has to work otherwise I'm broke and I got to start over?
21:02
I was kind of like us I wasn't like in I mean my parents were college professors so I didn't have a ton of money.
21:09
I had been a public school teacher and worked in non-profit education before this so I didn't really have a massively lucrative career. I was average.
21:20
I mean I couldn't stop working but you know I didn't have to eat ramen every day.
21:25
But yeah this this game and this company was the chance to completely change the trajectory of my life and my family's life from a financial perspective. Without a doubt.
21:38
I think the the insight about uh you know people Why do people stop playing my game?
21:42
You sort of invert So how do I not make everyone play my game?
21:46
It's like why would somebody not play a game?
21:47
Well because they lose and they feel bad.
21:48
And so you're like can you make a game where people don't lose and feel bad?
21:51
And the beautiful thing about the streak is let's say we lost well we're playing together we're collaborating.
21:56
I almost feel like I owe you to play again.
21:58
So instead of churning out because I lost I'm like no no no I got to make up for that.
22:01
My bad I dropped the ball.
22:02
Let's start the streak again and and I have I definitely have to play because I'm the one who cost us the streak.
22:07
That was the first thing.
22:09
I also loved I mean this game was amazing dude.
22:11
This was like my flirt game.
22:13
Uh you're you're basically my wingman.
22:14
I didn't even know you at the time.
22:16
I got a girlfriend through Draw Something because it was such a simple game.
22:19
You download it and immediately it's like draw this.
22:21
The beauty of it was it would show the other person like almost like a a playback of you drawing it.
22:28
For those who didn't play this game it's like I don't remember the exact mechanics.
22:31
It's like you have to draw it'll tell you what to draw. You start to draw it.
22:33
The other person doesn't know what you had to draw they have to guess.
22:37
And it would show you like kind of start stopping erasing and it was really funny to see people's kind of like mistakes as they were drawing the thing and you could only be so good like nobody could really be that great unless you're really really talented because it's a finger on a little iPhone screen.
22:54
So the expectations were low too.
22:56
And I just thought like I remember the first time I saw that oh it lets you watch the other person draw the thing and that makes you laugh and then that makes you feel connected with this person cuz it's like almost like both sides are like a little vulnerable in a way right?
23:09
You're you're embarrassing yourself.
23:10
It's like playing charades.
23:10
Um it makes you like each other more.
23:12
And I remember thinking this is genius and this game is so simple.
23:16
There's been so many people come on this podcast to say the same thing.
23:19
It's like well my back was against the wall like we didn't really have another choice.
23:22
I wasn't an expert at this thing but I just wanted to make a game that that would really fun to play.
23:27
And every week we would make it and every Friday I would play test it and then I just try to figure out what I could do to make it a little bit better than it was just that Friday.
23:35
I'll try to make one tweak and I just did that one tweak at a time and sure enough that actually resulted in a great product.
23:41
It's not this like highly complex convoluted grand theory approach to making things successful. No totally.
23:50
I mean people used to say to me I'm not I love that game but I'm not really that good at drawing and I was like that's the kind of the point of the game.
23:54
Like there were people who had pens and iPads who could draw great things but it should be accessible to everyone.
24:04
Weirdly we released a game and within a week there were five games that were released that were similar but we were the only game that had the playback.
24:10
And you know how people always say like the greatest thing about the iPhone is is when they text you that code and it lets you hit that little thing and it puts the code in anything you're filling out like it's just like sometimes there's some aspect of the product that doesn't seem like the core aspect but it's so great and to your point it wasn't just the drawing it was the erasing.
24:33
It made you feel like there was a live person on the other side of it and that that really was the point of it.
24:40
And then there were a lot of other just like really totally random goofy things.
24:45
Like I don't think I've ever said this before but like in the beginning there'd be a little screen and these letters would make a word and the word it made was Manchul m a n c h u l.
24:55
Manchul aka Chul was one of our developers and we just punked him and just put his name in the beginning of the thing and nobody ever said anything and after Zynga bought it for like two years they left it up there and you'd open it and it wouldn't say like draw something or whatever it would just say Manchul.
25:13
It was like this just like just put these weird things in there just because because you can and because listen you could say from a strategy Look if I'm not having fun how can I make sure that the people who are doing the drawings are having fun?
25:27
And you sold it for you sold for like what? $200 million to Zynga? Yes.
25:31
And that was when Zynga was at its peak.
25:35
That was like five to six weeks after the game really kind of came out and burst like we sold that. It happened so fast. No way. Six weeks? Yeah.
25:44
So that was like the crazy turnaround.
25:45
So they hired two law firms.
25:48
One worked the first 12 hours of the day on the deal and then the other one worked the second 12 hours of the day of the deal and the whole deal got done in nine days and I'm like I have like all this paperwork and I'm trying to run around and figure out How did it happen?
26:01
So the game's blowing up and what you get an email from Mark Pincus or how how did that blowing up and not only is it so big it's literally sucking the user base out of every single other game on the market.
26:12
And so that's Zynga that's EA that's like everybody else who's about to report earnings and talk about their DAU and MAU you know I have these videos of the download numbers and the counter is just broken because there's you know you're there's a million drawings happening every five seconds.
26:29
And so you know Mark knew somebody on my board they invited me to the headquarters.
26:36
I was a joker so I entered my name as Dr.
26:39
Dre from the company NWA coming in.
26:42
I thought maybe if somebody would know I was there or whatever.
26:43
Uh ultimately there were five or six companies that were really interested in buying it because it was just the trajectory was so big and I think they were playing offense like they clearly was like these guys are some mobile game savants and I think they were playing defense because they were bleeding all of their users across everywhere.
27:02
And the deal closed six weeks after the after Draw Something went live?
27:07
That's got to be one of the fastest That's got to be one of the fastest close like launch to close times ever. It was insanely fast.
27:12
And the funny thing is that I went to GDC which is a game developer conference and the year before I went and like nobody knew who I was and it just so happened that it happened at the peak moment of the game and I went and like everybody knew who I was but then I could meet with like seriously like every buyer like in two days because everybody was in San Francisco for that conference.
27:35
Francisco for that conference. And we also got a term sheet for $50 million which I had folded up and put in my pocket and went to a vent and I dropped it and I couldn't find it and I only had the printout so I had a rough idea of what the terms were but it was on the
27:50
floor of some party somewhere and I came back and I asked kind of like the OGs who had been there for four or five years since there only seven of us and we were working above like a combination Taco Bell Duncan Donuts where the smell was different on which side of the room you were on. And I was
28:05
And I was like do you guys want to raise money and like build something really big or do you want to sell the company?
28:10
And they were like sell the company.
28:11
Um and I get it they had put five years of their life.
28:15
They were at a pivotal time in their life and it was life-changing for them.
28:19
Um so I think that was the decision and and I think people ask me a lot of times also listen we were really really good at making games and we made a really popular game and we were good at the community management and the social media around it.
28:31
But you take $50 million and you spend a lot of that on building a legal team building a sales building all these commodity things that I didn't think we were necessarily going to be better than anyone else at.
28:42
So we just wanted to be in a place where we could make games.
28:46
How did you negotiate the price?
28:50
They the buyers came back and they were like 120 150 million dollars. The board was ecstatic.
29:01
Well where did they come up with that number?
29:02
Um I think they were looking at probably we were making a ton of money because uh we had so many screens in the game when you go back and forth and back and forth.
29:13
So we're churning out of advertising revenue.
29:16
You're looking at you know roughly kind of how much is an MAU or a DAU interesting to you.
29:21
And so we bring it to the board and the board is ecstatic because we go from being like oh should we actually wind this thing down to now we have this thing that's popular and somebody wants to buy it.
29:34
And so they're like great like $120 million.
29:35
I was like this thing is worth $250 million because like anyone I'm extremely high on my own supply at that time.
29:42
supply at that time. And you know there's this moment where basically the message they're saying to me is like you're the CEO but it's not your company it's our company like you don't control this thing and there's kind of a subtle message from me to them being like well fine [ __ ] sell this thing without me cuz
29:58
this thing is worth so much money and that's 50% complete delusion and arrogance and adrenaline and all the other things that happen uh you know when you're in the desert and you have a couple million users and now you have hundreds of millions of users and part of me thinking like maybe maybe maybe I actually am right and like
30:18
maybe it is worth more and so they give me this small window and I go back luster draw something's the greatest thing somebody tweets like you know Y Combinator pitch the draw something of X and you know that that matters to all those people and so I go back and I'm like I need this and I need that and I need this and you know it's a it's a
30:42
gamble but it was right like we got way more money and a way better deal because a segment of the buyers really really needed it because they were you know they were telling results the hit to their stock was bad you know somebody like EA was invested in sports games somebody like Zynga was over invested in
31:05
Farmville you know you have strategic imperative to people so sure you're super valuable but they're all playing a much bigger game and if you can understand that that's where your leverage is and then boom all of a sudden we do that I come back I'm like the company sold and it's you know this this whole crazy kind of episode and the
31:25
funniest thing to me is like I start reading all of these things like why draw something succeeded and then these other articles why draw something failed and you know when you're an entrepreneur you read a ton of these and you come back and you're like did you see these you tell your team you see this article
31:41
we need to be doing this and the reality was is that every single article was wrong like it was completely the wrong like their analysis was wrong like there was this whole thing about why we failed but they were analyzing our iPad app and we didn't have an iPad app we just had a stretched out mobile app for iPad and
31:59
then all of a sudden you just realize oh [ __ ] I've been reading these articles as an entrepreneur about why things succeed and fail I've been making decisions and they were probably wrong there and now when it's happening to me they're really [ __ ] wrong but it was this like crazy ride and then all of a sudden you know
32:16
we're part of Zynga and then all of a sudden a year later I'm not working there so it was an amazing rise and fall totally turned around the company saved us and we did a whole bunch of things you know there were a bunch of employees who I had to let go and I just made the decision on my own to rehire them like the day before the deal closed that
32:37
their options would still vest there were people who had taken more cash than stock because they had little kids and I got a cash component that I could use at my discretion and so I just gave them the money that they would have made this is his chance to do like all this insanely non-capitalist but like super cool [ __ ]
32:59
to change people's lives and after the deal closed they had a debt-free club where all the employees who had college loans all paid off their college loans and there's a moment when you have a little bit of money left in your bank account and that's going to go to the other company so I ran to the Apple Store in Soho they used to love me and I
33:18
bought a hundred thousand dollars worth of iPads and all this stuff and I just gave it out to everybody who worked at the company and every now and then somebody will text me they're like I still have that iPad from 2012 and so all of a sudden you just do kind of all the cool fun [ __ ] that they would never
33:34
teach you to do in business school they'd teach you to do the opposite but you can do it cuz you have this superpower which is not only does somebody want your company but you have this ability to impact the lives of all these people who have given you their all for the last five years and to me that was the coolest part of it
33:50
Sam you know one of the things I love about Dan is we meet a lot of founders and entrepreneurs and almost all of them I would actually say 80 90% of them will say it's it's not about the money money's not the biggest thing for me I I would say most people want that to be true and then you go look at their
34:04
actions and it's like those people are the most transactional they're the people that want the money the most and they they want to not want the money but they want the money and I'm guilty of that too Dan is one of the few people I met I believe it plays the game with money it's not that money doesn't matter to you
34:20
he's told me a bunch of stories of it wasn't about the money like he made a decision that was actively not money driven or not even like logical but he just does it for the fun and for the kicks it's like the Joker in Batman right like most people want to be Batman Dan I feel like you want to be Joker where you're just like I just want
34:39
to see what happens if I do this what if I tie up this this person you love over here and this person you love who are you going to go get can't wait to find out have you read his LinkedIn so his LinkedIn is pretty hilarious so it's it starts with I think you were the president of Teach for America when I when I think of Teach for America I
34:54
think of like kind of hippish like do good for the world type of vibe then you go to gaming which is in my opinion the gamers are typically like the hardest core capitalist there are it's just like you're practically working on an Excel sheet on how to change things but then so you got this like weird hippy side
35:10
but then you're also this capitalist but then his LinkedIn is Sean so after selling draw something he goes to work for Ari Emanuel at Endeavor who Sean and I love we love reading about Ari listen what he says he goes I told Ari to pass on five companies for investing that he ignored me and he invested in them
35:28
anyway all of them are now out of business know what you know my guy he's got this like [ __ ] vibe that I love that I love and then he's also like does good stuff for America and he's also this like greedy capitalist he's the perfect combination of like being a holistic balanced human being I love it I I I appreciate those nice words I I
35:50
will say I understand what it's like to you know be average or not have no money but not have any spectacular upside and also I would say like there's two things that really motivated me one was somebody who once said to me he was kind of Oprah's manager and helped her be really big and when I was in my 20s he
36:12
once said to me the most powerful people are the people who know how to give up power and not a lot of people say things to me that I either remember or have an impact but I just always was like wow that's so interesting it is like it's not hard to be powerful and consolidate power it's way harder to be powerful and somehow
36:33
let go of power and I think there's some aspect you can substitute money or anything else like that sure like Zynga said here's five million dollars in cash I could have put that whole thing in my own bank account if I wanted to and sure I do I wish I had that money today sure who doesn't but like to be able to
36:51
release that and give it to other people and change their lives is just it's just [ __ ] cool and then I would say to me like and I told this to staff the whole time the number one thing that motivated me was every day I rode the subway and every day people played games on their iPhone and I was just like I want to make a game that people play on their
37:11
iPhone and I remember there was a point at which the game was so big it was like everybody I knew was playing it it was everywhere and I was walking my dog with one of my kids in on Prospect Park and there was like this couple and they were like canoodling on a bench and they were laughing and I'm thinking oh my god I
37:29
wonder if they're playing draw something I got to go check it out so I kind of like walk behind the bench and I look over and and they're playing it and I think in that moment I'm like cool but I of course I can't help myself I tap them on the shoulder and I'm like I made that game and they were like looked at me like I was like the stalker and they
37:48
were like oh cool and and they went back to doing what they were doing but to me it's the same thing it's like I walk through an airport and I see some kid wearing an Overtime shirt and I just think like that's [ __ ] cool like I made that everyone who I work with we made that and like the fact that you can
38:06
make something that's out in the world that people love they don't even know you have anything to do with I did a a whole music festival when I was at Virgin and I remember we're standing on stage next to Richard Branson and like Roger Daltrey and The Who were screaming and like dads have their kids on their shoulder there's like 80,000 people
38:23
there and I'm thinking like I was the spark that like made this happen and I'm not interested in these people ever knowing who I am like that's not the point the point is you made something and it existed in the world and it touched people who have no idea who you are and I just can't tell you how [ __ ] existentially cool that is
38:45
can I ask you a little bit about Branson and Ari so Sean and I have been on this Ari Emanuel kick because he's not probably like us at all in that he's significantly more intense go go go take over the world Sean and I care a little bit more about just having an our ideal lifestyle but then you've got Branson so
39:04
you talk you said the guy was like it's more about who can release power so Branson seems like a guy where it's like decentralized Ari's like a guy where it's like he's he's the boss and it's a little bit more dictatorship this is just a an outsider's observation but what can you say about the difference between the two of them and what
39:20
attributes each person had that made them kick ass yeah so let me say like Ari is an amazing guy and I learned a ton working for him and Richard is also an amazing guy I would say in Ari's case when I worked at WME before they bought IMG before they bought UFC three 3 into it people were like what is it like to work there?" And I was like,
39:41
And I was like, "It's the greatest [ __ ] Jewish family dinner you've ever been.
39:46
You just sit around the table and everybody's screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, but they actually love each other."
39:53
And I had just never worked in an environment like that.
39:56
Like, Ari would walk into somebody's office and he'd say, "Listen, you [ __ ] schmuck.
40:02
You know, what about this and that?"
40:02
And they're like, "That's not true."
40:03
And I'm like, "Wait, they're yelling at each other, but they love each other?"
40:09
It was actually wild and I think that Ari is an example of somebody in a number of ways.
40:14
One is he's relentlessly curious.
40:17
Like, he reads, he consumes information.
40:19
There's nothing he doesn't want to learn about.
40:21
And I think that that is this incredible spark for him and within the company to clearly, like Richard, but in a different way.
40:30
He has an incredible amount of personal charisma, but he uses his personality to his advantage.
40:37
And in a way, the person he actually reminded me the most of, who I worked with later, was actually David Stern, the former NBA commissioner.
40:43
Cuz like I'd be in a room with David and we'd be talking about basketball and he'd look at me and say, "Listen, Dan. I get it.
40:51
You're good at raising money, but are you [ __ ] good at anything else?
40:54
Cuz clearly it doesn't seem like you are."
40:57
And so it's almost like this Catskill comedian style of using humor in your personality that's probably rooted in some like Jewish humor and whatever that says to you, "Hey, like maybe you should turn left instead of going straight here, but I'm going to say it in a way that that is funny, but but you you get what I'm saying.
41:17
And and that's going to make you love me in the end, too."
41:20
And I think that Ari is very, very funny and was very good at that by strength of personality.
41:30
And also, like he could he could call you every single day.
41:32
That's That's how he recruited you, right?
41:35
What was What's the story of how he recruited you?
41:36
When he wanted me to work there, he just decided he wanted me to work there and he called me every single day for 4 months.
41:42
And what what did he say?
41:42
He would just be like, you know, "We have all this IP. We need to do this. We should come here."
41:47
And then I'd go to talk and I'd realize he wasn't there anymore.
41:52
And that's the problem with cell phones is like he did did he did he hang up without saying bye? Yeah. That's awesome.
41:59
That's what the agents do. They roll calls.
42:01
He had a list of 300 people.
42:03
"Hey, hey, how you doing? Larry David, good luck." Whatever.
42:04
And then he's on to the next one. And they understood it. And I was an idiot.
42:08
I just wasn't from that environment, so I didn't really understand it.
42:11
So I'd be talking and I'd look and I'd I'd just see the time on my phone cuz he'd have hung up and he'd on to the next call.
42:17
Um and I just think there's this incredible personal force and momentum that he has.
42:23
And sometimes I think for some people they have that, but it can lead to a really toxic work environment and there are all kinds of exposures.
42:32
I think he loves life, he enjoys everything, he's very funny.
42:35
And I think he could he could have both of those in a way.
42:39
And he was good at understanding what made you tick and connecting with that.
42:44
I think Richard is really different.
42:46
Richard is very laid-back, but very cool.
42:50
And I remember going to this meeting at Virgin Mobile in Canada and he wanted to talk to all the people in the phone room, the customer support people.
43:00
And people just don't do that.
43:02
And he basically just tells them this story about when he lost his virginity, like no pun intended.
43:08
And it's this very funny story where he humanizes himself and he's just this regular guy and he's not talking to the C-suite, he's talking to all people who answer the phone.
43:16
And they just leave that thing and they think, "Fucking love Richard Branson. He is like the man."
43:22
And it's just a it's just charisma, it's just different for each of them.
43:27
And it's very rooted in what their brand is.
43:30
Their brand is extremely clear and articulated, but it's clearly they've understood how to make who they are.
43:37
They're not trying to be anyone they aren't, but they've they've rooted that.
43:41
And I think in this world where people become very studied and they read articles and they hire coaches and they do all these other things like that, both Richard and Ari had the superpower in that they just knew exactly who they were and they tapped in who that was and and that was their brand.
43:59
And maybe you make some comment about my LinkedIn.
44:02
It's not like I wake up in the day and I think I just want to [ __ ] troll everyone who reads my LinkedIn.
44:05
I just think like maybe this would be actually funny.
44:09
And so I think there's some self-realization and it helps to be charismatic and that's really hard to learn and and otherwise, but I think in a way they both tap into it and they both are relentless, but not in this grind-set way, in this way that like everybody reads on Reddit about how they're supposed to go and grind and grind and be relentless.
44:31
They just have this zest to do something that matters and something that's bigger.
44:35
And where does that come from?
44:37
That's for the psychiatrist's couch.
44:38
But again, it's it's authentic and it's unique to them.
44:43
It's not studied and I think that's part of that what makes it so powerful.
44:48
The internet community or industry or whatever you want to call it, we need more of that.
44:51
My father is a a small business owner and he does all of his business via phone.
44:55
And I used to sit in his office and he'd be like I remember he just like would call someone be like, "Hey, sweetheart.
45:00
Look, what's money amongst friends, right? It's just money.
45:06
We got to make some We got to make something work here."
45:07
Like I just like this like charm, sweet talk.
45:08
I remember hearing this or just just like little things like "Look, it's a little early for you to be busting my balls this morning.
45:16
We got Let's make something You know, just like this like gift of gab."
45:20
We don't have that in our industry.
45:20
It's significantly more formal.
45:23
It's like calls are scheduled.
45:25
Every call is like the default calendar length of the Google calendar, which is 30 minutes.
45:32
Like it's just different.
45:32
And I I actually love that that type of stuff.
45:36
It's the in-between stuff that makes those things happen.
45:40
I Look, Ari was an agent, maybe like the most super super agent of all time and he he definitely understood that. David understood that.
45:48
He was not a basketball player.
45:50
He didn't play basketball in college, commissioner Stern.
45:52
And he came into a thing and he's dealing with basketball players and coaches and China and international and it's just you know, there's there's like a a human connection, there's humor, there's charisma, there's all those things that kind of fit into it.
46:06
And and and I I remember a you know, a thing that someone else said to me at some point, this guy Dick Parsons who had run a big bank and at one point was the chairman of Time Warner and very very influential.
46:19
And he said, "Listen, whenever I do a deal with somebody, I always just leave a little bit extra on the table cuz you never know when you're going to come back and want to do another deal with them."
46:29
And like, you know, the internet is filled with here's how do you extract a maximum value from the other person.
46:37
Here's how you [ __ ] win in negotiation.
46:39
And the reality is it's like maybe there is enough to go around and maybe I'm going to let you have a little wins cuz I care about our relationship and maybe we're going to do business in the future and and everything else like that.
46:51
So I I think, you know, per your dad's story and otherwise, that there there is a bunch of that and and sometimes it makes it easier.
46:59
You know, they just sent me this thing.
47:00
They're like, "What do you think about all these things we're proposing?"
47:04
And I just wrote back and I was like, "These are seriously mid."
47:05
And that's like in front of 50 So we have this meeting and the guy says to me, "Listen, my only goal in this meeting is how can we not be so mid?"
47:14
So I'm like, "Okay, you get my point."
47:17
And yet I haven't crossed some crazy HR line and you've given it back to me.
47:23
And so that What is the goal?
47:24
The goal is to actually make something that's slightly better.
47:26
But it requires, you know, trust and humor.
47:28
And may maybe there is a lost art in in in Catskills humor in business and may maybe that's going to be my next company after this. How old are you? I'm 58 years old.
47:41
So you started Overtime when you were what? 50 years old?
47:43
And your partner Did I read your partner was 24?
47:45
Yeah, when we started Zach was 22.
47:48
That's That's some Leonardo DiCaprio [ __ ] I like it.
47:52
So you I would only date founders under 25.
47:55
So you By the way, the hilarious thing is I saw Overtime and I was like, "Man, this brand is awesome."
48:00
I don't know if I don't think you're as into the kind of like the hoops mixtape culture of Sam's not about the culture, you know, like you are, Sam. Exactly.
48:08
I've been waiting for somebody to call Sam out. More than you know. More than you know. Come on. We're It's all good.
48:14
So we see Overtime and Overtime just takes off amongst basically like the young black market in America. It's the coolest brand.
48:22
It's the shirt everybody's wearing.
48:23
It's the Instagram page people are following.
48:26
I'm looking for the founder of this thing.
48:28
I remember when I first saw it.
48:29
I'm looking for the founder.
48:31
And I have an image in my head of what I think the founder of Overtime looks like.
48:34
What was What was the image in your head? Oh, man.
48:36
It's some guy, maybe 28 years old.
48:38
I always got to have some business savvy to him, but I figured it was like a 28-year-old black guy who used to play basketball or still playing basketball.
48:45
Maybe comes from the music scene or some sort of music promoter or record label exec.
48:49
Cuz there was definitely like a culture crossover aspect to this where it was not just prospect rankings or [ __ ] like that.
48:57
Like not just like a database of athletes or it was not done that way.
49:02
And then I see it's Dan Porter.
49:02
And I meet Dan and Dan actually really helped us out with Milk Road, Sam.
49:04
I don't know if I ever told you told you this, but No, I didn't know that.
49:08
He was I don't know how we got connected.
49:08
He was reading the book Road early on.
49:10
We asked him, "You know, big fan of what you did.
49:11
Can we just get on the phone for an hour?"
49:14
And Dan's like, "You got to do this."
49:16
And he's like, "This is working?"
49:16
And I think the instinct when something is working is to kind of button it up and grow up.
49:21
And he's like, "No, no, no.
49:23
You're That's exactly the thing that's great about this is that it's not as buttoned up."
49:25
Because there I think there was a big Bitcoin conference going on.
49:28
He's like, "You should host the anti-conference.
49:29
It's like, you know, just PBRs in people's backyard" or something like that.
49:33
Just like what's the counter programming you could do against the traditional thing.
49:36
And I started asking him about the brand that he built with Overtime.
49:40
And Dan, you told me you studied soccer clubs and bands and cults.
49:44
And you wanted to figure out what they did differently.
49:49
And you shared with me two or three things that we used at the Milk Road to help grow that brand.
49:52
So, I definitely learned a lot about brand and working for Richard.
49:59
You know, and he really understood the idea of challenger brand.
50:01
And I think for me, I was really interested in community, especially coming from gaming.
50:09
And I was like, what is the challenge around being in the media space and, you know, being tangential to digital media space?
50:16
I'm like, it's all content and views.
50:18
And it's like you're looking on your phone or somewhere else and it's like, that's funny, but it it could come from anywhere.
50:26
And so, I was like, you know, maybe what the audience wants is a sense of community, a sense of being part of something, you know, belonging to something.
50:34
I think that was a clearly a growth hack for religion thousands of years ago.
50:38
Like, let's get a place where people can get together and make them feel part of something.
50:44
And I think people wanted that.
50:44
And so, to me, it's a it's just like you start from that standpoint and you just start to observe the world around you.
50:54
So, you go, you know, you go to a British soccer game and you realize like they're singing like Sweet Caroline.
51:01
And you're like, what does Neil Diamond have to do with soccer? I never understood that.
51:06
And it's just it's such a good sing-along song.
51:08
And then all of a sudden, you're just like, where else can grown men, I guess aside from church, go someplace and sing at the top of their lungs?
51:17
And like, why are people fandom?
51:19
And why do they paint their faces?
51:19
And I remember I went to a like a little baby birthday concert at State Farm.
51:24
And everyone was holding up their phone.
51:26
And I was trying to make a video to put on my story to show that I was valid.
51:30
And all of a sudden, I realized they were all filming themselves.
51:34
I was like one of the only people actually filming the concert.
51:39
Like, they were all content creators.
51:41
They went to a concert as a platform for them to make content about themselves.
51:47
And I was like, I'm not that way.
51:50
But like, to me, it was so fascinating.
51:52
There's some anthropological understanding about, you know, you ask people which way you point your camera.
51:58
And at a certain age, you're you're you know, you're filming other people.
52:01
And at a certain age, you're filming themselves.
52:03
And I just think I've had this relentless curiosity about that.
52:06
And to me, you can Google brand and you can read a lot of [ __ ] that has a high ranking in you know, in Google about how to do this and that.
52:19
But the passion of the soccer team or the passion that you feel for a sports team.
52:24
You think about things like the Grateful Dead that just gave away their music and let people record it.
52:30
When all it would happen when I was a kid is you'd go to a concert and they'd frisk you to make sure you don't have a recording device on you.
52:35
And how they understood like, well, [ __ ] I could let my fans be the distribution.
52:42
And it could grow 10x bigger than anything else like that.
52:44
And then all of a sudden, it's not about your song.
52:46
It's like, well, I have that song at, you know, this show at Nassau Coliseum.
52:49
And I have this show at Hampton.
52:51
And I have this song this version of that.
52:53
And so, I think in a way like all of those examples exist out there.
52:59
And I remember I watched the Travis Scott documentary that's on Netflix.
53:03
And it's so interesting to me that his audience is so much more passionate about him.
53:08
They literally cry when they're coming out of the show.
53:12
And he dives into the stage.
53:14
And you just ask, there are a hundred rappers out there.
53:16
Why is Travis Scott over here and they're all the way over there?
53:21
Like, why do people literally go Do people go to a Lil Uzi Vert show and cry? I don't know. Maybe they do.
53:26
But I don't think in the same way.
53:28
Well, what's that answer?
53:30
I I spend hours of brainpower trying to figure out what that is and reverse engineer it.
53:35
Because like, why is this person or this brand so much more beloved than the other?
53:40
Why is Ari so much more effective in his business than other people are?
53:45
I think for Travis Scott, it's something about the music.
53:48
But it is something about the fact that he cares so much more about his fans that he is literally able to jump in the middle and be there with him.
53:57
And then when you magnify that, the symbolism around that, the storytelling.
54:01
I think even for me, it's Listen, I you know, sure.
54:04
I'm a guy who is not the same as the people who put on my account.
54:09
But I'm willing to get in there and answer DMs and talk to them and connect them with our music and ask them a hundred questions.
54:17
I have this like, you know, they always have this thing they say, if you can give respect, you can get respect.
54:23
I don't walk into a room and think that anyone will ever respect me or care about me based on who I am unless I am the first one to give respect.
54:32
And I know that every single person in that room, whether they're a 16-year-old hooper or a talent agent or a YouTuber, has something incredibly deserving of respect.
54:40
And my job is to figure out what that is and honor that and learn about that.
54:45
So, Overtime's Instagram has like, I don't know, 11 million followers, probably, I don't know, billions of views over the years.
54:53
And it's one thing to say, you know, I learned a lot from Branson.
54:56
Or I've watched how other brands work.
54:58
And I've noticed these two or three things.
55:02
It's like me watching jujitsu versus going in there and rolling with, you know, Royce Gracie.
55:06
You've gone there and you've you've rolled with the Gracies, which which means you actually then went and did it with Overtime.
55:11
Can you talk about a couple of the things that you did intentionally that you think helped build the cult more of a cult brand?
55:19
So, you know, for example, the hand symbol. Yeah, tell me. What's the hand signal?
55:25
Every great gang in the world has a has a hand sign, you know?
55:30
And so, like we need a hand sign. And I was like, oh, OT.
55:32
And they were like, simplify it. Make the O. Throw up the O. Which is hilarious.
55:38
Just imagine your CEO sitting in an office and he's just throwing up symbols.
55:41
He's like, I'm really working on something today, guys.
55:44
It's going to be big, okay? What do you guys think?
55:45
Do you think the O should be oval or more circular? And it sounds silly.
55:49
But I think you even you told your people, you're like, if you go to this event and you record, every video, you got to get them at the end to be like, put up the O and say, shout out to Overtime. The same thing.
56:01
Cuz I remember I saw that once, forgettable.
56:03
Saw it twice, forgettable.
56:05
Once you see it like 25 times and you got the like cool high school athletes to do it, it was like, now it's a thing.
56:12
I've had people do it to me at TSA.
56:16
Actually, when they see my shirt and stuff like that.
56:18
I think it comes back to just if you want there to be community and you care about community and that was a premise, you have to give community away to interact and to share what makes that special with them, right?
56:34
So, I'm a Philadelphia Eagles fan.
56:36
I live in New York, which is clearly not Philadelphia.
56:41
I'm walking down the street and I see somebody in an Eagles baseball hat. I say, go birds.
56:44
And they're like, go birds.
56:47
You've given us this common language to say, I don't know who you are.
56:52
We may not have nothing in common.
56:53
But we got one thing for sure in common.
56:56
And so, being maybe nerdy or cerebral on that thing, I'm like, what are those things that are going to give our community They're not just going to be like, hey, my good fellow.
57:06
I enjoy the content on Overtime.
57:09
And he says, thus I do too.
57:09
Do you prefer TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram?
57:14
And so, instead you give them this little shout out to Overtime or this hand sign as a way to say, yeah, we're part of this community.
57:21
You know, this kind of if you know, you know.
57:26
Not unlike the secrets, right?
57:26
It's like somebody It's like my father-in-law is always like, I'm going to tell you the secret handshake for our fraternity.
57:31
But he never gives you the secret handshake.
57:35
He just like tickles your finger or something like that. Oh, sorry. I can't really tell you.
57:38
I'm like, you're a hundred years old.
57:39
Who cares about the secret handshake?
57:41
Oh, we're sworn to secrecy. Right? You know?
57:42
And so, you have these things, the secret handshake, knock on the door. What's the password?
57:49
You know, I can't tell you. I can't let you in. You know?
57:51
And I think you create you understand in consuming culture and even pop culture that there are these things that bind people together.
57:57
And sometimes you got to strong-arm them into existence using the superpower of social media as a customer relations platform, like a CRM as opposed to a publisher.
58:10
Every single DM to Overtime and even to me starts out the same. Yo.
58:16
I don't know why, but that is a apparently a very popular thing for people to DM large accounts. Yo.
58:19
And you you go back and they're like, yo.
58:23
And the next thing is, oh [ __ ] I didn't think Overtime responded.
58:28
I mean, I was talking to this 21-year-old kid who works for me.
58:31
And we were talking about going and doing something.
58:34
He's like, listen, you all understand like, when I was like 15, I DM'd Overtime. I just was like, yo. And they DM'd me back.
58:41
And I'm thinking, not they, you work here. We. But he's saying they.
58:46
And so, I think just figuring out how to connect with people, how to use those superpowers.
58:52
What are the things that around religion, around cults, their songs, their hand signs, there's things that you wear.
58:58
You know, part of the reason that I created this like shirt with the O that, you know, eventually all the talented people who work for me made way better and bigger was the people used to steal our content all the time.
59:11
So, we'd go and we'd cover somebody and they'd just rip our video.
59:15
And then I'd make a watermark.
59:15
And then they'd zoom the video out of the watermark to crop it.
59:19
So, I was like, you know, what if we just made a shirt with our O on it?
59:22
Then we've like a permanent watermark in our thing.
59:24
And if they rip our video, then that's fine.
59:28
Then our O is actually everywhere.
59:28
We've turned our biggest challenge into our biggest opportunity.
59:32
And so all of a sudden, there were people with shirts with O's everywhere cuz people were ripping those videos and you know, everyone would say, "Oh [ __ ] how do I get one of those cuz it must mean you're famous."
59:44
So the biggest thing we did is for 2 years we we refused to sell it.
59:48
Well, you can't buy one of those shirts like you have to be on Overtime to have that.
59:51
And then eventually you create so much pent up demand and I can't say that was in the deck or the business plan, but as you start to get into a dance and a romance with culture, you start to observe what's happening and you make some kind of audibles around that and you figure that out.
1:00:08
But like to be part of culture is to be part of community, to be what's relevant to happening around you and you know, listen, we started a basketball league.
1:00:17
Every single startup sports league in America has failed pretty much, you know, and by the way, the NBA, the NFL, these are 50, 75 years old and you can think about all these startup football leagues that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and it's like, why is OTE, Overtime Elite, a startup basketball league in its fourth season and every other league has gone out of business?
1:00:39
Well, it's because we're focused on the audience.
1:00:43
We weren't focused on just playing the sport.
1:00:45
It's like, you know, what people want?
1:00:47
They want more football, they want more basketball, they want more baseball.
1:00:49
So it's another league and it's like, well, they just they want to know like, why should I care about this?
1:00:55
Why is this league about me? Who is playing?
1:00:57
What are the hopes and the dreams of the people who are playing there?
1:01:00
Instead it's like, well, we got a field and we got a bunch of city-based teams and we said, "Here America, you like more football."
1:01:05
But like if you can't appeal to the aspects of culture and community and emotion to them, why should they care?
1:01:12
And and listen, me, I wasn't a gamer and I made a pretty popular game.
1:01:17
I didn't know a lot about ticketing and I started the first live event ticketing company.
1:01:21
I like sports, I'm not a sports wizard, I would come in last on a sports quiz show, but it's like I am more like the consumer in that I don't want to get sucked in so I'm so deep.
1:01:33
So it's like, what is resonating?
1:01:36
Oh [ __ ] there's a simple story about that.
1:01:38
I'll tell you one side thing that made Overtime big.
1:01:40
When we started, I was like, "Here's Shawn, he's like 6'2", he has an 8-ft wingspan, he plays for George Washington High School, he's a point guard, he shoots 50% for three."
1:01:53
And like we'd put the video up there cuz that's what sports is about, stats and all those things.
1:01:57
Every single time I removed one piece of metadata, it got bigger.
1:02:02
Down to the fact that it was like, "Shawn is [ __ ] dope." Boom!
1:02:07
Everyone can love that because as soon as you tell me, "Shawn went to George Washington High School", I'm like, "I don't know where that high school is, I don't care anymore."
1:02:13
You know, as soon as you tell me he shoots X from three, I'm like, "Is that good or is that bad?" I don't care anymore.
1:02:18
So in this weird way, similar to the Draw Something game, the more you can simplify it, the more it's available to everyone.
1:02:25
The more you tell me, "This wine is from this country with this, that and it's DOC and it's this grape and whatever", I just think like, "Fuck it, maybe I'm just going to drink tequila."
1:02:36
Can you do this stuff with nerdy products or B2B products or do you think that it's much harder and only possible for pop culture or consumer products?
1:02:45
I I think everything has a story at its core.
1:02:51
a story at its core. I always think of this dumb example from like a business book that I read 30 years ago where you know, where they used to like do door-to-door selling of vacuum cleaners and the guy would go around and he would tell the person who answers the door,
1:03:09
you know, what the suction is so strong and it's got these things and they sold all the features of the product and he sold 10 vacuum cleaners and then the next guy comes around and knocks on the door and he just [ __ ] sells you the dream of a clean house. And every time like you find your own
1:03:24
And every time like you find your own sales people and they're in how many views we have and this is why our product is so great and I'm always thinking, just got to [ __ ] sell them the dream of the clean house.
1:03:35
And so in a way, there is some abstract simplification at the core of what makes everything great and the more you know about it, the worse you get and the further away you get at telling that story.
1:03:49
So it's like, we have this basketball league, we had the number two pick in last week's NBA draft, we had the number eight pick, we have four lottery picks in 2 years, X number of people watched it on here, you know, all these people are playing professionally and at the end of the day like somebody from the NBA is like, "Why do people care about your basketball league?"
1:04:07
I'm like, "Cuz it's their shit."
1:04:08
The NBA, that's that's your [ __ ] that's old people's [ __ ] Like this is their [ __ ] and I can never forget that.
1:04:15
I can't get distracted by the fact that, you know, Alex went number two and Rob went number eight and now they're on these max contracts and they went to OTE and whatever.
1:04:25
It's like, if you can keep that fundamental core aspect of why it matters in mind at all time and not get sucked down the vortex, I think that that's, you know, that's the key.
1:04:35
It's like nearly impossible the bigger you get not to do that stuff.
1:04:39
Shawn and I both love UFC and the reason we like Ari Emanuel is in part because he owns the UFC and what Dana White has done there we love because like when Sean Strickland fights, you're like, "Well, this guy he's a crazy person who just says wildly offensive stuff and it's really fun because he's insane."
1:04:54
Or this guy's from Brazil and he's really scary-looking and he doesn't even speak English and he wears a red paint painting on his face and it's really intimidating-looking.
1:05:02
They do such a good job of telling a story even though they're a massive company now and they haven't got a huge Right.
1:05:08
Well, you know, you know what's like I remember I was a fan at the core of the UFC and the core of the UFC was every martial art against each other, right?
1:05:15
This guy's a stand-up guy, this guy's going to take him to the ground, this guy's a college wrestler, this guy's a judo guy.
1:05:21
Like that is the easiest [ __ ] story to tell in the world.
1:05:24
You could even look at the NBA finals or the Super Bowl or whatever.
1:05:29
Ultimately we're in these rivalries, this city versus that city, this boxer versus that boxer.
1:05:33
But if you could abstract and tell me this is actually a story about passing versus running or this is a story about something else like that, then you're just like, "Oh, I want to know how that's going to play out."
1:05:46
Like that's so interesting.
1:05:47
I was trying to tell people I went to the EuroLeague Championship with all these kind of young people and Greece was playing Turkey in the semi-finals and they're like, "Wow, these fans are really passionate."
1:05:59
And I was like, yeah, you like let's talk about the history of two countries, Greece and Turkey.
1:06:03
And it's not clear to them, but I'm like, "Yeah, there's something so elemental at the core of the passion."
1:06:09
I think the NBA finals are amazing.
1:06:11
I'm not quite sure that Boston and Dallas have existential beef against each other that go back hundreds of years.
1:06:19
So you've got to find some other core elemental story in it like, "These guys bought their team and these guys drafted their team."
1:06:27
You master, he says your karate is better than my kung fu.
1:06:31
If you can stay to that and all the stories and that's clearly a huge aspect of I think what UFC had in the beginning that was so powerful.
1:06:41
And I think that's a part of Ari's genius is he does understand at its core like what makes you like Mark Wahlberg when he signs up as an actor, what makes these stories kind of simple in a way because as soon as you find yourself having to oversell, you've lost the cause.
1:06:57
As soon as you're talking about the third switch on the vacuum cleaner that has seven HEPA HEPA air filters, you've lost the whole thing. That's a great story.
1:07:06
You're fun as [ __ ] to talk to.
1:07:08
You got like I I I I I could hear stories that you say all day.
1:07:13
I'm just trying to figure out how all works.
1:07:15
Can Can I ask you like a life advice thing?
1:07:17
So you know, if you were my dad, so you you you did a bunch of things, right?
1:07:22
You you were a teacher in schools, then you did Teach for America, you worked for these like high-powered organizations like Virgin and and you know, Endeavor with Ari Emanuel, started your own company in the gaming space, you started your own company in the media space.
1:07:36
If you if you meet like a 24-year-old, you know, ambitious person who just wants to have an interesting life, want to have a great life, don't even really know exactly what they want, what's your approach?
1:07:46
Like what does Dan think you should be doing in your 20s, you know?
1:07:49
What what do you think you should be doing in your 30s?
1:07:50
How How do you What is like the nutshell of your career advice?
1:07:55
First of all, there's a lot of ways you can learn about the world.
1:07:57
I learned about the world by being a public school teacher.
1:08:00
I learned about the world by, you know, giving guitar lessons.
1:08:03
Like there's so many different ways and I think that So I I have this thing where I I just I really don't like to hire people went to business school and I'm kind of anti-MBA because to me if there's a funnel and it starts when you're like 5 years old and you ask, "Why is the sky blue?
1:08:23
Why do people walk on two legs?"
1:08:28
That funnel goes through the education system and then it gets to business school and then it narrows and it closes and they're just like, "This is the way you do things."
1:08:35
And then you've lost all that like pie in the sky, whatever.
1:08:37
So I kind of say to young people like, your 20s it's like the time for you to get fired from a job, the time for you to stay up way too late and go to a club, time for you to like take a Euro pass across England, the time for you for your friend to say, "I'm going to do this crazy thing" and you're like, "Yes."
1:08:57
You know, the time to just say yes and do all those things and ingest and experience as much of the world as possible.
1:09:06
A, because all of those experience come and form you in some way like if I didn't go to the concert or I didn't sing at a soccer show or I didn't do any of these other things like that, I don't think I would have ever understood these.
1:09:19
But also because the world is so big and so vast, like if you If you you know, hitchhiked through some other country or stayed in a hammock somewhere or done anything else like that, you just have no context and appreciation for that.
1:09:34
And you you think your job is to graduate and then to get the job and then to be the analyst and then the associate and then the this and then the managing director and now you're on this pipeline, but you you failed to do all these other things.
1:09:48
I have a master's degree in 19th century Mexican history that I did while I was working.
1:09:52
My focus was the Caste War of the Yucatán.
1:09:55
People are like, "Why are you doing that?
1:09:57
How does that help you in your career?"
1:09:58
And I'm like, "It doesn't.
1:10:00
It just seemed interesting."
1:10:02
And like, if you look on my LinkedIn, I'll say it never had any impact.
1:10:07
Nobody ever asked me about it.
1:10:07
I never got ahead by having a a master's degree.
1:10:11
I don't do business in 19th century Mexico.
1:10:13
I don't know, you just do [ __ ] when you're young cuz that's the time you do [ __ ] and you just learn about the world and you experience things and you laugh and you cry and you get out there.
1:10:24
And like, if you think it's all about this ladder that you get to this other thing, it it really isn't.
1:10:31
And every single one of those things that you do that has no rationale is really actually about opening a door to something else.
1:10:39
That's kind of my advice.
1:10:41
You have to go to your rate your rate my professor uh profile.
1:10:43
Your top tag Your top tag is inspirational.
1:10:46
To which I would to which I agree.
1:10:49
You are you are inspirational. Gives good feedback.
1:10:51
Just like uh what your coworkers you said, "Eh, mid." Uh you're inspirational.
1:10:57
You love You love group projects and get ready to read.
1:11:02
Those are your tags for RateMyProfessor.
1:11:05
Listen, I like there is so much from business you can learn from The Wire, from Breaking Bad, you know, all the conference rooms in my last company were named after characters in The Wire.
1:11:14
I just think I learn stuff from books, I learn stuff from fiction movies, I learn stuff from listening to a song.
1:11:20
I'm just like, you know, I remember like the first time one of my kids' friends said, "I went to Irving Plaza and I saw this artist Billie Eilish."
1:11:29
And I was like, "Who is Billie Eilish?"
1:11:32
And he's like, "I would do anything for Billie Eilish." And I was like, "Whoa."
1:11:37
And I look and she's like, one Spotify stream.
1:11:38
And I'm like, holy [ __ ] like what is going on here?
1:11:43
And you know, what is the thing there? Whatever. She was not marketed. She was discovered.
1:11:48
The audience was the one They were like, "She is I Billie Eilish."
1:11:51
No executive in a high in a you know, tower somewhere said, "You're going to take Billie Eilish now."
1:11:56
And so, they're all just like, if you unpack why things work in the world and you're willing to get out there and experience them, then I I think that that's the opportunity.
1:12:07
The The one second piece of advice I would give is that a lot of times you think it's about adapting to your environment.
1:12:14
I I I had a a student of mine and she went to work at consulting and she was the only one who didn't get a job offer.
1:12:21
You know, you get your whatever offer to come back.
1:12:25
And she's like, "I don't know what's wrong with me.
1:12:27
Like, I messed up and like I got to figure out how to change and they told me I should stop talking so much in meetings or whatever."
1:12:34
And I said, "You just shouldn't work in consulting. Like, you are just you.
1:12:38
You are the best version of you.
1:12:40
You're just in the wrong situation."
1:12:42
And she goes to this startup and they're like, "You can't talk enough."
1:12:46
And they love her and she's so happy and I'm like, you're the [ __ ] same exact person.
1:12:49
You just got to find the place that celebrates you for who you are.
1:12:55
And by the way, you are you and you got to do the best to be the best you you can, but you got to put yourself in the best place and you got to think about your inputs.
1:13:03
And you know, your inputs aren't necessarily like, you know, the things that you think they are.
1:13:09
They might be going to the Sri Lankan restaurant in Staten Island and having a life-changing roti and just rethinking everything you ever knew about the world.
1:13:22
There's some episodes where in the YouTube comments people are being like uh well, I saw Sean put his chin on his hand and just stare into the screen or or Sam just sat back, crossed his arms, and kind of had his mouth open, and he was just staring at the guest.
1:13:35
These guys have a new man crush.
1:13:37
I would say this is one of those episodes where uh I definitely do.
1:13:43
I appreciate you coming on.
1:13:43
Thank you for not only this episode, but also helping us when we were doing the Milk Road.
1:13:49
It's not even one specific piece of advice you had, but after we talked to you, we were like, we came away with a very strong sense of okay, cool, we're just going to do this our way.
1:13:56
Like, we don't need to conform this in any way.
1:14:00
If anything, let's double down into all of the like quirks and weirdness and fun versions of what this could become.
1:14:05
And let's just play that out and see what happens.
1:14:09
And so, that was the the one thing that we took away from from hanging out with you.
1:14:11
And I hope uh you know, other people do that, too, because I don't think you get that advice.
1:14:15
I don't think you get that vibe from most people.
1:14:19
I get that Listen, I just played a long game.
1:14:21
If I can be helpful to you and then you're successful and then you buy an NBA team and then it's the playoffs and I want my feet on the hardwood, then I'm hoping that day's off. I got you.
1:14:33
Dad, thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate you.
1:14:34
I appreciate you guys for having me. See you soon.