From a Pro Gamer to Building (and Selling) Four Companies – Dennis Fong’s Journey

hey folks and welcome to the deconstructor of fun podcast in this episode I down with Dennis Fong who's the CEO and co-founder of ggwp to explore his truly extraordinary Journey from being the world's first professional gamer winning car John Carmichaels Ferrari in like 1999 I believe uh to becoming a Serial entrepreneur who's built four companies and sold those four companies the ggwp being his uh fifth one um we will delve into Dennis's motivation challenges and insights on culture building securing funding and overcoming doubts uh Dennis offers a lot of valuable advice to Founders the he talks about the importance of open conversation and the realities of making tough decision as a founder and a CEO things like pivots and layoffs uh additionally of course we discuss his latest company ggwp their mission to create a safe online communities um the

success with the leading companies that they've been having as well as the opportunities that um you may have a ggwp should you be looking for for those uh overall it was a true pleasure to talk to Dennis I did not know of his super super super impressive background before we started this podcast so um I was really taking back I think he's one of the most if not the most successful founder we've had on the podcast I mean at least in in top five um I'm sure that that folks interested in entrepreneurship and Company building uh are fascinated by this uh podcast episode and uh before I bring Dennis Fong on a minor small request if you happen to be watching this on YouTube it would be really great if you could subscribe to the show uh we're trying to grow our YouTube account so that we can make more onsite interviews like we did with woodoo like we did with company X

that is dropping out soon like we would be doing with other big companies the more subscribers we have the better and more interesting guests we can get and the more insightful content we can bring your way we've crossed 2 million listens on this podcast so huge thanks for everybody tuning in and uh we want to get a little bit more views um to bring much cooler not much cooler more of these amazing guests so anyway without further Ado ladies and gentlemen Dennis Fong [Music] Yeah we actually started rolling it's it's it's about little we can we can go three hours I'm just kidding don't be worried uh so let me let me just introduce Dennis Fong to the audience if if you're fine with that Dennis yeah let's do it okay so uh so Dennis you're a c and a co-founder of ggwp which is a Next Generation content moderation solution that uses

multimodel AI to identify and respond to harmful and disruptive behaviors in online games and services and this is not your first rodeo not your second not your third it's actually your fifth one so originally you started a company called gamers.com which you sold back in 97 so we don't need to even talk about who you sold it to um then you started and sold xfire to MTV networks then after xfire you started and sold lithium Technologies to private equity and before before ggwp you started and sold Raptor to take two so this is the fifth company or technically actually your sixth company that you rest started and um what keeps you what keeps you going like you're you're what sorry I just have to say when we got first connected I didn't know about you and then you told me a little bit in the call and I'm like this is like the most successful founder I've talked to and I've talked to many like you're in the uh in the

like top five so so what what what keeps You Going H that's very kind of you to say but you know hardly I think uh for me um frankly I just a I just get a little bit bored these days um you know I've tried playing games in kind of in in a retired state so to speak um and I just don't find it very um uh life to be like that interesting without without having something that I'm really passionate about um you know even going back to my very first company that I started it was really never about the economics um it's just I I'm I'm one of those that kind of if there's something that's bothering me or I'm frustrated with in my life and my life has largely been around games uh almost my entire life um you know I I'm one of those guys that just goes hey why don't we why don't I just try to go do something to solve this frustration of mine so most of the companies that I've started actually were

a result of something that I was just frustrated in my personal life and you know I'm just one of those guys that goes and does something about it yeah so which is exactly how an entrepreneur does it so they identify a problem and try to solve it and so talk to me about the the problems that you've been solving so gamers.com what problem did you identify and what did you solve with that yeah so I mean um I'm not even sure if you know my whole history in gaming so you know so I was according to the Guinness Book of World world records the first professional gamer oh wow I was I was a world champion of Doom play Quake 2 Quake 3 um I retired when Quake 3 shortly after Quake 3 came out because I was busy running a company in parallel um I won John carax Ferrari in a quake tournament in 1997 wow um and so um and just as the tldr of how that all happened basically

when I was in high school I mean I playing games like everybody else um you know and uh I was basically the best player in Doom um but audience was pretty small but hung out in IRC and stuff right and um Won Won a bunch of tournaments won the first kind of real Esports tournament which was in 1995 uh it was um coincided with the launch of Windows 95 so it was actually a worldwide tournament where they found the uh winners of um you know with within each region so call it San Francisco London France you know Etc and then they flew the top 20 winners to Microsoft headquarters uh which was this huge um kind of Windows launch event and um I I ended up winning that tournament um and uh it was called Deathmatch 95 uh and there's a funny video of Bill Gates in like kind of virtually placed in Doom uh you know that you could find on YouTube around this event

but um basically after I won that uh event The Wall Street Journal called me and they're like hey dude we heard what we're writing the story about online gaming I knew this is again 1995 or 96 or something like that and um you know they're like hey we heard you the best you know is it cool if we just follow you around for a day just to see what your life is like um you know to better understand this world and um you know I was just a kid right so I had no idea who the Wall Street Journal was actually um and I I thought so little of it uh CU I was living at my parents house that I forgot that I even had a an interview with the Wall Street Journal right the guy the guy showed up at my house at like 9:00 a. and I was like dude who are you like you just woke me up man come back and you know he was very gracious and did um but uh and I didn't even tell my parents about it because I was like I don't even know who these guys are like whatever um but anyway to make a long story short he ended up writing a story that ended up on the front page above the fold of the wall Street Journal and

the center of the story was actually about me and I had one of those little pixelated you know drawings of of of me you know on the front page and basically from that day you know literally that day I started getting calls and and emails from Corporation saying hey can we sponsor you uh and within a year I was making over 150,000 year just from sponsorship again this is the '90s right so a long long 95 which is which is like a lot of money back then yeah um you know I was doing consulting I was paid like $115,000 to show up to you know at a trade show and blah blah blah um so that was really the start of I guess in some ways my entrepreneurial journey I was just a kid in high school uh and then um you know I ended up winning you know I was undefeated for five years you know so from 95 to 2000 I was the champion of all those it it games um but in 1996 I started gamers.com with my brother and um the idea was we just

looked around the internet we're like dude these the gaming sites that are online right now suck like you know they're not written by Gamers blah blah blah and so we're like hey and I was effectively one of the first influencers on the internet because I had a like effectively like a Blog that a lot of people followed um you know I had a monthly column in PC Gamer I wrote the official Quake 2 strategy guide um you know I was thresh right so like people just followed me because you know you know I was the champion of you know probably the most popular game at the time and um and so it helped launch the website um and it started pretty humbly it was basically I wrote the Quake what we call the Quake strategy Bible was basically all my the tips and tricks like people didn't even know what rocket jumping was at the time right like they didn't know how to use You Know audio cues to understand where your opponents were and blah blah blah blah blah that's why you know I I won everything at the time

you know it was still the early days of understanding of how to truly um you know be good at firstperson Shooters um and so we used that as basically a Launchpad and used money I was making from sponsorships and tournaments and stuff to to start the first company which was my first during my first semester at in in college and then we conse I both my brother and I dropped out uh I was CEO my brother was CTO um and we basically fumbled our our way through uh a very fortunate time to be starting a tech company which is the original doc boom right in the the 9s yes um so you know I blinked and basically we had raised $10 million I was CEO I was like 19 uh blinked again and the company was like 130 employees you know making millions of dollars uh and that's how we ended up selling it you know it was just a lot of lock in timing being in the right place right time um it was so

early we basically went online and just registered gamers.com and it was available you know so you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because in today's mature Market you need every Edge to be successful rather than spending those precious company dollars on building game Tech focus on building your game and shipping it get into your players hands faster and grow your community heroic Labs is Battle tested partner and friend of the podcast their Tech enables you to be flexible Crea and scale for Success heroic Labs has your Tech stack covered whether you're looking for a world class backend game server an amazing game development framework Fantastic live Ops tooling or reliable Mass scalability heroic Labs has solutions for all of these challenges and it's not just us a deconstructor of fun praising heroic Labs the company works with some of the world's biggest Publishers on many of the Beloved games focus on your game save a big chunk of cheese and avoid Tech risks with

labs this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your app's Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps flyer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they interact with your app app sler where your app's potential meets performance and you sold it before the dot bust right that's right yeah um wow and you know uh gamers.com was not like just it started as obviously like as I said like a quake Bible kind of thing but it grew to a place where you could go create your own community on gamers.com so we had like thousands and thousands of communities some that were related to gaming but some it was like

you know whatever the Christian Club you know you can go there it's like it was forums and uh you know reputation and you know a bunch of other stuff um and it's actually what led to the second company because um especially in those days the the CTO cios of a lot of big companies were Gamers you know that was my for into uh you know I wasn't really into computers before gaming right probably the same story for a lot of us um and so so you know probably once a quarter like a CIO of like a big company would email me be like hey we love the technology this the software you know like that you're running on gamers.com you know I'm part of this community there how do we can I license it for you know uh you know our my website and we're like dude we're a gaming company like don't bother us um and so uh we got to a point where we were starting to get offers uh acquisition offers for gamers.com and it seemed like most of the acquirers were really interested in

the traffic and the eyeballs more so than the actual Tech because we were one of the biggest if not the biggest gaming site on the Internet by eyeballs and traffic at the time uh and so my brother and I you know I was like hey look I think maybe we could actually spin our platform team out um and maybe I could try to pre-sell this stuff and you know maybe we could sell it to a company that doesn't care about the platform and doesn't even care if we come along with it they just want the eyeballs um so that that was basically the initial idea for lithium was like okay we can take this platform and maybe we can sell it as something different and it wasn't called SAS at the time this is in 2000 um so it's exactly what I did I I went to these people that were calling us um and I said hey look you've been asking for you know well over a year about licensing our software um you know we're we're going to we're doing it uh um and they're like great that's awesome

like how much do we pay like you give you a million dollars for this you know license and stuff we're like well you know we wanted it to be like essentially Break Even or profitable on day one because we wanted to spin out about 20 some odd people from the platform team um so you know again we were just making making up to be honest we're like okay look we're not goingon to you don't need to pay a million dollars but we're going to charge you uh kind of like a monthly fee and charge you more the more successful it is for you what they call SAS now obviously we didn't call it SAS at the time um so we kind of like fake door started a company and then I basically pre-sold it to to Dell uh and uh Playstation so Dell and Playstation were our first two customers we powered all of their customer facing Community um uh software for well over a decade uh and we were basically breaking even SL profitable U the day that we started the

company when we spun it out so we sold sold Gamers started lithium uh and off we W so it's really just by accident to be honest that we even ended up in that business but yeah that's kind of the story of the first two and how about xfire and Raptor so with xfire um so the lithium Journey ended up being well taking well over a decade uh enterprise software I mean we power the communities for everyone from AT&T Google Cisco PayPal all the way to you know Nintendo PlayStation EA would soft Etc um but you know I'm a gamer at hard and I really want to to get back into gaming um so about halfway to that journey of building lithium um I basically talked to my brother and I was like hey look I want to go do something I want to do something else um why don't you take over CEO uh and then I I basically um started

uh xfire what became xfire um uh and I started with a few other uh co-founders um and uh you know interestingly like the first idea that we started the company around was actually not called xfire at all it was called ultimate arena it was like a um skill-based gaming but around like Counter Strike and unreal and Quake so like you can basically bet against each other for money uh extremely challenging business we tried it for a couple years almost two years just basically hit a wall we like there there's not enough luck in in this and I should have known because you know obviously I was a Pro Gamer um but um we had basically like I think maybe six six months nine months of Runway left mind you this was an incredibly experienced founding team uh like one of my co-founders um he had previously sold a company for half a

billion dollars my other co-founder U um founded a VC that was very successful and he after xfire became the first vpm marketing at Google um you know and then created Google Capital like so stacked team but we you know again when you have a bad idea you just have a bad idea uh one of the learnings of Entrepreneurship right um and so well like we're running out of money we this is not working we need to come up with a new idea um and uh you know a lot of us were Gamers and we're like hey one of the big frustrations for us at the time so this is in 2003 is um 2002 2003 um was like the way that we played games like Counterstrike and Quake and stuff I don't know if you remember the day of having server browsers where you would go to like games by Arcade or something you'd pick a server and then um when you find the

server even if you and I wanted to play together I would have once I log in I get the IP address and port number I have to cut and paste it all Tab out of the game get on AOL in semester send it to you or IRC paste it and then you would try to connect uh and you couldn't message each other in game because I mean there there was no in-game overlay technology or any of that stuff so everyone used AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo instant messenger which if you remember and you get those messages it would blink so if you're playing a full screen game it would pop you out of the game uh so if you're like middle of like playing you know a very intense moment like your someone messages you you're like you know you have to steals the focus from the game and so we're like hey look this seems like a huge problem it seems weird uh you know gaming is more about playing with friends and it's more about social you know it seems ass backwards that you have to find a server and then get your friends to get on it versus like being able to join your friends with a click being able to see

what game they're playing and blah blah blah so that was the idea we're like well we got nothing better to do cuz we we know that the ultimate arena ideas is dead um so we effectively built xfire in a few months because we were running out of money uh we shipped it uh just we had no other choice um and lucky for us it stuck and it was viral um and you know within a few months we had something like half a million users um which for those days was big um and on the backs of that we were able to raise more money to survive and then I think about a year and a half later we were acquired by MTV Viacom for about 130 million wow but yeah we were on on the brink of death basically uh and just you know you know that's often the story right it sadly yes yeah um I mean every startup has that kind of Journey

right so yeah I mean that's you know I think uh it was fun but you know and at xfire we basically were Discord in the 2000s we we invented the whole we literally invented in game overlays there was no such thing before us steam or nothing had any of this stuff we invented a buddy list where you could see what game your friend is playing um which is obviously standard now you one click join so like being able to click your on your friend's name and just click join and you join whatever server they're on that didn't exist before us um you know we had a whole bunch of stuff anyone that's listening that was old old school gamer would remember that we basically invented in the 2000s uh you know but you know I think we sold it maybe too early uh which is maybe another discussion but you know when you're on the brink of death and you're only like 12 employees and you start

getting offers for you know whatever north of $100 million uh yeah that's insane less than two years after you on the brink of death you know it um you know can't help but just be like hey maybe it's a good idea to take the money um which is what we did but um uh anyway it's it's awesome to see where Discord is now because that you know what could have would have should have yeah yeah yeah well they're also highly unprofitable to my understanding well they've done a lot of really incredible things and you know I think yeah um you know we certainly were you know we kind of got up on on the wave if you're using surfing as an analogy um but whether we would have stayed on that wave or I mean the wave changed dramatically in terms of how people engage with games yeah um and all that kind of stuff right so you know whether we could have shifted appropriately you know who knows you

know I like and and so those three companies gamer xfire and lithium Technologies all bootstrapped right no no we we we raised money um for we ended up raising money for all of them uh Gamers oh you strapped yes uh and then you know once we had success then we rais money to kind of supercharge it um yes you know and lithium and we ended up raising probably close to $100 million or something like that oh wow ended up becoming a pretty big company um but uh yeah I mean you know and for me I you know I think a lot of I still see today a lot of Founders you know that they celebrate raising money as being like this huge um win but you know to be honest I've never really looked at it that way it's it's like you just set the bar you're much higher to you know that you have you have to reach for success and it's really the start of your journey now or start of your journey rather than the end the end game right

and especially a lot of Founders like like there's [Music] um there are big funds that are doing Small Checks let's put it that way and when you take a small check from a big fund you still get you know treated to those standards that now you have to return quite significantly for it to make any sense for that big fund to really even work with you so you're you're putting your bar so incred High especially the ones who are celebrating like you know the first check coming in from you name it a16z Benchmark light speed like any of these like big big funds like that bar is going to be so high that that it's like a multiple unicorns that you have to you know hit in the head and it's interesting especially for the big funds if they're writing that first check or writing a small check um this is something that I think a lot of Founders don't really understand is that there's also potentially signaling issues if they don't lead the next

round right because you know this is a huge fund you know like a $500,000 check or million dollar check or a $2 million check is not really you know like that type of especially if they were like you know a minority or a co-lead or something like in your last round if if they're not leading your next round which is usually the one that's much harder to raise it's it's you know not the seed or the preed It's usually the a that's the you know yes the a that's um you know it potentially is a signaling issue for other firms saying okay yeah you know you're this big fund you have inside look at this company why aren't you leading it if it's so hot right uh so you know it's just one of those variables you kind of have to think about you know in advance and um you know so it's not always good to get like three big funds to all write a $1 million check in your preceed or seed right because because if all three don't don't lead or don't don't give you a term sheet the next round to lead then

for everybody else it's kind of like oh wait you know they they know what's going on like why why aren't they putting in money yeah yeah they're like oh we're gonna follow you know this is not really you know going to the uh it's not really in our Playbook like it's a little bit different it pivoted so we're just going to PR Rod of that stuff we're we're just we're just going to ride along somebody else can take the lead on this and then you know like okay this is not apparently the Unicorn that they were thinking in the beginning so yeah you get you get counted pretty hard at that point that's right now I mean the flip side is like as a big fund they're usually very very good about taking their Pata right not taking the Pata which is even worse right uh and some of the smaller funds will not take they'll just be like yeah we're out yeah when when they reach a certain limit like at series a after that they're just going to ride along because the check sizes are so big yeah I mean that's more understandable but there's certainly funds and I'm not going to name names but that you know if they don't they

just won't if they don't see you know it tracking they'll just be like look we're GNA opt out of even taking a Pata which is a horrible sign for new investors right um so you know these are you know these are all kind of the questions as as Founders as you think about Investors and who who you want to be at the table with you uh or in the trenches with you it's um you know you [Music] know it's important what their reputation is and how they act both in good times and in bad times yeah and you've had so much experience in this so how do you evaluate the funds so you're probably I mean looking at your companies they are and looking at you as a Founder just objectively as I said like one of the most successful Founders any fund can be connected to so of course they're lining up and that has been happening to you almost since the beginning because gamers.com did so well and then your second one and the third one so so how do you how does how H have you evolved in evaluating uh the

investors as a Founder uh it's a good question I mean I think I've I've worked with Excel Benchmark Founders fund Nea dfj uh with ggwp big craft makers Griffin um and then a bunch of Who's Who corporates right um and was it's interesting you ask that question because um you know I live in the Silicon Valley um I work with you know I've worked with many Silicon Valley you know funds I'm an LP in many of the personally in a lot of the Silicon Valley funds and they do incredibly well but gaming is interesting because it's such a unique industry um and I think the thing that I learned having started multiple companies uh most in gaming but some kind of you know one SAS company um is that a lot of the Silicon Valley funds don't truly they're not you know they're

almost maybe it's a little bit better now but certainly historically they're more like passer by uh gaming investors like most would do One gaming investment maybe a year every one once every one or two years when it heats up yeah right um and so they they were never really fully connected to that part you know so a lot of the value that they provide is kind of the pattern recognition when you are starting to scale like you know that was incredibly valuable so it's kind of like oh yeah we were you know we were seed investors in Uber right and we saw it Grow from you know nothing to whatever a zillion dollars you know and you know you should be thinking about X Y and Z because like we see you on a you know some type of trajectory and they've seen it over and over and over right so that that's super helpful and then the brand name is helpful both for raising follow on rounds it's like oh wow you know whatever X was is an investor um you know and uh and also hiring EX tives who who care about the

Silicon Valley right they're like oh okay you know these this is top deer fund I want to be part of that portfolio uh interesting um but in gaming it's you know what really matters especially for ggwp where you know we're selling to Studios and Publishers and stuff it's like relationships in evangelism with Studios and Publishers and that's where a lot of EC is not again some some are doing much better at it these days than than four um you know if that's what's valuable then we want to take money and work with funds that are funding the potential next epics and Riots of the world right which is why we took money from not just one gaming VC but pretty much all of them at the time which was big craft makers Griffin three of the top kind of uh funds um that are dedicated exclusively to games yes um it was for that reason um and for ggwp also you know I have two co-founders that are also very experienced Founders um one of

my co-founders is who was the founder CEO of crunchy rooll which you know he built for 12 years before selling it to Sony for like a billion dollars right and and George our CTO who had previously started an AI company that he sold for a few hundred million dollars um so we've all like built and scaled companies we know like the trials and tribulations um and so like we don't really need the the typical help of like hey you should think about like you know X Y and Z as you're scaling you know we've all built companies of hundreds hundreds of people um so you know that also you know again we maybe a little bit unique compared to other um startups but uh you know we we value people that are really tapped into you know you know the gaming ecosystem got it and so you value so what do you value spe specifically like what does it mean to be tapped into the like the connections or the network yeah look I so I think if I take a step back every company is hard and unique and

different no matter how many times you've done it right I know you've started companies before as well it's like it's hard every single time it's horrible uh there's only you know a couple things that you know even the fifth time or however many times you've done it it gets easier the first one is a getting the first round of funding funding in general is easier when you have a track record right so basically with a phone call we can get money um and the second one is is recruiting your founding team of people not not just Founders right but like the you know the engers yeah the core team uh because all of us um you know we just pick up the bat phone from people that we worked with before you know call up the rockstars like hey come on over right um and we can pay them a lot less you know we one of our principal machine learning Engineers you know he probably could be was making seven figures at wherever he was and came came over because he just wants to work with you know wanted to work with one of you know George um

because they worked together previously right so you know that that's the advant you know Advantage everything else is just really freaking hard you still have to find product Market fit and um you know all that kind of stuff and so given our space which is you know a broadly kind of content moderation um and you're coming from gaming companies historically that effectively spend zero or close to zero right like everyone understands customer support right uh which is like a problem a user has with uh the company account billing account got hacked or whatever but when you're talking about like player-to-player interactions like the player-to-player experience which is basically what moderation is involved in most companies historically spent zero on it uh we've met companies before we started you know big ones and I'm not going to name them but big some of the biggest games in the world were like okay well you know how do you deal with this they're like oh you players can report other players for bad behavior okay great well what

percentage of those reports that are filed do you respond to and you'll be shocked at how many of them said zero oh wow uh sounds like LinkedIn like literally zero uh and the best I would say the average was like less than 0.1% of the reports that are filed are responded to so it's like this huge black hole you know they're like look honestly we just have that in there to enable players to vent right like oh this guy was being a jerk to me he was harassing me or whatever and it's just a way to vent but they don't actually do anything about it so you know we knew it's that this business was going to be tough because when you're coming from a St state where a company is spending close to zero it shows with dollars that they don't value it right or or they don't understand its impact uh yeah which is that now we actually have data like 10 to 15% of turn player turn in

multiplayer games is U directly as a result of toxicity that players uh experience right like the most memorable part of most gaming experiences are those that you have with other players and that that's also the case when you experience you have a negative encounter with another player like people you know there's plenty of data and research that shows like 75% of players have quit playing a game permanently because of harassment that they receed from another player so you you know companies need to do a better job and it affects not just turn and you know retention um user acquisition like how many people how many friends do you know that are afraid to pick up a mooba because they know how the reputation that that Community has in terms of how welcoming they are to new players right um yeah and so you know there's all this data that's you know that's out there but you know nothing speaks the truth more than where people spend money and where people spend to choose choose to spend money right so we know like okay most

companies are not spending much in this so we're you're trying to build a a company and business around that we need a lot of evangelists we need people Everyone Knows oh toxicity is bad we want to solve it we want to protect our players blah blah blah but you know like again actions speak louder than words and we knew that it was uh far from ideal and so we wanted uh investors um and people that are connected to the company that spoke to Publishers and developers and Studios on a regular basis where they could potentially help evangelize the importance of this not not even from a ggwp perspective but just from a hey look you really need to pay attention to this because this is a serious issue that's affecting your bottom line um and that's not just with uh incumbents you know the big AAA of the world but you know also the the doublea's and the Indies and you know the future again the future epics and riots um and so you know we found our partners in that with you know the funds that we mentioned along with a lot of

our friends in the space right so the founders of Riot or investors founders of twitch founders of YouTube founders of you know whatever the list is quite long but you know people do care de deeply about this um and so we just needed a lot of allies and that's that's kind of how we made our decision of who to who to bring along for the ride step into the future of game monetization with exola exola empowers developers and Publishers to Market sell connect and optimize their games globally from payment solution to a full suit of tools designed to grow your games Revenue while fostering a lawyer player base exola is your game's gateway to worldwide success with exola the world is your playground visit exa.com to date and find all the solutions that will help you to power your games into success everywhere this podcast is brought to you by data AI now you're asking didn't

they get acquired by sensor Tower they did and that's awesome here's why what do you loved using data. or sensor Tower the combined company will offer customers even stronger and more detailed insights on the full Digital customer Journey exciting times lie ahead as sensor Tower and data enforces go to data. or sensor tower.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the business now back to the episode got it so basically looking at the funds and who are their LPS uh and what kind of a you know invest investment team or they could they could bring along and through that get the influence in the industry and that is what you need to get the first set of traction going where this problem is being recognized and one once the problem is being recognized and you can start offering the solution for that problem yeah I mean you know anyone that's started a company knows that first sale often is the hardest you know

it takes the longest you know our first sale took took about a year um but you know our last sale took you know a couple of weeks um you know we We Now power and you know kind of help protect the nurture the player experience for you know dozens of of of in some of the biggest games in the world right um but uh yeah it took you know it took a lot of consistent uh evangelism uh to help open people's eyes at at like hey there's this problem that I don't think you fully understand um let me help you understand it right and they ideally they're not hearing it just from us they're hearing it from a lot of different people um and once I hear it enough and you're talking at you know usually has to happen at kind of the sea Suite or at least a senior executive level then like you know because we're not trying to get 10,000 bucks right um you know it's a it's a big problem uh then you can you can kind of get over the hump and once

you convince them then it makes everything else a lot easier yeah it's a you selling it's an investment through this you don't have to acquire as many users or you I mean you're acquiring you're retaining your users better so it's an investment into user retention which again is a massive thing if you have a big game a multiplayer game uh when when people are enjoying you know each other's company especially when you get rid of the toxic players who are actually like a cancer in the game when they're destroying other players so so it's it's a good to identify and remove those uh or you know hinder them down so that uh the whole community community benefits from them and that is direct dollars that's right yeah um but yeah I mean in terms of actual company building and stuff as I said it's it's just as hard every single time right and so so there's there's few questions I have here like um well the core team is pretty understandable so you usually try to bring in the people you've worked

with before um who the founding team has worked with before but how about your founding team like how did you U like of course your first founding team was your brother that's a it's a pretty good connection um not likely you're not going to see eye to eye and if you want to fight that's nothing new you can fight easily even punch and things will be fine they're just brothers uh but um but how about with um like how has your approached towards a founding team evolved and how do you how do you basically build an aligned founding team yeah I think that's it's a good question because um you know the last few companies um it was like a new founding Team every single time yeah you know some people just choose to pursue other interests right and stuff um you know it's it's almost like a marriage you have to continue working at it um and even though you know with ggwp as an example you know we like I I met um you know when he first started crunchy Bowl um so 10 12 years ago um you know

but still I mean I think you know it's nothing's quite like working with someone to really truly understand right yes knowing somebody and working with somebody a little bit different thing totally um so yeah I mean yeah even for us um there's you I mean I would say we're we're still figuring it out to be honest um you know because you know I would say when we first started we gave each other almost too much space because like look I know you know you're you know I know you're so just you know what I mean like uh too much respect you created silos you created silos yeah it's like look I I respect you you know I respect what you've done you respect what I've done so I'm not gonna like I'm not going to speak up maybe in in some instances where I normally would because I'm like look I I just trust you um um but you know trust and respect and stuff all of it ultimately has to be earned uh and you know has to be earned through going through tough circumstances right or um debates and

arguments and honestly I don't think we had enough tough arguments or debates early on and then we realized like dude what what are we doing like we like just speak up like we need we need we need to if you disagree just just tell me right um uh so you know I think again every founding story has its challenges um and you know that was certainly one that we wrestled with early was just giving each other a little bit too much respect uh in some cases where we're not having debates you know having arguments and debates are actually really healthy um and so we just weren't having enough of them um and so yeah that that that was definitely something that I I've never experienced before yeah so so you're kind of like in that sort of a forming phase where you formed the team and everybody there but didn't go to the storming phase like just didn't want to like Venture there out of respect right uh part of it was

also I think co uh so we literally started the company during Co so um you know weren't all in the same building you know um you know it's first for all of us to be remote first as a company or remote only really um so you know given that most of us had not worked together before and we're not sharing the same space and you know you know spending 12 hours a day together in office and the kind of stuff and you know so much you learn just through osmosis and hanging out and you know you know water cool talk Etc right so we I think we we missed all of that uh and that all helps gel and you know and a team kind of come together to understand each other better at a at a more kind of you know I guess innate level um you know so I think that contributed to it uh as well and maybe looking back that was probably one of the big contributors of it because it's yeah it's so helpful then for you to say this because I did the same mistakes and I'm not a successful founder not even

close like you and yet you did this mistake after like on your fifth company not mistake but this this kind of like we're going to start a company during Co yes done that and also we I'm going to work with people who I know but haven't worked with and we're going to do it remotely for the most of the time and of course that leads to a lot of problems be you being so successful and uh it makes me feel good that I'm not actually that big of an idiot because I've made the same mistake and if you made the same mistake mistakes every single day man I mean that's that's what entrepreneurship is about is making mistakes right yeah yeah but but it's and it's a weird thing like being a being a startup CEO or you know CTO or whatnot is because you have that title and people assume that you know everything I mean you're the CEO like of course you then often times like myself and other most of the people are like first time CEOs and so you don't know you're literally learning on the job and then everybody

accept expects you to know everything and then as you said there's a I'm it's interesting to to hear from you is like you don't have a secret recipe for for you know how to form a founding team that gals from the first day like you have to go through all the same phases like everybody else and that is uh that is quite a combo for for startup entrepreneur like raising money uh forming a founding team properly forming so it's not something some you know crew that left another company and then started together and then um and then you know really learning your new job as a startup CEO or startup whatever c yeah and that's not even I mean that's all about company building but yeah and then there's a product Market fit that missing exactly and and like money is running out because you're not making money yeah I mean product Mark fit is really the hardest thing at the end of the day uh because product Market having product Market fit solves all of those things that we just talked about like people will sh out they will they will come together even if they hate each

other if you have product Market fit and you have a successful company and I think um the best analogy I've heard recently um was U something that Mark pinka said which is um that entrepreneur entrepreneurship is a lot like surfing where you know Founders think that they can create waves but you can't we can't the best Founders can never you can't create the wave all you can do is Spot It early so you can get better at spotting a wave that's coming early and then you know you get a little bit better at paddling it out ahead of the wave and then riding wave when when yeah standing and and riding it right um and lot of that's just pattern recognition or you know stuff that we've done you know we have a lot of reps doing it yeah um but yeah it's just as hard you know like sometimes people spot the wave but the 20 years too early right so yeah right yeah like like yourself you're talking about you know xfire being like kind of like the Discord but

before Discord and maybe you should have held on to it for it to become 20 years yeah I mean 20 years early basically yes yeah um another thing that that comes to my mind so I've been reading this book up down up by Kim Nordstrom so Kim is like a former I think it was Chief strategy officer of paradox he was um heading Studio at at King and then he worked also at PlayStation so very senior uh executive like super nice guy um here out of Sweden he wrote this book up down up and interviewed I think like hundred different founder Executives and kind of like the deepest notion of that book is really about like starting off with the with the strong culture and how do you proceed because you said now is like the most important thing is product Market fit getting getting to that situation where you know you're you have a product Market fit you're making money you're signing clients everything else will come together uh and then kind of reading that book it was more about like you know it's it's more important to

start with a with with Focus purely on the culture and the sort of a the meaning the why and and so forth and then that work leads to a good uh sustaining company so a little bit of a like am I understanding that those are different approaches or like how how do you see it no I I I don't think they're um I don't think they're necessarily mutually exclusive I think that's ideal absolutely um kind of understand understanding the why getting one on the same page um having it a having a culture where um it's a safe space to disagree right yeah which which a lot of cultures don't have or you know um you know so like you know having that trust and respect and again safe spaces and and being you know having a lot of empathy you know within the organization um you know all of that stuff I think absolutely matters um but I've also seen companies and have friends that have companies where it was a show

internally um but they still crushed it because they just they they had the right thing you know and it's you know um you know it doesn't matter how much of a sh Show it is if you're making tens of millions of dollars a month or whatever right um you know success does heal most wounds when it comes to that but you know look the honest truth is like the majority of us will never have you know you know be lucky enough to be in a position where you have this product that's just absolutely crushing it right in the first place um so yeah I think absolutely the culture culture matters yeah yeah it's a it's an interesting topic it's I I agree I agree with those and I don't know if they're mutually exclusive I don't think they are and I don't think Kim is saying in any way that they would be mutually exclusive the product Market fit and the culture it's just um in my limited experience working with uh different Founders and and being one myself is like I've noticed that sometimes when the focus switches too early on too

much of Simon cynic stuff then you're like hey hey hey hey hey like I understand that you listen to podcast with the CEO of Walmart but that is a little bit of a different type of a problem like we need to get to a point where you're making money and you are actually alive and then we can spend more time on on figuring the why because the why is now is like the product Market like you need to you need to get this product out and the Y can actually change like you said there are always pivots not always but very often a pivot that could be quite fundamental in the company and the the the whole why can even change and the new success can come in like Discord is a great example because that was a game company that was making a MOBA and then pivoted because they made this tool that was successful and the MOBA was not I played it a lot Fates forever uh and uh they pivoted into a highly successful company so whatever the sort of a forming and and and the building that

they did earlier on is like they didn't have the product Market fit and that now is a totally different company and a totally new set of values and so forth so I'm kind of having like I'm I'm always thinking about this I'm always thinking that that early on you should really laser focus on on the product Market fit and getting to sustainable position whether it's through you know rise of sales and something that allows you to raise more Capital uh or just you know turn profitable and just focus on the culture of being about execution and about reaching the target about understanding that that is the most important we're doing all the things for us to function extremely well and then as you get to the cruising altitude or the growth altitude now you're growing your company and now is the time to really focus on the culture because you're bringing more people in and you don't want to break this machine that you've built this execution machine so let's talk about it let's break let's let's build the uh the guard rails the values that that allow us to sustain what we've had had till day while we

significantly grow in size like am I off like this is kind of like my thinking yeah I mean I think there's a lot of Truth to that and you know I think some of the mistakes that I see and it's hard to argue that it's even a mistake but you know I've seen companies that I've been involved in or advised or invested in where they you know they hear about like say something like super cells culture which is obviously quite famous small teams like you know what I mean like a lot of autonomy and you know more or less flat um and they're like that sounds awesome like we should aspired to to be like that which totally makes sense like you know I get it um but you know I think a a lot of folks from the industry didn't come from cultures like that even at successful companies right um and so you know they came up with a more traditional culture where you know uh you know whatever like the leaders just tell you what to do and blah blah blah not saying one's better than the other um or arguing you know the

benefits or you know the cons of each ones but you know when you when you're if you aspire to be one way but all of your experience and your team's experience is another type of culture that could be challenging in and of itself because you're trying to figure out how to be this like it's great to Aspire to be like this but it's going to slow you down potentially and again I think it's perfectly fine to Aspire to do it you know but uh you know I I think if the whole team doesn't have experience being that even though it wants to be that there there's going to be some uh inefficiencies built in just because you don't you know like it's not the TR traditional way of doing things that you're used to right yeah I mean I mean this is that's a perfect example I think Super culture has is is a perfect example in the sense that um it's um a culture that so many companies have tried to mimic without actually knowing what the culture really is so they've heard heard about it from PR comms like it's not not I'm not

saying it's not true I'm just saying like you've never been there you've never experience you don't even have anybody working at your company from supercell to tell you what it is so you're you have a fable and now based on that Fable you are literally creating a company culture and the worst thing is you don't even know how this Fable was born like you don't under like you haven't even spent the time to understanding how these Founders ended up building this type of a culture that they are talking about and when they're talking about of course they're going to talk about it in the most positive way because it's a company it's branding it's employer branding it's company branding it's also the vision that the founder sets of I want this culture to be like this and it's I would you know I would assume and to my understanding and to my knowledge with with for example it is very close to that but of course what the founder says and the CEO says is more of like the vision rather than the everyday truth you know and and um anyway that the problem is like they don't understand how how that company

got into that like what were the companies they worked with before what were the inspiration for this this culture for example like in super Sol was Netflix culture book like they you know the founder really loved it and and the whole team loved it so they built from that they built from the previous experience of typical American company with multiple different Studios and and and that evolved into this type of a culture that they then perfected for like over a decade to be what it is and then did somebody say hey I read a blog post I think that's exactly what we should P at our like a thousand people company or 100 people company or even 15 people company without like without knowing anything it's it's almost like you know like in medieval times they were drawing giraffes based on somebody who told them what a giraffe would look like totally no that's right and you know the reality is the culture is ultimately made up with of the people yeah and so if the majority of the people on your team don't understand the intricacies of that culture it's really hard to adopt it yeah even if you to to do it you know what I mean so yeah but but at the same

time I think what supercell doing is fantastic especially the CEO blog post and so forth because even though that cult what he writes even though it might not be you know 100% factual at that point but by writing and putting it out there where the the whole company reads it he's pushing the company to that direction he's literally setting that direction publicly like this is what we are this is what what is you know what we Aspire for this is the type of behavior we are this is our Val like putting all those things in it's just solidifying the culture where he wants to take it and he eventually takes it with with uh mythologically through through this and so you have to understand it also from that perspective like these are you know this is you're you're you're watching the culture being shaped it's not a readymade product and you can just you know pick pick and choose or take that from it same thing happened by the way with the culture ink when people read read the uh Ed Cal's book and then everybody started having these uh these rain trusts and so forth

also did not work like because they didn't have pixer culture and they took a tool from there that's right yeah I I think you na nailed it de on which is it look I I I look up to people who Aspire you know to to because that level of transparency that supercell has and that level of trust and respect and um as I said I think almost the number one thing in any culture is is being able to have create a safe space where people feel okay to share and talk about their failures um and to have meaningfully um uh differing views on a on a particular topic and it'd be totally okay and you know it doesn't go off the rails right I think all of those are you know things that we we should all aspire to have you know within our cultures but to actually execute it is much more difficult than people realize yeah yeah um I have a question for you do you think so this is something that I've been I've been kind

of like mauling over and then it was uh I was talking to uh anyways I'm GNA ask you this straight up so do you think um a good leader is also a good manager and do they have to be both is a good leader is a good leader also a good manager I think yes um I think most good leaders are good managers but I think part of it it depends on the organization of the company right because you know you have I don't know I'm just going to pick maybe an extreme example and it may not even be a fair characterization but you know someone like Steve Jobs at Apple yeah I was thinking about that like an extreme version EX version I mean I think he's pretty extreme already from folks that I know that worked with him but um you know he's very charismatic Visionary leader um you know I think it's questionable whether he was a good manager I think he was an awful manager based on based on everything that so that's why

I'm asking the question like you took the most extreme and that is the the correct you know uh a choice of people to discuss and this kind of came to me because I was um was talking about a certain leader in gaming um extremely successful um founder CEO and so forth and and this kind of came up as well where where he was um to the to the people close to him was described as incredibly inspirational leader just you know you you'd love working with him but also not good manager like really not a good people manager not that not like a Steve Jobs way of being an awful person but but just like failing to really manage a team a leadership team and then and making like everything that goes into that boring management stuff that was a problematic like mining for conflict um

doing all the all the other the boring steps but then again setting a vision uh getting all the important things done like the strategy the vision that then talking to the investors and and getting you know people into the company like those were perfect uh but the management side was weak so I was I'm just curious to ask you because you're you're you know started so many companies I guess I I um so I think my answer was a little bit vague because I've seen plenty of friends who are incredible managers also be incredible leaders CEOs um often though that's like a I would say most often when I'm thinking through my list of my friends it's like an engineer or someone with a technical background that um ended up becoming a CEO founder um and I think it's a lot easier for them to learn CEO Visionary strategy fundraising stuff than the other way around uh and so um you know I I have seen basically them being in a single

individual um but uh yeah I mean I I just speaking personally like you know again I started my first company when I was you know whatever 18 um and didn't have a ton of mentorship so I just learned through making mistakes and I would say definitely the first company my understanding of what it meant to be a leader and CEO was um not right uh I mean I had the part where it's like you know first in last out but um you know like I I remember even to this day I still feel like I actually don't love the CEO job I think it's very lonely even though I have a lot of friends are founders and stuff um it's still like it's not something that I necessarily enjoy uh a ton um um or not that I don't I definitely enjoy parts of it obviously but there's parts of it that I don't enjoy as much and when I was you know my first company and even maybe my second one to some

extent um you know like I felt very lonely um and you know I felt you know it's like take all prisoners you know like just pick no prisoners just Arch you know like win at all costs I'm I'm gonna drag you over the Finish Line Gordon gecko style yeah I was kind of like um you know I think one of the things that I did have um you know I do have as a founder and as a gamer really is really good intuition MH uh so you know what I realized was maybe you know if there's a problem or a a question that we're try you know wrestling with as a company uh you know maybe I can go from a to P almost instantly with just a little bit of context I I can just jump straight to like something and I'm not getting all the way to Z but sometimes but you know most I can I can jump ahead um but not everyone's brain works that way some people are really good but they need to understand ABCD like every point along the way um and you know I think

when I was running my first company especially I just wouldn't have the patience because I'm like dude just you know we're dealing with something it's like look the answer is p just take it from PE and go from there and then you know people like what the you like how did you get there I'm like you know just trust me and you know look yeah most of the time I was right I'm not right every time but most of the time I was right but you know I also it's not easy for me to to explain how mhm I understood that it was going from a to P instantly um and I didn't have the patience yeah um and um you know so you know I think that was very um tough for me uh because I I think early on in my career I thought it was a strength I was like pretty proud of like hey I could walk into a room sit in a meeting and then within you know whatever 10 minutes I can tell you the answer or get close to telling you the answer and figure it out right but that's not how you build good culture it's not how you build good teams um and it's not how you um you

know help build great people U you know people some people do need mentorship or they just I didn't realize that people thought differently than me right because I was so young especially it's like oh yeah I thought how I see the world how everyone sees the world like why can't you see the world the same way that I can um so I struggle with that and I still struggle with that even now I'm definitely a lot better and much more mindful of it now um but you know I I still have the internal strife of like oh man I wish I could just tell them the answer right now I um but I you know I'm purposely holding back because I'm like look it's much better if they go and make a mistake you know so that they can learn from it because we'll we'll need these people later um you know maybe a year from now they've leveled up now where I don't need to do this but I have to let them you know take the path and of course sometimes they're right and I was wrong too so I'm not saying that I'm always right but you know that internal dialogue for me is something I I even to this day constantly battle but but there's a there's a

phases for that I think saying that like like there are phases in a company where you can make mistakes and there are phases where you can't where you can't let somebody go astray because you know you are in charge of this company it is on you and it has to get to you know a stable State as soon as possible find that market fit and so forth so in those situation I think it is correct to be the sort of a not good manager uh but a strong leader and just push through because you know what's going on but then you get into the phase of you're in a more stable position and you're focusing on building the culture so that you can actually start scaling build the values and and really at that point you can afford to let you know your G your your feet off the gas pedal a little bit allow people to you know to to uh to explore to to to make mistakes to to Really form as a team and and and I think I think just there's different phases and I know that there are some larger companies where the CEO is still

acting like this is 20 people company and they have to make all the calls all the time I think that's problematic but also if you're in that 20 people company and you're trying to find a product Market fit and the CEO is acting like this is a thousand person company that is generating stable Revenue that's also wrong so I think there's a there's there's a switch that you need to hit totally um and I would say probably that my single biggest lesson of learning what it means to be a founder or a good good leader is um that it's totally okay to be vulnerable it's totally okay to be wrong and you know that's one of the things that I just didn't know when I was early right that I always had to be the one that was strong I always had to be positive and optimistic for the company blah blah blah but that's not how vulnerability and empathy is actually how you build relationships going through hard things with other people is how you you know and admitting that you're wrong when you're wrong is actually how you get build trust and

respect and and earn earn people's respect um and that's something it took me a long time to learn and I to be honest again one of those things as a Founder I still learn you know I'm still learning every day how to better be vulnerable uh you know but yeah my first company I just didn't allow myself to feel that and didn't allow myself to show it and I think um it actually made the job even more lonely um and uh you know um like it didn't allow me to build the kind of relationships that I'm able to build a better able to build now um you know so you know it's I mean that's why you know you asked me at the beginning why I keep doing that's honestly that's part of why is is you know to me learning whether it's like learning a new game and becoming like one of the best if not the best at it um which is what drove me kind of in the early days as a Pro Gamer so now like the learning part of it when you're kind of in that learning process and you're feeling yourself level up and you're feeling like you're oh I understand myself better now I

understand this game whether it's a business company or actual game like that part of it is the most fun for me so I love being in you coming in no expectations and I'm like okay I'm gonna get my ass kicked for you know you know a bu you know for for hours on end but I know I care enough and I'm competitive enough that I'm going to just keep playing I'm going keep at it until I'm good um and Entrepreneurship companies culture are things that you can never truly win yeah because every combination of personalities and people just changes the dynamic so much that you you kind of have to like relearn it all over again um and even though it's challenging it's also really fun and rewarding at the same time especially if you have a you know something at the end of The Journey where you know there's some success right I po at the end the rainbow so to speak um and then you can kind of look back and be like wow we went through some together but uh but you know I think it was worth

it not not just for the financial outcome but for what we went through and and um the relationships that we that we built along the way yeah perseverance I have two questions just to pretty Before I Let You Go I need to ask this so how did you overcome the doubts that uh that as a Founder you must have have in every single company I mean one was literally going out of business but like what's your your you know how how did you overcome it or like what's your advice for for other Founders to overcome the doubts that they most likely have every second day um so I think number one it's totally normal to have doubts um I still have doubts every day so it's not abnormal you shouldn't feel less confident about what you're doing um just because you're doubting I think it's actually healthy to be questioning you know are we doing the right thing uh and to have conversations with the team again that goes back to some of the vulnerability as well like hey are we working on the right thing

you know like do do we really believe in our thesis that this thing is going to be worth X Y and Z or should we be pivoting or tackling something else um you know I think uh so how to actually deal with that other than founder therapy which is talking to other Founders and you know you know that's part of I think how anyone you should have a network of friends and people that you or advisors or board members or whatever that you can count on um that you can have these um vulnerable conversations with u but also to to sanity check that you hey look are again are we working on the right thing I think you know obviously we all have finite time uh on this planet and as well with with Runway um you know are be working on the right thing is our thesis still correct and if it's not to be able to have those transparent and um honest conversations about hey like okay if we're not working on the right thing what should we do should we be pivoting should we be

completely should we shut shut down the company I mean I've had friends that raised 1520 million a few million dollars in they're like our thesis was just totally wrong um and the founding team came together because we wanted to work on this um and we've decided just to return the money instead of pivoting they're just like hey look just not the right thing here's your money not whatever left they had left so maybe 12 but it's still you know it's a big deal you know it's like hey look we yeah we were just wrong um and I have other friends that have pivoted 30 times like they just keep trying stuff even they see moderate success as like not breakout success and they they're like hey look send the investor email we're shutting down this idea we're going to work on a new thing we're laid out the team now we're working this and they've literally done it like I there's someone I know that literally has done it like he did it like 15 20 times before they finally found the right thing and sold it for whatever $100 million right oh wow but you know it's

hard to be like that that Nimble and that flexible in your thinking um you know it's it's impressive to me if you can if you're able to do that uh and to have a culture and team that's willing to do that um they really live the Le in startup book yeah and I mean look the hardest thing with being a Founder is making the hard decisions which means like offs which obviously has been it's a really tough time in their an issue right now but you know like it's what sometimes what you need to survive um yeah and you know it's it's hard and those are the parts that suck of being a a manager and a leader is is when you have to do those things I've gone through it several times in my my career you know having to lay off people from from the from the company it's so it's super tough yeah yeah I've done few not not as many uh last question what what is success for you because I mean it's not clearly monetary like you're still in

the gutter in the trenches just trying to trying to make this happen but how like how do you define success I think now um especially with what we're working on uh with ggwp um there's a there's a another motivation there that I didn't honestly have in my previous companies which is literally like we're trying to make the world a better place right we're trying to make the internet a safer place um and uh even in Failure if we have meaning like we are not able to convince the biggest games in the world to use us they just choose to build it themselves just fine um like if we motivated them to get off their ass to spend the resource and take it seriously and and to to make the internet a safer place for us and and for the for our kids like that's a win for me uh no not a win for our investors

obviously um but but uh you know but you know that that's that's certainly a win uh you know the social impact part of it is a big reason why actually the the three founders you know we all got into it in the first place um but for me I'm built a little bit differently than I think the average person where I'm hyper competitive um once I I'm going to use poker as an analogy once I buy into a game even if the game is like a $100 Buy in once I'm in they just become chips to me and I just want to win um and it literally is a game poker game that I play with a lot of successful founder friends of mine you know um yeah know we literally buy in for a hundred bucks and you know we'll drink like thousands of dollars worth of wine and whiskey and stuff right but but I I I just care whether and I've played in the World Series you know like I'm really into poker um MH and so like but yeah I care just as much whether it's $100 or like or like

$10,000 right um and that's just how I'm built um so if you're asking me like what a success look like it does mean building a successful company having a successful outcome um yeah but you know there's just extra bonus for this one in particular because of what we're working on and uh um you know the impact the social impact if we're successful yeah I'm glad you you uh you followed it up with that poker analogy and and how competitive you are because you know altruism is a is a great bonus but I it it's like uh I think I wouldn't say that um it's a g you know I don't know maybe for a Founder like you need that fire you need that chip on the shoulder you definitely have it so so I would I would say I wouldn't have believe the altruism angle like that would be the only one I'd be like nah that that sounds like it but like I just want to win like I found this thing and it's not working and I'm going to make internet a better

place like I'm I'm gonna make internet better and I'm GNA win and that's it so yeah I mean yes absolutely I I I I I think I still hustled like my first company yeah you know like I was you know just had dice I had like 30- minute meetings back toback basically for four straight days right it's it's just how built right you just that's what you got to do to be F because it's as as we talked about earlier it's hard every single time and you have to work just as hard and no one's going to give you anything for free yeah so yeah well on that note I think uh I want to thank you for for for jumping in on the podcast this was uh this was really interesting conversation I I I have to say like I I've been as of late talking to more and more like really successful Founders and and y'all are all crazy I mean it's just like like like not only only on podcast but even even outside the podcast like you know the the thing that you mentioned I still

hustle like it's my first P like my first um company have the same thing with with another founder that I'm I'm kind of close to he's uh he does not have to do it and then I give him some feedback and he would send a pitch like a deck back at like 3:00 a.m. I was like he has and like it's amazing and it's really amazing and he's just like working super hard and trying to make this new thing happen and you know it's uh it's it's really admirable and and that kind of goes to into like there are people that that you know think that the the founder lifestyle founder CEO startup is like you know worth you know interesting or cool or or this and that but it's a it's a hell of a grind and it it it really takes specific people who do it over and over and over again like yourself so I think it was a very valuable conversation for a lot of people to listen and really think if they want to do this or not it's definitely not a glamorous life like I think uh that the pr and stuff makes it out to be but that's okay you know again

I think anything that's worth worth doing is hard right uh you know the most rewarding things you do usually are the most challenging things that tests you the most and so I think that's at the end of the day why I keep doing it because it's it's always so hard and but that's that's part of what makes it um kind of fun in a uh whatever a different way makes you feel L that's right uh Dennis uh uh ggwp so how can people get in touch with uh with your team your product and are you looking to hire like what's the next step for ggwp uh yeah we're we're we're we're scaling uh we're we've seen good success in the market we have some of the biggest games in the world that are now using us um and so yeah if if you're a studio that needs help with um you know creating more more positive community more retention more retention with Le less turn more higher retention better user acquisition um you should reach out

um you know you can go to ggw.com where you can reach out to us um and we also um uh have a bunch of positions uh that we're hiring for as well so you know if if you've fit any of those please please apply as well yeah there's folks in D from ggwp in our deconstructor fund slack channel so um you can reach out to them as as well anyway Dennis uh it was a it was a pleasure I think I'll see you in GDC for sure good thank you for having me thank you everybody for listening and thank you again Dennis see you later