From Animation to Zynga to Baobab Studios - Maureen Fan on Building Interactive IP Across Platforms

foreign is where you can interact where you matter to the world you matter to the characters because why would you not want to matter be the protagonist of your story yet it's a world that you actually want to be in like a one with like Rich environment with the actual great storyline with great characters and with rules that you really fall in love with and I think the film people and and two who are great at Story character and worlds and gain people great at the interactivity and what if you could have HR activity in that sweet awesome World story that would be great so that's what we are trying to do so while I do have a games Division and I have the film TV the publishing division that's why it's so important that they're working with each other at all times is so that I create these experiences that have the best of both worlds and I do think that is a future welcome to the gaming Founders podcast a show where we interview the founders that have shaped the gaming industry I'm

Eden Chen the CEO of pragma a back-end game engine founded by engineering leaders that built the platforms for some of the largest live service games like League Legends fortnite Destiny 2 and plants vs zombies 2. pragma power services like accounts matchmaking and player data for the world's most ambitious live service games and I'm Kevin Zane partner at upfront Ventures we're a venture capital firm based in LA and San Francisco I lead game Investments both in studios as well as the pick and shovel tools that power game developers and content creators to do their best work including pragma we interview Founders on their origin Stories the tactics that help them survive and thrive and key lessons for anyone interested in building the next generation of leading gaming companies learn more And subscribe today at pragma.gg gaming founders [Music] Maureen is one of the most dynamic entrepreneurs that I know she's technical has art and taste has deep

product management experience and on top of that is great at business Moraine was an early employee at Zynga and went on to manage zynga's most popular game Farmville she then started one of the most recognized and successful trans media startups Baobab Studios having won nine Emmys her talk covers her early days at Zynga the tension between numbers and art fundraising strategy and key advice for Founders who want to build a generational company now on to the conversation with Maureen [Music] hey Marine thanks for joining us on the gaming Founders podcast thank you for having me all right maybe we can start with your your early story where did you grow up how did you get into media and games and Technology I grew up in the best state in the nation which is New Jersey I love New Jersey East Coast hardcore East Coast person I lived in California more than I lived in the east coast now um so I loved animation in particular I

realized it was probably because of racism so I didn't realize until during the ancient hate crimes about like all this sadness that I was holding aside me I was one of the only Asian families in our neighborhood so there was some racism there and I was one of two Asian kids in our school so I think animation was in a way to escape well the reason why I love animation in general is not constrained by reality right it's yeah literally Limitless so I love that but also because my mom was a computer scientist my dad's also engineer so she brought home like I would go to her workplace she's a workholic and I just sit at our office and show I would play the text-based games because I had nothing else to do there and then she brought home you know the mac and then the Nintendo and none of my friends wanted to play with me but their little brothers wanted to play with me yeah it was super cool yeah but not with my normal friends so I was just introduced

to it really early on and I didn't know it was the thing you could actually do I just know I knew I wanted to make movies so I looked up before going to college I looked up every single you know studio and looked up what jobs they had and looked up what majors and said econ and communication so I went to Stanford and thought that's what I was going to do but then I got bored and I took a computer science class I loved it because it was hard and I felt like oh this is stretching me and then I realized I could merge it with you know art and psychology and learn about human computer interaction and then I realized that people made animation for living which seems obvious and I really want to make Final Fantasy eight that's what I wanted both oh that was the first Final Fantasy I played great game it's so good well the problem is I played eight before seven so everyone was like Seven's the best and so because I was used

but I I just fell in love with how they were great at both the story aspect and the gameplay and that to me was my Holy Grail of what I wanted to do so I found my people within Stanford there's a Stanford University digital art center and they just made animated things so I just found my My Tribe and then I guess you right out of school went into Tech and then went from Tech to something else like what how did that kind of go about my immigrant parents forbade me to follow my dreams that I really wanted to do what I really want to do is I want to be an art director for animated films or games and my mom told me I'd be porn destitute if I followed my dreams and so I thought what else can I do with a you know major that was Art computer science and psychology UI design so I went to eBay so I start off as UI design then ux researcher then cultural Anthropologist and then product strategy in the product management it

Etc so I was at eBay for about five years there and nights and weekends I continue to take figure drawing classes I took animation classes at the local Community College De Anza because uh the lucasfilm animators were teached there and I was just waiting for the day that I had saved up enough money from stock options that I could go get at MFA but um five years had passed and I was like it's time it's time to go so I can tell my parents I'm not going to be poor destitute but then the deadlines for mfas had passed and the only thing that was still available Was A Bachelor of Fine Arts which meant I would go back with like the 17 year olds and anyways I wasn't sure I want to do that um and my mom's like why don't you apply business school around three of business school and I said because I hate business and but like a good confusion daughter I I applied I got in and then I said I told my mom like no I'm not doing it and I

really want to go to art school and my boss season Kim at the time told me don't be an idiot you think that Hollywood is sexy but you don't know go try it before saying no to Harvard so I took her advice I emailed everyone in Stafford alumni database for any job internship I could find I ended up packing up going down south and I was assistant to like Zach Braff and Joseph gordon-levitt's talent manager Paul Dano like driving packages around La whatever I could do and learn that everything is a business at the end of the day and my mom's always right thanks I decided to go and I also learned that oftentimes business people take advantage of creative people doesn't let that happen to me so I went to First statement yeah yeah so I went I went to visit school and there I learned that it's a really dumb idea to start it the patient Studio ever um and became all practical but uh unless there's technological disruption so yeah in between those two business

school years I went to Pixar as an intern on Toy Story 3 and learned even more about animation in the industry but after graduating I ended up I really loved my time at Pixar but I also if you go into production at for animation it's like you go from production assistant coordinator to department manager to production manager to associate producer and usually you have to be at that position for an entire film I was totally willing to pay my dues but I was afraid I would have to be pretend to be someone that I wasn't because it's so hard to move up in the industry that there's a lot of politics involved and if I had to pretend to be this person I wasn't to play politics I felt I would become that person and I didn't want to have to sacrifice who it is I am so afterwards um when I was evaluating companies uh Zynga was one that I was really excited about because it was games it was entertainment there's animation and it was part of creating something

completely new rather than being in a mature existing industry so I as a question on business school do you feel like it's helped you at all in terms of actually starting and running a business Zynga was the most helpful thing in running a business it is because of Mark Pincus I have the confidence I was like if I could do that I can do anything I suffered so hard and I survived but um for business school what business school does is it gives you confidence it's because before you don't know what you don't know about business right and then after learning a little bit about everything I'm not expert in any of those things at least I know what I don't know and then now I have enough friends in a network that I know like if I have to do a discounted cash or whatever I could call my banker friend and they can help me and so I have the network to rely upon the other thing business school really helps so Network knowing what I don't know it also helped me um you know just train my muscle in terms of realizing that there's no right

answer because at least at HBS it's like affirmative action to like the nines whereas it's like how many second children versus like first child birth order like very specific and you see that people answer every single case study in completely different ways and can answer it very convincingly and you also learn it's not so much what the strategy is even though strategy matters it's more about can you convince the people on your team team to follow your strategy that is actually the greatest predictor of success so just seeing that play out and seeing how there are different ways because before like what people don't understand business they're like oh there's a right way that's the way and you realize that not necessarily so that was really helpful yeah it's interesting so many of my Asian friends who have started companies I think struggle with the same thing that you do which is the towing the line between art and like practical considerations like the parents in the back of your mind being like you have to do something

that's practical and at the same time wanting to like you know go start the restaurant or like go do the you know Animation studio so it's it's I feel that tension all the time being Asian American and I feel like everyone needs to watch the movie um 38 at the Garden that's on HBO by the way yeah agreed that's a good one yeah about that specific topic of it what was zega like when you joined like how many people was it like what was the state of the company at that point I don't remember how many people it was early on Mark told me I was his first NBA hire I don't think that was true because he's like I can't get because he's at HBS alone he's like I couldn't get any of them to come and I got you to come like it's a good thing um but it was crazy I started off on Yeovil and what was the main first I cried I cried like every day I would go after after work I would go

home and I would go to this complex I think it was like in Mountain View that had both like an L L Hawaiian and then I'd go there get the Spam Simon and then the chicken McNuggets and the apple pie and then a Krispy Kreme and I just like I was so unhappy because I was so stressed out but I learned to love it um because like it was like you there's like maybe two PMS in a game and then a few engineers and you would put it out but you I would be clicking refresh at night time at all hours of the night because I just put out a feature and I needed to make sure that the number was green because it tracks because Zinga has a data dashboard of week over week day over day and also compared to expectations and it's green if it's a positive red if it's negative and Mark Pincus would receive on his desk a dashboard of all the gays and I didn't want that to be red don't want to be screened up so I click your refresh and then if it goes red you

don't know if it's because Facebook it's a like a platform issue or if it's because you introduced the bug so it was just highly stressful but it's like a drug you love it because it's like I came up with a feature on Monday I shared it with my team Tuesday and Wednesday they coded it made it happen Thursday it's out on an A B test I said yes go on this and Friday I made them a company a million dollars right that time cycle was something and it's like a drug or it's addictive like I did that I did that and then you just keep on wanting to do it and you want to outdo yourself and do better and better and better and seeing that the company rocket ship like that based off of the feature that you did and the amazing thing is as a product management culture we were so we're both compete we were competitive with each other but also like it's like a like a fraternity right where you're suffering together because we all would get screened at your numbers were red so we would share like if I introduce some kind of feature that would do well um I would do a numbers review and share

it with the other PMs and they would share data with me so I could have comparables to do my models and whatnot so we learn from each other so it was this like learning organism um so it really prepared me really well for creating company and when I look back I like don't think as much about the fact that I had a bacterial and viral infection and couldn't go get an x-ray because I had to finish a model um at the time I don't think as it does I think about how I didn't even realize that I had that potential and how Zynga helped me realize that I could do even better than I thought I could so I'm forever thankful for that and it really changed the way I also managing right I thought you know business school they teach you this like nice way it was like your adapt your child to each person and that whole like wartime CEO peace time I love it like I make it require reading goes into the company but knowing to switch on and off and seeing the the

differences because while Mark is polarizing right like not everyone can handle it at the same time he was so inspiring the guy I want he's like do you want to be the best like I remember he would set okrs I'd be like I I gave you the highest number I could hit and I don't even know if I can do that why are you telling me I had to do better than that no I was so mad crying and then I would hit that number that he wanted me to and then I like I didn't even know I could do that because it required me to think in a completely different way to in order I couldn't think the normal way and so yeah I'm really grateful for my experience there how big was the team you ended up managing and what games did you work on there uh so I was on like Yeovil PetVille and then I became like I think director of product when we're creating FarmVille 2 then became EP and then GM of that and then so I looked over we I launched FarmVille 2 with my team and then was then promoted by president of games looking over the Farmville franchise so all the fire info

games and that team was about I think it was like 200 or so like immediate there and then um Don metric came and then I reported to Don and then I was then put looking over new IP so various roles like in between there I was also I just stint as like Central product looking at product across the different yeah they usually move around within companies very cool so at what point what motivated you to then to start your own company one is so Glenn entez he's one of my board members Glenn was a co-founder of PDI which DreamWorks acquire to become dreamers animation to create CG film so he founded you know one of the best animation companies and then he became CEO of DreamWorks interactive which made Medal of Honor so he partnered with katzenberg and Spielberg which birthed the whole entire First World War II first person shooter genre and apparently that team went and made Call of Duty but he he was like yeah Maureen

never try to do what an animation studio is like you know you can't make payrolls so we need to search yourself unless there's technological disruption and when VR came so I've always wanted to do animation like but like not just like lower Graphics I love like high production value and like beautiful art because I want to be our director so I I always told everybody what it is that I want to do like I was never shy about it and even when I was at Zynga I was working with my two friends from Pixar there are two our director production designers there on a short animated film called the damn keeper which ended up getting nominated that year for the Oscars so like nice and weekends this is what I would be doing because I loved animation but it made no sense as a business whatsoever unless you have ridiculous amounts of capital or unfair distribution Advantage but when VR came I said this is my chance because no one knows what they're doing like it doesn't matter that Disney has lots of money they don't know what they're doing so I thought if I could find a crack team and with my

connections I can make a name for our company and our IP and expand from there and put my IP in every different medium but VR right now spotlights on VR I can make a name for ourselves in here and so that was the that's what led to it but also I put on a VR headstone like what this is why I love animation animations because you're in this crazy world and it you know I talk about how animation is like Art In Motion you think you could reach out and touch the world it's real and in VR you can actually Reach Out And Touch the world so I'm like was so exciting and it was it was actually one of our games it was static nothing was moving it was just like the background in some mountains I'm like yes I want to do this so I was just really excited about finally doing it I guess what's really interesting to me is Zynga has this like reputation to be extremely numbers focused and I mean and you know some sense almost like very short-term oriented in certain ways and

your passion has always been and it's just it's quite different than your passion which has been more this like sort of deeply storytelling that feels more AAA to me than kind of your background which is I mean zynga's like it was more of like a software company that was really good at you know being a software company and then made having to make games I mean that was that's the sort of reputation at least how did I guess like Zynga inform your very different company I guess which is not I mean it's not like you guys are I don't think like sitting there and looking at graphs and making small product tweaks and and doing that sort of motion well that's why I initially hated it besides the pressure of refreshing yeah um I disliked it because the reason why you do entertainment entertainment is a bad business and it's history in general the money losing industry so you do it because you love it and you can't help it you have to do it but I'm also because I went to the dark side right I

was a product and I was Hardcore product I'm like I'm gonna be the best number monkey ever yeah eyes and which I did but what I learned is um oftentimes on the creative side the person who wins is the most senior person the loudest person the one with the marker and what you have when you have data is it doesn't matter how much experience if you can prove with data that your ideas right through a B test you can win and so that in a way democratizes things and I one thing I really respected about Mark he didn't care what level you were you could be new first day like customer support Community he'll come talk to you look at your screen like why is that check box there move it nothing here like whoever can move it for him he doesn't care um and so it was very flat in that way and that drove manager is crazy right there like no respect the hierarchy but I loved that about it and I learned that side because there are many times where

I was biased I thought like yeah it really matters to have some good animation here no one cared about this they just wanted to go as fast as possible for like like to get you know it's like my people for the cutscenes for FFA I love watching it all the time but you know people would open it and close it to skip past you know stuff like that so the data actually taught me so much that sometimes creatives can be a little high horsey and having that data could set them straight I think the problem is we were very short-term focused it was actually I was considered heretical when I um took charge of farm two because at the time Tim Letourneau who's my mentor was the chief creative officer and so he was pounding on the other side but I wanted to be like him right because I wanted to be the artist so I found this happy in between and then I created a new mission for Farm 2T and I said it's called change the company prove that quality is created through collaboration and that quality is created no sorry quality is good for

business metrics and that quality is created through collaboration which was considered like what and then I did this thing where I made PMs and game designers equal and the PLS were pissed at me they're like what you're bending betraying us but what I learned is if I could and I put all the designers through PM bootcamp because I like the game desires you can complain all you want but at the end of the day Mark Pinkus is a CEO and he makes decisions based off of data you could keep fighting that you'll just never have power or you can learn the language and have power so I put the designers through boot camp so I learned all the metrics and then after that I made the designers in charge of the leading metrics I made the PMS in charge of the trailing metrics I made the piance figure out what are things that are indications for improving engagement and retention versus you know PMS might want to just run a sale screw the entire game but boost the numbers temporary early but it's like you can't push through a feature unless the leading metrics are there blah blah anyways the point is

worked so I would say even though I was at Zynga I was able to create something that worked for me because you have to be authentic to yourself and then for so taking that to Baobab it's taking that I'm still I'm a creature of Silicon Valley more than I'm a creature from Hollywood and so sometimes to be honest Hollywood doesn't love me because I'm too direct I prefer the email I'll like leave words lingo and this is why I have Kane do all the Talking in Hollywood because he's very good because he genuinely likes everything he's like I love it I love it I love it and when I don't love it I say I don't like it and that's not cool apparently so I am more Silicon Valley but I think that also helps me it also actually gives me a good perspective about I find that oftentimes in Hollywood they're very excited about new technology it's a trend because they don't want to happen to them what happened with the music industry right but then they jump on Trends but

everybody from Silicon Valley knows that technology takes a long a lot longer than people expect to actually hit and then when it does it's way more impactful than anyone had ever imagined but it takes time to like timing the thing right and then looking at the data to figure out like to give an example right in the beginning of VR everybody was like I'm only gonna put my stuff on this platform because this platform you can view it the best and it's the prettiest and the blah blah I'm like dude there's nobody have VR heads message you have distribution you put your content every single headset possible it's not like all about distribution and that's why Invasion our first piece became the number one downloaded experience because I wasn't going to be precious about it so that's like the the zynga's like distribution thing yeah but at the same time we made the like super high quality product that wins the words and I give I view my job as making sure that my creatives have enough Runway to generate a hit so besides

and we have a good relationship that way and why I thought it was very important to have three co-founders I found that all the companies I've been in is the CEO favors their function like Mark favors PMS like uh eBay favorite strategy based off who the CEO is and I feel like for a successful entertainment Media Company you need equal parts business creative and and Technical and so that's why we have Eric Darnell chief executive creative officer and Larry Cutler CTO how is it like raising money for your company at the time sort of you know beginnings of VR or this hockey I was so like naive but it worked out well so I was like I'm not gonna do the seed thing because I don't why would I want to do it twice fundraising so and I had this idea that like just like three weeks but do you hear that from somebody where'd you get three weeks from I think I was talking to Kevin Lynn he sees her oh yeah he helped me he didn't become my board Mentor later he was so instrumental in helping me fundraise but

he was giving me advice and he's like yeah you the first week is like the people that you're practicing on and also you or and or you know are gonna say yes like yeah yes and then you say as I was here like you know all that stuff um it's a game and I was like all right so first week and then second week of the people I want and then partner meeting third week done so easy um all right well we we did do it we did it in two months uh like very proud of myself but I had unreal I thought when it was like week two and I didn't have the turkey I was like I'm a failure what's going on no one loves us yeah months and months to raise like why are you thinking that but what was amazing is remember I told you all those times I had told people throughout my career what I really want to do they all came

out of the woodwork to help me in every possibly like my first boss at eBay UI design Janie she helped me create my deck I mean she said you actually she makes things beautiful so yeah I'm like yeah I'm making I'm selling company that does entertainment has to be entertaining the deck so Larry I randomly found because when I was deciding whether or not to go to business school I emailed everyone the Stanford alumn I do this for those jobs he was at DreamWorks he responded to me and we kept in touch and I ran into him during a Chinese New Year's parade told him what he I was doing he's like hey maybe I'll join you and he's my CTO now right Eric Darnell my chief creative officer I met because Glenn entiss the guy I told you about I asked him like Hey do you know any directors and he's like yeah he hired Eric into DreamWorks and Eric directed on Madagascar films and ants so that's how that connection happened and then Gavin Teo who ended up and Michael Yahoo ended up leading my series a Gavin was a peon on FarmVille and he actually helped me he was just giving me advice of course like sneaky sneaky VCS is to make sure

that they're in there but he was giving me advice on making my deck or whatever and then all my Zynga friends like Seiki who's on the best at fundraising he you know he would help me review my deck as soon Nabil helped me because I helped Nabil when he was like Zynga Boston and Zynga Boston helped out my game FarmVille 2 and so I got to know Nabil so he helped me from a VC perspective so it was all and then in terms of getting my Advisory Board Glenn entice invited um I wanted Ed also and he's like not Ed but I know Alvin I'm like yes I'll be the other co-founder of Pixar and then Alvey introduced me Glenn Keane and so it was all through my history of people who ended up coming out and making that all all happen within a few months so I'm just really grateful but I went straight for the a I didn't do the seed and I worked people worked on like ious well I mean I think that's totally true I think you keeping the uh timeline shorter the longer it goes the worse it

gets I feel like it's just a blood in the water kind of thing yeah yeah it's important I know it's sad because I feel like there's this is totally stereotyping and categories but like the entrepreneurs who are really good at selling like marking BD and then there's entrepreneurship really good at a product and I feel like this is especially like ones that are especially good at selling like yeah which makes sense because you're pitching but as long as they're paired with a good product people but I see so many like entrepreneurs who aren't great at that other thing but can build a great product and I'm like well I'd rather that but I'm biased because my background's in products so yeah but it was eye-opening to learn like without coming and teaching me how to do that I would have been like way too direct like you know that's great VC's assistance like yeah I can schedule a meeting out in four weeks and you're like oh things are moving faster than I had expected I would love to meet with someone so do you think

like I didn't know to say that I would be like oh yes thank you so much right four weeks later that's okay like no but Kurt is also from Zynga he had just done Lux at the time he's like no you tell them you will not meet them except these two weeks like pile them all in educate fomo and all that stuff but I would not have known that had my friends not come out to help me and teach me all that stuff but yeah I hope to give it back you're sharing wisdom it's true it's typically like I'm like I'll share all this stuff later not while I'm running a company though [Laughter] absolutely you end up raising from quite a number of different folks and strategics and VCS and angels I mean it is hard raising money and I I think unfortunately we're back into that sort of Market again and it's quite challenging for Founders um but but

maybe moving from on on from that like how did you then get the most out of your investors and and you know how how are you able to get them to help you and yeah so I high maintenance I've always said I'm like I'm high maintenance but I'm worth it when I tell my investors I just ask them for stuff all the time how can you help me today how about now how about now how about now and one UBC said I gave you the money and that's where my job is and then I said do you want me to tell other entrepreneurs that but also because I chose investors that genuinely first I specifically did a bunch of strategics like business school I learned like strategic not good because you know right yeah that's the common wisdom yeah it was pure Financial like the investment is pure Financial so there's like a wall but I knew that VR was going to take forever and I know VCS are on this like five year cycle get the cash back I want to line myself with the

people who give me distribution advantage and value IP and are aligned for the industry for the long term so people like Samsung HTC grade for the headsets right getting favor treatment and connections within the company um but they're also in for the long run and the Comcast is great right because I have Comcast I have Disney Sherry Redstone you know chairman of Viacom and all them one of the reasons I want to do that is to make sure that nobody felt that I was only going to do it for them but I also wanted to show because right from the beginning my plan was always never just to be VR it was to create IP that goes in different mediums and they're people who know how to take IP into different mediums so I love strategics because they can actually help me in the actual industry so I love that and that's how I put together the suite of investors that I had yeah I do think it's critical to have multiple strategics kind of too early you can you can get them all to help you in different ways and also it creates a little competition and that that

definitely motivates people as speaking about VR because you just you know I was just talking about it obviously VR has seen like some highs and some lows what's your sort of take on where the industry's going and how much time do you spend thinking about the space I mean obviously you guys came you know out as like a VR company sort of and now you're doing other things but yeah what well we made our non-vr deals like within year one or two of our company so again it was never like marketing wise I'm like we are but um when we after we did Invasion um we had that deal with Joe Roth for turning Invasion into a feature film Joe Roth used to be the Disney chairman and then shortly after that for series B when Fox Disney came in uh we struck we never have shared this outside actually so you can exclusive um we have a first look deal with fast Disney for all of our IP to become feature films and and television so we

struck that and then we made our book deals early on as well with multi-series book deals with penguin random house and also MacMillan so all that and we've we've since now announced so those are all these things are in the works but we could never announce them but we announced the two book series and we've announced two series with Disney plus so it was always happening I'm still really excited about VR I think it just takes time but that I thought was one of the best ways that I was able to get investment I didn't go into the DC saying br's here say okay my I said it's gonna take forever and here's my plan of how to not die and then when it comes I'm gonna be the only one alive bam I got an advantage of all this stuff so I think that was helpful because a lot of VCS were still skeptical VR even though it was hot but they were like they liked that I was being honest and seeing it in a more practical way but um I'm really excited about VR because I think in the like super future we're not going to be watching things only on a linear way like why would you not want

to be like like me when I love animation I want to be in that world why would I not want to be I don't want to wear a heavy ass headset that's fogging up and I look really not cool I can bump into walls I don't want that but if I could be seamlessly in that why would I not want that so I definitely think it's coming but I I think right now it's being marketed solely as a gaming machine so that's right you're gonna get Gamers right now so you're not gonna really expand beyond that which is why I was excited about the within um acquisition that's now kind of you know oh the fitness yeah you see um Chris is one of our advisors so I really like him and admire him but so it's going out to Fitness and different things and it needs that but right now it's still being marketed as a gaming machine so this podcast is great because it's for gamers but for it to become big it's like I'm fine with Gamers lead being the leader Leading Edge because I think it's like they're made for each other the gaming and NBR but um and by the way also VR is really exciting because it's not it's not like Mobile

gaming where you put it on and you're competing with like a bajillion people well it's nice you're convenient against very few people and then you have a psycho engage install base who will play anything that comes out so it's I'm still very bullish and it's exciting time to get on but I think the headsets aren't there yet I'm excited about Apple I'm very excited about Apple even the new Pico headset is an improvement on what's out there if you've had it it's like very comfortable but it still has a ways to go so you also have a games division now when did that start and tell us a bit about the types of games you want to make are you using the IP you already have are you making new IP our specialty is actually merging games and story together and it's a it's really exciting because I see the two converging right now right with game like right doing like Arcane and now and the film people wanting to do like Mario I'm really excited about them but like trying to find additional IP in the game

Space so it's really exciting because the two industries do not understand each other at all having come from I'm more traditional I'm from gaming and I hired a bunch of film people to work with me so I had to learn more on the film side but they like from personality like film people very liberal not to say games but gaming is kind of like look at how much I suffer and like I'm a rebel um and it's not stereotyping but more like the Indie Vibe like yeah um like Outcast Rebel versus film it's like more like the the jocks it's uh it's just very different it's definitely not the rebel necessarily and also the working hours too completely different just a lot more suffering okay so I would say and just approach the things but they also the two don't realize how similar they are to another one of the like the script is the same

thing as a core Loop in terms of iteration and it never gets done until the last minute like it keeps on changing but as soon as you change one little thing everything changes so and then also people think that games are giving up a control not really the like a creative director is actually like how do I get you to feel like you're in control I'm in control so there's actually a lot of similarities but getting these two industries to work together really hard but I find our thesis is that the ideal experience is where you can interact where you matter to the world you matter to the characters because why would you not want to matter be the protagonist of your story yet it's a world that you actually want to be in like a one with like Rich environment with the actual great storyline with great characters right and with rules that you really fall in love with and I think the film people and and Tiki who are great at Story character and worlds and getting people great at the interactivity and

what if you could have interactivity in that sweet awesome world like a story that would be great so that's what we are trying to do so while I do have a games Division and I have the film TV the publishing division that's why it's so important that they're working with each other at all times is so that I create these experiences that have the best of both worlds and I do think that is the future especially when you talk about the metaverse right it's like ugly in there right now I want something visible with a beautiful Avatar that actually reflects because it's my identity that looks like me I want to be able to interact with other characters where their expressions like sensitivity like when I smile the like fleshy part under my eyes actually goes up to tell a real smile from a fake smile I want to feel connection through mirroring of actions I want all of that I want the gameplay of stuff to do with my friends and I want to do it in a beautiful world where I like care about the characters and their real Stakes right so I want all of that so that's what we do and in terms of the games division so I've always had game people from the very start because that's my background especially on the product side so David

Khan um was the first PM ever at Zynga and so he's our head of product and he's wonderful and so he's I've always had the gaming component and so even all of our VR experiences where there's a story narrative but every single experience we had is you are in the story and how you change the story for example bonfire which was starring Ellie Wong it's just like a we built a state venge in an AI system with a relationship meter between you and the other characters and based off of how you interact it actually changed how they interact with you and you could do anything at any given point and it would like rearrange a story and screw everything up but to give you example if you keep on throwing a log at the Ali Wong robot character in a typical game maybe she would like cycle through a bunch of animations but we put in the extra stuff of like at some point she like just turns herself off because that's how someone would actually react if you kept on Annoying them right right so from a game perspective I'm like oh I don't want to have to code an extra thing to think about that but from a

film side I'm like I care about that because then it makes you feel more immersed and that it's real so anyways that that's to think about the future of Baobab for you to know where we're going it is the metaverse both the game experience combined with the great world and story and sorry I keep on not answering a question I've had game people throughout but I started hiring even more people beginning of last year actually before so 20 what's the 22 21 21 yeah so we have we made some announcements so for example we have like Michael McCormick he was the creative director at Maxis Virginia MacArthur she was a producer of the original like The Sims games and like um Spore and she I met her I think that she hired me into Zynga so she was um executive producer on a lot of the Zynga games also Brian tinsman who is create director at Disney Interactive and she was at uh the original the Pokemon games and also Magic the Gathering who else do I have

have a lot of other videos anyways the point is I started hiring all these gay desires on like even more people to boost that division even more yeah that's quite the roster yeah I was gonna say exciting it's pretty expensive to uh build games and also to make films like how do you think about Focus number one I guess and then like just even just like just the cost of being able to put stuff out especially in like you know work multiple divisions and whatnot like just as a Founder how are you like managing that my specialty is being the cheapest entrepreneur you'll have ever met like I used it a tech question up there like yeah I'm like I want to be a unicorn with a cockroach you can't kill me you're lucky we have water and coffee no free things and chairs but um I remember Phil said that about you I love that's by the way one of the reasons why how I got the most out of my investors is I had people like Phil Chen who genuinely cared about our company more

than just making money and just like he's like I'm gonna make money by making you successful um he was like our BD person as our VC so I Love Phil Chen by the way he also like officiated my wedding that's how much I like it because he's also a pastor so one great thing about especially VR because P the Distributors want to create an industry they were giving out funds and when your product does well like I I funded the first one Invasion but it was super cheap when I did it but then I um after it did well then I can go back and say hey would you be interested in Southern and then if I also have no I have John Legend attached and Oprah are you interested like things like that so a lot of my IP to be honest has been funded though I own the IP so that's been great because I don't like using my Runway to to create things so that's one of the key ways but also we

make money and also even though it was always part of our plan to go multi-platform we also get money from putting our IP on other platforms as well can you give our audience a sneak preview what are some of the exciting titles you're working on yeah so one of them is called momoguro and think of it as there's I don't know how much I could say but it will know the time so imagine there's these organic creatures that combine they're called Momos and they combine these together to create and form these Momo beasts that can fight and defend the world from Evil so it's really a message about Unity over division which normally you would think obviously but in a very polarized Society sometimes you just have to sacrifice for the greater good and so that's and it's um the creators are Nico and Martine from Argentina and Venezuela

they're very brilliant they actually came from VR they created this Amazing Project called battle scar which is how we met them we liked them and they had this idea and so they came to us and we're like yes we would love to do this and we love the IP so you can imagine that it is going in multiple mediums because we are super excited about it and putting all our weight behind it but that's going to come out um as a web 3 game digital Collectibles game and also something else that I can't talk about yet but you'll hear about very soon but we're very excited about that that specific story and set of characters what is it about I mean obviously web threes like VR has had you know its highs and lows why did you guys decide to do something in that space because I love that the community itself is actually the ones giving me the money because they actually care about and like it and they can grow alongside me I think communities have so much power now like like even Marvel whatever if you get

enough people to complain about something or what direction you know the film covers are actually hearing but I would like to build what the my audience wants right from the beginning it's like having a market research are like the actual end consumers helping me build it so why would I not want that so making sure that it's something that the market actually wants and the people that are contributing actually are the ones who benefit from it so it just makes sense also our mission statement for the company is Inspire the world to dream bring out your sense of wonder make you matter does that last part make you matter people like what does that mean it's what I actually believe differentiates us from all Animation Studios out there because I'm not interested in just having you passively experience I want you to be part of the experience as a character or the main character that's obvious what it means in a game but in a film it's not as clear but it could be as simple as making you um the first person and breaking the fourth wall like they do in the fleabag which is one of the best TV shows ever so everyone needs to watch that to like

VR where you're inserting yourself into it so web3 uh or digital Collectibles is about the community that actually mattering because they're the ones helping to build the story build the game with us so it makes sense that it's a natural fit that being said I want to make it clear we're not a web 3 company um we are a IP company that creates IP that and web3 is one of the mediums is one of the platforms we put our IP out on I guess one like founder question from my end is like I guess seven years obviously running a startup and me running a startup also is tiring and hard how have you dealt with the challenges of basically doing all the things that you're doing for I guess you know I guess because you guys are more of a mature startup right now being like the seven year period like how how are you sort of like getting through and just continuing to do new things and you know crush it and do all the things that you're doing well my number one piece of advice to all founders is first don't do it and

then second if you do do it like you don't know you have no idea just they're suffering like everything is your fault and you would like to think like everything that's good is your fault too but it's like I don't know I never think that way maybe it's because like the Asian mom voice in my head but I think but anything that doesn't happen well it's like someone did something poorly but I hired that person or when people were like it's luck I'm like no I should have seen that coming like my strategy or whatever which goes against what I said about the ACs thing but I feel that way so I think the best thing is about having co-founders is the most important thing and if you don't have code so the nice thing about co-founders is sharing the load when you're crying underneath yes thinking you suck you have someone to say no you don't suck so bad I suck now is it emotional support I want to prop you up you need that and then and in the absence of that is having entrepreneur friends because

nobody we all have to pretend like everything's awesome all the time right you always be selling and so I always say how are you and everyone's agree and I know they're not great and so when people ask me how are you I'm like it sucks because I want to be obvious and show them that they can be vulnerable with me too and to build trust but no one's willing to say it so having other entrepreneur friends where you can actually tell them how you're really feeling and it's great because sometimes when I tell my friend he's like oh man that sucks it makes me feel better that my problems aren't as bad because that's bad so like even if it's that it's fine but oftentimes they felt something like that before maybe they've dealt with it and can give you advice about what to do like I've managed big teams and groups but a lot of Founders have I feel like a lot of questions I get from other Founders is about management and being able to help them I think is because like it's okay let them go they're not the right fit it's not you we're like you know in the beginning of the startup when if somebody leaves you

start you you're they take it so personally and like it's my fault and then at some point That's not healthy if you're like it's all me it's all me and then at some point you might Veer to the other side you're like no it's all you it's your fault it's not me and then you get to this like Middle Ground where you're like yeah it's a little me it's a little you which is not the right thing it's okay right but to get to that point to talk to Founders who have gone through it like really helps totally one question that we asked in every episode is um yeah if there's one kind of piece of advice that you could give other Founders that are kind of going through uh maybe a similar Journey thinking about starting a company based off of all that you learn what would what would that piece of advice be yeah I was gonna say to chill out the journey That's so exciting in the beginning because you think it's life and death right you think everything you do is going to be life and death and my other entrepreneur friends who have done it multiple times are like Maureen it's

okay it's a marathon it's not a Sprint and I just didn't believe in life no I'm gonna Sprint like America for the entire Marathon and I realize now how they were so correct um how you have to feed yourself because you are you are the light bulb you're the energy source of the company and so when you are full and energized you they feed off of the energy and when you are stressed out and anxious and your light is dim no matter how much you think you're hiding it it probably sense it um so you need to make sure you take care of yourself as well I know you're not going to believe No One's Gonna like whatever if this thing fails I'm a failure which every entrepreneur thinks by the way I know it's super unhealthy but it's okay everybody totally feels that way and to be honest VCS probably love that because they want you to never

so but it's totally normal physical and mental well-being is so important you know it's it's hard enough as is and and to your point a lot of people think everything is on them and and hopefully you know you find your co-founders your employees and hopefully find yourself investors right who who isn't just there for for the ultimate number or the exit but knowing that you know it's kind of a it's a failure in and of itself if to if you spring all the way towards the end and collapse even if you did make the best time so yeah I feel like Kevin cares about me so of course of course oh thank you so much for for joining us on the episode thank you even thank you so much Maureen thank you foreign