Grit Talk with Brett Nowak, CEO of Liquid & Grit

foreign guy that you played hockey with all right so this is my this is one of my favorite Finnish guys I played hockey with Yanni Yani was pretty classic and we were he was always making fun of me and and everybody on the team and so we're hanging out we're we're leaving uh dinner from some like wings place and I'm wearing glasses at the time I have contacts in and they you know whatever I'm just wearing glasses and he he had this high-pitched voice and he you know had that classic finish accent so all the guys around the parking lot and he sees me the glasses and he yells across the parking lot and my nickname is noe's it was hey Noe you look like a geek you know oh wait you are a geek and it just goes it just walks off yeah it was the best man just oh wait

you are a geek you know like this is yeah the action is really weird I can't even do a proper finish accent it is so weird but it's a fact that uh that every Finn uh every at least every boy has to play hockey I played hockey too I'm 5 10 and I played goalie so you can understand that that career didn't plan too too long like you have to be like six five nowadays to be a goalie um and um how long did you play hockey for uh 22 years wow you're pretty you still play no you still play there would be there's a there's a thing doing slush so slush is a huge conference here in Helsinki um it it has like 20 000 people startups scale UPS a lot of investors there's like a direct flight from San Francisco during slush there's always investors versus Founders hockey match so if you go if you want to go in and and kind of

bump with uh with the CEO of supercell or any of these other Founders like well he plays hard he plays hard like he really I think he's like a mate yeah he's like a main organizer of that uh so if you want to play then you can join team Founders and uh and uh yeah it's like Bastion from solston is pretty hard hockey player so uh Auntie from starbury games like there's a there's a lot of people playing hockey and it's funny because you would see people in slush like these you know Founders and investors you go into a Lobby and there's these guys with like huge hockey like bags with all the equipment and uh there's Stakes like they they came into a conference with full-on equipment so it's fun I think they uh I think they hire goalies for that one yeah I think they hire goalies and and just players so pretty good one anyway we're not here to talk about that's a good Intel that's good it's all worth I I just think that that would have been interesting so so we're here to to do a podcast like Brett we've been we've been talking here and there

about all kinds of stuff and um and it's good time to do a 3v3 kind of like the same thing that we did with JK so three questions on your part three questions on my part totally random we had one veto for each of the questions I used one you didn't use any of yours and how do you want to start do you want to start or do you want me to start with a question I can start asking you a question actually actually no let me start because like because like I don't think like because I I want to start with a super basic one and I don't think everybody listening to this is familiar with liquid and grit and you're the CEO and founder of liquid and grit and I think it's actually important that we start from that point because otherwise like halfway through the podcast they're like who's this hockey player he's talking to so let's let's establish you first not as a hockey player uh a 6-2 guy from New England who played hockey at Harvard Center uh but what do you

actually do what is liquid a grid when did you start at it and uh tell me more about your business yeah well before I started liquid and grid I was a lead product manager on singapoker specifically and about eight years ago I started liquid and grit to really build all the stuff I wish I had when I was managing that team so we do basically product insights and which means reports and tools and custom research that help game teams make better features and events and we focus on live Ops and uh I that's you know that's mostly we generally focus on um how to optimize the game yeah so what's more about the size of your company what's this like like there's there's a lot of questions that I have how big is liquid and grid well we kind of have an interesting

model in that we're all except for me contractors so we have 45 contractors who work anywhere between 20 to 45 hours a week and then we have one guy who owns the company which is me interesting and how about your clients who are like I think you are doing like Casino was the first that you started because you worked in casino games and you started from that it's a great um I would say a niche in a way in gaming it's a huge Market but not a lot of experts and not a lot of people playing casino games and breaking them down so in that sense a good good Niche is that the only thing that you do like how of course I know it's not the only I'm just having I'm just going softball yeah those are super soft yeah we have a we cover the casino Market with a monthly report and tracking we do the Casual Market Mobile we do core we also cover Sports and racing some of the major four markets

generally speaking we focus on tools for the top grossing companies games that you know companies that have live games that can really optimize for Revenue input Revenue basically optimization and we also have a impact portal which is an online tool where we have over 45 000 screenshot libraries data on Trends now a revenue lift tool a live Ops tool and sort of a wealth of information there and we also have a deep dive report that goes super deep on the most important topics sort of app wide and then now our newest thing is an app Dev digest which is kind of our more news responsive report that's reporting on things like the 25 playtika is generating from direct to consumer products for example so yeah really cool and so everything is

focused on mobile you're not doing anything with with PC console none of that we do some custom work in that area but right now we're mobile focused um how how was like you started this company eight years ago tell me about the the first couple of years yeah when I first started I you know I had this idea for a while and basically I I actually wrote a report that was on crossy roads if you remember that and I do I remember from Australia exactly and it was a hipster whale talked about the company exactly and I did uh I wanted it to be Market agnostic and I tried to I wrote that and I signed it to a couple of my friends who left Zynga started other companies were in other companies and they were sort of gave the feedback that you mentioned we'd like you to just cover Casino so then I pivoted to just casino and actually at the time what I did was I I was just saying this is a

little less known fact but I had a full-time job outside of gaming and basically started this on the side and show these two buddies who used to work at Zynga the report and they were like yeah great we'll buy one guy bought six months worth and the other was said well buy month-to-month subscription and I can remember I was like three weeks passed in the month and was realizing oh crap I gotta go write the next month's report because I sold them six months of reports and that kind of kicked things off and from there I basically had that other job for close to two years and built up the subscription in casino and started and that's actually where some of the Genesis of remote work and like asynchronous work started is because I was going into an office for eight hours a day and I couldn't really talk to my team and have meetings with my team and things like that and so it was somewhat

of a necessity and I also had a vision of sort of being able to be in Montana with my kids working in a pimped out Winnebago and like all these that was sort of some of the Genesis of it and then once I grew up through the subscription about two years in I left that company and I did some Consulting to supplement the work and then we sort of expanded from there growing into casual and then core and then building the database and going on from there so it kind of just um grew um but yeah there was a lot of different things about that starting yeah so you grind it pretty hard uh that's that's working two jobs at the same time um that's that's not a job there wasn't like yeah Venture money or anything like that you just just work your ass off yeah I put in about three thousand dollars into the company in the beginning and obviously and I had I was

a I was a yeah I was a full-time product manager I had two kids I think uh we had another kid a little bit later and I was basically like working on the ferry ride into work then I go to the coffee shop I'd work on it then then I'd walk to work I'd go to work all day and then I'd work on the way back from the ferry and help put the kids down and then I would slam uh double the triple espresso shot with ice cream uh drink and grind on it then and then and then repeat that process and uh yeah it was it was pretty you know it was pretty intense but I was kind of listening to podcasts of like Jocko of like the military and things like that and like I love it I was thinking always to myself like yeah it's hard and all that I know like startups romanticize but I was the whole time I was just thinking you're not in a trench somewhere in like you know Europe or something

referencing World War one or two right yes you know or you're not in Vietnam right now like as much as this is hard work like you're on a ferry with like a a book error right like and so I mean sure it was it was a lot of work but I always just felt like relative to some other things it was pretty pretty cushy yeah I love it dude you have perspective that is so nice uh from from a person who lives in San Francisco to have actually perspective but you're from New England so that's a that's a that's a different thing you know in San Francisco you would see people who get the wrong coffee and it's literally the worst thing that they had in their life so no offense to anybody that might be the worst thing that's happened in their life and their life is is great if that is so uh but but I actually love listening to Jocko as well and and and because he the way that Jocko podcast if folks who haven't listened and I assume that most of the people listening to this podcast haven't listened to Jocko of willings podcast but his podcasts are

focused always about reading a book of some kind of a military history and Jaco is uh former seal commander and um he sounds like a seal Commander he sounds like he killed a bunch of people like for his country uh and then he reads a book about the most horrific things people do to each other in war and like like absolute horrible things like whether it's Stalingrad or or um you know prisoners of war in Vietnam or or the uh what's the uh the March that the Americans did in Philippines where they marched him till death or like whatever horrible stuff and you read it and you're like insane and then you turn into your computer and you do your daily job it's like my life is so incredibly good it's like it's like perfect it's like I'm not five years prisoners of war and like all the horrific things that that men do to each other so um so yeah uh kudos for having a perspective uh

another question why Montana why not New England I love fly fishing and fishing in general so I guess well I'll be in Winnebago so I could always go New England it was this mobile lifestyle of I have the I'd get up I'd work from 7am to one and I'd tell my boys I have three kids like three uh golf go you know run around Yellowstone National Park and I'll see you after lunch they'll come back have lunch and then I go fly fishing with them and that was sort of the dream that I had in the beginning so for a long time actually I only worked off a laptop I refused to get a monitor or anything like that I just really sold myself this dream and uh and that was that really kind of I guess helped motivate me um to think about it but yeah that's maybe why Montana I mean they're all great New England's Great too yeah yeah it's beautiful that you thought about your family and kind of like the good life and you're working for it so that that makes it pretty I would have you

know maybe chosen Boise that that sounds like a little bit I like Boise yeah yeah like at least there's people but like if there's a college team like they could actually get an education like Montana probably doesn't even have schools I mean no offense to anybody in Montana has a couple schools it has a couple you know it's a big step but not a lot of people well we wouldn't be stuck there we were in a mobile mobile living I felt like the summer you know we travel around we go to Boise we go to Missoula we Montana we go to New England we'd follow the you know turkey hunting I can imagine following the different seasons you know like going all over America so yeah but it but instead you live in Mill Valley right a Marin yeah no not Mill Valley but close very close to Mill Valley I live in uh Kenfield um Ross area yeah yeah yeah so all you know all the executives listening to this they know exactly where you are so that's pretty much wow yeah probably uh

although they they probably know although a lot of like the tech industry is definitely in the South Bay I'm in the I'm in the North Bay but uh yeah as an outdoorsy guy uh the the North Bay just really spoke to me and um last one how good did it feel when you were able to quit your job and just focus on liquid and Grit uh it felt really great I mean I really did not like my job at all I was like I don't know what I we were talking about earlier some of the stuff that goes on in an office but I despise working there and I would actually say this I was more motivated to no longer do the stuff I hated than to have her have Ferrari or whatever you know I don't care about that much stuff that much like I just would I would write myself emails like dude when I have a company I'm never gonna have to deal with the boss that is just you know doing like just a [ __ ] or

I would never have to like share a bathroom with like 50 people you know like I would I would write myself this stuff and I would be like when I started my company I'm never gonna do this I'm never gonna do that I'm never gonna have all hand like all hands where everyone's forced to listen to the CEO talk for an hour and nobody's paying attention because they just want to get their work done like I would just write these things and then when I get home I would read them and I would be like oh yeah and like this is why I'm working so I never have to do this again and I never have to do this again and then that's partly why when I started the company I kind of remembered all those things and it felt really good actually the funny story is it wasn't really like somewhat by choice I definitely um oh man I don't know if we can keep this story but I definitely got the whole like hey Brad um I think we need to meet tomorrow and uh someone from HR might be in the meeting with you and no and I went in my boss like really didn't like me I mean for whatever reason well basically I was

telling them realities that they didn't want to know about I was doing the only one doing any analysis on customer acquisition and things like that and it was a classic VC startup that like really didn't want to know these things and I was kind of going around the company being like hey it's costing us like ten thousand dollars to get someone and we're generating a thousand dollars this is probably bad we brought it you know people were just like I rate that I was saying these things I mean I thought I was doing the right thing you know coming from the gaming culture which is like oh you know speak the truth and uh anyway so I ended up getting like basically uh they had just laid off like 12 percent of the company I wanted to opt in they had an opt-in and my wife who's like super risk-averse was like nope nope I'm like oh my gosh honey this is like the most amazing opportunity and uh and then like four weeks later I get I get walked in but like I was a you know top performer in all these different companies and then to go to this and they and basically I was just I um

but I basically just come back from fraternity leave like five weeks I was on paternity oh no and HR they didn't tell the HR person that was true so I'm in the meeting knowing that I had already deleted everything from my computer I knew I was getting fired pretty much and um I just turned to the HR person and go you realize I just came back from fraternity leave right like this is this is five weeks from paternity and and the guy was like white in the face I was like listen just give me the opt-in layoff and like we'll call it a day and uh I mean they they were like freaking out so like I went home they were like you want to say bye anyway I was like no I'm like they want your computer I'm like it's already deleted I like just walked straight out of the company went home and started working on a Consulting project I actually had lined up and yeah I had the business like two years in at that point so I just like literally just started working like right when I got home um probably didn't help but yeah it was a

good feeling I was pretty happy now I'm asking this because it just tells a lot about your character and also explains why the name of the company has a grit in it so yeah well it comes from a quote from Steve Jobs actually I don't know if you knew that but that's also no I also did like the job yeah the um yeah so the name of the company is from a quote Steve Jobs was asked what what he thought was the best product development process and in the Lost interviews he was asked this question and in telling the interviewer she told a story to represent it of how when he was a young kid someone a neighbor had shown him a what a rock Grinder like how Rock grinder worked and he basically was saying that like the product process is when you put in like these these people these very smart people like these rough stones into a rock grinder and they they you know argue they debate they slam up against

each other and in the Rock grinder you pour in a little liquid and grit powder and out of that process comes these polished stones and that is the the product process of apple and so for me it was a great metaphor for what we do which is to create the liquid and grit to your product process so that's actually where the name came from oh interesting interesting and you can see that video on our about page as well so I'm probably not going to look at it but you know thank you if anyone else not saying you that's a quote that's a video of Steve Jobs saying that okay okay so uh Steve Jobs okay right your turn are you gonna go with like we actually have questions about industry we actually know like especially Brett knows a lot about

industry he like he works through the data day in and day night and he has a team of 45 working on it but are you going to ask me anything about mobile are we just gonna go personal and then leave all the yeah all the good stuff I gotta go personal I just feel like I can't go right okay I think it's just too okay yeah so I mean one one thing that you always said to me that really resonated because as much as I'm from New England and all that stuff my gran my great grandmother who I knew when I was eight was uh off the boat immigrant who was illiterate who was a you know a basically a servant for a very you know long time and so and one thing he said to me was that you have an immigrant mentality and I always loved that and you've worked at Great companies you've started your own gaming company and similar to me you've you've had a side hustle of the deconstructor of fun and conferences and all the other stuff that everybody loves of course game industry so I'd love to hear like what drove you

to have this like side hustled all these different things and what were the things that helped you build build them like both yeah you know from a motivation standpoint because I feel like that's a huge part of it to like just tactically speaking what help interesting so I'll start off with the with the Immigrant mentality and it's very easy for me to say because I am an immigrant so we came to Finland when I was five and I spent the the years I think from five to six and a half at a refugee camp um we came from Soviet Union both of my parents were doctors uh me and my my sister and the parents we came by an accident to Finland that's a longer story that I'm not gonna bore people with but we were never supposed to move to Finland we're supposed to go way way way South but we ended up here uh because of Persian Gulf War that happened just the day when we crossed the border from Soviet Union to the Western Europe so we couldn't fly south anyway so it was like a fate and you

never know how long a war lasts and just flights are normally canceled like us is doing their thing down south so nobody's flying right now yeah like we don't want to go in the Crosshair like bush is on it yeah Bush senior anyway so so we uh so we kind of like accidentally ended up in in middle of nowhere like we weren't at the destination where we're supposed to go uh and we weren't in the country that we left and they naturally when you leave Soviet Union they say don't come back they take your passports like you don't have anything like who would want to go back anyway yeah we got fired from Soviet Union the commies anyways so deleted our laptops uh anyway so uh so so we ended up kind of here and uh it ends up like we were supposed to travel way further but we traveled like 300 kilometers which is 200 miles and sit here at a refugee camp and um The Immigrant mentality comes from kind

of like seeing my parents go from like we were like there's nobody's wealthy in Soviet Union nobody had anything because there wasn't anything to be had like people were just generally poor uh and so I don't know we were you know they were doctors so so they had that but in Finland they weren't even doctors so so I you know I remember when when I was a kid when I was five when I was six like our are the stuff that we did we didn't live off the welfare like of course we got the welfare and whatever's important I'm super grateful for Finland for that uh always will be uh but we kind of like we we did stuff together as a family like delivered newspaper or went to the forest to pick up berries and and and mushrooms and sold them on on like farmers markets so that you know my family could buy me a Ninja Turtles toy or stuff stuff like that we live four of us in uh in um one bedroom apartment and you know kind of like from refugee camp and then like governmental housing for about 10 years uh my parents didn't have

a bedroom for 10 years and they brought us to a better place and I watched them work out of where they were at that point coming in from like very educated uh we were living in St Petersburg so kind of like very uh intelligent uh family of like theaters and like you know like typical like liberals of of that area like if you say St Petersburg to San Francisco of Russia so um so that's um and my mom is actually from Ukraine so she moved there to be in the med school anyways so um so so they worked theirselves up like my dad owned uh a car shop and then kind of got more and more into entrepreneurship until like when he retired he had like a robotics medical robotics company my mom went back into like she was a she was um you know an interpreter and this and that and kind of like all kinds of shitty jobs and then she ended up going back to med school got her degree and she's still a doctor she's a part-time

retired but she just loves working uh and um and really kind of like you know reschooled herself to be a doctor and and as as they you know gained jobs and we were able to work as a family away from from poverty to um I wouldn't say Prosperity but to middle class and and um I went from like you know being governmental housing by 16 I had a car uh we lived in our own house and so forth so it was like seeing up close and going through that immigrant process of just like put in the work and when you put in the work there's gonna be a reward just don't stay idle don't take welfare don't be a do nothing like you can really influence your your um your your fate and that's where my immigrant mentality comes from it's just my upbringing this is what I went through I didn't have anything until you know I was I was 16 and and then um and and that kind of pushed me forward to to always work I can't stay idle even now I

I don't have to work for a while I'm still working recording this podcast at almost 10 p.m in the evening I just I just love doing this and I love work and that's that's kind of where my immigrant mentality comes from um never told this I I don't know I don't know maybe on Sophie's podcast but I realized that I need to start speaking about these things because otherwise I seem very harsh and very privileged people are like this white guy driving a Mercedes has a Pit Bull is kind of jacked has you know like the old everything that you could hate in the modern thing like I'm very proud of these middle class statuses that I've achieved because we didn't have any of that like we were dirt poor and my dad my parents worked super hard to get me my first Sega Sega Mega Drive or Genesis as it is in the U.S and and all of these things that that he you know did for me I'm like forever grateful so as I am for Finland that's why I'm always rooting for Finland so that's it and then um dof

um dof for me was like I had this I had this sort of a goal in my head before I even started in games like when I was studying in Business School uh and that was that I want to be um like what do you want to be when you when you you know when you grow up like people were dreaming about material and I was dreaming more about like I want to be a renowned uh expert like I didn't know what industry or whatnot but I just wanted to be that I wanted to be you know one of those people who whose voice matters and um and by an accident I got through deconstructor fund my girlfriend back back then was uh very much into fashion and was like doing some fashion blog whatnot and I was like what is this blogging thing and this was like in 2012 or 13 no 11 to 12. and and I you know started off of a blogger started writing my thoughts I did a lot of deconstructions for uh for the company that I was working for it I was a product manager of Digital Chocolate but I noticed that all the notes that we're

doing were quite weak because they were for myself and I realized that if I'm putting my notes openly for others to see even if it's five people even if it's one person then I will just do a better job and in my notes and that will help me to become that expert so the blog wasn't designed for me to get visibility as an expert it was designed to be a tool for me to become I'm an expert and um and it it was one of the first ones so again a first mover Advantage I blew up like some of my blog posts have been read over one and a half to almost two million times which is something which is insane yeah and um and and that was kind of it and I've been on and off and and for the first time during this week and I've been actually doing the blog for the full time now as I'm in between jobs or kind of like taking a a break form from day to day uh career so I always did this as a side and always enjoyed it as a side one I don't know if I'm gonna do this full

time uh but for now I'm doing it for for full time just just for fun of it so does that answer your question it does yeah it was a great story very very impressive and I didn't know that and even more impressed by what you've created so yeah my sister's actually double immigrant she immigrated to the US so so she's immigrated twice she lives in L.A yeah it's interesting how that that you've stayed because I think it's that transient sort of mentality that you grow up with I guess you were somewhat forced to do it I mean my I guess my family because I've lived in some like 10 different states in the US um not somewhat I've lived in 10 states in the US so it's sort of that that gets passed down um I think what's interesting there's a bunch of things interesting but what's what what I caught on that was sort of similar to my story is this desire to learn and I felt like when I was working there wasn't as much of that it was

always just go go go go go go get the next future out get the next thing out and I think it did an amazing job of sharing information and they would create these reports that if You released a feature that you would write out what you had expected it to do how it actually did and then your learnings from it and it would get sent around to the other teams and then we would meet go over it and then you could actually email those people talk to them and it was this amazing learning culture something that I don't think Zynga gets another credit for but I love that and when I left I realized Jesus not many of these companies have it and it's interesting here you talk about how you were doing that on your own in creating a system to learn right because yeah I just feel like so many companies don't is that part of it it's it still is like like I I re-listened to most of these podcasts again and kind of like not probably not to this one because this is just silly but I I listened to the uh to the other ones uh

where not no offense Brad and like I I appreciate you and you're a very smart person but I listened to the other ones where I'm actually doing the podcast right now so these are on these yeah I know I know I know but but but I I we listen and I actually write notes from those podcasts and now I'm actually pushing them out as a newsletter so it's like a a full cycle because I'm writing the notes that I that I listen through and then kind of like internalizing that knowledge and sometimes it's pretty funny because I go back when somebody asks me something or we're doing a project sorry or anything like that I go back to my notes I'm like wow I wrote this this is insane like I'm not that stupid so uh so so there's there's that part and and of course there's a lot of um I've used it to to influence certain things like it's very hard to get your voice through in a company especially as your low level PM or like senior pm and so forth it was I was able to carry more

weight than I had status in the company by just writing about these things and even at Rovio when I when I started this podcast I was working at Rovio sorry not this podcast this the blog and I was able to uh you know to to just lift up from from like a monetization manager up to uh having like weekly sessions with the CEO and the leadership team about you know the industry and so forth so uh just by by doing you know outside work of of my daily day-to-day work and analyzing games and analyzing businesses and analyzing um uh the market so it paid off in many ways and um yeah just just working it's working I love it just working yeah your turn no wait yes your turn I think it's no it's my turn sorry it's my turn uh so uh no no that's this this I've opened up

too much uh I'm uncomfortable talking about these things these things to some extent I have to walk before this I meant I had to walk yeah I had to kind of like walk the dog and then kind of like think about in my head like what I want to say because For the First Time kind of like telling my life story and I realized that that I have to do it because I'm you know I would post stuff on LinkedIn I have my own views about things like like Dei in the company and so forth not not in the sense like I'm against the yeah or anything but how it is implemented and how it is so focused on on um on kind of like the surface points especially working in the U.S where I had a team of PMS that were you know of Asian descent of Indian descent of Caucasian descent but all of them were from Ivy League schools and honestly like their thinking was pretty much the same you know they they looked very diverse but they thought the same and that's kind of like the stuff and so

it's important for me always to raise up like this is not a a typical white dude giving his um feedback on on Dei that's uh you know I mean it's yeah I I had the privilege of going to um I this is gonna sound oh prep school and um I was a as we were talking about a pretty talented hockey player when I was younger and so get recruited basically in high school and and the interesting thing about it is uh you move into this dorm and you have like one bag of stuff you know your Pock equipment and a bunch of clothes and they they bring in people from the the poorest communities private school and obviously the the richest communities and then when you're moving to a dorm it's a little bit I wouldn't say it's like prison but in a way it makes it so everyone just has a twin bed a bag of clothes and you go to school and then you live with 30 guys I mean you don't get to pick who you hang out with or who's next door or whatever you

could have the richest guy's son in the world next door and then the poorest guy is next door and you start to learn at least I learned that it there are Tendencies but it doesn't necessarily matter I mean some of the people that I met who had the most money were the hardest working down-to-earth people and some of the people who I met who had come from no money were the opposite and vice versa and actually Jocko talks about that with Navy Seals he says that some of the people came with the silverest of spoons in their mouth were the baddest hardcorest Navy Seals and vice versa and also the the opposite you know you could come from nothing and be kind of a selfish you know not great seal and that was a that was a tremendous learning for me you know having learning that kind of early on you know yeah yeah actually one thing that I was I was thinking about I I totally

understand your experience is pretty much the same as I had in military it's like you go in and you you know share bunk beds with a bunch of dudes who all dressed the same and do the same stuff and you never know until you see them outside uh outside the uh the barracks that they're actually you know like what are they about because when you take away how we dress we are we're so similar like there's there's no nuances and then you start seeing guys with like you know whatever the bad t-shirt already tells about it whether you have a bag of jeans or skinny jeans or what kind of jewelry you wear and so forth anyways but I was thinking about another thing uh about the swimming room mentality that just came to my mind is like um I have a very like because of this sort of um um work I don't know if it's work ethic but it's uh it's um glorification of work if you will uh like that is the the uh the the everything and anything I feel a lot of

affinity towards Founders because they tend to be you know the hardest workers and um and on vice versa I have I find it hard to relate to people who are not hard workers it's just like it's uh it's like a a good thing and a and a bad thing so so I don't know maybe maybe that that makes sense anyways and and also I don't know just I was just thinking about like uh it was when I was walking the dog I was like why do I like working with Sophie so much and and um and a lot of like talking to you and so forth it's like it's because of this sort of our approach towards work that is very similar and that makes us uh compatible anyways just a random thought in a random podcast but uh right let's let's your turn to ask a question no is it my it's my turn why do I want to say it's your turn um okay let me ask you one question that has been going on in the um in the LinkedIn so you've been posting a lot

about remote remote work and being sort of like the uh the knight in shining armor for everybody who wants to work out of their home in Montana or wherever they are and um and almost like setting up like picket lines and and being that True Believer like people like yes bread go show the evil corporations that work from home is the way to go and the funniest thing is is because people are listening to this now they understand that you don't even have employees you have just 45 contractors and like you don't have to build like all these type of things that are that uh you know a company would have to like the you know the values and this and that everything that goes with employees uh Contracting is a much more straightforward I love Contracting it's a it's a straightforward setting where we're here to do work and it's literally says in the contract that you get you work x amount of time we make that deal you deliver this I pay you that awesome

handshake I don't care where you are you're delivering this and that and so forth so you're not invested in this company you're not a shareholder there's none of that and so we don't have to debate about the values or or or you know misinterpret what you said and this and that or judge your character it's just all about the work and you don't have to provide people with vision you just have to provide them with work so why are you so um Pro remote work when you're not even dealing with the challenges of remote work that is my main question so oh man well there I I don't want to get caught on the fir the part you talked about the contractors because I could talk about that I I disagree with some of the things you're saying I think you use all the stuff you probably do but why am I so uh you know passionate about remote work I mean I I just think that it at the end of the day I think all companies will eventually be remote work in and we're talking about tech gaming right I mean

we're not talking about let's not let's not go like some you know doctors have to see patients right let's not go there but I just like actually doctors example yeah yeah exactly uh and I could actually talk about that and how remote medicine is Health uh some stuff at home but yeah I just think that if you if you sum up everything that is of value to remote work or some combination of remote work it is in my mind a clearly better system and I think the competitive nature of business will make it so that every company will have to offer remote work and I'll give you a perfect example I just wrote this post that's going to come out on Thursday about how Google just just cut half a billion dollars worth of releases across the board okay now granted they that's that's less than half a percent of their total costs and

so it's not a cost cutting thing that's so important about this move what's so important about this move is that liquid and grit and Savage games and every other company out there for their top talent is now competing with Google not only on salary because they'll pay more not only on benefits because they'll have better better benefits not only on brand because they're Brands no offense better than both of our you know companies you know whatever and now can poach every single person and let them live where they want to live right and so Google is coming after your best talent my best talent everyone's best talent that and if you're any company in gaming right and that recruiter emails your employee and says hey we'd love to talk to you we'll offer you more money we'll let you live wherever you want you can move around ever you want we'll give you better benefits we'll let you work on cooler products 99 of those people are going to open up

that email and consider that offer it's going to force companies to start offering the same thing because they're going to go to their employee and say listen I'm top talent and I don't really want to live in San Francisco anymore there's homeless people everywhere it's super expensive my grandparents live in Boise Idaho and I want to fly fish all day right and what are they going to say they're either going to have to match not only match they're gonna have to beat Google's offer but they're gonna have to do all these other things to keep that that Superstar right and that's going to force people to do it I mean I can go into all the benefits of it uh not commuting protects you from major risks like covet again I mean when covet happened it was a blip for us we didn't have to adjust anything environmental impact massive reduction potentially in CO2 uh you your talent pool gets like 60x I estimate in terms of potential hires there's just like I

mean I could go on and on in terms of the benefits and that's basically why I'm it and I think the the one caveat I will say and I think I want to clarify this with some of our debate if you're a company right now you're a public company you have 3 000 employees and you have had a system that works has worked for the last 30 years right and you're a Titanic and you can barely you know move your company in a direction without having to have 17 meetings or whatever going back to work right now as a stop Gap makes sense to me but if you don't have a vision of offering or becoming a remote company like I said in my post you'll be a dinosaur in in whatever time it's going to take but in a certain amount of time because like I said Google Google is coming for you or whatever other company that's in your space playwrix is coming for you right like playwrix is going to be able to offer all that so if you know how to

speak Russian they are well they they said that right they said that English is I thought they said that English was a language that they used they said Russian yeah yeah first or something oh is it Max Maxim he's he's studying how to overcome the language barrier with his with his uh you know research so as long once he solves that problem which seems like a solvable problem and then three thousand three thousand people would just magically start using a language that they're not comfortable with uh as their primary Communication in everything they could you know translate it I mean languages can be translated very easy it would be like us too would be speaking Spanish you know like neither of us is too good in it but we'll just we'll just do it in a private setting well that's why asynchronous communication is ideal right and we don't we don't have any meetings for that reason I mean that's a great I mean I can go into all the

things that you can do to combat it but I I I I I I don't re I don't rebuke any of the points that you're making except maybe the the carbon emission thing I don't think the effect would be that big I think there's a lot of other Industries and that are causing a lot of emission and always focus on our like the changes Transportation no transportation is actually the number one uh impact on carbon emission it's 20 of our carbon emission and Road Travelers right yeah okay road travel accounts for 75 of that uh and 45 of that comes from cars and buses so I agree uh it's but it is a a large percentage and I will add in 2020 when everyone stops traveling we saw a near five percent decrease in global uh carbon emission now granted that's there's a lot of things that go into that number I agree those are just some numbers that I could find that would point to some of the

impact I agree I think that's a little bit of a stretch it's a nice to add but it's a potentially huge win I I get it I get it it's a it's a green point it's good to have it gets it gets me fun we've gone off of like one person talks the other person talks yeah just a pure like yeah you know that we work it out we were not gonna have on this one we're not We're not gonna have that I'm not more of a debating I'm more like um no I you know I I just wanna like why do you think then the companies like Google especially you mentioned Google a couple of times I read their HR head of HR talking about how they're bringing people back to the campuses and all the news that I'm reading about Google is how they're incentivizing people to come back to campuses because it makes them more efficient when people can work together in a similar setting of course I have to take the point that Google is a massive Corporation and even if you're on the same campus I think you need to need an Uber to the other side to to

meet with somebody and I would assume that it's easier to to jump in on Google meet than to walk 15 minutes on the other side of the campus I'm it could be a fun walk uh but but anyways like my question is more why do you think than these companies like Zoom today um essentially mandating people to come back to the office at least couple of times a week well because they're currently sub-optimally run yeah I mean like I said I think that if they're slow to turn and transition I mean uh then it makes sense right because you you can't just go well we're 100 remote today we don't have the infrastructure or the systems I mean Maxim talked about how long it took them to uh to create remote work and he mentioned that 10 years two works is two years isn't enough right and I've I've been running my company for eight years and so it makes perfect sense you don't want to

go from we don't have the systems let's just force this upon ourselves because they they may fall off a cliff in terms of Revenue but my point is if you're going to start a company today and if you're not you should be remote and if you're a company like Zoom that doesn't have the infrastructure for it you better be battery building it because if you don't you're going to be competing with those companies that have figured it out who can offer the same if not better benefits and you're just going to be out compete for your top talent so if you want the The Leftovers in San Francisco who are super expensive and not that good like how are you going to compete go okay so another point you mentioned that if you're a startup like you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna even debate those points people can listen to them and be like I agree with Brett or be like I think Zoom is building a lot of infrastructure for remote work that's

literally what they do uh but you mentioned that if you start a startup today it has to be remote first I was reading through I think it was under Chin's comments a partner at General partner at a16z and he was making the case that startups should be especially in the beginning on site and I paint another partner whose name shall not be man mentioned because I don't have he didn't say I could do that or not uh and I'm paying them like from from another fun I was like hey did you see this comment like what do you think is like yeah uh remote is dead like they're just like you know typical VC answers uh basically remote is that not investing into full remote on-site too many problems Etc so why do you think then that the funds have turned against the remote companies yeah because what a fund wants to do is invest in a group of people that are

going to create the most value that they can create in a short amount of time in a five to seven year period right and so they're very the the company itself isn't incentivized to create a infrastructure that's going to sustain over the long term what a startup company wants to do is wants to create a product that's going to rocket ship for the next five years and be able to create the most value for that investor group who's going to hand it off to the larger investor group or the public markets or whomever else is going to take the bag in the next five to seven years right and you constantly see companies we can name 10 off the top of our heads that do that and then crater and crumble because the infrastructure isn't built so as a VC partner who doesn't care about the long-term Equity of a company leaning 10 20 years and who doesn't necessarily care about the yeah who wants the best benefit and

and focus on product get people to sit in the same office for the next five years have them sacrifice that have them build the best product product is kind of everything there that makes sense to me so I do think that there probably are there are certainly caveats to why I think it works but I think for a long-term sustainable company in today's environment if you are not starting remote or moving towards remote you will lose because of the lack of competitive Advantage you have in terms of hiring and talent mm-hmm I understand the point I would still say that that kind of like you you know you have to think about what is important as your startup you're going from one funding round to another until you reach profitability and in some cases you never do you just go through the IPO and continue spending money uh not naming any companies uh but but but um isn't it like really important like

you would argue that it's very important to cross those first steps so if you start remote and that is a sub-optimal option I know that because I've done that and it was covet then it's important to get through that first product stage and I wouldn't add that element of risk when everything is a risk when everything is a problem you don't want interpersonal problems you don't want communication problems you don't know any of that so that's why it's important that everybody works in the same room because there is no long-term future if you fail in the beginning so I would I would maybe counter that point and then align myself with the uh with the funds that that while we could all even if we agree on long-term remote work the company has to succeed and they're very fragile in the beginning so and again I mean most of these companies again that VCS are backing are fragile um you know again I think if you want if

you're thinking 20-year period and yeah and every you know if you have someone who lives locally and is your co-founder like there's you know but if you're going to grow the company and you're going to want to hire you're limiting yourself again by like 160th of the talent pool so if you're planning on scaling the talent quickly in those five-year periods that your five-year period then again not having some path to hiring remote and building remote uh into your culture is going to limit your ability to get top talent by you know 1 60th so again if you don't if you don't need top talent and your two people and you plan on staying two people and you've lived nearby each other currently then yeah stay stay and create an office although you know the expenses of an office are massive on a two-person company in fact they're going to become the largest expense of yours by a mile for the first

probably six to year of work so again I don't know I I it's the best for me it's a stretch to even like accept that being a strong argument for it um the thing the thing is I know exactly where you're coming from because I've lived in in the uh in the Bay area so I understand the view it's just it's it's different in different countries and especially when you go outside us the uh the tax and legislation challenges that come from employees working in different countries because our our countries are smaller like a fraction of a state and there's like ton of them so there's there's a lot of challenges uh a lot of elements I'm not against remote work I'm actually Pro a lot of co-development type of things where you integrate entire teams into it and um I'm very Pro of hybrid work uh I just I believe in human contact a lot so but

then again liquid and grit does magic with contractors who have never met and never spoken to each other um I've had people in the same way on the Constructor of fun who have been contributing for a month for for years sometimes and I would be like wait a minute is this the first time but that we're talking like I've never actually seen your face I've heard your voice so I totally understand where you're coming from there as well kind of being on on different types of businesses and that's why I always go for like yes I get your case if you're this and if you're that if your business is a synchronous if the type of a job is a synchronous is uh if if you are in these expensive areas if you're in the US that's already amazing you have 300 what you count Mexico you count uh Canada that's like 400 million people all you know that can that could work that that is your talent pool essentially and the the tax challenges are much smaller and so forth so I get where you're coming from it works but it but I'm just more more of there are no Universal rules there are companies that

that would suffer from reward work there are companies that Excel because of remote work but I think most of the companies in general will do better with hybrid setup because it gives you enough freedom for individual employees it gives them their the then it removes the need to to commute every day gives a little bit of freedom of of what you want to do during those days maybe you want to you know you know do something around the house that is on the background uh and at the same time you keep that that communal aspect of coming to the office meeting people face to face communicating you know smiling my wife just got to their new office uh and their company she's been working remotely quite a while even though she's she lives in the same city and she just keeps talking how nice it is to be in the room though she does says that it's very hard to do your job and I was like that is why hybrid is perfect three to two days three to two days just pick and choose and optimize your life against it and your efficiency as well so I get it I think we can move on to the next topic and wait until you troll on LinkedIn about remote work

being the superior option I already have some queued up so I I can only imagine and I will reply accordingly and then there's going to be eight eight comments below it with your remote Army I'm even biting my tongue on like seven points that are in my head so I will I will it's fine it's fine this is never ending debate okay Brad um who's asking the question no it's your turn yeah yeah it's my turn so I'm trying to think of what is okay I want to do this one because this one's more fun to me is you've worked at a lot of great companies Rovio supercell fun plus PlayStation your own what is your favorite one and why what is was your uh least favorite and yeah specifically talking about culture and yeah operations and all those kind of things and yeah you obviously we both

call any companies out that's not necessarily I think just your perspective on what's worked and what hasn't it's probably the most I'm I'm not gonna call like I'll I'm gonna be just straightforward and honest because it's such a long time ago also that whether I say this company was great or this company wasn't the right fit for me that was like 10 years ago for example so that that company might be totally different and most likely is totally different but I will start with where I enjoyed the most and where I would say like this was my favorite place to work at and that was fun plus so um and I was just thinking about like why did I love fun plus so much I think one of the elements was the uh the autonomy that that CEO Andy I I think is a is a tremendous I don't have to think think that he's a tremendous CEO he is a tremendous CEO objectively by building your company from nothing there's literally every single number to support that he's a tremendous CEO so so

just note it uh but why I liked him uh so much was that that first of all like he loves games like he's so into it and he's like so entrepreneurial and so so fired up about things it's it's like it's it's catchy then the second part is like the autonomy that you're giving uh together with the support it's not the type of autonomy that I've seen other Studios give like hey you can do this however you want but if you [ __ ] up we're gonna cut you like you're like that is that is that is an autonomy of its sense but with with Andy and with fun plus and like in the whole leadership team I felt the autonomy but I also felt the support where I could fail and there would be like let's go again let's let's do it let's find until it works rather than like one strike and you're out and and that was uh that was such a uh invigorating feeling where you felt that somebody has your back

um and and you were more willing to take risks and more willing to to try hard and so forth and and the structure of working was really nice like we would just have monthly like sort of a product reviews that was all about like playing the game and talking about it and you would have smart people around them that would be from different places but it was like a small setting it was not heavy reporting but it was more like conversational and um and and another thing that definitely made me love it is because I came directly from Zynga like I had an offer just to go to casino probably would have made a good money an EP on Casino dude wow yeah yeah it was the place for big money it's exactly yeah that's the reason I was on Zynga poker Revenue PM they sat uh they sat me down they're like listen let's talk about bonuses because like I know you know bonuses but you don't know our bonuses no and I was like I hear you but I'm gonna go to this obscure Chinese company uh that has an empty office space and and in middle of San Francisco

next to in front of actually Gold's Club so uh so you know not a proponent of those establishments but I did hire one programmer who wanted to have in the middle of his interviews he was like let's go for lunch and he was like I was like where do you want to go and he was like well the Gold Club is on the other side of the street are you serious oh my goodness and I was like are you serious he's like yeah I was like wow he's like I hear they have good chicken wings and I was like damn it this dude has an offer from Uber and from Amazon and like he worked at my team at uh at Zynga and so I knew like I knew I knew him I knew

him that he's good I knew that I wanted home my team and I knew that he has an offer for double the salary and I was like I guess we're going to go club and I closed him and go go Club on half the salary so so I know okay this is amazing [Music] story but but that was another part is like you like it was almost like entrepreneurial like I was running the studio I got the backing from the company I got the backing from from the CEO and I was doing these startup things where like you do whatever to get to get you know the key talent and so forth and then 85 probably of my team was xinga and we worked on a project for a long time it was like one of those death marches and it didn't go through and so kind of coming into that environment we are we I didn't have to write anything about the culture our culture was counterculture of what we did at Zynga it's like we didn't want to have any meetings we

didn't have to do specs we just wrote things on the wall we like everything was so efficient because it was like different and everybody had the same background so I think that made it a lot more enjoyable and I just remember having a lot of fun working at fun plus which is uh well it kind of kind of makes sense and that was the the place where we I left because we had our first child and it was very difficult to kind of like settle down in the US with our kid there's more dogs in San Francisco that there are kids you know we couldn't get a daycare place we had we had a great Ukrainian Nanny uh but but it was like uh you know it was tough and even then the CEO was like dude I'll pay your rent IQ was so like like he had your back at all places so yeah you know much much kudos to that and like I have only good things to say about fun plus and and their their objectively great CEO uh so so that was that was my that was my favorite place uh and I I think I cried a little bit when I was um

when I resigned it was such a you know like I was like leaving your team that did you build and everything I think you know everything about that was it was the right atmosphere and right right things and so forth and I the funniest thing is like I was trying to recruit people from Zynga it was like very difficult because we nobody knew about fun plus and we had this like that building has been since demolished but it had it had like very very high ceiling very very high ceiling and uh looked almost like a churchy Vibe and um and like empty desks and people would come in they're like you guys are doing money laundering over here like like there's nothing here like what is this nonsense uh and then uh and then the company launched a king of Avalon that became on on one point number one grossing game in app store and all the people who came by and were laughing at us like they were just lining around the door and I was like who's you know who's who's money laundering now so yeah so it kind of It kind of changed and

um and it was it was it was awesome to be a part of that and uh and kind of like the only job that I truly um am sad that that I that I left uh but then again I go back to like it was the best thing for a family so so um I I would still do it again but it would be equally as painful so so shout out to to fun plus for for being on uh for having an awesome CEO and and other awesome people like Chris petrick is now working there and um I I'd assume that he would have same kind of appraises for for fun plus um and then then the company that I that I enjoyed the least uh a little bit of a controversial take but this is 2013 guys 10 years ago uh I joined supercell and it was a company where half of them I knew half of the people I was employing number like 60 or 70 whatever uh most of the people were from Digital Chocolate um and that was a that was a company that started before uh with would make when then they started uh supercell so

so kind of like coming to a company where you knew half of the people it felt like very uh safe very um natural uh very normal and back then again back then 10 years ago so it was there was no HR and there was actually no HR for a very long time in that company because they they lived very much by the ethos of sort of a Netflix culture you know it was like it was almost like a hedge fund super you know work focused aggressive like oh I like all those type of things but it was very difficult I joined Clash of Clans team as a product manager with the goal of taking over the game it was very difficult to get a foothold because there was no there was no processes you know you had to kind of jump in and take your space and it was very difficult because the lead you know awesome dude still talked to him probably talked last week uh he was a Powerhouse like you know you a great game developer but like I would say like a what's called like a Steve

jobsy type of a character like like really takes the space super difficult to uh to to kind of come in as a new guy to to join the team of somebody who build Clash of Clans and be like hey you know like let me take my space so you know eventually I got myself I told him like you have to just exit this room I can't do anything when you're here because people are looking at you to make all the calls and and yeah and he he moved on to the next room and I started running the update my first update for Clash of Clans golem was the unit that the team did under under uh under my short leadership of it uh proud of that unit wasn't my idea but it was more like we need a unit on this place and then the team was fantastic that it was like so autonomous such a great working team um and and at that point like one of the co-founders who also was working on that team went on a vacation decided to uh to basically say like he's actually not exiting the team but he's going to take

it over and so I got a little bit shafted like in the middle of my update cycle uh asked to uh to to leave the team and I want to give a shout out to ilka uh CEO of supercell he was like is still is was super generous super Fair guy he was like sat me down explain the situation it is what it is but hey like would you like to um essentially run growth for supercell like we need somebody who's like a product focused guy uh and we have all these kind of things and it was company was very young uh and very very successful but didn't have uh any any of anybody kind of like looking for growth and and I was a young kid back then under 30 and I was like sure I'll do it and I didn't really understand the opportunity that I was given I did all kind of cool stuff that I'm you know looking back at it I'm super proud but I wasn't happy doing that like we did a launch in Japan it was the most successful launch of a western game in in Japanese Market uh

um I'm proud to say that I was able to find uh the uh the uh the localization partner and it was all kind of fun stuff about that I traveled together with with just a couple other people went to Japan figured out the launch strategies made the relationship with apple relationships with gung-ho cross promotion with gung-ho like all that kind of stuff I was able to do uh they let me do I was you know designing the First toy lines all that kind of stuff like like really exciting stuff flying business around the world and still I was such a young guy that I was a little bit like resentful of what happened and only wanted to do games like I don't want to do any of this business development [ __ ] I just want to do games naturally if you give me that position today I would fly that super so hoodie like nobody else I would wrap the company like crazy because it's like an awesome job but back then in that scenario I really disliked it and and um and through that disliked working there again this was 10 years ago I was

a kid and um it was unfair but live is unfair and I took it in the wrong way so I so I kind of blame my own um attitude towards the opportunity given to me uh and and being too much clingy on on like what was promised in the beginning so basically being childish uh but that led to me not to enjoy that that job um and kind of like saying that that's the the one that I enjoyed myself the least but again as I said fantastic CEO all the kudos to him uh very fair very generous person uh meaning ilka and uh objectively also one of the best CEOs you can find in gaming ever so surprise yeah surprise for us yeah I'm surprised yeah so those are those are the ones so that that's awesome we can clip it why I didn't like supercell yeah the better

why why it's the worst place you know I mean in their defense in their defense I mean and this is something I learned in starting liquid and grid running it and one of the reasons why we don't have meetings I don't meet with I've never met 80 of people that work for me and I'm by no means obviously supercell is that as a CEO as a leader as you learned I'm sure you have to do just not fun awful stuff I mean there's really no way to put it and you have to do it in what is best for a business right and it sounds like in their situation they had a co-founder who wanted to do something they had a lead who want to do something and you were kind of caught in in that and I feel like when you personify or apply humanistic things to decisions made by businesses by leaders who are have to think in an objective way for what's best for a business I think it's unfair

in some ways and I I don't want to like get pity or anything like that but that's one of the reasons why we're 100 remote and we don't meet and I don't want to meet anybody and I could tell I don't want to like but I had to let someone go and they basically convinced me to stay and they were terrible they were terrible and like basically I ended up letting this person stand for two more months and I called my mom and she was like I told her the story that I like five minutes after the meeting I just felt terrible and she said here's what you're gonna do you're gonna hang up this phone you're gonna email that person you're gonna give them their two weeks and you're gonna like delete them from your company right now and I was like really like that's what I'm gonna do she's like yeah go do it right now and that's when I learned that as a leader of a company you have to do these things that are gut-wrenchingly difficult and awful and it's unfortunate but like that's kind of what's necessary so that's my defense we're both obviously big fans of supercell like there's yeah exactly and you don't need to do defend them I I agree as well that that was the right

call and as I said like I given that opportunity now I'd be like give me a head of growth I don't want to be you know running a game team that sounds stressful like how about I fly business to Tokyo oh so so um so so of course that and and the second thing that that actually it was a great experience in that sense not only you know the growth stuff that that I only later learned to appreciate but what was also a good experience is kind of like my emotions not how I felt about different things because I had the situation where I was on the other side of the uh of the table where I was making these decisions for others and you know what I didn't spend time to convincing them that this is the right decision or so forth I was like I know that you won't get it and you might get it later or maybe never I don't want to waste my time because when I was in your shoes I didn't get it it took me eight years to get yeah to get it to be like you know what I get it this was a smart call so there's no point so so so uh so there's there's no

point a waste of time a [ __ ] sandwich is a [ __ ] sandwich I mean yeah I feel I hate that too it's like well maybe if you framed it it's like come on let's just agree this is gonna be a [ __ ] sandwich and like later on you may figure out why you you know why you had you know it happened but yeah I agree yeah it's a but again super generous and wrote me all the recommendations for for my next stuff and and so forth so uh always appreciative of of everything you know of all the stuff at supercell and I met my wife at supercell so like in the books like it's the best experience as a whole that I've had and most profound experience of my life because it changed the course of my life on the personal note on on the professional no it might have been not as as uh as positive at that point but then going forward especially giving it more years maturing a little bit you know losing some hair uh as both of us have let's be honest

father time is cool very cool but uh but yeah so so kind of like really learning to appreciate and um and take all the learnings for that so so definitely no hard feelings and I do write about supercell sometimes and I'm I'm like objectively critical but not I think I'm very positive and some people are like oh you're critical like no I'm just not I'm as objective as you can to a company that I think is amazing so yeah yeah well they can go bathe in their their money when they fail badly after listening they're diving into their money pit so I don't think they're gonna be crying for too long but there's no crying about this but it will make a good clip okay um should we go to the real topics I've we've been recording a lot of real topics we're an hour and 20 minutes in I don't know man okay we're gonna blast through the most I think yeah Trends I mean we could even

like three for three could turn into two by two honestly like no no we gotta go three point okay three by three all right I love it so all right um let's talk about Trends in the in the industry so you asked me the last questions now am I asking your no yes I'm asking you the question is yes well because it's not like uh because like we keep asking questions in between and I already forgot like who was the original question I'm a chat I'm a chatty cat everybody knows I'm a chatty cat so uh um all right let me ask you the questions I wrote I wrote that what is next for mobile games because you've been following I think more than 99.99999 in the industry like you're at the uh at the spearhead like you and a couple people at news who no you're probably even more you and and some people at uh data AI uh

like Lexi no equal amount about games industry but you know on the feature level and the genres and like what's going on like like what is happening in the industry because on the outside if you talk to investors they would say well the go to market is [ __ ] uh the mobile game business is difficult we're not really investing we're kind of like look and see position um you know there's all these layoffs going on the consolidation has been crazy since 2020 uh there's like 10 companies left uh what what's what's really going on Brad well you know certainly we're going through a more difficult time for mobile gaming and that has been largely driven and I'll I'll say that I I think you called this correctly more correctly than I did with the admin of ATT or apples you know cut off of basically Facebook's connection to user data and

that with a couple other things uh you know the the the market itself was more Consolidated so public uh more Mobile gaming companies were public Mark companies and the public market wanted profitability due to recession even though mobile games are basically recession-proof if not inversely uh related to recessions or but um you know basically that that really hit profit margins for mobile gaming because it cut off the ability for mobile gaming companies to go Target a white male 40 year old in Northern California right and without that ability and they the profit margins got hit very hard and I will say that I think that that in in the long run this will be good for mobile gaming or gaming in general probably not mobile gaming but gaming in general so like the gaming

companies that are my subscribers and the people I care about because at a certain point we had to rip the Band-Aid off of Facebook advertising because it was near close to a perfect market and the margins were decreasing gradually over time and we're all so happy that we could predict exactly that when we spent a dollar we got 99 Cents back and I I know there was something comforting about that but eventually Mobile gaming companies had to cut their Reliance off from Facebook advertising we had to stop giving you know Zuckerberg all of our money pretty much yes and you know unfortunately it was very heavy handy handed by Apple of course like apple could have done a much better job of transitioning away from Facebook for app developers and I think that's going to come back to haunt Apple because there's going to be a lot of resentment from and they're already you're already seeing it there's gonna be a lot of paranoia about being reliant on Apple from here on out which is going to bite them just like a

bit Facebook in the ass in 2012. and so profit margin were hit very hard public markets wanted profitable companies to show how stable they were that ended up producing a lot of layoffs in the industry a lot of cutbacks because of those of those factors and uh you know there's a bunch and then obviously Apple has made it more difficult to be featured they want more control average advertising they want more control these dollars now on the flip side the reason why I'm still bullish I'm gaming is because I like to say gaming is the second most innovative Market in the world mathematically speaking and factually speaking because you have the most upside if you or you have a massive upside if you win right like play Ricks came out of nowhere and it is a gazillion dollar company that you have tons of competition you have super fast cycle time right or release ability to release the task and you have low risk

right like if you try something wild tomorrow it's not showing up on the New York Times and that creates a very Innovative industry and therefore we're gonna find a solution it's just a matter of time where the companies are already finding Solutions with external payment pages and cross-platform is getting um investigated by a bunch of companies right like they're checking that out console people are thinking about console I think different GEOS right like you're already seeing these just gaming companies just chomping at the bit to figure it out and I think we mathematically speaking it's just like an inevitability that they will and then on the demand side from users I do think that there's going to be a little bit of a a gap here but if anyone has a kid on this podcast everyone knows that gaming isn't going anywhere right like when I tell my children that they

get to watch TV they're like ah boring right if I tell them that they get to play games they're all super excited so once once it becomes ubiquitous that mobile games and games in general is something that you do for entertainment and that you spend money on them just like at one point I can imagine everyone was thinking well why would I spend money to go to the movie theater when I can watch TV at home and then that became ubiquitous it's it's more or less ubiquitous but what's going to become more of a universal concept is spending money on your device and you're already seeing that outside of gaming right think about how much more you spend on streaming subscriptions in-app purchases of course on your mobile device that's just going to continue to go up and it that's really what's going to drive the growth from a gaming perspective now conversely I will say that I think it's going to get and it already is getting more competitive right like the percentage of revenue from mobile games

as a total percentage of Revenue on a mobile device is decreasing so the pie for gaming is going to grow but it is going to be more competitive I mean Googles and Hulu's and Netflix and Disney's and everybody's going to get in the game and so your our games are going to have to get more creative they're gonna and it's gonna be more competitive but I think overall those are all going to rot you know the rising Tides it's going to be rising tides in general and then the last thing because this has been like super heavy and I apologize with listeners but I is you don't discredit Black Swan events and the gaming industry is somewhat built on unexpected or Black Swan events right and this is why it's so hard from an analyst perspective if we're not analysts in the traditional sense of you know the market is going to grow five percent year over year what's so hard about predicting the gaming industry is if you look back on the last 10 years of

what really drove growth most of the growth was driven by unexpected things right like who could have predicted Mobile in general who could have predicted Facebook who could have predicted a Pokemon go success who could have predicted that Clash of Clans is still gonna is still a top grossing games like nobody predicted these things and No One's Gonna predict the next thing that's going to help grow the industry no one predicted covid right so in covet house or fortnight yeah a fortnight right exactly like Roblox like whoever thought that that game would ever be as big as it is besides the CEO and even he probably was like hmm I don't know it'll probably be something big anyways the point is is that if you don't take that into consideration I think you're foolish that there are unexpected things that happen in this industry that drive the real growth and that's why analysts from you know industries that are highly predictable like whatever industry you want utilities or financing like they're just

it's very hard to come in and go I know what's going to happen just because every two years something totally unexpected happens to change the course of Gaming so that's what I think is generally what's going to happen in gaming uh there was a little bit history there but um that's my that's my hot take interesting interesting especially with the Black Swan thing that's something that that a lot of predictions tend to leave out because it's impossible to predict well in predicting the you know predicting the unpredictable is is possible and I think it's foolish to have a prediction if you're trying to predict an industry as Innovative as gaming is to not consider that right like again if you're you're looking at utilities or if you're looking at bonds right like you can go back and look at those those histories and you can see that the differences have changed slowly over time but if you go look at the history the last 10 years I mean you're talking about supercell way back in

2013. think about how different supercell is back 2013 I wasn't we were worried about all the mass of Revenue we were getting from Facebook we were worried about all the channels of Facebook right and just think about the change that's happened in that time period so the next 10 years are just going to be as dramatic if not more dramatic and assuming that you can predict that is is I think foolish is an extreme word I think uh but if we're doing hot takes I think it's foolish I think it's an oversight probably is a better way of putting it if you if you're not putting that into your estimation makes sense makes sense last one let's go Brad well I mean realistically it's I mean not realistic it's basically the same question just posed to you you know how do you see the mobile industry evolving in the next few years and you know what should developers do I think which is a great add-on to to I mean we said keep

up but I really think take advantage and succeed because you know yeah he wants to just keep up we want to we want to be the next supercell right yeah I didn't want to go Toe to Toe with you on mobile market because it would help me so so I tried to kind of zoom out and talk about games as a whole with uh with mobile just you know as a key thing as a 50 to 49 of all the revenue and so I looked at some new Zoo data as well as some of the data from from Google uh and according to New Zoo like first of all we have to say that year 2021 was absolutely absurd and it will take several years for the industry to reach that those levels and we're still not there uh and and you know all the stars aligned and people were locked down uh so so you know that it is what it is and there was too much money going around in the economy so it will take a time but overall like even though we had a decline year after those insanely you

know those hockey stick years of 2020 especially 20 and 21 the global the global games Market is still growing so 2023 will represent about 2.6 growth uh reaching almost 190 billion as a games Market as a whole um and most interesting thing is the the amount of players worldwide is growing uh it's going to about 3.4 so basically a six percent year on year rate and mobile contributes the most growth when it comes to the growth of people who play games so that might be probably because it's the first device that people are getting not a lot of you know kids are getting the ps5s you know I got my girl to play for the first time she's six and she was stoked but but uh but you know that's that's not the the first device they will they will play games on um unless you live in Mill Valley but uh but that's a different story uh it's all

mobile yeah man yeah yeah right it's all everything there uh so Mobile accounts for for highest share Revenue it's still you know it's it's getting a little bit smaller uh and we see a lot of growth on the console and PC side but that growth is primarily driven by the fact that there was a remote work and no those games are late because of the remote no I'm not just saying it's remote work but a lot of key games were late and also the uh the devices were late like PlayStation 5 is only now becoming available uh in a in a more uh liberal way but before that it was hard to get even the device from anywhere so so there was there's this backlog of demand a lot a lot of games were late by years uh you couldn't get the devices now it's coming out the games are coming out the devices are available and that of course will drive significant growth and according to New Zoo it's up to like seven percent year over year so so definitely console is the bread winner at the moment uh but you know I'm gonna talk a little bit about

the trends overall and then with console they really underperformed the previous years and and overall like like thinking about this I think 2026 I agree with news or that 2020 sick is going to be a new year a big year for games uh on two sides first of all um naturally we're gonna get the new Nintendo device we're going to get the new generation of consoles and there's won't probably be these type of or who knows maybe maybe there's another war and and we can't get you know devices from from uh from Asia and whatnot like we know that Buffett pulled out of Taiwan his investment so that seems pretty real and if there's another Black Swan event a sad event of a war in Asia then then we won't be able to get the device but assuming the world is getting more peaceful um hopefully than than 2026 would be probably the year new console generation will come in and at that point I think a lot of the mobile gaming companies will be more accustomed to the Privacy changes that they're now tackling with

like we knew about the con the changes but the companies were so slow to react to them and they were kind of oozed by by um by some of their Partners In AD Tech like we got this it's not that bad we're going to be fingerprinting and apple wasn't as hard as in in implementing all these changes and enforcing them so this has been this so slow transition and I think it's going to continue through 2024 and 2025 until we get to a place where where it's really like something that that you know is normal what do you think Brad I'm a little more bullish on the changes I'm already seeing it happen but 25 24. yeah I think it's going to take um less time for the mobile developers I mean the console obviously would it's different but um yeah it's certainly a a difficult time but I think my take is we'll look back on this and say overall it was a good thing for the businesses in over the industry itself that

represents you know mobile and console gaming right like different companies and they're they're basically the same now right because so many console companies own mobile companies and yeah yeah and that and that kind of leads to to some like this is the data dump but I think what's really interesting on the trend level uh is well if we talk about console and PC like now they're growing like crazy they weren't growing on 2021 and it was actually declining because they couldn't get the device couldn't get the games but that growth is not going to continue with what they have like they're blowing out their you know their their backlog now um and there's years before the new generation so they are they have to diversify their monetization to channel and they have to diversify on their platforms they have to enter mobile and that's what you mentioned we've seen that take two we've been seeing it from from Microsoft deciding that that is like the key reason uh Sony has been open about uh entering mobiles uh Nintendo has talked again about going back to mobile they get the first try

and now they're coming up back I think with DNA uh on it so so that is there to sustain the growth that they're experiencing right now so I think that's gonna be a big influence on overall mobile just ecosystem as these traditional uh game companies are entering mobile with their top IPS I think in terms of geography the Mena area so Middle East and North Africa uh is very interesting because according to the numbers uh the growth in terms of players is six times faster than the one in Europe and us and the Rev and twice as fast as an APAC and that's naturally the reason why deconstructive fund does all their events in Mina no not not not the reason but but but could be I did not predict this but uh but this is clearly the uh the growth segment and we're definitely doubling down with another event this year in Abu Dhabi

um and then there's a lot of AI talks that that has been pushing really the stocks and I think AI is very interesting when looking at these trends to me it reminds a lot of this web 3 talk where all the executives were super bullish all the investors were super bullish every company had their Chief web3 dude and like and and at the same time uh the developers were not happy about web 3 and the players were super not happy about web3 um yeah I'm sure that a lot of web3 guys would say that's not true but it is uh and I'm seeing kind of the same type of a resentment and in AI but of course not even comparable that what it was towards web 3. so I think what we'll be seeing with the AI will be streamline of a lot of development uh that is aimed to cut the absolutely insane development costs that we're experiencing right now especially uh in AAA I think the vocal minority on discords and whatnot

channels the x or or what Twitter whatever it is we'll we'll uh will resent uh but I think companies will really just continue to use it to boost productivity there's a lot of different AI Solutions whether it's the NPCs whether it's the World building uh whether it's the narrative those are all great Solutions and I think the companies won't talk about AI as much as they are doing right now or talk in in more more of a close settings because just not to agitate the uh the vocal minority and I think like like Joe asked me what do you want to do next I think this is a great business idea so if you're some insane person that is listening at almost two hour mark with this podcast then then I would say that if you're interesting you're starting an an a company an AI company that watches AI so that the AI does not infringe on

copyrights that is a fantastic business model so AI to watch AI not to infring copyrights if you're a programmer uh you're all about AI you want to be rich uh DM me we're going to do this company it's going to be in incredibly high demand because AI is pushing so much stuff that is infringing on copyrights and we're gonna save companies from a lot of lawsuits so ping me DM me if you're still watching this anyways at the end of the hours talk about transmedia I don't find it uh too interesting to be honest I think it's a lot of a hype because of the the media companies are good at generating hype I'm not going to talk about Esports because what hasn't what hasn't been said about Esports that has been said about Afghanistan oh that's a bad joke uh we need to cut that one uh so uh Esports

not exciting handheld consoles that could be pretty exciting but I don't think that's a big business the one that I want to end off end on is intersection of games and apps and we've been talking a lot about that and I think I think that's where the big opportunity is we're seeing a lot of mobile games companies kind of suffer right now with self-publishing and figuring out what they should be doing some of them are going co-development uh we we did a good podcast with hothead games if you're interested about transitioning into co-development that is that is for you uh but I think what what these companies Mobile gaming companies are not looking at is apps I think they would have so much to offer in the apps business because I feel that even the top apps are like 10 years behind in terms of gamification and what we do in mobile games and there's a there's a lot of a lot of learnings that we have that they don't know they they think that they're gamifying their their products but they're really just tinkering around them they're doing stuff that we did in

Yeovil back in the days yeah it was back when we had a thick set of hair on ourselves yeah that was a long time ago so so I think I think we've learned so much and then and they're all about like Duolingo and how they added like events and streaks and and the tasks and stuff like that we could do so much we we know about social we know about monetization we know about we know about marketing so I think a game company that would look into Apps would be incredibly powerful and could win one of these top companies whether we're talking about health or they're talking about music whether we're talking about dating I think a game developers going into that would absolutely crush it and as an example Discord before it became Discord was known as a company called hammer and

chisel and they made a MOBA with animals and yes it was a fun game I played it there's a deconstructions on deconstructor fund uh blog but that wasn't a great game but then they made a chat what is it a chat app it's not it's like a productivity um app yeah I don't know what do you call a Discord and it absolutely crushes it so so that's what you can do with the pedigree of gaming like we could do anything and we're not using our full force we're too focused on on figuring out what kind of a improve what kind of a mobile we should do next or what kind of a MMO we should be doing or you know what is the Casual version of of hearthstone you know marvel snap but anyways like we should be looking at the existing apps using Tinder using I don't know Spotify would be too too difficult with all the all the stuff that they have there but using all kind of Health apps and thinking about like how can we make a better app whether it's you know the

beater of Peloton uh the Peter of um of you mentioned it I I use a ton of apps I didn't want to give any more shout outs so yeah that's kind of like my end speech on that very bullish about apps uh and and sort of an intersection of games and apps and would love to invest into teams that are going from games to app development I like that last hot take I was there's a little company called slack that started as a gaming company that was a gaming company too yeah yeah I don't know if you've heard of that but they do pretty well yeah yeah there's a couple podcasts on there yeah started out again actually the company they started first was also a gaming company and that turned into um oh my goodness it uh like one of the first like photo sharing at flickers flicker Flickr first and then but then they then they were trying to build a

game and they had a communication platform that they were using that ultimately they like better than the game itself that's fantastic I I would use a sports analogy I'm a big UFC fan um and it's almost like like in UFC there's always like a heavyweight that comes in who's like a former NFL player or even like a Collegiate NFL like not didn't even make it in NFL like was was kind of like nobody crushes it in UFC why because they're a top athletes they can learn anything so fast and I feel this is kind of the same thing like if you were uh if you're a game developer I think you crush it in apps and you just but you're still trying to to kind of like stay in your lane do not stay in your lane move to a different Lane you could be the next slack it could be the next Discord uh you know do do something else so that's it that's a hot hot mic drop right there I like it all right so we went three for three we got plenty of ideas for for listeners who who stuck

into US towards the end we could start an AI company to watch AI to not infringe copyrights or we can we can go into the intersection of games and apps or we can just wait and see until 2025 2026 with the game industry again picks up and starts growing Brett anything you want to tell to the people who know more about you that you're comfortable with oh just hit me up on LinkedIn if you have any further questions or want to chat and you know always happy to talk boom um and Brad is also on deconstructor from slack Channel as are yeah a couple of thousand other people so so thanks everybody for listening um let us know let me know how you like these nonsensical podcasts that uh are briefly touching up on our industry we do talk some sense in the end but are more people focused um we'd love to to uh to hear that because we did the podcast with JK and I got a lot of kudos for that like it was

a real talk people just enjoyed it it was like a real podcast and so who else then then the bread the man from Montana to to talk about to talk about some nonsense yeah all right so everybody have a good day good night all that good stuff um and again tell us how you like this so bye bye