Blaze Your Own Trail - Using Problem Solving to Build Relationships with Tony DiMatteo

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

About Tony: Tony DiMatteo is the founder and CEO of Lottery.com, a courier service operating in multiple states, enabling consumers to play state sanctioned lottery games directly from their mobile phones. Lottery.com is also the largest provider of lottery data in the world with clients including Google and Amazon. The company has worked with regulators and industry leaders to help legitimize lottery courier services in the United States.  DiMatteo is responsible for global initiatives and the development and execution of the company’s long-term strategy.  DiMatteo is also the Executive Director of the WinTogether trust and WinTogether.org, a charitable platform enabling causes to raise funds for global and local projects.  He is a sought after thought leader, and his approach to social impact, entrepreneurship, blockchain, and the gaming industry has been covered in The Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Inc. and more. Tony has also been a featured guest speaker at Tony Robbins’ Platinum Finance and Peter Diamandis’ A360 events speaking on the future of fundraising. In this episode we discuss: Tony's upbringing  Growing up in Colorado His parents hard upbringings Being the youngest of 3 Learning about Entrepreneurship at a young age His Mom's Diagnosis  Moving to California Making it through High School A pivotal moment Starting his entrepreneurial journey The ventures that didn't work Why Lottery.com? And more! Connect with Tony: https://tonydimatteo.com/ Connect with Jordan: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanjmendoza/⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/therealjordanjmendoza/⁠ Clapper: ⁠https://clapper.vip/jordanjmendoza⁠ Join my Facebook Group: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/linkedintrailblazers⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.blazeyourowntrailconsulting.com Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready to find out how to blaze your own trail? Welcome to the Blaze Her Own Trail podcast with your host, Jordan Mendoza. In this podcast, Jordan interviews people from around the world to find out about their journey to success. If you are looking for valuable content with actionable advice, you've come to the right place. And now your host, Jordan Mendoza. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host. And I've got a very special guest today.

His name is Tony D. Mateo. And I'm going to give him just a second to tell you who he is and what he does today. Hey, everyone. Yeah, I'm Tony D.Meteo. I am the co-founder and CEO of Lottery.com. And so we do a lot of things, not just in lottery, but in the charitable sweepstakes space. We're entering into sports betting. And we're just, our goal is to be everywhere and be the biggest thing on the board.

playing it, I'll say. Love it, love it. Very ambitious. And we will get into all the things that you're up to you. I know you've got some exciting things happening. We're going to get into that later in the show. But my favorite part of the show, man, is really taking a rewind. You know, I want to, I know, I know you're in Austin now, but I want to give the audience context, you know, where did you grow up? You know, where were you born and raised? And when you think about those formative years, you know, elementary middle to high school, you know, what kind of kid was Tony? Wow. That's a great question. So, I'll say I was born and raised in the Denver area in Colorado.

And, you know, my parents, my dad, he was the son of a farmer, so he grew up on a farm. That was obviously somewhat difficult life. And my mom, she also grew up in Denver and she didn't know her father. And her mother had some substance abuse issues. And so she spent a lot of time in foster care. If I'm rewinding too far, let me know, but this is my parents' life. But, you know, when they basically- Hey, that's where you came from, brother.

So they're part of your origin story. So definitely, definitely interested to hear about them. Yeah, and they definitely formed myself, right, of just my personality and who I am. So they met, I think my mom was 14. My dad was 16. You know, and they both had very difficult lives. They eventually, as soon as my mom was 18, they got married and they started, you know, the family.

And they're just very down-to-earth working class folks who just were trying to do the best they could, right? They didn't come from any type of privilege or anything. They just wanted to succeed. They worked really hard. And so, you know, we were, I'll say, you know, I have two older sisters. I'm the youngest of three. Eventually, because of their hard work, as we were able to move out of our, I'll say, you know, economically depressed neighborhood to like a suburb of Denver called Littleton.

And if you know Littleton, that's Columbine. And like I went to Columbine in my freshman year and that's the whole thing there. But really it's just my parents really had a drive to succeed and just try to take opportunities. And, you know, I learned a lot very early on about entrepreneurship is, you know, it was at one time they were thinking like, we'll move to Georgia and we'll, you know, buy an orchard somehow. They didn't really know how to do that and we'll do that. Or they also had a vending machine route that they tried to do all while also working other nine to five jobs. So it was just all about how do we better the family going forward and how do we sort of make something of ourselves.

So that's how I grew up. My mom when I was 14, she was diagnosed with MS. And so very serious, you know, disease. And being in Denver is where we were a mile high. And so it turns out being at that elevation is very hard on MS patients. And so when I was about 14, or I guess maybe 15, is we moved to the Bay Area. So northern California just to be at sea level, which was a huge benefit to my mom. And so I went through that whole process.

eventually I sort of barely graduated high school when I was 18. And I really mean barely. You know, and about two weeks before graduation, I remember this very clearly. In senior year, my history teacher, Mr. Mantooz, he sort of took a break from teaching history. And he said, I'm going to tell you all, like, what is your future going to be like? right? And, you know, just to educate us about what does the real world look like, you know, with just a bunch of 18-year-olds or 17-year-olds. And, you know, you said, look, you're either going to go to college or you're going to get into the workforce right now. And, you know,

all of what does that mean, right? And so either path you choose, you're going to, you know, you're going to get a job at some point. You're going to get sort of these, you know, cost of living increases you have to, you know, how to get a 401k and all just sort of general advice, right? And I took that a very different way, right? It is I thought so the way that I interpreted everything that he was saying was that, look, I'm here's the world, right? Which is that you're going to work 50 hours a week for 50 weeks a year for about 50 years and you get maybe two weeks off, right? like through this whole thing and you have to squirrel away money is the most that you possibly can't and then at the end of the line when you're an old person right when you're you know 65 70 who knows

actually what when retirement age is going to be um then you get to enjoy it enjoy life right like then you get to actually enjoy your life and um that all seemed sort of crazy to me right I was like I really felt like I don't want to have anything to do with that right and if you think about the current sort of system that we have is your goal is to squirrel away money and then you retire you move to Florida or someplace that you know you can afford you downsize and your goal is really is that if you die before you run out of money you are a success right because now you have something to give away to your children or to a charity or whatever and like you know and But if you look at the statistics is most, well, it's about 50-50, right?

So about half the people in the U.S. are successes, which means that they die before they run out of money. And the other half, they run out of money, and then they're still alive, right? And if you're in that position, now you are dependent on either your family, your children, hopefully, or, you know, a church or the government. And when I looked at that future, when I, you know, when I was 18 years old, I was like, I don't want to have anything to do with that. That seems like a terrible idea. And so I thought, you know, look, I can, the thing that I had on my side was time, you know, is like I was young. I didn't know anything. I had no resources, no anybody to sort of help me learn along the way.

But I thought, like, what if I just become sort of a, you know, like a home run hitter? And every time that I get an opportunity, I just swing for the fences and I try to do the absolute best I can possibly do. And I just hit it out of the park. And I became okay with the idea is like, I'm going to strike out a lot of times. Like I'm going to fail and fail and fail and fail. But eventually, just if you think about, you know, if you fail enough and you learn from every time you fail, eventually you sort of have to hit a home run. And so my goal was just to ignore the sort of normal path that's, you know, that folks take and just try to hit a home run, right?

And it's taken a long time. Like, I have failed many more times than I've ever succeeded, but that all of those failures are why I'm successful now. It's because, like, I just took the risk. And it's wild. And if you think about, you know, we, and to backtrack a little bit is, we did have a system, you know, for about 50 years or so where you could just sort of go into the workforce,

course, you know, get a job, have a pension. And then all of that would eventually, you know, work 40 years with the exact same company. And that would lead to sort of economic prosperity, which would be good for your, for your children and your family. Like, that doesn't exist anymore. And it actually hasn't existed for about 40 years, I'd say. It worked for a very short amount of time. But that's not the reality. But I think most people still believe that it's that same reality. And that's the thing that frustrates me is that I don't think we really understand where we are, right? And if you think about like college debt and all of these things, like what's your ROI on going to college right now today, it's not great, right? If you look at all the numbers.

So anyways, I'm rambling, Jordan. So that's okay. I'll stop there for a second. No, no, that's okay. You know, I mean, what a what a lesson to learn at 18, right? Seven, you know, other kids in your class are 17 years old and you have somebody, you know, again, there's plenty of people that probably blew it off and was like, I can't wait for the summer. You know what I'm saying? But for whatever reason, you took it to heart and said, I'm going to do everything in my power to not have to go down that path. Right? You essentially said, that's going that way.

I'm going the opposite direction. And I'm going to do it come hell or high water. It doesn't matter how many times I fail. Right. And that's a matter of attitude. But I think if I'm catching on correctly in learning about your parents, you saw them do this, right? You saw them, even though they still had their job. They were figuring out how do we add more value to our family?

How do we provide more for them, right? And so that hard work, I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like it helped pave the way for you so that when you did get that epiphany, you said, you know what? I'm gonna, let me blaze my own trailer. Let me go this other direction. Yeah. No, you're right.

You know, and I won't see that my parents were ever widely successful as entrepreneurs, But what I learned is that this is the way forward, right? Is that like you have to, you have to own some part of what you're doing, right? A nine to five where all you do is get a paycheck every two weeks. And maybe sometime in the future you actually have some type of, it's not even really an exit, right? It's like, okay, I'm just going to squirrel away all this money. That doesn't work. Like it just doesn't, right?

And so I learned from them about risk taking it, which is a little bit ironic is that Both my parents are very risk-averse, but they still made the moves that they thought they could make, right? I'd say I'm 10 times more, you know, okay with risk than my folks were. But I learned that lesson, right, is that you have to have ownership, whatever you're doing, like whatever that you're working on. And that led me to, you know, like, it's interesting is from entrepreneurs, there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. I mean, it's so much easier.

you know, think 30 years ago, how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. Like, you have to quit your day job. There's the internet does not exist, right? So you have to like quit your day job. You have to go all in on something else that maybe works, maybe doesn't. That's a big risk. And now you can sort of sign up on eBay, right? Like create an account.

Find, you know, I will buy a widget for $1 from somebody and I'll sell it for $3 over here. You can do that in your spare time. Dedicate an hour a week, two hours a week. if you start now, like you can build something, right? Like I think a lot of people, they overestimate what they can do in one year, and then they underestimate what they can do in like three or five years, right? So it's all about just doing it. Just go, just start and just learn about all of what that means, right?

Whether that's, you know, affiliate marketing or learning about, you know, profit loss and inventory and whatever that means is like you just need to start. That's it. Yeah. I really do believe everybody should be an entrepreneur in some way. that's the future. Well, you know, when we talk about entrepreneurship full time, I've been full time since January of this year.

I left my 15-year corporate career. Best decision I ever made. But when I think back to my childhood, like I was prepared from an early age. Like we grew up super poor food stamps. Like if I wanted candy, I had to go knock on doors and collect cans to get the deposit to go buy candy. But that helped me later. when I went to sell newspaper subscriptions and when I started getting into baseball cards and into sneakers. And so I had that itch.

I got knowing that I could turn something into more like from from an early age. And so when I was ready. But again, it took me until I didn't leave until I was 39 years old, right? But the, but the journey started at a young age. And so a lot of, a lot of today, a lot of that gets discounted. You know, a lot of, a lot of that journey gets discounted. discounted today because people didn't see me knocking on 100 doors at 14. Hearing 100 people tell me no, right?

But what does that build up? That builds up tough skin, similar to your situation. We've done a lot of different ventures. And that's really where I want to start with this next part of the show is what did you do next, right? You get this information and you say, I'm not taking this path. So you're 18 years old. You're living in the Bay Area. Did you stay there?

Did you end up going somewhere else? Did your family end up moving? Like, how did you get to all? Austin, you know? Sure. Yeah, okay. That's a long story. But yeah. So, you know, is after that is I realized like college is not for me. Right. Like I literally barely graduated high school. I'm just a bad student in any type of structure, right, for that. And so the way that my brain is wired is that I'm a problem solver. Right. So like if you give me a problem, I can fix it. And that's just how that I'm wired. And so I got into IT and tech. So like I was really just an IT guy for a long time.

You know, so I got to say, I need to stop you there because there's never just an IT guy. Because everybody needs the IT. You know what I'm saying? They're not. They're an integral part of every business. So give yourself some kudos because everybody needed you, right? No, I really appreciate that. You know, and I'll say uniquely being an IT guy led me to so many.

relationships that I would not have had because I you know I was an employee as an outsourced IT company right and so what I got to do is go you know fix everybody's stuff whatever that meant right like either servers or networks or or computers but I would be able to sit down at the CEO's desk of whatever our client was and you know we would just go back and forth and just talk about like you know what's happening what's going on and that helped me build my network and you know there's this whole thing of it is like it's not what you know it's who you know right and that's true to an extent but here's the good news you can get to know anybody right like you can work your way towards like these

relationships and a lot of diverse paths to meet people and your your goal should be that like I deliver value to somebody right like if you just imagine me it's just an IT guy that's all I did right is I would fix stuff fast that's it but it's a tremendous value for people And it also taught me of, it's not good enough to just fix technical problems. Like your actual job is to make people happy. Right. And so it's not good enough to just, you know, make sure that this guy can print or this, you know, a woman can, you know, do whatever she's doing and print out her stuff.

It's really is your job is to make people happy. And if you make people happy, some amazing things happen, which is that they will refer you to other people that increases your business. They believe in you and they want you to succeed, right? And so just spreading that sort of, you know, that message is incredibly valuable. And I think you can do that in any job that you're in right now, right? I feel like we all, and by the way, it's, it is important for us to all work as employees, for sure, right? Because you, especially when you're young is like you have to understand how does this all work and, you know, what's going on and how do you understand these social dynamics.

but you should always be thinking about like what's the next step and it might not be with the company you're with it might be making your own company or a better competitor or just advancing yourself right i don't know if that makes sense i don't think i answered your question but no it definitely makes sense though and you know i can relate a lot to it because i can remember for for probably six or seven years in my last position i never thought i was going to leave right i thought that this was the organization and i love my role i was in training and development and teaching and coaching and coaching and people, but when people started making these little deposits, like they would say like, hey, man, you really impacted me. Like, I see a change not only at work, but at home. Little deposits start to happen, right? People, and I'm sure it was the same for you. You're working closely with these CEOs. And the conversation switches gears from a conversation and not about technical stuff, right?

And you start to realize the true value that you had. you're you're completely right so so my entire adult life has been um i work i t right and because that pays the bills and it's a really great sort of career path and then whenever i had an idea i would bail on that and i would go all in on toward some type of startup and those sometimes they work sometimes they fail and then whenever they fail i would go back towards IT right um but the the the biggest benefit that I got was having these conversations, right, with either CEOs or VCs that would understand, you know, like what I'm doing and what I'm really about.

And eventually, is like, at one point then, I left the, the IT company that I was working for and I started my own. And I really focused on VCs. And actually, the way that I left it is that one of the VCs said, look, Tony, I would love for you to be my guy, right? Like, I don't want anybody else coming here. why don't you just quit this job and start your own thing? And I'll, you know, I'll pay you way over what market was going to be.

And I have somebody, you know, three, four floors above me who will do the same thing. And so that was sort of my exit from that world. You offer you couldn't refuse, brother. You had your first two clients. Like, you know, that's awesome. Here, you know, start a company and I'll give you two clients, which are way overpaying of what they probably could do. right. And so that made all the sense to me and that that allowed me to do whatever I wanted to do, right? It gave me freedom. And I'm, again, I'm a terrible employee. Like, I don't think I could be,

I'm not employable, right? Like, I'm your worst employee. Like, I'm not going to, you know, pay attention to like TPS reports and like, you know, file all these things. I'm just, I'm just not wired that way. So for me to be the person who just figures all that out, like I'm in a much better position. And then that led to me to meet my co-founder and being able to self-incubate all of the ideas that we wanted to build. And, you know, lottery was not our first idea. It was probably our fifth idea. And we, my co-founder, Matt, he's brilliant at the time when we met about eight years ago. He was running a tech company. I was running a different one. And the idea was like, we're just going to build things that should exist or that are inevitable.

to exist, like things that have to happen. And if we can be the guys that build that, like there's a huge opportunity there. And so that's basically what we did. And we got some patents around other tech that has nothing to do with lottery along that journey. And then once that happened is lottery just became our entire focus. So like I sold my company, he left his company. And we've been just dedicated on that going forward, which is a whole other story, I guess. That's awesome. That's awesome. And so, And so did you meet him in Austin or did you move there after? How did you end up getting to Texas?

Oh, no, yeah. That was, so I had been in San Francisco for probably 15 years-ish. And I spent a year in Miami in between. But it was really around the Bay Area. And we started the company. We met with sort of, I think, you know, Jason Calican, that's a great angel investor and 500 startups. We sort of pitched everything to them.

The thing that they actually liked was, was lottery. That was actually the thing that was most interesting. So we raised a couple, we raised some money there. And honestly, like, I wanted to move to Austin immediately. This is probably, you know, five or six years ago. Matt and my co-founder didn't want to move to Austin. He loved San Francisco. But ultimately, so we're about a six-year-old company just over.

We moved in, I think, February. of 2018 to Austin. So we moved everybody here, which has been amazing. And when I think about Austin, I think about Austin feels like San Francisco did about 10 or 15 years ago. Like this is sort of the future. It's the right vibe. It's the right culture. It is the new epicenter of like what's going to happen in the next 10 or 15 years.

Yeah. So I would thank you for sharing that context. And so when you think about the Bay Area, you know, that's a place you really were raised out there. What sticks out to you? What sticks out to you the most from maybe a landmark perspective? Oh. Well, you know, look, I love the Bay Area.

I love San Francisco. And that's sort of why I'm upset by everything that's happened, right? And only to say is that San Francisco is gorgeous. It's beautiful. You have beautiful people. You have a great vibe. but it has gone downhill every year that I've seen it in the last probably 10 years. And that's very frustrating to me because I do love that place and I love the people there.

And it doesn't make sense to me. And so that's why I think you're seeing that everybody is leaving, right? And they're either going to sort of Vegas, Miami, or Austin. And it's interesting in Austin because of all of this is you have a new VC community that wasn't there, five or ten years ago. And so, like, you know, things change. But I really do believe that if you are an entrepreneur now, you probably should look at Austin, like come out here, you know, meet the community, get to understand that.

As much as I love San Francisco and the entire Bay Area, I just feel like that is the past and that the future is probably in Austin or maybe somewhere else, but unless the Bay Area has a huge change of direction, right, which incentivizes entrepreneurship, which they used to a lot. It is a very difficult place to, you know, to be a company and to build whatever life that you want to build. It's rough. It used to be the land of opportunity. I don't feel like it's that same thing as it was.

Okay. Well, yeah, it's, you were there to see it, right? And you've been in Austin to see the changes as well. so I think you've got a pretty good, pretty good perspective. So Bay Bridge or Golden Gate Bridge? Oh, I was a Golden Gate guy for a long time. Honestly, I've lived all over the Bay in, from, you know, Santa Rosa to Marin to St. Bruno to Pittsburgh and the East Bay. So I've been, I've been all over the place.

This may be a very random question. You probably never got this on an interview, but why are there so many, Volkswagen Beatles in Santa Rosa and Pataluma in like that part of California. It's like the epicenter. Anytime I've been there, I just see Volkswagen Beatles everywhere. I have no idea, but you're right. They are everywhere, and they've been there for the last 20 years. They are literally everywhere.

There's a, actually, it's a very cool car culture in sort of like the Santa Rosa, Petaluma area. And I don't know why Beatles are a big part of that, but it's a cool place. I just noticed them all over the place. I was like, wow, this is, this is kind of cool. So let's talk Austin. So had you been out to Austin for, you know, maybe like a South by Southwest prior to moving there

and got to really experience the vibe and the creative culture there? And is that something that, you know, made you want to make that shift and bring everyone there? Yeah, you know, we came out for South by, I think, and really early in the history of the company. And I liked it, but also I realized, like, you can't judge a city based off of,

like, South by, like, a giant event, right? So I came back a few times over the years. And, you know, when we, when we thought about, well, we came to a decision as, like, San Francisco is probably not right for us, right, for a lot of different reasons. And so we thought, well, where could we go? And we narrowed those down to, like, Vegas because we're a gaming company, or even like Miami or New Hampshire, all sort of, you know, good tax-effective places that we could, you know, move our headquarters to or it was really Austin, right?

And so we chose Austin because it has sort of the all the benefits that you're looking for from a corporate perspective, but also you're looking for the vibe, right, of like where do you want your to build your team and who do you want on your team? And we, I saw that, you know, years ago is like, if we go here, we will attract incredible talent. And we will have all the advantages that we want to have as a business without having to sort of, you know, pay, you know, half a million a year to a senior developer, right?

Which is, which is what the pay area is. And that's totally fine. But there's incredible talent everywhere. And so you don't have to hamstring yourself to a specific location anymore. that's great and so what are your thoughts on the austin food scene you know i went to a very interesting little spot um it was off six street it's called frank uh frank it's got like you know these hot dogs and they're all doctor you got the notorious p ig and like all these different you know cool style of hot dogs do you have my favorite local food spot that you frequent oh my gosh i don't know that

i have a favorite i just go everywhere um and my wife is actually very good about finding you know foods, but I mean, it's sort of, Austin is at a point where, like, open up the map, throw a dart at it, you're going to find amazing food. Like, it's just great, right? And, uh, you can't go wrong. Like, it's really hard to have bad food in Austin. So, like, just, just get out here. Just check it out. It's amazing. For somebody that's never been to Austin, have, have you personally experienced the bats under the bridge? And is that something that you? you'd recommend people that visit that they actually go and check out for themselves. Well, you know, the, yeah, I have, actually.

And like, I've gotten a little boat on the, on the river and seen the bats fly over. It's cool. It's fun. You know, the bats, they do, they might poop on you. Like, you just have to be ready for that. But so that's just what it is. It's cool. Honestly, like, there's not much that's not cool about Austin.

Like, if you come here, you're just going to be like, I like this place, right? Like this is a, this is a cool place. And if you, if you are a traveler and you, you sometimes you land in a place and you just have this Bible, like, I don't love this place, right? Like, there's something going on here. I just, it's not the same. Austin is very welcoming. It doesn't care.

The people don't care of what your, your views are, how you see the world, or what you want to do is like, it's very accepting of just like, look, everybody's cool. Come here and then let's have a good time. Yeah, that's a very, that's a very good way to put it. It's very laid back. It's very, you know, people are just super chill in, in Austin. It's, it's, you know, it makes sense that a guy like Matthew McConaughey is over at the football game. Yeah.

He just fits into that environment, you know. Absolutely. So you mentioned a lot on your journey about failing a lot, right? This lottery.com thing wasn't, wasn't the first thing there. So when was it that this really clicked and people started, you know, wanting to know more or, or, even, you know, becoming partners or investors in this, in this whole thought process. And can you share with the audience context on when they make it to this website or they get to the app? What's this user experience like?

You know, because that's super important, especially from a gamification standpoint. You got to keep people engaged when they're using the app. So I would love for you to share some light on that. Sure. You know, again, you know, like actually, if you, if you rewind all the way back to like 2015, We, so my co-founder, Matt, he met Jason Calacanus, who's a really impressive angel in San Francisco. And we, at the time, we had about six projects that we had been self-agubating. One was called Glintzable, which was like a photo sharing app that I thought was great.

Like, we thought that was actually our best idea. And, you know, that was going to be amazing. And so Jason puts on the launch festival, I think, at Fort Mason. And so, you know, Matt sat down with him. And he pitched him everything that we had. And so Jason didn't like glimpsable. He didn't like Wi-Fi. He didn't like all of the things that we had.

The very last thing on the list was Auto-Lotto, which was that's where we started. And so Jason said, great, you're on stage in two weeks. Get ready. At the launch festival. And, you know, if you think about it, like, everybody else who was already accepted into the launch festival had been accepted about six months ago. They were ready. They had time to prepare.

Oh, they were ready. You guys had two weeks. Yeah, we had two weeks, right? And so a couple days later, we go to pitch prep with Jason, right? And so Matt and I are in the back of the room, and everybody is getting up to do their pitches, and they have these, like, amazing, like, keynotes and PowerPoints with animations and all this stuff.

And literally, we are in the back making our deck as fast as we possibly can, right? Like on the laptop to just explain something. And so, you know, we did that. we got okay scores, it's not great. And then we did another week of that. And then we decided like I should actually go and present at the launch festival. And, you know, we did that. And all of a sudden we had a tremendous amount of interest, you know, from 500 startups and all these private angels.

And we raised, I think, about 700,000 in maybe two weeks or something. And it was also a great lesson of storytelling, which I do think is the most important skill that you can have and develop is how do you. you tell people a story because that's how we're all wired is to understand stories. But we put together a really good story, I think, you know, at least on stage in about a minute and a half. And then we raise that money. And then that immediately, you know, I sold my company. Matt left his company and we just focused on this to do as much as we could because, you know,

the lottery is a, it's about $80 billion a year market just in the U.S., right? And about another $400 billion roughly outside of the U.S. but it has not gone online the way that it should have probably 10 years ago. And so, you know, that is our goal is just to take something that already exists. It's a huge market. And we can bring that online to, you know, different people, different demographics, younger folks and all of that. And it's in one way, it's sort of the most obvious and easiest thing that you could do.

But it's also one of the most difficult things because you're dealing with states and regulations. and you're trying something that's never been tried before and everybody has resistance to that. You're poking the bear. You know, you're essentially poking the bear, right? Because you're probably like, you do something. They're like, well, you got to bring that back a little bit and, you know, try to do it, you know, and then you got to go back to the drawing board and you got to probably figure it out. Because there's a lot of, like you said, a lot of regulations and compliance, never fun to deal with. No, you're right. You know, and like we, what I think we learned early on that it's, Not enough to, we cannot be disruptive, meaning we cannot be sort of like, if you remember Uber and a couple years, you know, six years ago is that they would just open up a market and they would get market share and they would just fight the battles that that came along. We realized you can't do that because in lottery, the states own the games. It's their games, right?

So it's not like you're going against the taxis, which is another private company is like these are their games. And so what we did is we just built relationships in those states is we started meeting. lottery directors and the AGs and the governor's offices and we said, look, we are here to our value proper is like, we're here to sell your product for you for free, right? Like, you don't have to do anything. That's it. And so we would have like a, you know, a legal opinion written by our gaming attorneys submitted to them and then we would ask for like a letter of compliance in return. And that gave us the sort of the clearance to go forward. But we realized like this is a unique industry, which is that you really have to, you cannot be disrupted. You have to make friends and

allies along the way. Like, we cannot afford to make an enemy ever, right? And that's worked out. So now we're in 12 states. I think we'll be in at least another six by the end of this year. We're expanding internationally into other types of games like sports betting and, you know, other types of games of chance. So, there you go. Man, so when I think about your journey, like from 18 years, old when you had that conversation, everything has been about taking risks, right? And you took five risks. Four of them didn't work out. The fifth one did. Right. And now this is something that, you know, is going to be going internationally, like you said. So, you know, kudos to you for not giving up. But I think, you know, for everyone that's going to watch this or hear this,

there's some lessons, very clear lessons that I can extract here. And for one, it's definitely bet on yourself take risks. The other one is it's about, building contextual relationships with people. Because if you think back to your roles in the IT world, that was the training ground for you to be able to have the wherewithal. How do I have these productive problem solving conversations? And I'm sure you took those same skill sets into these local jurisdictions and the chambers of commerce and all these marketplaces that you wanted to get into. Right? So you stuck to your bread and butter things. But I mean, that's what it's all. about and having a compelling story to go along with it, it's no reason why this is going to be

wildly successful. No, you're completely right. And I think I forgot the fact that is I started that IT company to focus on BCs because I knew eventually like I would have the right thing, the right investable idea. And probably more than half of the seed money that we raised was from just my D.C friends. They put it personally, right? They knew me. They believed in me. They knew I was an entrepreneur. And then when the right thing came along,

they put in their own personal cash, not even from the funds. And so it is really about, well, you know, again, it's not what you know too, you know, but like you can go and know anybody and just deliver value to that person in whatever way that you can. And they'll be a fan of you. And they will want you to succeed.

And eventually you're sort of, you're building up these like goodwill points, right? Like, you know, these people really. really like you and then at some point you'll have a reason to catch those in and ask for their help. You know, and that's that's how it's worked out for me is it's all it is all about it's, it's what you know and it's who you know. And you can go and meet anybody and know them. You also have to know a lot of stuff and you have to be able to execute. That's sort of the, you know, the two dynamics about everything I guess. Yeah. And and you know, reciprocity is almost like

a free lottery, right? You can you can always give info. You can always be nice to people. You can always do it. And you don't know when it's going to come back or when you're going to strike, but when it comes back, man, it's a beautiful thing, right? Because I'm a big believer that every good thing that you put out is, it's going to be returned back to you. It may not be in a monetary sense. It may not be in a stuff sense, but it's going to come back in some former fashion. And it sounds like all of these seeds that you've been planting along the way are now starting to come to fruition and the harvest is starting to show up. I completely agree.

Like it costs nothing to be nice to everybody, right? It doesn't cost you anything, but the benefits in the long term are so significant. Like I've, there have been so many times where I've met somebody, we've tried to do some type of deal. And it didn't work out for whatever reason, but I made them my friend, right? And then sometimes years later, they'll say, hey, look, I just got this opportunity. You were my first thought. And so I want to put you in touch.

And then it works out. And it could be a massive thing. That's life, right? Just build friends, don't have enemies, you know, and it will all work at. As long as you're continuing to do everything you can to be successful yourself, that's how you win. Love it, love it. So I would love for you to share.

I know we were talking a little off there. You've got some exciting things coming up with Lottery.com. So I'd love for you to share with the audience. What's kind of going on behind the scenes for whatever that you're able to share? and then I'll make sure that we get everything linked in the show notes for the audience. No, I appreciate that. You know, so we are, I'll say, you know, we're going through a dispatch process right now with Trident TDAC is the ticker symbol on the NASDAQ.

The audit processed and the filing of the S-4 has taken longer than anybody would have hoped, which I completely understand. And I promise you, nobody's more frustrated by this than me. But we just have to deal with, you know, accountants and auditors and lawyers. And that's just the process. in a very changing world of the SEC's guidance and what that means. And so it's just a process. We are going to go public.

That's really the message. Like, this is going to happen. And I share and understand everyone's frustration, but this is going to happen. And so, you know, hopefully sometime in the very near future is like we will have a defined IPO date. We'll go ring the bell in NASDAQ. It's going to be amazing. And this is really just the beginning. Our global vision is to be a marketplace for all types of games of chance.

Wherever you are on the planet, you come to our property. We check your location and your identity. And then we want to show you with every game you're legally allowed to play. And that's the whole of it. And so I appreciate everybody, all of our investors. It's a little bit crazy. We have about 16,000 retail investors, which sort of blew my mind when we started with about 400 in November. So we really do have this very.

very strong, you know, retail base of people who believe that and just are holding and going to that they understand the opportunity and that we're going to be successful. And for me, it's on me to everything we talked about is I just have to execute. Like I've put all the pieces in place and it's just on me to just make sure that it happens and do whatever I can to make it up. Awesome. Well, I'm very confident, brother. You're going to achieve tons of success. I do have one final question that I've just been thinking about and the audience is going to get the answer this. How much was the domain lottery.com? Did you have to pay it for you? You don't have to share the number, but I'm going to assume it was it available and then did you have to fight hard for

it because, I mean, did you get it in 2015 or was it even long before that? It's actually a really cool story. So, you know, we started as a lotto. And I actually have an autolato tattoo about about right here, but the old logo, right? And, you know, we, so we started in 2015. We were raising our Series A in 2017. And I had met a seed investor or an angel investor to put in there. In Miami, he said, he put in some cash. And then he said, look, I know the owner of the lottery.com. And so immediately, I'm from Miami. I flew to L.A. and I met with the owner of lottery.com. And so it turned out that he had bought it in about 2006 for, I'll say, well north of $10 million in 2006. And his goal initially was to do what we're doing now, which is to allow people to actually play the lottery in a legal way.

But in 2006, that was very difficult. So he sort of just abandoned that idea. And he just held onto the domain and the website for about 10 years. And so when we met him in 2017, when we looked at the, website, it looked like it was designed in 2006 because it was and had not changed at all. And then I just sat down with him and I told them the vision, right, which is that like, we want to be synonymous with the lottery. Like when you think of lottery, think of us. And we would just want to be everywhere, whether you're just checking your results or you're

playing a game or you're getting into whatever you're getting into. We want to be that, you know, and we think we have the opportunity to actually to be that platform. And so long story short is he invested cash into our series A and then he contributed domain on top of that. So in a way, we got paid to take the domain, which was, uh, that's cool. But, but again, folks, for, for everyone that's watching or that's going to hear this, it went back to building a relationship. It went back into sharing the vision, telling a story and getting someone to buy in. Absolutely. I mean, what, what an incredible story. I appreciate you giving us that access and sharing that because, uh, that's going

to show a lot of people that sometimes it's just about being patient, you know, asking the right questions, you know, and you never get anything you don't ask for, folks. So in having this conversation with you, Tony, I think you've proven that sometimes it's just about asking. It is, it is. And you know, it's, uh, entrepreneurship is a long road, but you have to start, you have to start walking, like, or you're never going to get anywhere, right? Like, just start, just go. And what you think you can accomplish in one year, it doesn't matter. but if you just do it for five years, you'll be so far ahead of where you could even imagine. And so I encourage everybody, just go be an entrepreneur.

Don't leave your job, by the way. I'm just saying, go do it, go be it. And the time will be right for you to move on to the next level. And the only thing I'll add to that is what he's talking about folks saying go do it is become a practitioner. You know, get good. Master that, whatever that craft is that you have, whether it's video or IT work, or sales, get really good at it, fail a bunch, you know, share it with people, put people

through it. And that's how you're going to prove to yourself that you can do it. Right? Because if you do not put in those reps, it doesn't matter what you want to go set out to do. You're not going to accomplish it. 100%. Completely agree. Well, hey, thank you so much, Tony, for coming on the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. You're a true trailblazer. We're going to make sure we get lotto.com and all your info and the show notes for everybody so they can connect with you further. Fantastic. Thanks for having me, Jordan. I really appreciate it. Thank you.