My First Million - Our buddy sold his app for $200M in just 6 weeks?!

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Episode 607: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Dan Porter ( https://x.com/tfadp ) about selling his app for $200M after just 6 weeks plus stories about Richard Branson, Ari Emmanuel & building cult brands. — Show Notes:  (0:00) Intro (1:29) Story behind OMGPop gaming company (5:23)Creating viral mobile game Draw My Thing (now Draw Something) (12:02) 25 million users a day, 1 million drawings every 5 seconds (24:10) Zynga bought the game for $200M 6 weeks after launch (32:30) The real power of money (38:32) Working with Richard Branson and Ari Emmanuel (47:44) Building Overtime (creating a brand that is part of culture) (52:28) The Travis Scott effect (1:06:45) Dan's life advice  — Links: • Overtime - https://overtimeelite.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

I tweeted this out a long time ago. I said, I have a new hero, and his name is Dan Porter. Nobody knew who the hell I was talking about. Nobody knew why I was saying that. I didn't give any context, but you're here. And today, you're going to explain to the people. You're going to show people why that is true. I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel. I'll start with a few facts. Number one, this is a guest I have been waiting for it to come on the podcast for years. and the reason why is because I have, Dan, you don't know this, but I've had all these fantasies, these entrepreneurial fantasies in my life. There's a part of me that's like, you know what,

one day I'm going to make a hit social app, and 100 million people are going to use it. I'm going to sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars. You've done that. I have this other fantasy that, no, no, no, I'm going to go change education. I'm going to start a big nonprofit. I'm going to be the leader of that. I'm going to help grow that thing.

I'm going to help change the way the education works in America. You've done that. part of me wants to go to Hollywood and work with the power brokers, the people who are in that world. You've done that. Part of me wants to create a brand that's like, you know, part of the culture that, you know, in the world of sports takes off. You've done that.

Part of me wants to own a sports league. You've done that. You have done basically all the things that I've ever wanted to do. That's an amazing intro, especially for somebody whose Twitter game is as lame as mine. I appreciate that. I would some text that with clearly. Jack of All Trades, Master of Nutt. Well, I want to start with the story, because your stories are legendary.

You came to our basketball camp, Camp FFM, and you didn't even play basketball, which is the best part. You were my favorite person there, and you didn't even play basketball, which is the funniest part. Can you tell the story of OMG Pop and what happened there? Yeah, so OMG Pop was a gaming website built entirely in Flash. started with this incredibly creative guy, Charles Foreman, who grew up playing Game Boys in his garage. It was like, I wish the internet could connect us to play together. And we made a ton of really fun games. And we actually had success. And it's a weird story because in some ways,

like, we imagine that businesses either succeed or fail, but what happens like if you're in the middle. And we had millions of people who played our games. The problem is that Farm Bill came out and they had 100 million people who played their games. And all of a sudden, millions of people who played your games was kind of way lamer than 100 million people who played your game on Facebook. And we did our thing, but then the world changed. And it was Facebook games and it was all of these other things. And so at what point do you come back to the board and you're just like, well, we're, you know, we're kind of running out of money. And They're like, well, why do we want to invest in something that is good, but not great?

And so I remember we went back and we were like, okay, so let's say that we cut all the snacks, like how much runway would that increase for us? And the answer was one day. And at some point, you're just like, well, am I in the runway extending business? Am I in the business of taking something that is good but not great and just continually taking money over and over time. And so I think at that point, you kind of have that realization and the board is sitting around. They're like, oh, we can raise money, we can borrow money.

And you're just like, well, what happens if like we did some cool shit? It just wasn't cool enough. And so, yeah, we're kind of, I just said like, maybe this is just kind of the end. And we're just going to make some more games and see what happens. And maybe we're going to go out of business and a couple million people will be sad. but not a hundred million. And so it's kind of what we did. And in that process, I just thought, like, let's make one or two more games.

And we had this one very big game that everybody in the company that was working on, a more kind of complicated game. And so I said, I'd like to at least try to make the last game that we make. Even though I'm not a game designer, I think I've worked here. and I've kind of like internalized it. And I think that the cool, as a sidebar, one of the cool things about working the gaming space is it changed your mindset so that you're kind of one game always,

there's always one game away from something changing the trajectory of the company. And if you're in a website or an app or a product business, that's dangerous because you always believe like, oh my God, I'm just one feature away. If I just enable push notives, if I just add this other thing, then my app is going to be gigantic. And that can be an illusion, which is challenging.

But in a portfolio theory, kind of a games company is almost like a portfolio of a bunch of smaller startups in some ways. And even if you look at overtime, you know, we have basketball, we have football, we have a media company. And they all kind of roll up to some big vision. But they're also a portfolio of different types of bets in some way. And so I think that definitely impacted my thinking. But I was just thinking, okay, like, we're going to make one or two more games.

Let's see what happens. How much time did you have? Four months, five months left. Damn. And did you believe or where was the belief? Because, you know, startups are a roller coaster. You have the initial surge where this is going to be awesome. You have the trough of despair, the trough of sorrow where you're, it feels like nothing's working.

And then sounds like you were at the end. Where was the morale at the time? I didn't get up on a podium and say, hey, y'all, we're going to be out of business in five months. So polish up that resume. And we had millions of users. I mean, our average time on site was like four and a half hours. And people loved us. It's just that the scale at which they loved us was not the scale at which was happening

when Facebook transformed the gaming business. And of course, like, all the money is focused on you. And then they're like, oh, shit, bright, shiny objects, Zingaw, Farmville, anything that ends in Ville. And they all ran over there. And you're like, hey, what's up? I got a couple million users and they're like, cool, cool. And so we're like, wow, we made these web-based games, but it's about social games and

it's about, you know, mobile games. And so, you know, you have four to six months left. And at some point, I think you hit this point where you're just like, maybe it is just going to go out of business. Like, you know, whatever they say, and Wall Street, don't fight the tape. And like, all we're going to do is do our best. Like, we're not going to mortgage the house and do all these other things like that to stay in business for the sake of staying in business. And, you know, we got a we got a couple

shots. So we have this big game everyone's working on. And I think I'm just like, I'd like to make a game and maybe I can make a game and maybe I'm like super arrogant or really diluted or completely out of touch. But like, we have this kind of fun drawing and guessing game that we've been making on the internet. And like maybe we could make it as a social game off in the corner. So everybody in this 50 person company is making a game. And I'm in the corner with like an outsource dev and two people on my team. And I don't know a ton about making games, but the game seems fun. And I just have this instinct that like, wow, the phone is a communications device. And yet every game that's popular on the phone is basically a single player game. And so we're back in this like, okay, everybody is a

game boy, but they're actually connected in some way. so could we do something social? And so I start trying to make like a version of this game, which was called Draw My Thing at that time, which I think might have been a little intentionally racy. And basically like every Friday we would make a version of it and I would try to play it. And I'm really dumb and I'm not good at games.

And I can't read instructions. And I have a lot of limitations in that space. Obviously I clearly can't even hoot really. And so I just play the game and I'd just be like, How can this game be simpler? I don't really understand it. And I'd recognize every Friday when I played it on the subway home, like, wow, this is really fun and I get it and this isn't.

And so we kind of get to that point. We rename it, draw something. And we're like, kind of last gasp of the company. And we try to promote it to our audience, you know, to our couple of million people we have. Hey, we got this new game. It's based on this other thing. And it's, in my mind, it is kind of this Hail Mary, but you can't run a company and go like, hey, guys, we're going to be out of business in four months.

And by the way, this is our Hail Mary, or else literally everybody in the entire company would have a psychic breakdown. So they're working on this other game with fighting and all this other stuff and we kind of like release this game. We give a lot of promotion so everybody knows about it. And the game kind of like climbs the chart, right? Because on day one, like 30 or 40,000 people download it because we've given them free coins on our website to do that. and it blips up a little bit, and it blips up a little bit more, and then it kind of crashes down. And you're just like, okay, so what have we learned? Dan Porter definitely not as smart as he thought he was, probably not a real game designer,

and looks like it's not going to save the company. And that's the nature. And we try some other promotion. And before the weekend, like a week out, one of the back-end developers comes to me, and he says, I think there's something broken in the game because, like, there are all of these calls being made in the game and like they're not going through. And he's like, I think Chris and I, his name was Jason, are going to say all weekend we're going to try to fix the back end of the game. And I'm like, cool. Like, what's the downside of that?

So they stay and they rewrite the entire back end of the game over the weekend. But then we have to submit it to the app store. And at that time, you'd submit it to the app store and it might take a week or two for it to get approved. And so I call a famous. investor who everybody knows, who had written a seed check in us and wrote a lot, a lot of seed checks. And I said, listen, I just need this one favor. Like, if they could actually review the game and put it up in a day or two, it might be huge for us. And he says, I can help you, but A, you never get to ask me another favor. B, one day in 12 years when you're on Sam and Sean's podcast, you can't use my name so that other people don't ask me. So blank, blank, I'm not

using your name. And I'll see what I can do. He does it. It goes in the app store. He uses cloud and all of a sudden it's updated. And what had been happening was that the game was actually spreading like wildfire, but nobody could download it and they couldn't play it once they had downloaded or they had downloaded it didn't work. So they fix it, whatever. And the thing just effing just like blows up. It just like goes through the roof. And all of a sudden, it's the number one game in Sweden. And the colors were blue and yellow. So people were like, oh, they must be confused about the Swedish flag. I was like, I think they're a smart people's. Maybe they just like the game. And it started getting really big there. And then weirdly it started getting really big in small

liberal arts colleges. And in Minnesota and all these other places. I think what happened was that we were really successful at two things, making a game that was really, really, simple to understand and play. And ultimately, like, grandmas played like it was super broad. And the second thing was making a game that really had just insanely powerful word of mouth. But word of mouth works in a very small, tight-knit community. So it works in a liberal arts college of 5,000 people. It works in a country like Sweden, you know, at a giant university or somewhere else it doesn't. And so it just starts to grow. Well, what's the time frame of this? I would say literally day by day. Like in the first nine days, we got to a million downloads.

And then in the first 50 days, we got to 50 million downloads. The only app that was in front of us was fucking flashlight. Because at that time, the iPhone didn't have a flashlight and somebody make a minute. Every day that came out, I was like, going to fucking kill flashlight. We got to be more popular than the flashlight is. And this is like in 10, 2010 or something? Is it 2012? 12.

Yeah, of course I played. I mean, everyone played that game, right? I mean, how many users did you end up having? So it just blows up. It just becomes the number one game in like every country in the world for six months straight. So I would say on a DAU basis, we had at least 25 million people playing every day, which was gigantic. At that time, we ultimately were downloaded 250 million times. And all of a sudden, it was just everywhere.

And then everyone came to me and they're like, we need influencers to make this big. And someone's like, I know Cristiano Ronaldo's manager. And I was like, that's really fucking random. But like, I'll do whatever. And then a week later, they come in and they're like, Miley Cyrus is tweeting about it. And like all these celebrities are tweeting about it. It has nothing to do with me.

It's like if you make something that's popular in culture, like, everybody does it. And I remember I end up making a game show with Ryan Seacrest. And I was like, how did you find out about this game? He's like all the, all the people who sat in the front of the studio, like secretaries and the assistants and the bookers, they were just playing it all day and they were laughing their ass off. And I keep coming over and I was like, what are you guys laughing at? And they're like this game. And so in this weird way, especially in this influencer world, like there's this level of traction

that you get where people just participate in it because it's part of culture. You were like the Haktua girl before she was around. I just managed to stay around for six months as opposed to like three days on Twitter. But you could tell by watching on Twitter, I actually think that we were one of the first games that ever kind of broke on Instagram because it was so visual. If you Google draw something and look at Google images, there's billions and billions of images around it. And there were all these funny things about it.

Number one, like we didn't put any sharing capability in it. So there was just no way to share. And that was like the antithesis of what everyone did. And so what happened was people just took screenshots of their drawings and they just texted and posted. And in this weird way, because you didn't ask celebrities to talk about it, they talked about it. Because you didn't ask people to share, they shared it.

And I remember at some point, like I was walking through Zingas headquarters and they eventually bought the game. And there were a bunch of developers. and they were trying to figure out the game and trying to like map it so they could copy it. And one of them said to me, why didn't you put XP in this game? I mean, every good game has XP. And I thought, oh, fuck, you're right. I meant to do that, but I hadn't done it.

And so it ended up just being this kind of organic game that we knew a lot about, but it was built by kind of a regular person and then just played by regular people. And I'll tell you one kind of like geeky game thing about it is that I understood from our site that if you came onto our site and you played a game, if you and Sam played and Sam won, 50% of time you would never come back to the site again. So let's say it was even checkers. The first time you lose at checkers, you're like, F this site, this isn't fun, and you lose. So what does that say to you about running a gaming site where literally somebody's going to lose and then you're going to lose them as basically as a customer?

And so in my head, I was like, I need to figure out this way that you could have a game where nobody loses. And that's like some like, that's like one of those riddles, like, which is the door you knock on to get into heaven or hell or other things like that? What is the game that has no winners and losers? And so one day I was in Prospect Park with my son, my younger son Miles and his friend, and they were throwing the football. And I was like, listen, if you guys can throw and catch it 50 times in a row, I'll take you

for ice cream. Because basically, I'm just trying to get them to collaborate. And they were like, oh, it's like a streak. We're going to keep doing it. And I was like, oh, my God, there's no winner and loser. Like, they're both winners in this game. And so I'm just like, oh, you're going to have streaks and draw something. Like, the more you can go back and forth and everybody's a winner and all this other stuff,

so it's fun for everyone involved. So there are all these kind of non-game moments in life. And subsequently, somebody at Snap told me, oh, yeah, we took that idea of streaks from what you guys had done in that game. And it's not like I was like in some lab cooking up amazing, like ideas about internet and the future of gaming. It was just kind of like, I was just this regular person observing, trying to answer some of these existential questions and looking around me. And I wasn't a gamer, so I didn't really use XP. And I was like looking for the ways that, what made people laugh and what made them smile? And the biggest thing is, listen, if the first game

was called Draw My Thing, what do you think people draw? in the game. Like, this is not a heart. Well, well, that's something, uh, you and Sean actually have that in common. You have both owned, uh, social apps where, uh, drawing penises were, was one of the main features. It was a core activity. And I remember this like very long board meeting where they were like, you know, we're going to use optical character recognition and we're going to recognize every dick in the game and then we're going to blank it out. And this other board member is like, it doesn't matter whether it goes to the left or the right. We're going to figure it out and we're going to just get it out. And I just thought like, wow, that's so it's really

hard. And it's like, here lies Dan Porter. He figured it on his grave. He figured out how to use, like, early artificial intelligence to spot, you know, DIC-K-S games and stuff like that. And so, ultimately, I just made this change where it's like you could only play with your friends. Because I just figured like, okay, so like, whatever, you send your friends something like that, they either laugh, or they're like, dude, come on, just send me a real drawing. And it's just kind of like one of these moments where it's like you're trying to solve this problem. And the reality is the solution for the problem is actually something that's like bigger in a way like that. Like I'll tell you a really dumb story. I had like terrible knee pain.

And it's like at some point I was climbing stairs and I started wearing like pads on my knees. And I finally went to a doctor. I went to like an NFL doctor. And I'm thinking, tell me I need knee surgery. He does all these things to me and he says, listen, lie on the table. It's like, I'm going to touch your heels to your butt. And I'm like, ah, it really hurts. He's like, yeah, your quads are so freaking tight. You have nothing to do with your knee.

What you think is the problem is completely not the problem. You just need to stretch out your quads. And I was like, oh, my God, I just, A, avoided knee surgery and B, learned one of the greater lessons in life, which is you think it's this input output, but there are all of these things that are around it. It's like not about recognizing, you know, the dicks in your game. It's about changing some other structure around you. It's about figure out, stretch out your quads.

I think we found your, your biography title. It's not about, it's not about the dicks of the game. Hey, Dan, were you, I know you had a business before this, but were you financially successful before starting this company? Or was it like, this has to work? Otherwise, I'm broke and I got to start over. I was kind of like us. I wasn't like in the, I mean, my parents.

for college professors, so I didn't have a ton of money. I had been a public school teacher and worked in nonprofit education before this, so I didn't really have a massively lucrative career. I was average. I mean, I couldn't stop working, but, you know, I didn't have to eat ramen every day. But yeah, this game and this company was the chance to completely change the trajectory of my life in my family's life from a financial perspective without a doubt. I think the insight about, you know, people, why do people stop playing my game? You sort of invert. And somehow don't make everyone play my game.

Why would somebody not play a game? Well, because they lose and they feel bad. And so you're like, can you make a game where people don't lose and feel bad? And the beautiful thing about the streak is, let's say we lost. Well, we're playing together. We're collaborating. I almost feel like I owe you to play again. So instead of churning out because I lost, I'm like, no, no, no, I got to make up for that.

My bad. I dropped the ball. Let's start the street. again and I have I definitely have to play because I'm the one who cost us the street that was the first thing I also love I mean this game was amazing dude this was like my flirt game you're you're basically my wingman I didn't even know you at the time I got a girlfriend through draw something because it was such a simple game you download it and immediately that's like draw this I'm video that's like the beauty of it was it would show the other person like almost like a playback of you drawing it for those who didn't play this game it's like I don't remember the exact mechanism it's like you have to draw it'll tell you what to draw you start to draw it The other person doesn't know what you had to draw. They have to guess. And it would show you like kind of start stopping, erasing. And it was really funny to see people's kind of like mistakes as they were drawing the thing.

And you could only be so good. Like nobody could really be that great unless you're really, really talented. Because it's a finger on a little iPhone screen. So the expectations were low too. And I just thought like I remember the first time I saw that, oh, it lets you watch the other person draw the thing. And that makes you laugh. And then that makes you feel connected with this person because it's like almost like both sides are like a little vulnerable in a way, right?

You're embarrassing yourself. It's like playing charades. It makes you like each other more. And I remember thinking, this is genius. And this game is so simple. There's been so many people come on this podcast to say the same thing. It's like, well, my back was against the wall. Like we didn't really have another choice.

I wasn't an expert at this thing. But I just wanted to make a game that would be really fun to play. And every week, we would make it. And every Friday, I would playtest it. And then I'd just try to figure out what I could do to make it a little bit better than it was just that Friday. I'll try to make one tweak. And I just did that one tweak at a time.

And sure enough, that actually resulted in a great product. It's not this highly complex, convoluted grand theory approach to making things successful. No, totally. I mean, people used to say to me, I'm not, I love that game, but I'm not really that good at drawing. And I was like, that's the kind of the point of the game. Like, there were people who had pens and iPads who could draw great things. But it should be accessible to everyone. Weirdly, we released a game, and within a week, there were five games that were released

that were similar, but we were the only game that had the playback. And you know how people always say, like, the greatest thing about the iPhone is when they text you that code, and it lets you hit that little thing and it puts the code in anything you're filling out. Like, it's just like sometimes there's some aspect of the product that doesn't seem like the core aspect, but it's so great. And to your point, it wasn't just the drawing. It was the erasing. It made you feel like there was a live person on the other side of it. And that really was the point of it. And then there were a lot of other just like really totally random, goofy things. Like I don't think I've ever said this before. But like in the beginning,

there'd be a little screen and these letters would make a word. And the word it made was Manchool, M-A-N-C-H-U-L. Manchul, aka Chul, was one of our developers. And we just pumped him and just put his name in the beginning of the thing. And nobody ever said anything. And after Zinga bought it for like two years, they left it up there and you'd open it. And it wouldn't say like, draw something or whatever. It would just say mantle. It was like this, just like, just put these weird things in there just because, because you can.

And because listen, you could say from a strategy, look, if I'm not having fun, how can I make sure that the people who are doing the drawings are having fun? And you sold it for, you sold it for like, what, $200 million dollars to Zenga? Yes. And that was when Zingo was at its peak. I was like five to six weeks after the game really kind of came out and burst. Like we sold that. It happened so fast.

No way. Six weeks? Yeah. So that was like the crazy turnaround. So they hired two law firms. One worked the first 12 hours of the day on the deal. And then the other one worked the second 12 hours of the day of the deal. And the whole deal got done in nine days.

And I'm like, have like, like, all this paperwork. And I'm trying to run around and figure out. How did it happen? So the game's blowing up in what? get an email for Mark Pinkis? The game's blowing up, and not only is it so big, it's literally sucking the user base out of every single other game on the market. And so that's Zinga, that's EA.

It's like everybody else who's about to report earnings and talk about their DAU and MAU. And, you know, I have these videos of the download numbers and the counter is just broken because there's, you know, there's a million drawings happening every five seconds. And so, you know, Mark knew somebody on my board. They invited me to the headquarters. I was a joker, so I entered my name as Dr. Dre from the company NWA coming in. I thought maybe somebody would know I was there or whatever.

Ultimately, there were five or six companies that were really interested in buying it because it was just the trajectory was so big. And I think they were playing offense. Like, they clearly was like, these guys are some mobile game savants. And I think they were playing defense because they were bleeding all of their users across everywhere. And the deal closed six weeks after draw something went live. That's got to be one of the fastest, that's got to be one of the fastest closed, like launch to close times ever. It was insanely fast.

And the funny thing is that I went to GDC, which is a game developer conference. And the year before I went and like nobody knew who I was. And it just so happened that it happened at the peak moment of the game. and I went and like everybody knew who I was, but then I could meet with like seriously like every buyer like in two days because everybody was in San Francisco for that conference. And we also got a term sheet for $50 million, which I had folded up and put in my pocket and went to a vent and I dropped it and I couldn't find it. And I only had to print out.

So I had a rough idea of what the terms were, but it was on the floor of some party somewhere. And I came back and I asked kind of like the OGs who had been there for four or five years since they're only seven of us, and we were working above, like, a combination, Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts, where the smell was different on which side of the room you were on. I was like, do you guys want to raise money and, like, build something really big? Or do you want to sell a company? And they were like, sell the company. And I get it.

They had put five years of their life. They were at a pivotal time in their life, and it was life-changing for them. So I think that was a decision. And I think people asked me a lot of times also, listen, we were really, really good at making games and we made a really popular game and we were good at the community management and the social media around it. But you take $50 million and you spend a lot of that on building a legal team, building a sales team, building all these commodity things that I didn't think we were necessarily going to be better than anyone else at. So we just wanted to be in a place where we could

make games. How did you negotiate the price? They, the buyers came back and they were like, 120, $150 million. The board was ecstatic. Well, where did they come up with that number? I think they were looking at probably, we were making a ton of money because we had so many screens in the game when you go back and forth and back and forth. So we're trending at advertising revenue. You're looking at, you know, roughly kind of how much is an MAU or a DAU interesting to you.

And so we bring it to the board and the board is. ecstatic because we go from being like, oh, should we essentially wind this thing down to now we have this thing that's popular and somebody wants to buy it. And so they're like, great, like $120 million. I was like, this thing is worth $250 million because like anyone, I'm extremely high on my own supply at that time. And, you know, there's this moment where basically the message they're saying to me is like, you're the CEO, but it's not your company. It's our company. Like, you don't control this thing. And there's kind of a subtle message from me to them being like, well, fine, fucking sell this thing without me because this thing is worth so much money.

And that's 50% complete delusion and arrogance and adrenaline and all the other things that happen. You know, when you're in the desert and you have a couple million users and now you're hundreds of millions of users. And part of me thinking like, maybe I actually am right and like maybe it is worth more. And so they give me this small window and I go back, bluster, draw something's a greatest thing. Somebody tweets like, you know, Y combinator pitch, the draw something of X. And, you know, that matters to all of those people. And so I go back and I'm like, I need this and I need that and I need this.

And, you know, it's a gamble, but it was right. Like we got way more money and a way better deal because a segment of the buyers really, really needed it. because they were, you know, they were telling results. The hit to their stock was bad. You know, somebody like EA was invested in sports games, somebody like a Zingo was over-invested in Farmville. You know, you have strategic imperative to people. So sure, you're super valuable, but they're all playing a much bigger game. And if you can understand that, that's where your leverage is. And then boom, all of a sudden we do that. I come back. I'm like, the company sold. And it's, you know, this whole.

crazy kind of episode. And the funniest thing to me is like, I start reading all of these things. Like, why draw something succeeded? And then these other articles, why draw something failed? And you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you read a ton of these and you come back and you're like, did you see these? You tell your team, you see this article? We need to be doing this. And the reality was is that every single article was wrong. Like it was completely the wrong. Like their analysis was wrong. Like there was this whole thing about why, we failed, but they were analyzing our iPad app and we didn't have an iPad app. We just had a stretched out mobile app for iPad. And then all of a sudden, you just realize, oh shit, I've been reading these

articles as an entrepreneur about why things succeeded and failed. I've been making decisions and they were probably wrong there. And now when it's happening to me, they're really fucking wrong. But it was this like crazy ride. And then all of a sudden, you know, we're part of Zinga. And then all of a sudden the year later, I'm not working there. So it was an amazing rise and fall totally turned around the company, saved us. And we did a whole bunch of things. There were a bunch of employees who I had to let go. And I just made the decision on my own to rehire them like the day before the deal closed that their options would still vest. There were people who had taken more cash than stock because they had little kids and I got a cash component that I could use at my discretion.

And so I just gave them the money that they would have made. It's just this chance to do like all this insanely non-capitalist, but like super cool shit to change people's lives. And after the deal closed, they had a debt-free club where all the employees who had college loans all paid off their college loans. And there's a moment when you have a little bit of money left in your bank account. and that's going to go to the other companies. So I ran to the Apple store in Soho.

They used to love me and I bought $100,000 worth of iPads and all this stuff. And I just gave it out to everybody who worked at the company. And every now and then somebody will text me. They're like, I still have that iPad from 2012. And so all of a sudden you just do kind of all the cool, fun shit that they would never teach you to do in business school. They'd teach you to do opposite. But you can do it because you have this superpower, which is not only does somebody

want your company, but you have this ability. to impact the lives of all these people who've given you their all for the last five years and to me that was the coolest part of it. Sam, you know, one of the things I love about Dan is we meet a lot of founders and entrepreneurs and almost all of them. I would actually say 80, 90% of them will say,

it's not about the money. Money's not the biggest thing for me. I would say most people want that to be true. And then you go look at their actions and it's like, those people are the most transactional. They're the people that want the money the most. And they want to not want the money, but they want the money.

And I'm guilty of that too. Dan is one of the few people I met I believe it who plays a game with money It's not that money doesn't matter to you But he's told me a bunch of stories of It wasn't about the money Like he made a decision that was actively Not money driven or not even like logical

But he just does it for the fun and for the kicks It's like the Joker and Batman Right like most people want to be Batman Dan I feel like you want to be Joker Where you're just like I just want to see what happens Well if I do this What if I tie up this this person you love over here and this person who are you going to go get i can't wait to find out

have you read his lincoln so his lincoln's pretty hilarious so it starts with i think you were the president of teach for america when i when i think of teach for america i think of like kind of hippie-ish like do good for the world type of vibe then you go to gaming which is in my opinion the gamers are typically like the hardest core capitalist there are it's just like you're practically working on an excel sheet on how to change things but then so you got this like weird hippie side but then you're also this capitalist. But then his late did, Sean. So after selling, draw something, he goes to work for Ari Emanuel at Endeavor, who

Sean and I love, we love reading about Ari. Listen what he says. He goes, I told Ari to pass on five companies for investing that he ignored me and he invested in him anyway. All of them are now out of business. Know what you know, my guy. He's got this like shithead vibe that I love, that I love. And that he's also like, does good stuff for America.

and it was also this like greedy capitalist. He's the perfect combination of like a being a holistic balanced human being. I love it. I appreciate those nice words. I will say I think like none of it is intentional or by design. It's just kind of instinct. And I think I understand what it's like to, you know, be average or not have no money, but not have any spectacular upside and also have that potential.

head of show in front of you. You know, I have a guy who worked for me at overtime for six years. He left to take another job, which was the next step in his career. I didn't have enough money to exercise his options. So that happens all the time. And so he just left them. So one of my investors is like, I want a bigger piece of overtime. And I was like, you should buy his options. Like, there was no incentive for that. He wasn't even working in the company. But it was just a right thing to do. Like, the dude worked for us for six years. Like, if I could help him make some money based on that, then I think that that part of it was really cool. And I would say, like, there's two things that really motivated me. One was somebody who once said to me, he was kind

of Oprah's manager and helped her be really big. And when I was in my 20s, he once said to me, the most powerful people are the people who know how to give up power. And not a lot of people say things to me that I either remember or have an impact. But I just always was like, wow, that's so interesting. It is like, it's not hard to be powerful and consolidate power. It's way harder to be powerful and somehow let go of power. And I think there's some aspect you could substitute money or anything else like that. Sure, like Zinga said, here's $5 million in cash. I could have put that whole thing in my own bank account if I wanted to. And sure, do I wish I had that money today, sure, who doesn't? But like, to be able to release that and give it to other people

and change your lives is just, it's just fucking cool. And then I would say to me, like, and I told this to staff at the whole time, the number one thing that motivated me was every day I rode the subway and every day people played games on their iPhone. And I was just like, I want to make a game that people play on their life. And I remember there was a point in which the game was so big. It was like everybody I knew was playing it. It was everywhere. And I was walking my dog with one of my kids on Prospect Park. And there was like this couple and they were like canoodling on a bench and they were laughing. And I'm thinking, oh my God, I wonder if they're playing draw something. I've got to go check it out. So I kind of like walk behind the bench and I look over and they're playing it.

And I think in that moment, I'm like, cool. But I, of course, I can't help myself. I tap them on the shoulder and I'm like, I made that game. And they were like, look. looked at me like, I was like a stalker and they were like, oh, cool. And they went back to doing what they were doing. But to me, it's the same thing. It's like, I walked through an airport and I see some kid wearing an overtime shirt. And I just think like, that's fucking cool. Like, I made that. Everyone who I work with, we made that. And like, the fact that you can make something that's out in the world that people love, they don't even know you have anything to do with. I did a whole music festival when I was at Virgin. I remember standing on stage.

next to Richard Branson and like Roger Daltrey and the Who were screaming and like dads have their kids on their shoulder. There's like 80,000 people there. And I'm thinking like, I was a spark that like made this happen. And I'm not interested in these people ever knowing who I am. Like that's not the point. The point is you made something and it existed in the world and it touched people who have no idea who you are. And I just can't tell you how fucking existentially cool that is. Can I ask you a little bit about Branson and Ari? So Sean and I have been on this Ari Emanuel kick because he's not probably like us at all

in that he's significantly more intense. Go, go, go, take over the world. Sean and I care a little bit more about just having our ideal lifestyle. But then you've got Branson. So you said the guy was like it's more about who can release power. So Branson seems like a guy where it's like decentralized. Ari is like a guy where it's like he's the boss and it's a little bit more. dictatorship. This is just an outsider's observation. But what can you say about the difference

between the two of them and what attributes each person had that made him kick ass? Yeah. So let me say, like, Ari is an amazing guy and I learned a ton working for him. And Richard is also an amazing guy. I would say in Ari's case, when I worked at WME before they bought IMG, before they bought UFC, three months into it, people were like, what does it like to work there? And I was like, It's the greatest fucking Jewish family dinner you've ever been. You just sit around the table and everybody's screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, but they actually love each other. And I had just never worked in an environment like that.

Like, are you going to walk into somebody's office? He said, listen, you fucking schmuck, you know, what about this or that? And they're like, that's not true. And I'm like, wait, they're yelling at each other, but they love each other. It was actually wild. and I think that Ari is an example of somebody in a number of ways. One is he's relentlessly curious. Like he reads, he consumes information.

There's nothing he doesn't want to learn about. And I think that that is this incredible spark for him and within the company to clearly like Richard, but in a different way, he has an incredible amount of personal charisma. But he uses his personality to his advantage. And in a way, the person he actually reminded me the most of where I works with later was actually David Stern, the former MBA commissioner. Because like, I'd be in a room with David and we'd be talking about basketball and he'd look at me and say, listen, Dan, I get it. You're good at raising money. But are you fucking good at anything else?

Because clearly it doesn't seem like you are. And so it's almost like this Catskill comedian style of using humor and your personality that's probably rooted in some like Jewish humor and whatever. that says to you, hey, like, maybe you should turn left instead of going straight here, but I'm going to say it in a way that that is funny, but you get what I'm saying. And it's going to make you love me in the end, too. And I think that Ari is very, very funny and was very good at that by strength of personality. And also, like, he could call you every single day. That's how he recruited you, right?

What's the story of how he recruited you? When he wanted me to work there, he just decided he wanted me to work there. And he called me every single day for four months. And what did he say? He would just be like, you know, we have all this IP. We need to do this. We should come here. And then I'd go to talk and I'd realize he wasn't there anymore.

And that's the problem with cell phones. Wait, did he, did he hang up without saying bye? Yeah. That's awesome. That's what the agents do. They roll calls. He had a list of 300 people. Hey, hey, how are you doing?

Larry David, good, goodbye, whatever. And then he's on to the next one. And they understood it. And I was an idiot. I just wasn't from that environment. So I didn't really understand it. So I'd be talking and I'd look and I'd just see the time on my phone because he'd have hung up up and he'd on to the next call.

And I just think there's this incredible personal force and momentum that he has. And sometimes I think for some people, they have that, but it can lead to a really toxic work environment and there are all kinds of exposures. I think he loves life. He enjoys everything. he's very funny and I think he could he could have both of those in a way and he was good at understanding what made you tick and connecting with that. I think Richard is really different. Richard is very laid back but very cool and I remember going to this meeting at Virgin Mobile in Canada and he wanted

to talk to all the people in the phone room, the customer support people. People just don't do that And he basically just tells them this story about when he lost his virginity, like no pun intended. And it's this very funny story where he humanizes himself and he's just this regular guy. And he's not talking to the C-suite. He's talking to all people who answer the phone. And they just leave that thing and they think, fucking love Richard Branson. He is like the man. And it's just charisma.

It's just different for each of them. And it's very rooted in what their brand is. their brand is extremely clear and articulated, but it's clearly they've understood how to make who they are. They're not trying to be anyone they aren't, but they've rooted that. And I think in this world where people become very studied and they read articles and they hire coaches and they do all these other things like that, both Richard and Ari had this superpower in that they just knew exactly who they were and they tapped in who that was. And that was their brand. And maybe you make some comment about my LinkedIn.

It's not like I wake up in the day and I think I just want to fucking troll everyone who reads my LinkedIn. I just think like, maybe this would be actually funny. And so I think there's some self-realization and it helps to be charismatic and that's really hard to learn and otherwise. But I think in a way they both tap into it and they both are relentless, but not in this grind set way, in this way that like everybody reads on Reddit about how they're supposed to go and grind.

and grind and be relentless. They just have this zest to do something that matters and something that's bigger. And where does that come from? That's for the psychiatrist's couch. But again, it's authentic and it's unique to them. It's not studied. And I think that's part of what makes it so powerful. The internet community or industry or whatever you want to call it, we need more of that.

My father is a small business owner and he does all of his business via phone. And I used to sit in his office and he'd be like, I remember he just like would call someone and be like, hey, sweetheart, look, what's money amongst friends? Right? It's just money. We got to make something. We got to make something work here. Like, just like this like charms, sweet talk. I remember hearing this or just like little things. Like, look, it's a little early for you to be busting my balls this morning. We go, let's make something. You know, just like this like gifted gab. Yeah. We don't have that in our industry. It's significantly more formal. It's like calls are scheduled. Every call is like the default calendar length of the

Google Calendar, which is 30 minutes. Like, it's just different. And I actually love that type of stuff. It's the in-between stuff that makes those things happen. Look, Ari was an agent, maybe like the most super, super agent of all time. And he definitely understood that. David understood that he was not a basketball player. He didn't play basketball in college, Jewish or Stern.

And he came into a thing, and he's dealing with basketball players and coaches and China and international. and it's just, you know, there's like a human connection, there's humor, there's charisma, there's all those things that kind of fit into it. And I remember, you know, a thing that someone else said to me at some point, this guy, Dick Parsons, who had run a big bank and it was some point was the chairman of Time Warner and very, very influential. And he said, listen, whenever I do a deal with somebody, I always just leave a little bit extra on the table because you never know when you're going to come back, I want to do another deal with them. And like, you know, the internet is filled

with, here's how do you extract maximum value from the other person. Here's how you fucking win in negotiation. And the reality is it's like, maybe there is enough to go around and maybe I'm going to let you have a little wins because I care about our relationship and maybe we're going to do business in the future and everything else like that. So I think, you know, per your dad's story and otherwise, there is a bunch of that. And sometimes it makes you. it easier, you know, they just sent me this thing. They're like, what do you think about all these things we're proposing? And I just wrote back and I was like, these are seriously mid. And that's like in front of 15 people. So we have this meeting and the guy says to me, listen, my only goal in this

meeting is how can we not be so mid? So I'm like, okay, you get my point. And yet I haven't crossed some crazy HR line and you've given it back to me. And so what is a goal? A goal is to actually make something it's slightly better, but it requires, you know, trust and humor. And maybe there's a lost art in in Katzkills humor and business. And maybe that's going to be my next company after this. How old are you? I'm 58 years old. So you started over time when you were, what, 50 years old? And your partner, did I read your partner as 24? Yeah, when we started, Zach was 22. That's some Leonardo DiCaprio shit. I like it. So you, I would only doubt date Fowlander is under 25. So you, by the way, the hilarious thing is I saw overtime and I was like, man, this brand is awesome.

Sam, I don't think your eyes into kind of like the hoops mixtape culture. Sam's not about the culture. Yeah, you know, like you are, Sean. Exactly. I've been waiting for somebody to call Sam out. Look, more than you know, more than you know. Come on. It's all good.

So we see overtime. And overtime just takes off amongst basically like the young black market in America. It's the coolest brand. It's the shirt everybody's wearing. It's the Instagram page people are following. I'm looking for the founder of this thing. I remember when I first saw it. I'm looking for the founder.

And I have an image in my head of what I think the founder of overtime looks like. What was the image in your head? Some guy, maybe 28 years old. I just got to have some business savvy to him. But I figured it was like a 28 year old black guy who used to play basketball or still playing basketball. Maybe comes from the music scene as some sort of music promoter or record label exact. Because there was definitely like a culture crossover aspect of the.

where it was not just prospect rankings or shit like that, like not just like a database of athletes or it was not done that way. And then I see it's Dan Porter. And I meet Dan and Dan actually really helped us out with Milk Road. Sam. I don't know if ever told you this, but no, I didn't know that. He was like, I don't know how we got connected me. He was reading the Milk Road early on.

We asked him, you know, big fan of what you did. Can we just get on the phone for an hour? And Dan's like, you got to do this. And he's like, this is working. And I think the instinct when something is working is to kind of button it up and grow up. And he's like, no, no, no. that's exactly the thing that's great about this is that it's not as buttoned up

because I think there was a big Bitcoin conference going on he's like you should host the anti-conference it's like you know just PBRs of people's backyard or something like that just like what's the counter programming you could do against the traditional thing and I started asking him about the brand that he built with overtime and Dan you told me you studied soccer clubs and bands and cults and you wanted to figure out what they did differently

and you shared with me two or three things that we used at the Milk Road to help grow that brand. So I definitely learned a lot about brand working for Richard. And he really understood the idea of Challenger brand. And I think for me, I was really interested in community, especially coming from gaming. And I was like, what is the challenge around being in the media space and being tangential, the digital media space?

I'm like, it's all content and views. And it's like you're looking, on your phone or somewhere else. And it's like, that's funny, but it could come from anywhere. And so I was like, you know, maybe what the audience wants is a sense of community, a sense of being part of something, you know, belonging to something. I think that was clearly a growth hack for religion thousands of years ago. Like, let's get a place where people can get together and make them feel part of something.

And I think people wanted that. And so to me, it's just like you start from that standpoint. and you just start to observe the world around you. So you go, you know, you go to a British soccer game and you realize like they're singing like sweet Caroline. And you're like, what does Neil Diamond have to do with soccer? I never understood that. And it's just, it's such a good sing-along song. And then all of a sudden you're just like, where else can grown men, I guess, aside from church, go someplace and sing in the top of their lungs.

And like, why are people fandom and why do they paint their faces? And I remember I went to like a little baby birthday concert at State Farm and everyone was holding up their phone. And I was trying to make a video to put on my story to show that I was valid. And all of a sudden I realized they were all filming themselves. I was like one of the only people actually filming a concert. Like they were all content creators. They went to a concert as a platform for them to make content about themselves. And I was like, I'm not that way.

To me, it was so fascinating. There's some anthropological understanding about, you know, you ask people which way you point your camera and at a certain age, you're, you know, you're filming other people. In a certain age, you're filming themselves. And I just think I've had this relentless curiosity about that. And to me, you can Google brand and you can read a lot of shit that has a high ranking in, you know, in Google about how to do this and that. but the passion of the soccer team or the passion that you feel for a sports team,

you think about things like The Grateful Dead that just gave away their music and let people record it when all it would happen when I was a kid is you'd go to a concert and they'd frisk you to make sure you don't have a recording device on you and how they understood like, well, shit, I could let my fans be the distribution and it could grow 10x bigger than anything else like that. And then all of a sudden, it's not about your song. It's like, well, I have that song at, you know, this show at Nassau Coliseum, and I have this show at Hampton, and I have this song, this version of that. And so I think in a way, like, all of those examples exist out there. And I remember I watched the Travis Scott documentary that's on Netflix. And it's so interesting

to me that his audience is so much more passionate about him. They literally cry when they're coming out of the show. And he dives into the stage. And you just ask, there are 100 rappers out there. why is Travis Scott over here and they're all the way over there? Like, why do people literally go? Do people go to a Lil Luzi Vert show and cry? I don't know. Maybe they do, but I don't think in the same way. Well, what's that answer?

I spend hours of brainpower trying to figure out what that is in reverse engineered. Because like, why is this person or this brand so much more beloved and the other? Why is Ari so much more effective in his business than other people are? I think for Travis Scott, it's something about the music, but it is something about the fact that he cares so much more about his fans that he is literally able to jump in the middle and be there with him. And then when you magnify that, the symbolism around that, the storytelling, I think even for me, it's, listen, I, you know, sure, I'm a guy who is not the same as the people who put on my account, but I am willing to get in there and answer DMs and talk to them and connect them without music. and ask them 100 questions. I have this like, you know, they always have this thing. They say, if you can give respect, you can get respect. I don't walk into a room and think that anyone will ever respect me or care about me based on who I am unless I am the first one to give respect. And I know

that every single person in that room, whether they're a 16 year old Hooper or a talent agent or a YouTuber has something incredibly deserving of respect. And my job is to figure out what that is and honor that and learn about that. So overtime's Instagram has like, I don't know, 11 million followers, probably I don't know, billions of views over the years. And it's one thing to say,

you know, I learned a lot from Branson or I've watched how other brands work. And I've noticed these two or three things. It's like me watching Jiu-Jitsu versus going in there and rolling with, you know, hoish-gracy. You've gone there and you've rolled with the graces, which means you actually then went and did it with overtime.

Can you talk about a couple of, the things that you did intentionally that you think helped build more of a cult brand. So, you know, for example, the hand symbol. Yeah, tell me, what's the hand signal? Every great gang in the world has a hand sign, you know? And so like, we need a hand sign. And I was like, oh, O, T. And they were like, simplify it, make the O, throw up the O. Which is hilarious. Just imagine your CEO sitting in an office and he's just throwing up symbols. He's like, I'm really working on something today, guys. It's going to be big, okay? What do you guys think? You think the O's should be oval

or more circular and it sounds silly, but I think you even you told your people, you're like, if you go to this event and you record, every video, you got to get them at the end to be like, put up the O and say shout out to overtime. The same thing because I remember, I saw once, forgettable,

saw it twice, forgettable. Once you see it like 25 times and you got the like cool high school athletes to do it, it was like now it's a thing. I've had people do it to me at TSA, actually, when they see my shirt and stuff like that. I think it comes back to just, if you want there to be community and you care about community and that was a premise, you have to give community a way to interact and to share what makes that special with them, right?

So I'm a Philadelphia Eagles fan. I live in New York, which is clearly not Philadelphia. I'm walking down the street and I see somebody in the Eagles baseball hat. I say, go birds. And they're like, go birds. You've given us this common language to say, I don't know who you are. We may have nothing in common, but we got one thing for sure in common. And so being maybe nerdy or cerebral on that thing, I'm like, what are those things that are going to give our community?

They're not just going to be like, hey, my good fellow, I enjoy the content on overtime. And he says, thus, I do too. Do you prefer TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram? And so instead you give them this little shout out to overtime or this hand sign as a way to say, yeah, we're part of this community. You know, this kind of, if you know, you know, not unlike the secrets, right? It's like somebody, it's like my father-in-law is always like, I'm going to tell you the secret handshake for our fraternity. But he never gives you the secret handshake. He just like tickles your finger or something like that.

Oh, sorry, I can't really tell you. Like, you're 100 years old. Who cares about the secret hand jacket? Oh, we're word of secrecy. Right? You know, and so you have these things, the secret hand shake. Knock on the door. What's the password?

You know, I can't tell you. I can't let you in. You know, and I think you create, you understand in consuming culture and even pop culture that there are these things that bind people together. And sometimes you've got to strong arm them into existence. Using the superpower of social media as a customer relations platform, like a CRM as opposed to a publisher, every single DM to overtime and even to me starts out the same.

Yo. I don't know why, but that is apparently a very popular thing for people to DM large accounts. Yo. And you go back and they're like, yo. And the next thing is, oh shit, I didn't think overtime responded. I mean, I was talking to this 21-year-old kid who works for me. And we were talking about going and doing something.

He's like, listen, you all understand. I was like 15. I DM'd overtime. I just was like, yo, and they DM'd me back. And I'm thinking, not they, you work here, we, but he's saying they. And so I think just figuring out how to connect with people, how to use those superpowers, what are the things that around religion, around cults, their songs, their hand signs, there's things that you wear. You know, part of the reason that I created this like shirt with the O that, you know, eventually all the talented people, work for me made way better and bigger was the people used to steal our content all the time. So we'd go and we'd cover somebody and they'd just rip our video and then I'd make a watermark and then they

zoom the video out of the watermark to crop it. So I was like, you know, what if we just made a shirt with our O on it? Then we've like a permanent watermark in our thing. And if they rip our video, then that's fine. Then our O is actually everywhere. We've turned our biggest challenge into our biggest opportunity. And so all of a sudden, there were people with shirts. with O's everywhere because people were ripping those videos. And, you know, everyone would say, oh, shit, how do I get one of those? Because it must mean you're famous. So the biggest thing we did is for two years, we refused to sell it.

Well, you can't buy one of those shirts. Like, you have to be on overtime to have that. And then eventually you create so much pen up demand. And I can't say that was in the deck or the business plan. But as you start to get into a dance and a romance with culture, you start to observe what's happening. and you make some kind of audibles around that, and you figure that out. But like, to be part of culture is to be part of community, to be what's relevant to happening

around you. And, you know, listen, we start a basketball league. Every single startup sports league in America has failed, pretty much, you know. And by the way, the NBA, the NFL, these are 50, 75 years old. And you can think about all these startup football leagues that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars. and it's like, why is OTE overtime a lead, a startup basketball league in its fourth season, and every other league has gone out of business? Well, it's because we're focused on the audience.

We weren't focused on just playing the sport. It's like, you know what people want? They want more football. They want more basketball. They want more baseball. So it's another league. And it's like, well, they just, they want to know, like, why should I care about this? Why is this league about me? Who is playing? What are the hopes and the dreams of the people who were playing there? Instead, it's like, well, we got a field and we had a bunch of city-based teams and where he said, here, America, you like more football. But like, if you can't appeal to the aspects of culture and community and emotion to them, why should they, Karen?

And listen, me, I wasn't a gamer and I made a pretty popular game. I didn't know a lot about ticketing and I started the first live event ticketing company. I like sports. I'm not a sports wizard. I would come and last on a sports quiz show. but it's like I am more like the consumer in that I don't want to get sucked in so I'm so deep. So it's like what is resonating? Oh shit, there's a simple story about that.

I'll tell you one side thing that made overtime big. When we started, I was like, here's Sean. He's like 6'2. He has an eight foot wingspan. He plays for George Washington in high school. He's a point guard. He shoots 50% for three. And like we'd put the video up there because that's what sports is about.

stats and all those things. Every single time I removed one piece of metadata, it got bigger, down to the fact that it was like, Sean is fucking dope. Boom. Everyone can love that because as soon as you tell me, Sean went to George Washington high school, I'm like, I don't know where that high school is. I don't care anymore. You know, as soon as you tell me he shoots X from three, I'm like, is that good or is

that bad? I don't care anymore. So in this weird way, similar to the draw something game, the more you can simplify it, the more it's available to everyone. The more you tell me, this wine is from this country with this, that, and it's DOC, and it's this grape and whatever, I just think like, fuck it. Maybe I'm just going to drink tequila. Can you do this stuff with nerdy products or B2B products? Or do you think that it's much harder and only possible for pop culture or consumer products?

I think everything has a story at its core. I always think of this dumb example from like a business book that I read 30 years ago where they used to like do door to door selling of vacuum cleaners and a guy would go around and it would tell the person who answers the door, you know, the suction is so strong and it's got these things and they sold all the features of the product and he sold 10 vacuum cleaners and then the next guy comes around and knocks on the door and he just fucking sells you the dream of a clean house. And every time, like, you find your own salespeople and they're in, how many views we have.

And this is why our product is so great. And I'm always thinking, just got to fucking sell them the dream of the clean house. And so in a way, there is some abstract simplification of the core of what makes everything great. And the more you know about it, the worse you get and the further away you get at telling that story. So it's like, we have this basketball. We had the number two pick in last week's NBA draft. We had the number eight pick. We have four lottery picks in two years.

X number of people watched it on here. You know, all these people are playing professionally. And at the end of the day, like, somebody from the NBA is like, why do people care about your basketball league? I'm like, because it's their shit. The NBA, that's your shit. That's old people's shit. Like, this is their shit.

And I can never forget that. I can't be distracted by the fact that, you know, Alex went number two and Rob went number eight and now they're on these backs contracts and they went to OTE and whatever. It's like if you can keep that fundamental core aspect of why it matters in mind at all time and not get sucked down the vortex, I think that that's, you know, that's the key. It's like nearly impossible the bigger you get not to do that stuff. Sean and I both love UFC and the reason we like Ari Emanuel is in part because he owns the UFC and what Dana White has done there, we love because like when Sean Strickland fights, you're like, well, this guy,

He's a crazy person who just says wildly offensive stuff, and it's really fun because he's insane. Or this guy's from Brazil, and he's really scary looking, and he doesn't even speak English, and he wears a red painting on his face, and it's really intimidating looking. They do such a good job of telling a story, even though they're a massive company now. Right. Well, you know, you know what's like I remember I was a fan at the core of the UFC, and the core of the UFC was every martial art against each other, right? This guy's a stand-up guy.

This guy's going to take him to the ground. and this guy's a college wrestler, this guy's a judo guy. Like, that is the easiest fucking story to tell in the world. You could even look at the NBA finals or the Super Bowl or whatever. Ultimately, we're in these rivalries. This city versus that city. This boxer versus that boxer. But if you could abstract to tell me this is actually a story about passing versus running,

or this is a story about something else like that, then you're just like, oh, I want to know how that's going to play out. Like, that's so interesting. I was trying to tell people, I went to the EuroLeague championship with all these kind of young people and Greece was playing Turkey in the semifinals and they're like, wow, these fans are really passionate. And I was like, yeah, let's talk about the history of two countries, Greece and Turkey. And it's not clear to them, but I'm like, yeah, there's something so elemental at the core of the passion. I think the NBA finals are amazing.

I'm not quite sure that Boston and Dallas have existential beef against each other that go. back hundreds of years. So you've got to find some other core elemental story in it. Like, these guys bought their team and these guys drafted their team. Master, he says your karate is better than my kung fu. If you can stay to that and all those stories, and that's clearly a huge aspect of, I think, what UFC had in the beginning that was so powerful. And I think that's a part of Ari's genius is he does understand at its core, like what makes you like Mark Wahlberg when he signs him as an actor. What makes these stories kind of simple in a way, because as soon as you find yourself having to oversell, you've lost the cause. As soon as you're

talking about the third switch on the vacuum cleaner that has seven HEPA air filters, you've lost the whole thing. That's a great story. You're fun of shit to talk to. You got, like, I could hear stories that you say all day. I'm just trying to figure out how all works. Can I ask you like a life advice thing? So, you know, if you were my dad, so you did a bunch of things, right? You were a teacher in schools. Then you did Teach for America. You worked for these like high-powered organizations like Virgin and, you know, Endeavour with Ari Emanuel.

You started your own company in the gaming space. You started your own company in the media space. If you meet like a 24-year-old, you know, ambitious person who just wants to have an interesting life, I want to have a great life, then we really know exactly what they want. what's your approach? What does Dan think you should be doing in your 20s? What do you think you should be doing in your 30s? How do you, what is like the nutshell of your career advice?

First of all, there's a lot of ways you can learn about the world. I learned about the world by being a public school teacher. I learned about the world by, you know, giving guitar lessons. Like there's so many different ways. And I think that so I have this thing where I just, I really don't like to hire people who went to business school. and I'm kind of anti-MBA because to me if there's a funnel and it starts when you're like five years old and you ask, why is this guy blue? Why do people walk on two legs? That funnel goes through

the education system and then it gets a business school and then it narrows and it closes and they're just like, this is the way you do things. And then you've lost all that like pie in the sky, whatever. So I kind of say to young people like your 20s, it's like the time for you to get fire from a job, the time for you to step way too late and go to a club, time for you to like take a euro pass across England, a time for you for your friend to say, I'm going to do this crazy thing and you're like, yes, you know, the time to just say yes and do all those things and ingests and experience as much of the world as possible. A, because all of those experience come and form you in some way, like if I didn't go to the concert,

or I didn't sing at a soccer show, or I didn't do any of these other things like that. I don't think I would have ever understood these, but also because the world is so big and so vast, like if you haven't, you know, hitchhiked through some other country or stayed in a hammock somewhere or done anything else like that, you just have no context and appreciation for that. And you think your job is to graduate and then to get the job

and then to be the analyst and then the associate and then the this and the managing director, and now you're on this pipeline, but you've failed to do all these other things. I've on a master's degree in 19th century Mexican history that I did while I was working. My focus was the cast war of the Yucatan. People were like, why are you doing that? How does that help you in your career? And I'm like, it doesn't. It just seemed interesting. And like, if you look on my LinkedIn, I'll say it never had any impact. Nobody ever asked me about it. I never got ahead by having a master's degree. I don't do business in 19th century ago, I don't know, you just do shit when you're young because that's the time you do shit and you just

learn about the world and you experience things and you laugh and you cry and you get out there. And like, if you think it's all about this ladder that you get to this other thing, it really isn't. And every single one of those things that you do that has no rationale is really actually about opening a door to something else. That's kind of my advice. You have to go to your rate your rate my professor profile. Your top tag. Your top tag is inspirational. Okay.

To which I would, to which I agree. You are, you are inspirational. Gives good feedback. Just like what your coworkers, you said. Eh, mid. You're inspirational. You love group projects and get ready to read. Those are your tags for Rate My Professor.

Listen, I like, there is so much from business you can learn from the wire. from Breaking Bad. You know, all the conference rooms in my last company were named after characters in the wire. I just think I learned stuff from books. I learned stuff from fiction movies. I learned stuff from listening to a song. I'm just like, you know, I remember like the first time one of my kids friends said,

I went to Irving Plaza and I saw this artist, Billy Eilish. And I was like, who is Billy Eilish? And he's like, I would do anything for Billy Elish. And I was like, whoa. And I look. And she has like one Spotify street. and I'm like, holy shit, like, what is going on here? And, you know, what is the thing there?

Whatever. She was not marketed. She was discovered. The audience was the one. They were like, she is by Billy Eilish. No executive in a tower somewhere said, you're going to take Billy Eilish now. And so they're all just like if you unpack why things work in the world and you're willing to get out there and experience them, then I think that that's the opportunity.

The one second piece of advice I would give is that a lot of times you think it's about adapting to your environment. I had a student of mine and she went to work at consulting and she was the only one who didn't get a job offer. You know, you get your whatever offer to come back. And she's like, I don't know what's wrong with me. Like, I messed up and like I got to figure out how to change. And they told me I should stop talking so much in meetings or whatever.

And I said, you just shouldn't work in consult. like you are just you. You are the best version of you. You're just in the wrong situation. And she goes to this startup and they're like, you can't talk enough. And they love her and she's so happy. And I'm like, you're the fucking same exact person. You've just got to find the place that celebrates you for who you are. And by the way, you are you and you got to do the best to be the best to you, you can. But you've got to put yourself in the best place. And you got to think about your inputs. And, you know, your inputs aren't necessarily like, you know, the things that you think they are. They might be going to the Sri Lankan restaurant in Staten Island and having a life-changing roti

and just rethinking everything you ever knew about the world. There's some episodes where in the YouTube comments, people are being like, well, I saw Sean put his chin on his hand and just stare into the screen or Sam just sat back across his arms and kind of had its mouth open and he was just staring at the guest. These guys have a new man crush. I would say this is one of those episodes where I definitely do.

I appreciate you coming on. Thank you for not only this episode, but also helping us when we were doing the Milk Road. It's not even one specific piece of advice you had, but after we talked to, we were like, we came away with a very strong sense of, okay, cool, we're just going to do this our way.

Like, we don't need to conform this in any way. If anything, let's double down into all of the quirks and weird. weirdness and fun versions of what this could become. And let's just play that out and see what happens. And so that was the one thing that we took away from hanging out with you. And I hope other people do that too because I don't think you get that advice. I don't think you get that vibe for most people.

I get that. Listen, I just played a long game. If I could be helpful to you and then you're successful and then you buy an NBA team and then it's the playoffs. And I want my feet on the hardwood. Then I'm hoping it pays off. I got you. Dan, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you guys for having me. See you soon. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back.