NZXT PODCAST - #038 - Mike

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

This week on the podcast, the crew are joined by NZXT’s Marketing Operations Manager: Mike! Mike and the crew discuss tea, bluegrass music, and freedom units. Listen live to the NZXT 💜 CLUB CAST on our Discord server at discord.gg/nzxt every Thursday at 10AM PT! Thanks to XENO.#0001 for the artwork! Learn about our Folding@Home team on the NZXT Blog: blog.nzxt.com

Nothing like anime tunes in the morning to wake you up. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 38 of the NXT Clubcast, the official podcast of the NXT community. This podcast is recorded live every Thursday at 10 a 10-end Pacific Standard Time and the official NXT Discord server and is available to stream wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. My name is Dennis and with me as always is Ivan. Hello at everyone. Hello, everyone.

Amanda is still out. She's very busy working on super important tasks that you guys are going to love, but that's okay because joining us today with their fancy scarf is our marketing operator, Mike. How did you know that I'm wearing a scarf? I saw you wearing a scarf in our last meeting. Also, you always wear a scarf. Well, see, the thing is, here's the thing. The last couple days have been really warm, so I haven't needed the scarf,

but then for whatever reason today is gray again, so I'm wearing the scarf. Are you down in Southern California? No, no. I'm still up in the Bay Area. How warm is warm in the Bay Area? Warm in the Bay Area is probably like 60s. It was like pretty nice. Oh my God, dude.

It was 80 yesterday. Are you kidding me? 60s? Yeah, dude. The thing is, is that none of us have air conditioning up here. And so if it hits 80, we're just dying. You can't just go outside and like, thank you, cool, Angel's thesis for doing the conversion for those who don't know. Fair night.

For those who don't know freedom temperature. Yes. Thank you for the conversion. Freedom units. Freedom units. Yeah, no, if it gets too hot in the bay, it's miserable. Like, we get maybe like a couple weeks out of every year. It gets really hot, like 80, 90 degrees.

That's not really hot. That counts as really hot. And it's just, it's miserable because, like, you can't sleep. You have no air conditioning. You're in for a treat, man. Well, I'll have AC down there. Yeah, but still, like, every... Doesn't always work?

Like, you know, our headquarters is located in the valley over here. So every year, there's like two months, like a two-month stretch where it's like 100 degrees every single day. Oh, man. Yeah. Walking to lunch is not really a viable option unless you want to like burn your skin. Wow. And then you have to leave the car on for like 10 minutes so it cools down in there or like you're literally sitting in like a pot box. It's definitely not tea drinking weather.

Definitely not tea. I mean, all weather is tea drinking weather. We'll get on that. Way later, because I really want to talk about that. But first and foremost, Mike, what is your position at NST? Right. So I am the manager of marketing operations. Okay.

And what does that mean? That's a great question. Operations can be hard to define because in most cases, people only notice operations when things aren't going well. So the job that I have to do is to make good things. things go better and fix things that aren't going so well. And unfortunately, most people come talk to me when it's the latter case and not so much the former. So in the marketing context, like the most common place you'll see operations is like people

operations or facility management, you know, the folks who make sure that the snacks show up and the like the drinks are stocked and that kind of thing. Very important job. Very important job. But in the marketing context, it's just like how do we take the programs that are going well and make them do even better. How do I make your lives better so that your work isn't quite as difficult in those types of things?

There's also a lot of like thinking about how our systems and programs work together, you know, thinking cross-functionally. The nice thing about being an ops person is that I'm not, well, I guess it kind of depends, but in NST, I'm not embedded in a single team. So I get to look at what everybody's doing and find opportunities for people to work together. You know, this person needs what you also need. and so we can kind of kill tubers with one stone. So it's a lot of that kind of stuff,

a lot of thinking, strategy, and planning too. Right. I remember when you first started, I didn't really know what you were there to do. And to be honest, I still kind of don't know because it seems, because it seems like such a broad position, especially with the company

because everybody kind of helps everybody that you really could be helping any team with any particular process that they need to be streamlined or fixed or just something that we'd never even thought about doing, right? Yeah, yeah, I think maybe the best way to think about me is like an internal consultant, you know, like you hire outside consultants to come in and do things. Right.

But ops can also be like an internal consultant where we sort of like parachute into different projects with different teams and help people do whatever they need to do on like a project basis. All right. How did you get into that? Quite by accident. Actually, I was, so my background is as an agency marketer. I did a brief stint with a mobile app startup in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I'm from, right out of college and really enjoyed it, but I had no idea what I was doing. So I thought, well, I'll go learn the ropes in more traditional marketing.

And so joined some marketing agencies. That took me back to China. So I worked with like international agencies and multinational corporations in China companies like Visa and Volkswagen and stuff like that. And that was interesting but frustrating. And I thought, well, you know, the agency model isn't really all that humane. If you talk to anybody who works in an agency, they'll tell you that it can be kind of a meat grinder. And you have to sort of just like make your way through it until you reach the top. And I thought, well, that's not for me.

And so we decided to leave China, we meeting my girlfriend at the time, now wife, because we wanted to settle in the States and get married and so on and so forth. And coming back to the States, I thought, well, I can go pretty much anywhere in the world at this, anywhere in the country, rather, at this point. And I picked San Francisco because it sounded like a place full of smart, passionate people. And I wanted to be surrounded by those kinds of people. And so that's how I got back into tech. and I originally wanted to be what you commonly hear described as a growth marketer or a growth person, which is a very technical marketing role that is rather unique to the startup world. And, you know, I kind of sort of wanted to doing that, but also not really.

I joined one company called this company called Snowshoe Stamp. I was there for a brief period in time. Unfortunately, it didn't work out the way we had all hoped. and then I landed the big one and found my job at Discord. And even at Discord, they hired me to be an account manager to handle all the relationships with Twitch streamers that they were putting together. But coming in, I quickly realized that while the account management stuff

was important, they actually didn't have anybody on the team who was not only capable, but interested in doing the more technical side of the stuff. stuff. So like figuring out what the program, how the program was behaving, who are our, you know, big partners and who's doing well for us, where are their opportunities to grow, blah, blah, like a lot of those types of real like nuts and bolts foundation type things. And that's how I wound up getting into operations without even realizing that that's what it was at the time. It was just like, well, here's a job that needs to be done. So like we're a scrappy startup. I'll just jump in and do it.

Do they call you, Mike, because you're an actual microphone? because you're crackling really bad right now. Oh, am I? Hold up. Yeah, you sound fine on the recording. You just on the Discord, do you sound a little clicky? I just double-checked. Well, I haven't told me.

Yeah. Let's go. How about that? Is that a little better? No. It may just be our connection with like... With Zencastr? Let me...

Because Zencastr sounds fine. So I think really, yeah. But that's cool. How long were you at a, I didn't mean to the track, by the way. Oh, it's all good. How long were you working at a Discord? I was at Discord for just over three years. I joined in the beginning of February 2016 when there were like 20 employees.

And I left in the end of March, towards the end of March 2019. And we had 160 employees. So we 8X star our head count in three years. That's kind of very similar to me. Like when I started at NZXT, I was like the 20th person there. And now we're like at 200 something. Yeah. Maybe I should leave the Discord now.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you've seen it too, Ivan then. It's crazy how, you know, how that can change things, you know, all that growth and so on. It's definitely very different than before, you know, with like so many new people. Like this, it's crazy like to not know everyone's.

name, first of all, like, so many new people. But it's also a good thing because we're getting a lot of, you know, smart people like you who come in and, like, help us do better and improve and keep growing, doing more cool stuff. So it's definitely been, like, a fun thing to see. Yeah, it can be very enjoyable for sure. I think that NZXT seems to have managed the transition pretty well. Not all companies do, for sure. You know, Discord also did a pretty good job.

The executive team put a lot of effort into making sure that, like, it was a relatively smooth transition. But, yeah, like you're saying, Ivan, I remember it was probably at about the 100 employee mark. Now, Discord had a lot less employees than NZXT because it's a software company. So, you know, we have all types of operations and things like that. But at about the 100 employee mark is when I started walking around and being. like, wait, what was your name again? Who were you again? And it kind of like went from there.

Yeah, I have no idea who's in the warehouse now. Yeah. I walk in there and like, I don't know who any of these people are. Yeah. By the way, are we like answering questions from the chat in line here? Are we like saving them for later? Oh, no. So the way it works is people ask questions and then the moderators are pinning them.

And then once we get to the community questions, I'll moderate that chat and we'll answer those. Okay. So we're just going to collect them as we go along, just so we can have like a full conversation. And then, you know, the last part can be just whatever silly stuff people want to ask. Sure, sure. Speaking of silly stuff, should I tag everyone? Should I tag everyone right now? Oh, you haven't done it yet?

No. So I want to give the people listening a warning and then also give them a chance to actually win a prize first before I tag everyone. Well, I don't have it set up for. for that, but if maybe one of our wonderful moderators who are hopefully listening into the podcast, I was just going to drop some links. Oh, if you're going to drop links, I would not do that because there's bots. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we have some bots in the server that are snatching up the natural codes. I don't know why, because you can't really do anything with them, but I don't know, maybe you can.

Can you do anything with them, Mike? I mean, like, technically you could resell them. if you really wanted to, but like, Nitro's so cheap. But like if you click the accept button, like, it's just, it's on your account, right? You can't really. Oh, so, yeah, if it's something that gets like automatically applied, then, yeah, then, like, there's nothing you can do with it. If it's, if it's like a, so there are codes that you can get that you can enter in to your

account that will give you Nitro. Yeah, the way that we do it, we just click the little gift button. The Nitro gifts, yeah. Yeah, that's just a, that's just a, a, real. claimed redemption that applies immediately, so you can't, you can't do anything with those. All right. I won't tag everyone then. I was thinking it would be cool if I tagged everyone and just started dropping some

nitro codes, but it sounds like it's probably not a good idea. You get a code and you get a code. Yeah. I mean, we could. Yeah, so Mike, if you don't mind if you don't mind me asking you, you know, you're free to decline the question if you like, why did you leave Discord? I mean, it seems like, you know, everyone is like in love with the calls. company, right? They're doing so many awesome things now.

Yeah, so let me think about a way to give like a TLDR in this, because as with most decisions like that, it was a complex one. Oh, yeah, I can imagine. So I think that it was like a variety of different things coming together. One of the biggest ones is that like, you know, after a little bit more than three years at Discord, Like it was pedal to the metal, nose to the grindstone, working as hard and fast as we could the entire time. You know, the cool thing about being at a company that's growing explosively is that like, especially at the size that Discord was growing at. I mean, we're talking about adding millions of new users a week, like that kind of thing.

Yeah. We would get together, we would have these weekly all-hands meetings and the CEO would show us our charts and how we're doing. And he'd say, well, we're up until the right again. And it's just like the numbers cease to have meaning because they get so big and you're so far removed from the reality of it. Like how do you think about two million people coming into your product on a weekly basis? And so in order to like not only sustain but increase that rate of growth, it takes a lot of work. And Discord wanted to stay really lean. And they hired the most intelligent and capable people they could to keep.

the head count low. But what that meant is that they had, they asked a lot out of each individual employee. So, so it was just a lot, you know, three years going hard. I was,

I was tired. And, you know, the last big thing that I worked on at Discord, winning all the time is boring sometimes. The last thing I worked on at Discord is, was the game store. And that was a big flop for us,

you know, talking about winning all the time. was Discord's first big miss. And, you know, that was like my baby. I was the guy building all the store operations for that for the most part. And so for that to sort of like go the way that it did and it was sort of shut down rather abruptly. And so that was a bit of a blow to the morale.

And I just like was I was thinking about I could see the changes that were coming down the pipe for Discord You know it's it it was going from being like almost like a frat house when I first started That's kind of a bad connotation but like when I first started we were on the first floor of a small corporate office and Burlingame down by the airport and like 90% of us sat in the same room And you guys are basically just like all friends who were working together Yeah just like a big family in this building and we wound up expanding and take over the second floor.

And it was just like such a magical time where all of us are together trying to do something awesome. And then, you know, like we've gotten much bigger and there are laws that actually dictate and change like what happens to you as a company as you grow in headcount. So once you cross the 100 employee threshold, there are different legal requirements. And so like more red tape starts to show up

and, you know, more bureaucracy. And some of this is good. but you know like again i'm sure you guys i'm not telling you anything you don't know you used to be able to walk across the room and just get a thing done real fast but now you got to like route through two other people or whatever and there's like a form and a spreadsheet and like that that can be really frustrating and so for me i didn't see myself as the person that went through that transition at discord um and i found it kind of to be like a bit ironic that i'm kind of coming in at NCXT during a similar time.

So like the irony of that is not lost on me for sure. But yeah, like, you know, look, Discord is still a great place to work. It was always a great place to work. And I loved it. I'm still connected to a lot of the people there. But, you know, it just came down to me making a decision for myself and what I felt like was best for me. And it was not an easy one to make. I agonized over it for quite some time.

But it was just clear that it was time for me to go. Here's a question that kind of goes along with that. So Discord is a software company, right? So they don't necessarily ship any product that has to physically go to people. So like if I want to use Discord, I can just go use it, right? I can go to my phone, go to my computer and download it. With an NXT product, right, it's a case, it's cooler. It's, you know, whatever that we're going to be coming out with, right?

Like, it's, it's, what, what are some of the challenges and kind of like, kind of like, that you found from transitioning to software to, to, from software to hardware to, from software to hardware to, yeah. So the first thing is that the costs on the software, or sorry, the hardware side are much higher, right? Like, the, the reason why Silicon Valley is so obsessed with software is because it has very low overhead and it scales almost infinitely. Um, but that's not the case when you have a physical product. Uh, you know, there's much more consideration. There's an actual supply. chain, so on and so forth. And so like, just like all of the different ways that you consider how to do things from a business perspective, they all change. The other thing is that, you know,

Discord was a venture-backed company. They had very, very deep pockets. I think they raised something like $135 million or something during the time that I was there. And NZXT is a cash flow company. So NST can only spend what it makes So that's a different consideration as well Because for the longest time

Discord didn't make any money But we were certainly spending money And so we of course tried to do our best To be responsible around that But at the same time there was never really a sense That like we were going to run out of money Right or like we would somehow like empty the piggy bank You know NSXT has very different considerations

So, but I actually specifically wanted to get into like a consumer goods company because I have an interest in e-commerce and physical products and things like that. And so I like the systems of marketing and business that go around having a physical product. It is a bit more complicated. It's perhaps a little bit more restrictive than just software. But I'm enjoying the challenge. so far. All right. That's,

that's, that's really interesting. That's, it's always something that I've always wondered because like I, I never really worked at a company that, I mean, I guess I technically did. I worked for a video game company previously,

but it was a little differently. It was a little different because there's still money that you had to spend on it, right? Like you can essentially use Discord for your entire life, at least for now and never had to spend a single dime, right, other than like internet connection. So as to me, it was always really interesting when people be like, oh man, discord is so huge.

Like, well, yeah, they don't, don't, You don't have to buy anything. You can just use it. Of course they're going to be big. And the product is really good. It works. Like every person I know is on it. There's no reason why they shouldn't be using it.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like that's the thing about Discord is that as long as they can figure out how to become profitable, then essentially, yeah, they'll just exist. As long as the servers are on, they'll continue to exist, you know. Right. But that's not necessarily the case with NZXT. It's just, you know, different business considerations. unless unless we all go to cloud computing

A No thank you I do have a great name for Our first cloud PC if we ever make one Oh yeah What is it I'm not going to give it away on the air But it's actually the first

Original name that we had for Manta But we scrapped it But it would be perfect for a cloud PC Oh I think I remember What that was I think you dropped it as like a joke a while back. I'm not joking, man. I would never joke about that.

Never, ever. He's got it written on his wall, man. It's tattooed on his body. So, Mike, how long have you been at NZEXT this far? Only about six weeks. Not very long. I know. You came in at the perfect time.

Oh, yeah, man. Parachuted in right when things were getting hot. Yeah, no, I can't imagine. Like, there's, yeah, because like we just had Josh, who was our marketing director, just start and he literally started remote essentially, right? I think he was in office like once. Yeah. His first day, I think none of us were

there. He was in the office and none of us were. Yeah, but is it like challenging, I guess, to start any job and then have it be like remote? Because me, I feel like I'm still struggling working remote to be honest.

So I don't know about you. How are you adapting to that? Yes. Yes. So it is I think it's not so much So I think that it is difficult to do certain types of work from home Generally the type of work that we do Is made more difficult by the fact that we can't just get up And like go tap the person on the shoulder and say hey I have a question Yep

There are other types of work Engineering work and things like that where like you actually Really benefit from having that kind of isolation And so for those types of workers, it's great. But other than sort of like if you crave the social interaction, right, the sort of loss of the office environment, but just talking about work, definitely like the amount of meetings that we have go up.

It's much harder to keep people in the loop and so on and so forth. So yeah, like it is challenging. I've never worked completely remote like this before. Yeah. I feel like my job is just meetings now. Yeah, right? For sure. for sure.

Like every day is just like one long meeting. Yeah, so I've tried to like push a lot of that off just because like I'm a one-man team right now. And so like all the promises that I make when I get into a meeting, I'm also responsible for delivering. So I can't, you know, overcommit. The term that you'll hear in sort of Silicon Valley parlance is maker versus manager time. And so managers do a little. lot of this like meeting and coordinating and makers do a lot of the focused productivity time. And so I'm trying to find a way to blend both and that can be a challenge.

That's super hard. Yeah. Yeah. So I try to do the same thing, you know, because there's things I got, I have to do. And then at the same time, it's like I have to also, you know, to help plan these things too. And it's just, and I think Dennis and Amanda, too, not just me. Yeah. It's really, really challenging.

Yeah. Like, there was a, I actually had to schedule my lunch on my calendar every single day from 12 to 1. So I have an hour to eat and just kind of do whatever I want that wasn't like work related. And someone tried to schedule a meeting. And I was like, hey, I would love to, but I really want to like not do it because I'm at home all day. So, you know, let's not do that. And then like one of the bosses like, hey, that was actually a good call to take time for yourself. Like, oh, thanks.

Yeah. It's going to put on the spot there. It's just one of those things where it's like, you know, it's hard because like you, like you you want to work with people but the same time it's like I'm here all day eight hours a day plus like I don't really leave this room anymore like yeah right you have some time where I go for a walk or something yeah yeah I mean I live in a 700 square foot apartment it's a one bed that I share with my wife and so like my my work station is my gaming station and so like it's it's very difficult from just like a

psychological perspective the brain likes to bucket things And so to have the mixed signal of, like, play and work in the same spot is very, very difficult to manage. So I'm glad that. That's why I actually don't play that many video games on my PC. It's because of that. I had to play on my Nintendo because I can't flip that switch, man. Yeah, I picked up the Final Fantasy remake, and so I've been playing through that on the PS4 on the couch. Plus, my wife likes to watch me play some of these games.

So it's like, you know, we get to spend time together and play some games. I've gotten myself into a bit of a ritual where at the end of the day, I usually have one browser window that holds all of my work tabs. And at the end of the day, I close all the tabs. I close Slack. I close everything down. And I walk away from the computer and go, like, sit on my balcony or something like that. Maybe I'll have a libation of some type or whatever.

listen to music or something and just like let myself like completely switch out of that like productivity work space for maybe like 20 or 30 minutes or something like that and then I'm ready to kind of like get into the rest of my night and that's been really helpful for me. It's definitely something you should do like I've been taking a lot more walks now like me my sister because she's working from home too and she she moved back in so she can be with the family during lockdown stuff. And she's a teacher.

So she'll teach online and then like around 12, hey, you want to go for a walk? We go up for a walk. And then after you have dinner, hey, let's go up for another walk. And then we just go walk around the block or something for a little bit and just talk about like if you were just hanging out normally. And it's just going to help you kind of switch that, that little, you know, part of your brain was like,

okay, I'm no longer in work mode. I'm now home. I've done my quote unquote commute, right, to get home after work. And now let's, you know, enjoy ourselves. and then Ivan tags me on Slack about something. Yeah, well, you guys have it hard, right? Because, like, community is, I think, probably one of the hardest jobs to do.

Like, community and support functions are some of the hardest jobs to do in a business organization. Because it's very difficult to be able to step away. Like, people have problems when they have problems. And that's the thing I told Dennis in the job interview is, like, you know, community does not stop. It's 24-7. and these foods don't sleep you have to be available at all times

it's not like you know you can't turn on you can't turn on Twitter from 9 to 5 basically it's yeah you know it's nonstop and especially like you know as our company has grown so it has our community you know

and earlier I was like you know we were all in one room too and like 20 people or whatever and I think when I first started we had like 20,000 Twitter followers or something like that. We're almost at a million now. So it's like, it's a lot of people, man.

And a lot of them, yeah, they need help. They need either customer service issues or maybe they just want to have fun with you with the meme or maybe, you know, another question about something else. So it's, it is really hard, but at the same time, I also think it's the most fun job.

Because we're able to do a lot of like, dumb stuff yeah true yeah well the nice thing about nzxte is that like

they they give you guys the respect you deserve and the freedom to be able to do things that make the community as cool as it is and and like so I love that here

I loved it at Discord you know I just I have a lot of respect for people who do this kind of thing as their daily full-time work yeah

Thanks, appreciate it. We're trying to make it more, more, I guess. I don't know what the word is maybe quote unquote professional, you know, by like trying to work with operations and, okay, we're going to try to flesh out this air table calendar. So everyone like on board and trying to, we're trying to, you know, have fun, but at the same time also kind of improve the way we do things as well.

So everyone in the loop. So speaking about operations, Mike, can you tell us what your favorite thing about operations is? Why you do it? Yeah, so I think the thing I like the most about operations is I love problem solving. And operations is ultimately like a problem solving function. You know, it's it was, I got to have a seat at the table with the executives at Discord. and I get to have that here too. And so in that sense, like, it puts me in places where I get to have a lot of context

around what's happening. And then, like, the other cool thing about it is that I mentioned earlier, this kind of like strategic and planning element and then more of like the systems and processes planning part of it. And so it's like you get to think at the high level in the abstract about like what it is it that we're doing or trying to do. and then you actually get to go over to the part where you're thinking about

how are we going to accomplish this? So I'm not yet at the point in my career where I feel like I'm ready to be completely removed from working in the trenches. So I like to be able to have a bit of both, sort of like having my cake and eat it too. I think my least favorite part is sometimes it's either difficult to make it clear

the value that we're providing because sometimes it can be a little bit soft you know sometimes like the value provide is measured in like hours saved right right and it can also be difficult at times to this hasn't been the case so far at NZXT but sometimes it can be like hard to help people they'll come ask you for things

and then you'll provide it for them but then they won't use it and then it's like they keep bugging you about stuff. It's like, well, I've solved this for you already. And so, yeah, so that can be a bit difficult sometimes. Like, when you're, when you're in a service role, a service based role, like, you're, the client that you're working for may not be, is not an external client. It's an internal client. But like clients are still clients. People are still people and service is still service. Right. Okay. So I got one more, well, I got some other questions for you. But before we do that,

can you disconnect from Discord, uh, uh, the channel that reconnect. We're having some issues with the quality right now. Yeah, sure. They're back. Yep. The worst. Just a minute, folks. We'll be right back. As you all know, we do record this podcast live. And such as the nature of a live recording, you're bound to have some issues with quality. But don't worry, because we do record this. And you will have the opportunity to listen to it on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen to your

favorite podcasts. So, you know, don't worry. I think he literally like, okay, no, he's back. How about now? I think, like, maybe, like, he restart his computer. How about now? Oh, perfect. Oh, my God, sounds amazing. Okay.

Should have you do that a while ago. All he did was take off his scarf. I had some tea, man. I had the tea. Just clear things right now. Oh, the scarf was muffling the microphone. That's right. Yeah.

All right. Next question. Do you have any special shout-outs for anybody in the company who's been, like, really been helping you out so far special shoutouts are people in the company i think shout out to the data science team of arroon malick and uh and also extra credit goes to snow as well i've been like asking a lot of noob questions uh around like data building dashboards and stuff like that and like they're always happy to to field those questions without making me feel dumb um but also like just like shout out

to the marketing org in general because as i mentioned previously if people aren't willing to work with you, then it makes your life very difficult. But so far at NZXT, everybody's been very willing to work together and learn and do and try new things. And so, like, that's just made my life a lot easier. Oh, yeah. Like, when I heard you were coming in and I kind of had a basic idea of what, like, you were here to do, it was like, okay, you know, it was like, how can I utilize Mike's big brain 500 IQ to help me do my job better, you know? And it was, it was, you know, it didn't end up working the way that I wanted to, but at least like, you know, we were able to go to

the exercise and kind of figure out, you know, what, you know, like what we could do and work together, right? And do things for the company. We'll still have opportunities. Don't worry. Ooh, really? Plenty of promise. Still to be done. Yes. All right. Cool. I'm going to hold you to that. For sure. Okay. Next question. What is your favorite NZXT product? New or old? Favorite NZXT product? That's currently, that's currently out. No leaking companies. secrets. Yeah, sure. Well, I guess it would have to be my custom 510 case that I got as my anniversary PC from Discord. Oh, nice. That's slick black with the Discord logo on the front and side, and very slick. You should show us pictures and posted on the podcast channel. I'll check it out.

Though, I guess if I do that, I'll have to figure out how to do cable management because the back end of my desk is a Rance Nest, but maybe it's better that I expose that and get roasted so I can figure out how to fix it. Okay. What is your least favorite NXT product? And be honest, because Johnny does listen. The least favorite NZXT product. I think for a while it was Cam.

Okay. It's gotten, like, I'm sure, Dennis, if you remember, like three, four weeks ago, I was on a super old version of Cam. Yeah, you were like, post in a picture. I was like, why is mine different from yours? You were like, how do you not have the newest version? Yeah, like, go to go. And so, yeah, for like, for a while it was frustrating to use it.

And I still haven't really like learned how to use it properly. So when I have it on, I don't have it right now because of issues with the Valerant. But when I have it on, like my fans start going bonkers. I don't know what it's doing. and I should probably just like get into it and figure out like all my profiles. But no, that's gotten. You could ask anybody at the company and they'll ask me or Ivan or anyone else and they'll hope you get it set up. It's not that it's hard to use is that like there's just some, you know,

some neat little tips and tricks that you can do to kind of make it go more quiet. Yeah, for sure. I should get on that. Sometimes my computer starts going like a blast for enough. Right. Okay. And what product or sorry, what non-gaming product would you like to see NZT take a crack at using our design language? I would like to see a chair that is more ergonically friendly for tall people like me.

Yeah, you are really tall. How tall are you? Yeah, for those no, Mike is giant. 992 centimeters. Yeah, and so it's hard. Take a second. Just take a second and just think about that. That's a tall boy. I think I'm one of the top, like, tallest people in the office, I think, you know.

Yeah. And I look up to you. You're tall. Yeah. So it's a real struggle, like, finding ergonomically friendly, like, chairs and, you know, desks and things. Like, that's why, like, adjustable desks are so important to me. I feel like, I think they stand up more. the, then you sit, right?

I generally like to stand, yes. And I always feel so dumb because our desks are cranked desks. So every time I want to go up or down, I got to crank the thing. I know it's the worst thing. 1800s. I remember spotting like Mike like every other hour. He's like cranking his desk up or cranking it down. So you can sit or stand and I'm like, we're going to get some like, we got to get some like

automatic, you know, with the buttons desk. This is getting, this is getting annoying. I'm going to have like a real buff right arm. And I remember like, I'm not going to say I'm a mean person, right? But, you know, like me and Ivan would you like to poke fun, you know, it's kind of like our way of like introducing people to the company. And like I remember when Mike was talking about the chair because he had, he has a vertigure chair in the office.

It was the purple N16 one. And he was talking about how it's hard to find a chair when he's tall. I'm like, oh, no, how terrible it must be for you to be a tall person. He's giving him, he's giving him crap. Yeah. It's like, oh, no, I'm so tall. Yeah. Oh, no.

Whoa, is me. Look, I would gladly give like two or three inches away, for sure. It would make flying more comfortable. It would make driving more comfortable. We'll make it happen. It actually just like a lot of spaces aren't designed for people as tall as me. Yeah. All right.

So we have some fun questions for you. Questions that we've just kind of spitballed together that will hopefully let the community know a little bit more about you. Ivan, do you want to kick it off? Yeah, my first question for you, Mike, is, is Mike short for a mycicle? Micycle, it is not. Technically, it's short for Michael, so that's a close guess. All right. That was just a joke.

My serious question is, what the heck took you so long to join this Discord server? We asked you to be on the podcast, and then you're like, sure, I'll join. And then this morning, you're like, I guess let's just join the Discord server. Yeah, that might be a good idea if you're going to be on the podcast. I don't know. I think like, so when I was an account manager at Discord, I almost always had the maximum allowed servers

because I was in all of my streamers and content creator servers. And so for a long time, it was just like a huge mess to navigate things. And like we didn't have server folders until like, what was it, like summer of last year. And so I think I just got maybe a little bit like, worn out by being in Discord servers all the time. So if I don't have to join a new one, I'd rather not. And so I just, like, it just didn't, I wasn't in a rush, I guess.

But, hey, I'm here now. Are you also maxed out on the Twitter accounts you can follow? Because I notice you don't follow NGXT either. I don't. Well, so, okay, so here's the thing. Like, I've got, like, a few different Twitter accounts, right? And, like, the, the one I use for gaming is kind of like, Like I just I mostly just post about like Dota on that account and so I just don't I just don't know like that it like has a lot of oh oh no oh no I broke the rule I broke the rule just going nuts it's okay okay let's keep it going on the server it's it's fun being here we'll see you guys later um I'm I mostly just no dude plus like the look at the the the highway to hail underscore dude

Like the username is so... That's the best username. Oh, man. It's so jank. And the picture makes it awesome, dude. Oh, gosh. Because I do want to talk about my next question for you was actually going to ask you about your guitar prowess. You know, you recently shared a YouTube video with me where you were playing the guitar.

I won't link the video unless you want to, but you're actually a really, you're a really good musician, man. Thank you. I was like super impressed. I was like, this guy can play the guitar and he can sing really well. So I was going to ask you like, what kind of music do you listen to? I know you mentioned earlier that, you know, you go on your body. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah. So, yeah, I've been playing guitar since I was 11. My dad was a guitarist and I think I probably get most of my musical chops from him. and I grew up listening to a lot of like classic rock and stuff like that, but I mostly was playing like American folk and Celtic music. So like bluegrass, not like not country music, but bluegrass. There's a difference, folks. There is.

And that's probably why you're really good at guitar. Well, so I'm a rhythm guitarist is what I am. I play some lead, but not a ton. and so the song that was in the video that you saw was written by one of my old guitar teachers and so I haven't been playing much since I moved to San Francisco so it's been a bit of a drought over the last few years

but recently one of my good friends and another former teacher told me is like, dude like are you playing that guitar and needs to be played? I was like, you know, you're right. So I've been playing again lately and so I've been kind of going back to the folk roots a little bit, and I've been listening to, I'm actually going to link it because it's so good and I think everybody should listen to it.

This, so this dude Jeremy Kittle, who I actually played music with back in high school. And he's like a Celtic fiddler, folk fiddler, and this is his trio, this Celtic trio. and it's really good. We should listen to this in real time and I'll see if I can click like snip it into the podcast. So let's try something fun.

I'm going to count a three and then we're going to listen to like what 30 seconds of it. Okay. Is that enough time? Okay. Yeah, sure. So three, two, one, go. It's loading.

Oh, no, rip. There you go. There we're good. I don't hear anything. Did you unmute it? Unmuted by default. what? The YouTube.

I mean, I clicked it. Oh, are you saying you off to click it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we can't sink it right now because I need to figure about that tech, but. So basically, this is actually pretty cool. So basically you have dead air on the podcast? No, because the plan is that I'm going to in post, stick this in for people who don't listen live.

We'd be like, whoa, this is amazing technology. Dennis is such a great editor of audio. It's like I'm really there live. It's actually really cool. No, I, okay, so I just paused it. I think, like, violin is really, really cool. Or not violin, but fiddle is really cool. And, like, I've always wanted to learn, but I just never really took the opportunity

or, like, had the opportunity to do it. Yeah. Yeah, so I was really fortunate in that the school district that I went to growing up, every person in the school district at fifth grade had to choose between joining orchestra, band, or choir. It was a requirement. And I started off actually playing trumpet for about a year, year and a half, but all my friends were an orchestra. So I switched over to violin.

And that's how I got into bluegrass music because the high school orchestra teacher also organized a folk bluegrass group. And so that's how I got into playing bluegrass. And I actually toured all over the United States and Canada all throughout high school playing as many as 100 shows a year playing like bluegrass and stuff like that. So it was pretty wild. So that's how you got into music. Now I want to know how you got out of our social media Slack channel. Oh, dude. We got questions.

I think that I was never checking it. I just didn't like. Obviously. I was. I just wasn't going in there and like seeing all the, dude, man, I'm so embarrassed right now.

Like, I just wasn't going in there and like seeing all the tweets and stuff like that going on. No, trust me. I wish I could leave that channel too sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's like, dude, trust me, like, um, like you said earlier, like, yeah,

community is a lot of work. And it is. Like, and I can understand why, like, someone wouldn't want to be in a million Slack channels, a million disc, servers, you know, follow a million

Twitter accounts. Like, me and Dennis do it because we have to, so it's like, you don't have to, like, be a part of any of that, dude. We're just, yeah, I mean, we're just missing around with you. I know. Or are you? No, like, one of the, one of the great things that I think I didn't really

expect after, and sort of like post-Discord life after I left the company, you know, like, Discord also used discord for our corporate comms, as you might expect, right? And so again, sort of talking about like blending your personal space and your professional space. There was a lot of that going on. So like when I was no longer using Discord for work, like all of my notifications went away.

And I just had like a three months period before I got involved in my next project where just like I almost never had a single notification. And it was such a peaceful time. And so I've been really careful. with like how I reintroduce technology notifications into my life as I've like joined NZXT and things like that. Just trying to make sure that like I'm getting as much signal as possible and not getting, you know, mixed up and too many other things. All right. Speaking of getting mixed up into other things. Oh, no.

You can ask this one. You got it. Yeah, you could ask him, but yeah, we recently discovered something very interesting about you, Mike. Okay. So we knew that you were like super into tea because you were always sipping on like tea during meetings. That's true. But little did we know that you're a tea blogger. This is also true, yes.

Wow. So tell us more about that. Yeah. So it started as a way to, man. look at this, dude. I've been like mega sleuth, dude. I feel like I'm getting docks right now. NZXT, yeah, that's, dude, I want to do a research. That NZXT, I'm going to do something with that. I'm going to get that on like a t-shirt or something like that. I don't know. Do it. I want it. So I think that, you know, I'm a creative person, you know, musician, stuff like that. And I just like to,

be creative around things that I'm passionate about. And so I got started writing about T as a way to learn more about it and also share my excitement and passion for it. So me going and writing a blog post provides the motivation to like read some articles or you know, some studies. Yes, I've read studies on tea and things like that. And they're actually pretty interesting. And so, yeah, it just sort of like started as a way as like a creative outlet for me, but it's kind of grown, has been growing into something a bit more serious. I started studying Japanese tea ceremony about a year ago. And that's been a pretty eye-opening experience, a very

interesting experience, as I've engaged with a lot of the history and culture around that stuff. And so yeah, it's something that has become like a pretty important aspect of my life. And I really enjoy writing about it. And I'm yeah, welcome anybody. If you have any tea questions or you want tea recommendations or whatever, hit me up. I'm always happy to provide. Yeah. You know, you said I was doxing you, but I was stocking your Instagram.

And I noticed that you were recently a part of some like virtual tea. event. This is true, yes. What was that about? So there was a, you know, in light of coronavirus and all the live events being canceled, you know, every, every summer there's a major T-Expo that historically has happened in Las Vegas. It's now it's moving up to Denver, but like that's getting canceled. Like all events are getting canceled. And so today I learned there were T-expos. Yeah, dude. I shouldn't be surprised. Yeah, I mean, it's like a trade show, right? You know, like all, like various vendors come and and so on and so forth. And so I think that this woman, Elise, who put the event together, like, she wanted to make, to have an excuse for people to come together and just like talk about tea.

And it was a unique opportunity to make it a global event too, because, you know, typically events, you got to be there, right? There's physical requirements. And, and so this was an opportunity to do something really international and really cool. And so we had people joining us from India, Scotland, Japan, of course, America, Canada, things like that. And so it was like a really neat event. And without the requirements to like make money and sort of earn the price of admission, this is a free event. So like it was it was perfectly feasible for us to just like do things out of passion

and interest rather than trying to make it something that's like special and makes money. All right. So to kind of follow up on that question, Why are your teacups so small? Yeah, they're tiny. Yes, the tiny tea, as Jeff says. So the way that I brew tea. Get ready, guys.

We're getting real sweaty now. Pay attention. Yeah, here we go. So real high-quality loose-leaf tea. And there's a difference between, like, Japanese and Chinese-style. of brewing. So I'll start with the Chinese style. There's something called Kung Fu tea and Kung Fu aka like Kung Fu like we hear it. You know Kung Fu we associate with fighting but in Chinese the word Kung Fu actually means done with skill. And so

in that sense Gongfu anything is just means that like this activity is carried out with like skill and mastery. And so Kung Fu Style tea is a way of making tea that focuses on like making the best tea possible. And the way that you do that is by using a very high amount of tea leaf with a relatively low amount of water and you brew it for very short amount of time. And so what this does is it essentially concentrates the tea flavor. and you consume it in these small cups over multiple what we would call steeps or infusions. And so high-quality tea actually has character because the nature of, let me get real sweaty for a second, talk a little about chemistry.

The chemicals and the tea leaves that are water-soluble are extracted at different temperatures and at different times. And so as you brew over a session, you're increasing the amount of time. you may even be increasing the amount of heat that you're using to extract different compounds out of the leaf, and those compounds are what create flavor. So by having small cups, but having a lot of small cups, you actually get to experience tea on sort of an arc or a curve that starts from very bright and fragrant

and obvious clear flavors up front and kind of evolves and turns into something else over time. So that's like the Chinese Kung Fu method of brewing. That was incredibly enlightening. Do you drink coffee? I do not. For most of my life, I actually, like, actively disliked coffee. It may be because when I was a kid, like, my mom would always make coffee first thing in the morning,

and I associated that with having to get up to go to school. And it just, like, it always tasted like ash to me. But then a few years ago, a buddy of mine visited from out of town, he's like, oh, I really want to go to this coffee shop in San Francisco. Will you take me? I was like, yeah, sure, whatever. So we went there and he just got like a straight up pour over black coffee and I tried some of it and I was actually astonished by how good it was. The reason why I haven't started drinking coffee is because it's like rocket fuel to me.

So again, one more dip into some tea science. So tea has a compound called L-theonine. And L-theonine is a compound that is unique to tea. And there's a couple of varieties of mushrooms that have it, but we commonly don't consume those mushrooms. Hold on. I'm going to get some water. Go for it. So L-thian is primarily restricted to T.

And what L-thianine does, it's basically like the Zen chemical, right? So the reason why people say that tea makes you feel calm and like relax and stuff like that is because of L-theonine. and coffee doesn't have that. And so L-thianine actually mitigates the downside effects of caffeine. It binds to the same receptors in your brain that caffeine would normally bind to, and it creates this sort of like time release effect. So when you drink coffee, not only is there more caffeine in most cases in coffee, but you're getting 100% of that caffeine hit immediately.

So that's why as soon as you drink it, it's just like you turn the car on and just press the throttle all the way down to the floor. Yes, sir. But tea doesn't do that. Does wearing fingerless gloves make the tea taste better? No, but it certainly makes you feel a lot cooler. Yeah, you know, like, that's the other thing I noticed about you in our Zoom meetings. You not only drink from the really small teacups, you're also always wearing like these, like, fingersless gloves.

Look, here's the thing about me. Ivan, you've seen me. You know how skinny I am, okay? I don't have a whole lot of insulation to keep me warm. So I need to use things like scarves and gloves and sweaters to pad myself, okay? I wasn't some lonely island after this right now, too. I was wearing fingerless gloves. All right.

So one more question before we get into the. community questions here is I think you said you're playing Valerant but what other games are you currently into? Yeah. So Valerant for sure. Final Fantasy 7 remake. I'm really enjoying it

though I do find the real-time combat to be a bit frustrating at times simply because I don't find the like party AI to be all that great in some situations. And it can be like the combat gets so hectic

because there's particle effects and things going everywhere so it's a little bit hard to make sure that you're managing what everybody's doing with their abilities at any given time. Have you found the H1 sign?

The H1 sign in Final Fantasy? No. Wait, like, well I've seen like H-0-1, but yeah, they call it the H-1 gotcha, gotcha, gosh, yes, I've seen that sign. I actually just beat that boss.

So, so I can't have a fun game. Yeah, I'm, I'm enjoying it a lot, actually. I think I do kind of wish I could try it with like the traditional turn-based JRP combat. Let me say this. I'm not sure that I'm a fan of what they've done with Tifa.

In my mind, in the original game, Tifa was more of like a sporty, like person, like a bit more of a tomboy type. And I feel like they've made her a bit more coquettish, if you. you will in the remake a little bit more I don't know I guess the image I had of her in my head is a little bit different than the way coquettish yeah coquettish behavior a touch away very flirty okay yeah okay I get that flirtatious yes and she was flirtatious in the original game too but I feel like that they've exaggerated some of that Yeah, I think that that probably has to do with like, you know, this character being in like the collective Final Fantasy Zite guys for such a long time.

That's kind of what she's turned into. And maybe she wasn't intended to be that. But now they're kind of like, maybe they're like interpreting her as like what people have been kind of portraying her has after the, you know, the original release of the game. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's plausible. Who knows, right? Who knows?

That is plausible. Okay. So we do got some community questions. And I'm actually going to take to us on Ivan because you did ask all the fun questions. All right, cool. So thank you for that. And we're going to go down the list here. So these are the handpicked by our moderators.

So first question is from Queen Money is marketing operations to do with product marketing. So I guess I'm not 100% sure what you have in mind when you ask whether it has anything to do with product marketing. So operations is involved in all aspects of business. Right. So product marketers may, like on the back end, they may need tools and dashboards and reports, analytics instrumentation, various things like that. On the front end, they may turn to the operations group for things like market research, market sizing, opportunities, things like that.

So in that sense, yes, it does have to do with product marketing. But operations generally, like, operations is like the oil in the engine. So it kind of like goes around a whole bunch of different areas. Okay. Next question. This is from Vigy. Why doesn't NZEXT make blue cases? I think I can answer that one, right?

Yeah. He's could have answered some more questions before. Because no one would buy them. Ninja's case is blue and yellow. It's true. Whatever. Yeah. It's, you know, it's one of those things there's like it's not,

as simple as just like painting a case. It's setting up the infrastructure and setting up the supply chain stuff to make sure that we have blue cases. We have enough of them. We have enough to meet the minute. That's part of it. And then I think I asked answer to that the same question, the last podcast. But basically there's also, there's not a lot of blue computer hardware.

You know, like we make cases mostly white and black because most computer hardware is white and black. a couple, maybe like, you know, a decade ago, even five years ago, there was a lot of red, orange, green, there was a lot more colorful PC hardware, so we did make more colorful PC cases. Has the community seen the picture of the yellow case? The original Johnny design? Oh, yeah, the original Guardian. The Guardian.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, original, exactly. Great example. Our first case ever was yellow and purple. It looked like a weird optimist prime. Yeah. But the other thing, too, as our design language gets more refined through the years, like we really, you know, want to stick to a certain aesthetic.

And that aesthetic is primarily, you know, simple white and black cases. So, you know, that's not to say we won't make a blue case ever again. But for right now, I don't think there's any plan to do so. Right, but you never know, right? If enough people ask and we see the demand, you know, we'll do anything, right? Anything is possible. Cruel-Angel's thesis. Question for Mike.

What had been the hardest moment for your... Okay, so what was the hardest time you had so far working at NST? That's hardest time working so far at NST. Why was it beating Ivan? I think probably... Why was it beating Ivan? I think it's just been like wrapping my head around everything that's going on. Because NZT is like a shockingly large and complicated company, actually.

You know, we have international operations operating in all these different markets. And so there's like what's happening at home in HQ and what's happening globally and just trying to wrap my head around. Also like a lot of new terminology that I'm not familiar with, not having been experienced with hardware and stuff like that. And so, yeah, it's just been like it was kind of like drinking from the fire hose for the first couple weeks. but fortunately that's calmed down a little bit not a whole lot it's a little bit it's a little bit um dragon tamer wants to know question for mike what was your favorite part of working at discord oh man I think my favorite part of working at discord was like doing something really feeling like you're doing something

really cool with a really great group of people um you know like I said it was a very small group when I first got started. Like we all knew each other. We would hang out together after work and play games together, various things like that. And so it just felt kind of like, it just really felt like we're all in this together. And that continued, even through the point where like we were a really big company. Right. Everybody who was there for the most part was very passionate about like Discord as a product

and what Discord was trying to accomplish. So just like being surrounded by really awesome people. who are really good at what they do, working on a really cool product. All right. Nomad wants to know. Question for Mike. How hard was it working for Discord?

Or disco-ed. It was very hard. Like I said previously, the expectations were high. It wasn't so much that, like, the bosses were tough, although they were. Like, that they were placing impossible expectations on us. It was that, like, when you get,

talented and capable people together, they all challenge each other to be better just by like being with one another. You don't want to be the person who's dragging the team down. You don't want to be the one who like didn't do the hustle and now we can't ship that thing on time or we can't take advantage of a certain opportunity.

So this also came from like the passion for the product and the mission. Is that like that's something that Discord actively hired for, especially early days. because that passion is what drove people to really try to go to the next level with things. So in that sense, like, it was very fulfilling, but it was also very, very difficult. Right. I mean, yeah, it definitely makes sense if you know, if you want to do well, you're going to work hard, right?

Like if you don't care, you'll just phone it in and, you know, nothing will ever really get done. Yeah. Yeah, nobody was there to just collect a paycheck. Hopefully not. Dragon Tamer also wants to know. Mike, what was your favorite place to work at? I'm assuming that would have been probably Discord. Yeah, definitely Discord.

For sure. And hopefully NZXT will be right up there too. So far, so good. All right. Vigy wants to know, when will the audio line get released? Soon, TM, as you know, there are delays all over the industry. I'm sorry? When it's ready.

Yeah, pretty much, yeah, when it's ready, you know. Everybody is experiencing delays with everything be patient and you'll know when we know pretty much i mean i'm wearing the headset right now so technically i mean i have too oh oh me too um decon one-two-six wants to know what features did you see implemented in discord or sorry what features did you want to see implemented in discord before you left so the the big one was server folders which they've since um built out The other one that I still bug people about on a semi-regular basis is stickers, or like basically a better system for managing emojis.

Oh yeah, no, it's definitely not easy. Like I have like five emoji servers. Right? Like how ridiculous is that, you know? That we have to join servers so that you can get access to different things. Like it just seems like a no-brainer to me that Discord should have a better system for managing this type of user content. I mean, just like, look at, you know, line and we chat.

Like, they all have it figured out. I don't understand why we shouldn't do the same. But there, that's my soapbox rant. The thing that the, probably the only, I don't mind the emoji stuff. The only thing that really bothers me about Discord is the markdown text. Oh, yeah. I guess you probably deal with that a lot, right? Yeah.

So I just wish we can do it kind of like Slack. You know, you have that formatting toolbar. I think that would be a lot easier. But I'm sure if Discord did that, everyone on Discord would be like, this is like, this is so lame. Yeah, who wants this? Like, can't you figure out mark down your nub? It's like, yeah, but just one more thing. Yeah.

I would like a bigger window for editing text because you can't do a server announcement in like two lines. There's no way. Yeah, that's true. And then things don't transfer over when you can copy and paste. Welcome to the Discord complaint center. The hotline is open. Please call in with your queries. Okay.

Nick Zero, I think is Nikulai wants to know. How does NZXT turn feedback on products or software into actual improvements to those products or services? How does NZXT determine when they should create a new product? That's a good question. That's a great question. Probably a question more for the product team, but I know Ivan probably has an answer for that. I have an answer for everything. So the way we handle feedback is we do take it very seriously.

You know, primarily Dennis now, but, you know, when someone asks us anything on social media or complains about anything or recommends anything, you know, we let the teams know. So if someone's saying, you guys should do this with Cam, you guys should do this with this case, et cetera, we let all those teams know. this is what the community is saying. When it comes to what do we work on, it's really up to the product manager, and every product is a different product manager, and they have their own priorities. So I'll just use CAM as an example,

because that's probably the one product we have that gets the most suggestion. Feedback. Yeah, feedback and suggestions. So a lot of times people will say, well, I wish CAM was able to go, go full screen, which is something, that's probably my

number one thing on the list, honestly, is I wish Cam was screen. But you know, when I tell that to the product manager for Cam, who's Jeff, who's also been on the podcast, you know, for him, you know, he has it on his to-do list, but at the same time,

he has to figure out how to fix that Valorant bug that just came out, right? Or he has to figure out, okay, well, this hardware is not being detected with Cam, how do I fix that? So he had to prioritize a lot of different things. And does not to say that, you know, your suggestion is not like high priority. It's just that there's a lot to do with everything. So eventually, I feel like we'll get to everything. It's just

it takes time. That's, that's pretty much the answer that I was going to give, but not so eloquently. Magdemosity wants to know, how long would you spend on programming when feature? How many people will work on it at a time. I believe that's for you, Mike, but I don't think you coded at Discordored. No, I did not, but generally speaking, like, engineering was the largest team at Discord. Obviously, it's a software company.

And the way that features worked at Discord, then, and I'm probably still now, I'm sure. It's obviously, like, we would have a roadmap of things that we wanted to build, blended with things that the community was asking us for. And essentially, like, the question that we always, asked ourselves is, like, what are the features or improvements we can build that will affect

the largest possible number of users of our product? So, for example, like, when I worked with streamers a lot, they would ask me for giveaway functionality. They would ask me for things like calendars and the servers. And I would always, you know, push for that stuff internally. But the answer I'd always get is like, well, you know, like, streamers are a 1% use case. The 95, 98% of people who on the platform aren't going to be interested in those features. And so, like, the main user of Discord is actually small groups of friends, usually about five or ten people who use Discord to stay in touch with each other and play games together. And so, like, that was the constant North Star that we always look to and we were thinking

about what features should we build. And so how are we going to make stuff that's going to help as many people as possible in that regard? I did go to conventions, by the way. When I was an account manager, I spent a lot of time going to conventions because that's where I would go meet my partners. But as I moved away from that, I stopped going to events. Yeah, events can be incredibly taxing. They can.

To be honest, I always enjoyed them. I grew up looking at events like E3 and thinking, like, man, will I ever get a chance to go to something like that? And I just never... Look at me now, right? Like, it just never seemed like it was a possibility for me. And so I was kind of like a kid in a candy store at these events. I loved going around and seeing all the displays, what games are being shown, especially in the indie sections.

And like, you know, is there some cool early preview of the next AAA I can get my hands on? And I liked meeting people, my partners, Discord fans. And so I personally, now I'm an extrovert. So I always enjoyed going to events. But they are very, very tiring. Yeah, right. It's fun to go when you don't have to work there. Yeah, that's that doesn't work into, right?

Like, if you're there to go to talk to people and, like, have a schedule to do stuff, it's definitely not as fun. Like, I go to Evo. Well, I would go to Evo every year for, you know, for my, you know, the finding game tournament. And, you know, I go just to hang out and play games and chill with the homies and, you know, shoot craps and whatever else. Way more fun than when I worked, when I used to work finding game events and I would have to be there, like, as production, right?

Yeah. I'm going to do a job. And I can't just walk off and like, oh, hey, I'm like, go check out this thing over here. Yeah, working the Discord booth was really, was very demanding. You're like there at 8 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock at night

or whatever the event hours are. As the like partnerships guy, like so I was the one who fielded a lot of questions about our partner program. And so content creators were always coming to me and being like, oh, well, how do I get in? What are the requirements? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so I was just like constantly meeting you know, young content creators and stuff like that and giving them advice on that kind of stuff. And so you talk all day and then go out at night and like, you know, hang out at night and so on and so forth. So that was very, very exhausting. All right. DeCon also wants to know what kind of things the Discord do

to be profitable. Yeah. So basically Discord Nitro, which so here's here's some discord lore I don't know that this has ever been really talked about sort of like the the genesis of Discord Nitro

You heard it here first folks And it's not it's not like anything ND8 I think so I don't think I should get in trouble for sharing this But it was after Pax West 2016 I think it was Must have been 2016

We were all In the car going to the airport and the CEO and CTO started talking about how they had this idea for like a Discord program that would give

some like sort of nice to have fun perks or whatever and it started as a joke as things often do and then like within a week or two it was like no we're making this and so that's what turned into Discord Nitro you know the original plan for Discord

was always to make you know, our billion dollars off of a video game store, you know, digital game sales and things like that. Sure. Right. But, you know, again, as discussed previously, that did not go according to plan. Right. So, yeah, Discord's monetization has always been and is still Discord Nitro. You know, they don't sell user data, whatever you read on the internet.

You know, they don't sell data or anything like that. The only way Discord makes money is via Nitro. I've always found it funny that people will complain on like Twitter or Facebook about people stealing their info like this program of that program stealing their info. I'm like, dude, you're on Facebook. Like that's literally what their business model is. It's to sell your data and advertise and it's like, come on, dude. I'm going to send a strongly worded email with my Gmail account.

That's right. That's right. Actually, funny, funny story. Cam started as a joke too. Oh, did it? Yeah. Some say it still is. Nice.

I'm saying it still. I hope you're not listening. I love chemistry. I use it all the time. I use it every day. I am always showing off screenshots of my game time and cam. That's tracking dying light in battle right now. So, yay.

Okay. Next question is, there's a lot of these coding questions. You have a lot of nerds here in the chat. What's the Discord code like from Spoopee? Oh, man. So I used to actually have an answer, like the right answer for what our code stack was. But like Discord's desktop app is is an electron application. The back end of

Discord is built in a right combination of like C++ or sorry C Sharp I think it was. Python and like Arlang. So that's that's about all I. That's about as much as I know. Like I said, I'm not a technical person. I think I just like asked the CTO one time so I could answer these questions. But it's about as much as I know. He's just a T guy. Just a T guy, man. Yeah, he just likes T. And then I guess a follow-up question, how many program languages did you use for Discord? I think it's a lot of one.

So I know Python, and I did write some Python scripts. Oh, really? Yeah, to do, like, various things, the Twitch API or the YouTube API for research purposes and so on and so forth. Also, like, data cleaning and, like, automation tasks. But I'm not anywhere near a professional with any of that stuff.

That's like another like hobby project that I picked up. All right. All right. Mushu beef, aka Alex from the product team, wants to know. What's your favorite libation? My favorite libation of the adult variety is probably bourbon. And I also like sake quite a lot. Oh, okay.

Okay. Okay, not bad. I'm aover-sojoo kind of person, to be honest. So manly. Mm. I know. Now I imagine Mike sitting on his balcony, like, sipping bourbon and smoking a cigar. Wait, wait.

I'm going to blow your guys' mind. So, Ivan, if you said you were stalking my Instagram, you may or may not have seen the picture I posted the other day of a mixed, roasted green tea and bourbon whiskey cocktail that I made. I'll find it right now. Lord. It's actually funny that you're mentioning the tea and whiskey, right? It was tea and whiskey.

Yeah, because that's like two things that like I just in my mind don't think you could ever mix. Right. And I went, yeah, right, I went to this really nice restaurant in Tijuana like last year, I believe. And it was like it was supposedly like a Michelin Star restaurant or something. And they mixed, what was it mixed? They mixed hamaika and whiskey. and Hamika is basically a hibiscus tea with like a bunch of sugar in it, right?

But like when you drink it was like as a Hispanic person, it's just, you know, it's like a refreshing drink. It's basically like an iced tea, right? And the fact that they mix those two things felt so wrong to me. I'm like, you're not allowed to put alcohol in this. I drink it as a little kid. What's wrong with you people? It's going to break my brain for a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. No, there's a whole, like a lot of people are doing really interesting and cool stuff with like tea mixology right now. And I actually, so here's one that blew my mind. is I just learned that apparently you can make like a concentrated tea syrup using the sous vide method. And that's just like I'm like dying to learn more about that. Well, maybe you can start your own tea podcast and let us know about it.

Maybe I will. I have posted some quote unquote podcast episodes before. Yeah, it's it's you had to keep up with it. you know, a lot of podcasts don't last very long for a good amount of reasons. Yeah, I mean, podcasts last six episodes. Yeah, I think I did like two or three. Yep. Not so much because I wanted to like make it a regular thing,

but because I just, I feel like some media does better in audio. Some media does better in videos, some does better in text, so on and so forth. And so, like, there are times when I just want to, like, make something in audio. but I have yet to commit to actually doing a real podcast. Right, right. Well, if you need help, don't call me, I'm way too big of that. Call somebody else.

Okay, Invictus wants to know, what is your dream gaming setup and would you go aim to your intel? Dream gaming setup. Man, that is a great question. So, I'm not much of like a big performance nerd. You know, like my main game is Dota And so I don't need to have like the top of the line

Machine for that And basically like I like Dota and MMOs So you don't need to have the absolute like most cutting edge Technology for that But I really do like the new H1 And I think what I might do When I do move down to Los Angeles I get a two bedroom apartment

I might thank you Ivan for that what I might do is like try to get an H1 box built as like a dedicated Steam big picture machine so that I could play you know like stream games onto my my TV you can buy a steam link right like they'll sell those yeah I mean so I have one two of them I have one yeah I'm two but that's beside the point Dennis we're talking we're talking about the we're talking about dream setups here okay gotcha gotcha my bad my bad I bought this dream setup to streamer H1. Yeah.

I would say my dream setup really just to be having like a wider desk and just like more management for all the stuff I have on my desk. So I can mess with like more VR. Because right now the VR setup I have is pretty janky. And it's like there's boxes on my bed. And then one of the sensors is on my desk so that I have a wider playing space. Because my computer is like it, I can't really explain the setup right now, but it's not optimal for VR.

I can explain your setup. Go for it. Your room looks like a Spencer's gift shop. In the shopping mall. You have like these stars. All right, how many swords do you have on the wall? I have at least three swords. One is Frostmorn from World Warcraft, right?

The other one is Riddix, you know, like Vin Diesel's Riddix. knife blade things and I have scorpions chain on the wall from Mortal Kombat Exactly, Spencer's gift shop Not a single katana, I'm disappointed Sorry, I don't use Superior Nipanese steel

Fold the 1000 times My dream setup is just to have a mouse That doesn't squeak like an actual mouse All right, none of that wants to know Mike, did you ever have an idea for Discord that wasn't used besides the emoji idea I think you really kind of... Yeah, was there anything else?

Was there anything else? No, I think that was the big one. I think that was the big one. I generally always wanted to see more out of Nitro. And that's happening now, but it took a little while. For sure, for sure. Invictus also wants to know, if there was a prosthetic made for gaming and PC building,

how would NXT approach a solution? I'm not... Wow, a prosthetic made for PC building and gaming? I'm not quite sure what he's asking that. Maybe we can clarify in the chat. Let's go on the next question while he does that. Sunlight Gray wants to know, did you ever get into heated arguments

with other Discord employees? I'm assuming while you were working there. No, no, I never got into a heated argument. I mean, I wouldn't even go as far as saying that I like got into a disagreement. I mean, there were definitely differences of opinion. Right. But the nice thing about working at a place like Discord and also like in ZXT is that like you can have differences of opinion and like people don't take that seriously.

They don't take it personally, I mean. So like you can have a conversation about things and say, well, like this is how I feel and this is how you feel. And then together we just like find a solution. But sure. Like, I'd be lying if I said there weren't times where I got frustrated, or there were times where I felt like I kind of like had the right of it and wasn't really listened to, but like, a lot of that's just ego. And you got to put that stuff away, you know, like, it's not, it's not about you being right.

It's about what's doing best for, what's best for the company. The literal definition of discord is disagreement. I know. I know. Yeah. All right. Dragon Tamer wants to know. Mike, what's your favorite tea?

Oh, man. That's just like, okay. And why is it brisk? Okay, so first of all, brisk is a brand. And second of all, you could hardly even call it tea. Oh, actually, we have a NZXT's long lost son who's in the server. He's not in the podcast right now, but he visited us last year and he told me, I'm going to bring you guys a gift from Canada because he lives in Canada.

because he lives in Canada. It's a gift that you can only get here and it's one of my favorite things. So he ends up bringing us a can of brisk iced tea. He says that, he says it's special Canadian ice tea that they don't sell anywhere else and that even he and his dad traveled far and wide across the state lines to see if they could find

the same type of tasting brisk iced tea. And according to him, it doesn't exist. So it is special Canadian. ice tea. So you may want to give it a try. You may want to give it a try. I'll take that under serious consideration. So as for my favorite tea,

it's a coin flip between roasted Chinese Oolong, known as Cliff Tea, comes from the Fujim province, or matcha. Okay. I very much dislike macha. It tastes like grass to me.

I'm not a fan of it. But I know a lot of people like it. Feature not a bug. All right. Darky wants to know. Opinions on bubble tea or boba. So I love milk tea. I generally don't get boba because for whatever it is about like the tapioca seems

upset my stomach. I love milk tea. So the real legit places, will have really good grass jelly or almond jelly and that's the stuff that I'll get as toppings in my drink if they have it. It can't be from a can because it tastes like crap. It's got to be made from scratch after place. Then it's really good.

I like when people get passionate about things that like really have no real meaning. I know. Because it's like it's such a human thing to do to like care so much about something that really has like very little consequence. But it's like if you get it from a can, it's crap. I'm like, yeah, you're right, dude. Yeah, man. It's got to be that good stuff. In the cosmic sense, whether or not your grass jelly comes from a can literally is meaningless.

But I care about it, yes. But it hits different and that's what matters, right? Preach it. Okay. Find a question from the community. Thanks for asking guys. CCAT, the SFF guy who does not own an SFF computer, small phone factor PC. Which restaurant has the best sweet tea?

Oh, man. So I lived in North Carolina for a short bit, and there was, I don't even remember the name of the place now, but in Kerry, North Carolina, there was a spot on the main drag there that had a pretty good sweet tea. But I'm generally not a big sweet tea drinker just because there's so much sugar in it. And when you drink good quality tea, it can be very sweet without having to add anything to it. Okay, final question, if I wanted to just buy like a regular off-the-shelf tea brand that you would recommend, and then I don't have to go through the process of like, you know, finding the best province to find my tea. What would you recommend?

Probably Mighty Leaf. Mighty Leaf. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, cool. Thank you for that, Mike. Sure. Appreciate it. I feel like I'm way more informed than it was before. I kind of won like a second episode where we just talk about T's and stuff like that. I'm game. I feel like there's so much more that we can go into the yeah, regarding the stuff. Hey, you know where to find me if you want.

Definitely, definitely. Okay, so time for the community roundup. This is stuff that Mike doesn't know because he's not in the server or wasn't in. Well, I am now. Before today. So first order business guys. Pucci Cup, the Pucci Cup is currently continuing. So, you know, we are changing the secret channel where you can earn passive coins by chatting every so often.

So keeping out for that. You know, you can definitely figure it out if you look at the coin feed. We're still doing karaoke nights and game nights. Actually, I forgot to add this spot to. There go. Is there anything else, Ivan, Pucci Cup related? You know, we're still giving coins for a winner of setup of the week and wallpaper of the week. So I'll submit those.

Not nothing. Just Poochips continue and just want to remind people that, you know, we're awarding cup coins. We're just participating more on the server. So submit your setup, submit your wallpapers, participate in those game nights, karaoke nights, etc. Ask questions on the podcast, all that stuff. Yep. And we will also, you know, we're, I know Amanda and the mod team are currently working on other cool things that we can do in the server that, you know, should be fun and hopefully easy to get some coins. And if you have any ideas, feel free to shoot them at the moderators and they'll pass them along so we can maybe implement some of those cool ideas.

The other cool announcement that I don't know why I forgot the note down here, but I did now. We have two brand new moderators as of yesterday, and that is Kiyo and Kocksu. So congratulations to them, you know, for passing the rigorous moderator application process. And I don't know if we've officially announced mini-cuddle. or Merv either. I believe we did with Merv, but congratulations to them. Also, can't forget about the mods. Thank them very much for working so hard

to keep the server fun and safe. And don't ping them unless you need to. And if you're interested in being a moderator, ping B. I believe we're still looking for you, time zone moderators. So bug B, she'll know. She'll has all the answer with that. Or buggy Manda, she loves being bugged.

Um, second, our third announcement is set up of the week winner this week was Ccat, the SFF guy and his O11 dynamic one, which is not a small form factor PC, which is why I mentioned that earlier, because I feel like if he was going to win set up all the week, he should have done it with a small form factor computer, but you know, what do I know? Uh, wild paper of the week winner is Spoopee. Congratulations. Spooey. I think I hit you up in your DMs for your prize. Thank you very much for that. We also launched our latest design contest, design contest number five. Please be very aware of the rules. We, you know, as you guys know, we had some issues last time. So make sure that whatever you're submitting is either NZXT art like Pucci and stuff like that because we don't care because we own Pucci or is 100% original content because we do,

because if you do win, we will be making stickers and we might use them for, you know, promotional purposes to promote the club not making money off of it you know we don't make money off the discord believe it or not we also don't want to get sued yeah that too you know uh we have a really good relationship with discord and we don't want them we don't want them to get angry over our use of wampus i'm definitely not a mole yeah unless you know unless like if it comes down to that which side would you choose discord or nzxte well i guess i i can't really say it for sure now can i keep in my eye on you. Another important announcement as well is folding at home.

So we recently posted a blog to the NZXT blog, blog. Blog.n.com about our folding at home team. Join the folding team. If you don't know what folding at home is or what the purpose of it is, I'm not going to explain it here because it's very big, big brain, sweaty tea ceremony type talk. And I don't have the capacity for that right now. But basically, you just use your system resources to solve,

math problems and hopefully save the world. I think that's a good way of explaining it, right? Let's know, maybe? Okay. That's the dumb way of it. Yeah, it's like big way of thinking about it. And also another announcement as well, for those of you who live in the California area, we are hiring builders.

So believe it or not, there's actually a big demand for gaming. I'm sure you guys have seen a bunch of articles and Twitter threads and things about it. Gaming right now is at like a crazy, crazy high. you know everyone's stuck at home they want to play with their friends and they're buying computers so we actually uh we actually need more computer builders and at n60 warehouses don't apply if you hate webes exactly yeah that is good advice you don't like listening to anime random way yeah so apply at uh n60.c.co slash builder we'll drop the link in chat and we'll put it into the podcast notes as well if you want to apply um there's a much stuff with that uh

Next up is there was a cam update and then I believe some bugs with it. So the biggest issue that I would say people have been bugging about that we don't really know anywhere is that there are some issues with Cam and Valorant in terms of hitting your VoIP. I wasn't aware that was a thing until like I looked it up. But if you are playing Valorant and you also have Cam and your voice, your VoIP isn't working, turn off Cam. We start the game and it should work. We're working on a fix. I think we rolled one out and it didn't 100% fix it. So, you know, bear with us.

It's a brand new game. It's a beta. Half of us didn't even have access to test it. So I think I was actually the first person to point it out in like our cam chat. Like, hey, guys, I found out the cam doesn't work in Valorant. Dude, that was so crazy because I just so happen to drop into that channel because I've been having Pristatakish's in Valorin. And I couldn't figure it out. I was going to go into that channel and see that.

And I was just like, holy crap. Is this the thing? time. It was funny because, like, as you guys know, I actually stand cam really hard. I love it. I'm a sim for cam. I think it's a great program and it does a lot of really good things. And, you know, you can never really like fully, like prepare for like a new game,

especially if it's a beta with like limited access, right? So like when I was looking for, when I was looking for solutions, I had to fix my VoIP issues, I was like, please don't let it be cam. Please don't let it be cam. Something in the back of my mind was like, it's probably going to be a cam. you. And when I saw the thread on Reddit, it's like, hey, guys, by the way, disable your N-Z-D-CAM and your WapeWorks, I was like, oh, no. Like, why? It's just the worst luck possible. But yeah, if you do have any issues with CAM, because I know we did a rollback

and are having people downgraded and then re-upload to our, so downgrade and re-upgrade to the newest version of CAM, contact support. Obviously, that's a big thing. And last order business, I got a new chair and I love it. So I'm wanting to sure that everybody here knew. It's important that it's very important It's in the notes What kind of chair? What kind of chair did you get? It is so it's no longer like a DX Racer

Bucket Seat style chair. It looks more It looks more like a Herman Miller kind of chair It's a Hibata I got it off of Amazon It has a footrest on it Yeah it's a space chair Dang

Yeah it looks really cool But I won't be I actually have a picture of it You really Okay, I'm ready for it. Here we go. What does I even have? It's been in his new chair right there.

Yeah, that's me. It's that. So, yeah, I'm just getting ready to log into Fortnite for the day. You know, and get those three wins. Can you say VoIP one more time, please? VoIP. Yeah, it sounds like one of the three stooges. VoIP, wait, wait, wait, VoIP.

Voice over IP. I'm trying to think that happens. Yeah, that's what we used to call it, like VoIP. Like, me, so like, like, I'm obviously, right, if you guys haven't already heard, an older person on the internet, right? I remember when dial-up was the thing. I had to yell at my mom to, like, get off the phone when I'm playing StarCraft one, right, playing Brood War. So me and my friends, when we, like, want to hop on a voice call, we'll say, hey, man, boy, cool.

And then we just, we'll call each other and just chat. How is it that you're older than me and I'm twice your age? I don't know. It's a very out of effect. Okay. Any other announcements that you may have, Ivan or even Mike, if you want to announce anything? I just wanted to thank Mike for joining it on the podcast and for finally joining the Discord server. It was a pleasure. Yeah, it's been a good time. I'll for sure hang out.

And I'm always happy to talk about tea anytime. We can have a T channel if you like. We did get rid of a bunch of channels recently, so there's definitely some empty slots. Yeah, I mean, if there's interesting in the community for it, for sure, for sure. Yeah, we can turn the food channel to a T channel. Works for me. Yeah. Oh, actually, yeah, Omsky Bombski is the T guy.

Maybe he knows a lot more about tea. I don't know if that's like a joke or what, but yeah, maybe you and him can talk about tea. Okay, so with that, guys, thank you for joining us, Mike. You really appreciate it. Of course. Thanks for having me on. Thank you, everyone. Don't worries.

Anytime, man. And thank you to everybody who tuned in. Remember to tune in next week at 10 a.m. Pacific Center time of the official NZT Discord server and follow at NZXT on all relevant social media. And don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Also, if you be so kind, please leave us a positive review if you like what you hear or even if you don't. And with that, thank you very much, guys. See you next time. Bye.