This Week in Startups - Frost Giant CEO Tim Morten on gaming business models, Esports & more | E1503

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

Today, Jason sits down with Frost Giant CEO Tim Morten to discuss the gaming business models, Esports, and more (1:50). Then, on this week's OK Boomer segment, Producer Rachel speaks with Richard Mensah, co-founder of Salley, about being an international founder (1:09:45). (0:00) Jason and Molly introduce today’s show (1:50) Jason speaks with Production Director & CEO of Frost Giant, Tim Morten (11:15) PolicyGenius - Head to https://www.policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save (12:25) Running a game studio as a startup (21:54) Vanta - Get $1,000 off automating your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (23:09) Business model changes in the gaming industry (30:40) Intercom - Get advanced Intercom features and Early Stage Academy at a 95% discount https://www.intercom.com/early-stage (32:56) Raising money as a gaming startup (1:09:45) Producer Rachel tees up this week’s OK Boomer (1:12:37) OKB: Richard Mensah, Co-Founder of Salley, on being an international founder (1:36:51) Outro + Plugs

Hey, everybody, hey, everybody. We've got an awesome Friday for you. First up, I sit down with Frost Giant Studios CEO, Tim Morton, to talk about the business of online gaming. He worked on one of my favorite games ever, StarCraft 2. And so we go deep into real-time strategy. And it was just an amazing discussion. It got me really interested, Molly,

and potentially investing in video games. Maybe people should make a bubble of their video game pitch and send it to you because that's this very visual pitch that we'd want to see. Be great. That is just, just an absolutely great conversation and it's pretty darling actually to hear Jason like geek out on video games which does not happen. That's very often. And then of course, we have another edition of everybody's favorite OK Boomer with producer Rachel. It's going to be a great show.

Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by PolicyGenius. You could save 50% or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with PolicyGenius. Head to PolicyGenius.com your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC2 report fast. Twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com slash twist. And Intercom.

If you're an early stage high growth startup, you can get access to Intercom's Early Stage Academy today at a 95% discount. Join the program today at bit.l.ly slash early stage 22 or email them at startups at intercom. Okay, everybody, I'm really excited about our next guest. We don't talk too much about video games here on this week in startups because the video game industry has become a bit of a giant conglomerate business, right? You have these giant conglomerates. They make all these big games. The games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. And it's kind of left its startup roots. But our guest today is very much involved in a startup called Frost Giant Studios. He's

the CEO co-founder and the production director. But we had Nolan Bushnell on the show, the founder of Atari back on episode 282. That was 10 years ago in August of 2012. I met when I was in L.A. Really great guy. If you don't know Atari, that was sort of the beginning of not only, you know, the video game industry, Pong, becoming a major cultural force in our lives as humans, but it also was the start of Sequoia Capital. Very famously, Sequoia was the only company that backed Atari. Atari was unbackable, but Sequoia Capital back in its early days, was able to back the crazy concepts that Nolan Bushnell was working on. And it was pretty radical.

I mean, people were smoking pot. They were doing business in hot tubs. It's a pretty crazy story. You can go watch Twist 282. But Atari eventually got a deal with, they were making arcade games. You basically put a quarter in them. And that's how I grew up. Our guest today also had the Atari 2,600, like I did.

And I actually had the first version of the Atari 2600, which came because Sequoia Capital pressured Nolan Bushnell to do a deal with Sears, to make a Sears version of the 2600. And that became one of the great investments of all time for Sequoia. Also put the video game industry on the map. Well, today's guest, Tim Morton, he worked on one of my favorite video games of all time, StarCraft, specifically StarCraft 2, which still has an amazing, amazing group of loyal fans.

as people have moved to first-person shooters, et cetera, the category of real-time strategy, also the extension tower defense, which became very popular on iPads and iPhones, is I think one of the most beloved categories. And also, I believe, the most sophisticated of all genres of video games, that's just me.

But I'm super excited to have him here because he's got a new game coming out. And it's a startup that he's working at, not just a studio working for some big giant EA. So welcome to him. Tim. Thank you so much for having me on. Hey, Tim. So you heard my little preamble there, my introduction of you. You, like myself, got your start in video games with the Atari 2,600.

When did you get your Atari 2,600? And what was your first game? Because I know it came with Tank, but I'm not sure if that was the first game you played. Oh, wow. Yeah. I actually, I had, there was another, pretty sure it was an Atari box, even before 2,600 with breakout on it that had a dial. Yes, the dial pad. It was just breakout. Yeah. I think it had Palm, too.

I think it had those too. But, yeah. So God only knows what year that was, though. It's been a long time. It was probably 77, 78, right? Yeah. And then you got into video games. Your first job was Activision, if my research is correct,

makers of what was the great Raiders or lost are pitfall. That was another seminal cultural touchstone, I guess, in video games. But you went to work, and what did you work on in Activision when you went there? The first thing I worked on there was Return to Zork, which was a graphical version of the text adventure that had been so popular from Infocom back in the day. But yeah, then Mech Warrior 2, which was kind of giant fighting robots, but a lot of fun. memories for sure. Like Transformers or

you know, mecks from Japanese culture. When did you first get exposed to the concept of real-time strategy? And why is this the most elegant and best genre of video games? It's a leading question. I think you and I feel this way. I'm not sure everybody does. I didn't

start my video game experience with real-time strategy. You know, we talked about breakout and pong and pitfall. and all of these simpler games. I remember when I was working at Activision, there was someone there in James Anhalt who I actually work with now at Frost Giant, but he was at Activision with me at that point in time, and he had worked on a real-time strategy game,

and he was showing me a real-time strategy game on his PC, and it just looked so intimidating to me. There are all these buttons on the screen, there are multiple units instead of just the single character that you're used to in most video games. And so I was a little scared to try it, but once I finally got sucked in and understood the strategic aspects of the game,

that it's as much about thinking as it is about reflexes, I just got hooked. It's really fantastic. What game was that? And maybe you could explain to people what the core device of real-time strategy is? That game was an early build, I guess, of Warcraft 2. So Workraft 2 was just launching at the same time that James and I were working together.

And real-time strategy, you collect resources, you use those resources to build a base on a map, use that base to build an army, and then you field that army against your opponent. And your objective is to destroy their base and destroy their army so that you can conquer the map, basically. And if you think about just from the once you have the pieces and the map, that's kind of chess. But if you think about before that, what if chess included you had to build your queens or pawns and you had to upgrade them and, you know, how many pawns should you make versus how many knights you could create? You could see this be changing the game forever. In fact, that would be kind of an interesting real-time strategy diversion if somebody made the real-time version of chess. There were a couple of other moments along this trajectory, the ones I remember from the 90s when we started having land parties, because this is when games became very social, I believe, was real-time strategy.

Age of Empires, Command and Conquer were the next two, I remember, and I don't have the perfect history of this, but I remember the first land parties, even before people were really using the internet, you would just bring an Ethernet hub, you'd connect four computers, people would bring their rigs, and we would just play Command and Conquer. overnight, basically. Maybe you could speak to when these, you know, the impact of socialization and networking and teams had on these. Absolutely. Yeah. I guess we're in roughly 1995 at this point where

Command and Conquer 1 and Warcraft 2 came out. And Blizzard had this pretty cool feature with their games because we were on CD-ROM by this point in time. That if you took the CD, you could play with friends who hadn't even bought the game yet in a network match.

And they just supported that by default out of the box. So I think some of my first experiences were playing network games with friends after work. And that social aspect is something that we've come to take for granted in games today. It's just built into all games. But yeah, this was a moment in time where that social aspect was just coming into being. And in working at that period, 95, 2000, 2005 era in video games, there was, it had moved from being startup culture, I think, to becoming larger companies. And then larger companies, I believe, would then hire studios to build games for them. Maybe you could explain how the industry sort of changed from the startup culture of the early 90s to maybe the studio structure, I think, as a neophyte in terms of how this industry has grown in the 2000s. Yeah, that's an accurate description.

There has always been a sense in the video game industry of platform holders. And in the simplest example, that would just be, you know, Apple has a platform, Microsoft has a platform, but also these days, Nintendo, Sony, Microsofts have console platforms as well. So there's that sense of first parties who control hardware, but also then produce a certain amount of software for that hardware. And then third-party publishers like Activision Electronic Arts or today Ubisoft take two, who are these bigger companies who, as you referenced, do often hire outside companies to develop for them, but then they'll also have some internally owned studios that produce software. And then last but not least are the independent studios who traditionally were published by those bigger companies, either first party or third party. These days, it's now possible to also self-publish. Trust me, getting life insurance can give you a lot of peace of mind.

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When you were at Activision and then eventually, I think you went on to Blizzard, but you also ran your own studio at some point as a startup before Frost Giant, which we'll get it to in a moment with all the exciting new stuff you have coming. What was that experience life? Because it always seemed to me that that was a somewhere between a tough and a horrible business to run because you were at basically the mercy of giant studios who could change their minds on a whim. And you were basically doing work for hire work. You don't own the IP. You're building stuff for them. and you're kind of just on a treadmill, if you will. So maybe you could tell me your experience as a startup the first time around.

That's a great question. I went into that startup very naively, having only worked at Activision, a big publisher prior to that, and I think didn't understand at that point exactly how much leverage publishers had over developers who were working for them. And that startup ran for a dozen years, so it wasn't, you know, an overnight learning experience. There definitely was time invested. But it was during that whole time, a struggle to keep the company cash flow positive that relied on work for hire deals from bigger publishers that generally on a month to month basis have milestones and they get to exert a lot of editorial control over those milestones, but also a lot of financial control on

the company by deciding to pay or withhold payment for milestones. So it's a very insecure business model for Game Studios. And really, no upside. I mean, you don't own the IP. It's not like you can hit a home run. So you're essentially a startup that doesn't get the benefit of the outsized return that a startup can get. So you're independent, but you're on this very short leash it just sounds like an incredibly anxiety-producing proposition. Definitely anxiety-producing. There are success stories, though. I think, you know, the lure that keeps you going is the hope that you can create original intellectual property,

your own game that gets picked up by a publisher, and certainly their examples of developers during that period. Bungy, for example, was one who were able to successfully create original intellectual intellectual property and go big. There were also examples of working on license products that sold very well and generated royalty. So kind of like Vegas, where everybody knows a winner, but most of the companies in the space are just struggling to put in the next quarter. So at some point, you wind up going to Blizzard, which owns StarCraft 2.

StarCraft 2 was the business model was you buy the product, right? you spend $50, $60, $6,000 to buy StarCraft, you can play it. But they decided to shift it to free to play. I think that was under your direction and upselling people on all kinds of cosmetic stuff and chess and other in-game stuff. Talk to me a little bit about StarCraft to the extent you can, because obviously it's not your company, but it seemed to me being a StarCraft player, Protos, protos for a long time.

I just love playing that. even as an adult into my 40s, I would just, you know, if I want to blow off a little steam, just play some heads up matches, play some 2V2, whatever.

The game didn't change all that much, but still super compelling. And then I would try other games, and I would just always come back to StarCraft 2 or some Age of Empires, old title I had on my computer, which looked terrible. They just came out with Age of Empires 4,

and they redid it, and it's freaking fantastic. Alexis O'Hanian, you know, the Reddit co-founder, He also plays it. We're supposed to get on some heads-up matches. But it is incredible that these titles have not changed dramatically,

but still have this incredible base of loyal users. Maybe you can speak to why that is. Over the years in video games, there are some genres that have just remained seminal. And first-person shooters would certainly be in their platformer games, often console games. But I think it's fair to say that real-time strategy is one of those genres. that remains seminal. There's something so fundamental about the mechanics of real-time strategy that it inspires great passion, certainly in me as a player, but also as a developer.

And there's an audience of people who have just stuck with it over the years. Alexis actually came to speak at Blizzard at one point as well. So I know he's an avid gamer. Yeah, for sure. There are tens of millions of people playing these type of games, millions of people playing real-time strategy every day? What does the market research say? Because you must have done some research to then go start Frost Giant and we'll talk about your new game that you just announced in a moment. Size of market, it's tough because it's fragmented between different games. Command and Conquer,

Age of Empires and Blizzard's got Warcraft and Starcraft RTSs. Blizzard certainly had tens of millions of RTS players that I believe Microsoft also does with Age Vampires franchise. Command and Conquer, likewise, how much Venn diagram overlap there is between all of those players, hard to say. But what's really fascinating about genres like this is the potential to reach a broader audience. And so you look at other examples. Recently, there was a game called Eldon Ring that took a much more narrow audience from the Dark Souls series and expanded it to a more mainstream audience. Another great example would be Boba as a genre.

which actually came out of real-time strategy, but it was sort of a mod of a real-time strategy game. Explain what that is? Yeah. So, Mova games are team versus team games, and they have a similar camera perspective to real-time strategy. Mova stands for multiplayer online battle arena. Like League of Legends falls into this, I think?

This is exactly the example I was going to. League of Legends, you know, publicly said they hit over 100 million monthly active players. And so this is an example of something that came from a much smaller audience like real-time strategy. Literally, the genre came from real-time strategy and expanded it in a way that reached 100 million monthly active players. So I think a lot of potential exists for genres with passionate fan bases like this to go big. And that's what we're hoping to do. So tell me a little bit about starting your company. and before we get there, StarCraft 2

became incredibly popular in Korea, South Korea, of course, for some reason. I don't know the history of that or why, but I do know I went to Korea 15 years ago to meet with Down and Naver and was doing some business development there, and I went to my hotel and I'm flipping through the channels

and I see StarCraft on TV. And then I flip the channel again, and there's a second StarCard channel, and then I flipped again, there were like three channels of people watching StarCraft, And I think one of them was live and the other ones were replays. Esports seems to have, correct me if I'm wrong, was Starcraft the birth of esports and why does real-time strategy work so well for watching as a person watching this

unfold? Yeah. So real-time strategy played a very important role in the birth of e-sports. And certainly there are other games that also played a role, but Starcraft was a very important part of the formation of e-sports originally. My theory is that being a top-down camera perspective, and I think being visually intuitive, meaning that you see a big army, you kind of understand that's powerful. You see units in that army that are large, shooting, scary weapons.

You don't have to play the game to understand what's going on when you watch a real-time strategy game. Obviously, if you do play the game, there's a lot of nuance. that she appreciated that a casual observer might not. But my wife, who is completely not a gamer, comes to e-sports matches with me and still has a really good time because she can just look at it and intuitively understand what's going on. So I think that's a big part of it.

Korea in particular, and this goes back to StarCraft Brood War, there was something about the game and about the universe that resonated culturally in Korea that was not planned. And, you know, if we could kind of bottle the magic that caused that to happen, of course, it would be amazing to reproduce with another game. But something about Starcraft struck a chord in Korea that, you know, even people who don't play games, because it was on television, are familiar with the characters in Starcrafts and just, you know, come to e-sports matches in huge crowds. There are these shots of Busan e-sports matches where the crowd is just a sea of people. It's incredible to watch. It's really important for founders to understand what SOC2 compliance is.

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I invested in that round. So here is the best part. Vanna's going to give you $1,000 off. I kid you not. They're going to give you $1,000 off at vanta.com slash twist. That's V-A-N-T-A-com slash T-W-I-S-T for $1,000 off your sock, too. And there seems to be coinciding with this was a massive change in the business model. from buy this CD for 60 bucks to just download it and start playing and we'll figure out how to make money off you later.

You'll want to buy a better gun. You'll want to buy some skins. How big of an impact has that had on the gaming industry? There was this phenomenon even in the days of CD-ROM releases where players didn't want the game to just stop being developed when the disc came out. And as developers, certainly when the business model is, get whatever it is, $50, $60 for a disc and then move on to the next one,

your incentive is, as soon as you ship this one, stop working on it and focus on the next $50 or $60 disk that you're going to be able to sell. So it took a while for the industry to understand what players wanted,

which was they found a game they loved. They wanted more content for that game. And so things like downloadable content, DLC started happening where there was a smaller pack of content post-release for a game. And slowly

we moved towards distribution of content through the internet, which meant that people didn't even have to go to a store. Now they could download content updates online. And this opened the door to smaller and smaller more granular pieces of content getting delivered.

And so really, even from the CD days, there was this idea of continuing content, but it's become fundamental. And we now talk about games as a service instead of games as an individual product. Which is essentially what happened in software, right? People said just instead of buying Photoshop for, or Salesforce really was the start of this,

hey, just give us whatever, $100 a month per salesperson, $1,200 a year per salesperson and we'll just keep updating the software. You buy Photoshop, you'd have Photoshop from whatever edition, whatever year. And if you didn't want the new features, you could just use the old version, but you would get FOMO,

your friends would have these new features. You've got to upgrade the disc for 900 bucks. So it's a really considered purchase. You'd have to think, do I want to upgrade or not, and it's going to take time and I've got to learn the new interface. Whereas organically, if you're paying a monthly fee or you're paying for in-app games, games-as-a-service

gas makes much more sense. for everybody involved, because it makes it easier from what you're saying for the studio to justify putting a 10-person or 20-person team on continuing to make new seasons, new challenges, et cetera. That's basically what happened. Yeah, and it was almost an incremental step then at the point where now we've got this catalog of smaller pieces of content to let players a la carte just getting the content that they're interested in playing. So if I'm a campaign player and I'm not interested in multiplayer or vice versa or if cosmetics don't appeal to me. And so for StarCraft 2, that was how we arrived at the moment of saying, all right, we're not going to charge you for the initial

download anymore. In fact, we think it's beneficial if more people can get into the ecosystem for free. And then players can just choose what kind of content appeals to them and buy just that content. And it definitely requires a shift in thinking a shift in the financial model to make sure that it still works. But we were able to make that transition and it seemed to be received well by players. The population doubled basically. Yeah. Oh, wow. So you double the population. You lower the spike of just the spiky revenue when the game comes out. But you have ongoing revenue coming in every month. And I would think that then get you closer to what the customers want because you can

run more experiments as a startup. Hey, we did these new skins. They felt flat on their faces. Oh, we did this new campaign and, oh, people loved it. We should do more campaigns, do less skins, or vice versa. Your development team actually gets some feedback loop that lets them match the customer need to the products you're making. That's right.

Yeah. And that feedback loop is such a beneficial thing for us, is develop. because it brings new ideas that we're able to respond to more quickly. And it also lets us course correct when we've gone down a path that's just not striking the right court. What about subscriptions? Just, you know, we had world, I'm sorry, what was the, wow, world, was it World Warcraft where people pay 15 bucks a month? And like, you get your character, now you're a level, whatever. You kind of have no choice but to keep paying.

Did that model fizzle out because it was too expensive or it felt predatory or had, how, What happened to that one? Because if I could subscribe to Starcraft for five bucks a month, I would do it, or Age of Empires for five bucks a month, I would do it. But I've never bought skins. It doesn't appeal to me or campaigns. I just like to play a heads up match. It feels to me, and so by the way, World Warcraft is still going great and, you know, continues to support subscription model. But it feels like many games have implemented season passes or similar mechanics like that where it's sort of like a subscription.

There's a regular amount that you're paying in exchange for access to a certain amount of regular content from the developers. But it's not quite the same as a subscription in as much as you can still play the game without it. And there are usually ways to a la carte purchase that content if you don't want to pay regularly. Do you look at the monthly fee as something you want to do with Stormgate your new title? Or do you just look at it as upselling people for campaigns and stuff? in the game, or are you going to sell the initial version? I'd love to give you 50 bucks for the initial version. I feel bad not paying, so I want to pay you.

But I, you know, generally the free version is enough for me as a, you know, I'll call myself like a medium caliber player. Well, good. We're trying to take a lot of learnings from our experience on StarCraft 2, which did seem to be well received by players. For StarCraft 2, there are certain content purchases that, you can make straight up, a campaign pack, for example, or a new hero for the cooperative mode. We did have some seasonal events that for StarCraft 2 were called War chests,

where players could pay to participate and unlock content. A portion of the proceeds went to e-sports. So something like that we will consider for Frostgine as well. And when we launch, we'll probably do some kind of bundle offer, for players who are more used to doing premium style purchases. But we're so far away from that. We've got a year till beta. And I should mention anybody interested in signing up for the beta,

can go to Playstormgate.com and register today. But the beta is going to start in about a year. And then a year after that is where we're hoping to land in terms of launching the game. But it's really going to depend on the feedback that we get during that beta period. so we're not setting a fixed lunch date yet. Listen, everybody, stop what you're doing. Intercom has an awesome new product and I need to tell you about it. Basically, it's a connected inbox for your customer support team and it integrates everything.

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What a great idea. So as a startup, you chose to do this as a startup. You raised money from a Korean internet company. Is it Kikau? You've got it. Kaka. Yeah. Kakao. So, obviously, StarCraft being popular in Korea, I'm sure the Koreans are chomping on the bit to have essentially, you know, some new RTS IP.

There hasn't really been new RTS IP, has there? There have been some indie games, but there hasn't been anything really high profile. That's fair. Okay. So you raise over $30 million to do this and you decide to start your own independent company. venture capitalists in the United States are not interested in backing companies like this. It has to be strategics who have an interest in it. Great question. We actually did an initial seed round with a number of game funds and including some U.S. funds. But I think for the big dollar amounts in our series A was a $25 million rounds, typically

those are either strategics or generalist vCs who are starting to get some exposure to games. But, yeah, I think it's fair to say Korea has a love for RTS and a history with RTS that made Kakao a good partner for us. But there are certainly some U.S. companies and European companies involved as well. And it's because it's a hit space business, right? It's hard to bet on one title. So was your pitch to them, hey, we're going to build one title or, hey, Frost Giant's going to have eventually five titles.

And you're going to be buying into a company that will have five different titles over 10 years, etc. How do you pitch that to the investors? We did pitch Frost China on the strength of one title initially, but you're right. There is very much a perception of games being a hit-driven business. And for a long time, that meant that venture capital was reluctant to back game studios. There were some investors, particularly Mitch Lasky at Benchmark, who were making game investments and were realizing some big successes. Mitch was in Riot early. And I think this is me speculating,

but my sense is that VCs have come to think about games as a sector as a portfolio play rather than each company necessarily needing to be its own portfolio play across multiple games. How many people does it take to make like a great game like Starcraft in today's world and how many years does it take, you know, the team? There must be an optimal size team, right? You can't just throw a bunch of people at this because it seems to me like building a magazine or running an orchestra.

It's not just about how much money you throw at it. It's about talent coming together over some period of time in sync because if the orchestra is not in sync, it sounds horrible and your ears bleed, you know, with a magazine, this old art form of, you know, writers, graphic designers and photographers coming together to put something together. It seems to me, or like a movie, you have to get everybody in sync. You can't just throw bodies at it.

So educate us on what it takes in terms of time and team composure to make something extraordinary in this space. Yeah, across games in general, there's such a variety of team sizes. I talked to a team of two that is starting to test their game on. Steam right now, and it's a really cool game. Obviously, the scope is more focused, but, I mean, two people made a pretty solid game. You know, on the other end of the spectrum, you look at some of these games like Red Dead Redemption or Assassin's Creed that involve multiple studios, and I believe in excess of a thousand contributors in some cases to these. Yeah, it's incredible scope. RTS games having been around for a long time, I haven't heard of anybody applying 1,000 people to an RTS game. Really, our team size is around 50 right now between full-time and contract. We'll grow a bit before we launch the game, but we expect to stay under 100 in terms of core development. When you factor in the companies that we work with who are helping us build cinematic

or who will ultimately help us do quality assurance for the game, you know, who contribute important pieces to the overall development, but who don't sit here in the studio with us. Obviously, the numbers do go up, but we'll be in that sort of 50 to 70 range as team size to ship this game. And then how much a time does it take a team of 50 to get the product to launch? Because I found out about you a friend of mine. who's in the music business, who knows I was obsessed with Starcraft and Age of Empires.

Like, you know about Frosh giant? It's like, it's the dudes from Starcraft and they're going to do like this new, you know, real-time strategy. I was like, oh, my God, no. And I literally started following your every move on social media and like, investigating, like, you know, what is this going to be? From start to finish to, you know, to me playing from when you get the money in the bank from your investors, how many months, how many years is the, is the journey?

without knowing exactly when we're going to feel like the game is ready to launch, it's hard to put a precise number on it. But my expectation is that we will spend about four years in development to put a first version out there. And again, games as a service will continue to update and add to it for potentially a decade or more after that. And, you know, for StarCrafts, I wasn't there for the original development, but my understanding is they spent over seven years. But in part because of some interruptions like the team went off to help Diablo 3 along the way and some other things like that. But still, multiple year journey to build something that's really polished and really high quality. So you're in year two or three right now at this moment.

year two yeah year two 50 people you're spending about six seven million dollars a year about half a million dollars a month based on my experience so you're basically talking about if over four years you have to basically spend 25 million dollars to get something like this out the door uh ballpark yeah and i and there are other expenses like creating cinematics localization you know things that you spend on externally uh marketing costs server costs all of these things add up. So add another 5, 10 million. Yeah. Yeah. And so in order to make that work, you have to have, I don't know, hundreds of thousands, a million people participate in the game. If the average user spends 25 a year, 50 a year, I'm coming up with a number here. What does the average work out to you? If you have half the people don't pay, half do pay, you need to get to what kind of numbers to make this successful. In other words, you know, break even to profitable, which would be the first. benchmark for any company to be successful.

You know, in a sustained state, you're probably spending a million a month keeping something like this up and running. So, yeah, a million a month. If you've got 100,000 people paying 10 bucks a month seems completely doable. Yeah, it's interesting how much this has changed on the business front. So obviously in the days where we were selling CDs for 50, 60, now $70, you can take the total amount you spend, divide by what you're selling the CDs for, subtract cost of goods, and you know how many units you need to sell.

today, the way that players spend in games varies incredibly. So the majority of players will spend nothing, even though they're playing the game in a free-to-play game. They're part of the ecosystem, and they're providing benefit in terms of excitement and other players to play against. But it's really a minority percentage of players who will spend anything. Of that minority percentage,

there's another even smaller minority percentage who really get into the game. and who potentially purchase every piece of content that becomes available, or it's their primary hobby. They spend a lot against it. These would be referred to as whales in the system, people who... In mobile games, that's the terminology that they use in PC and core games. I don't know, we sort of find that term pejorative.

But anyhow, because it feels like you're taking advantage of them. A whale in gambling is like a sucker. So it is sort of, yeah. These would be passionate users, like the top 1%. And what do they spend when they, you know, they'll spend a couple hundred bucks a year on a game they love? Potentially, yeah. You know, you look at some games, World of Tanks, as an example.

I don't know their numbers, but it's possible to spend thousands a year in a game like World of Tanks. We don't actually have the same volume of content that a game like that does. So, yeah, the cap for us is much lower. But, yeah, passionate players spend a lot for sure. And is there some feeling of predatoryness for you as somebody who loves these games, loves what they represent in the industry where you think, you know, we don't want to be abusive to the players, but we do want to build a viable business? So what number do you feel comfortable as the CEO and the founder of this company extracting from the top users? Because I have a theory on this, which is, I can't believe that I get, you know, whatever.

it winds up being if I play, you know, three nights a week for two hours each night, six times, 50 weeks, 300 hours, 300 hours for free, 300 hours even for a dollar an hour or 25 cents an hour. I mean, it's an extraordinary value. Video games are the best bang for the buck in the world that I can think of. Yeah, we, it's a great question. And I don't necessarily have a fixed number in mind, but I think there's a philosophy in terms of how we approach this, which is that we never want to frustrate players into spending. We only want them to feel like they're getting value for what they're spending money on.

That's very important to us. And we never want players to pay to win the game. Giving one player an advantage over another player because they spent more doesn't feel good. Is there a term for that? Because that's the thing I hate about mobile games. I play Tower Defense. And I just hate the concept that if I,

don't buy mana and, you know, get addicted to this stuff. I can't get to the next level. And that's where I wind up throwing my iPad against the wall and say, I just don't want to play these anymore. Yeah. Is there a term for that? That nefarious? Pay to win. Pay to win is typically the term. Yeah. It's so gross. I hate pay to win. And it just seems like the iPad, the apps in the app store are the ones that really have made this into a science, especially if you have kids, which is why I subscribe to Apple Arcade, because they don't buy into this, I think largely. They try to strip out that pay-to-win madness.

You know, it seems like early access is a big deal. And when Elon came out with the Roadster, there was a signature series for the first hundred cars. And then when they did the Model S, there was a signature series for the first thousand cars. I am your customer. I am probably going to play the free version, but for me to get early access would be a dream come true.

Now, I can use my influence. I got a podcast. Maybe now we're friends. I could DM you or friendly, hopefully. But I would love to be part of the signature equivalent for Frost Giant, for Stormgate. Is there a way you could just give the first 10,000 people, a number, and we pay you $100 and we get to be part of the beta and talk to you all? That seems like a quick way to bring a million dollars of cash flow in.

We've seen a number of other developers do founders, packs, or calls. collectors editions or other ideas like that. So that's definitely something we'll be thinking about, but it's far enough away our launch that we don't have any specific plans to announce yet there. Okay. All right. Well, that's what I want. You buy into any of this like NFT, in-app, make money to play video games concepts out there,

or do you think that's all just a little silly? I am so focused on delivering entertainment value. And that being the primary reason for people to play our game, that we really have not explored tokens or NFTs. That feels like something else. It's almost a security. It's about investing. And there's nothing wrong with securities or investing, but that's different than providing entertainment value of players. And I think we want our game to be fun.

We want our players to be happy. ultimately those things are our focus rather than trying to create a financial system that people can make money off of, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, it feels like a giant grift, let's be honest. Like people are kind of making crummy games and then layering on top of them this like financial incentive. That's not why video gamers play the game. That's why people play like poker or something or, you know, some other game that has finance

built into it. But it does seem like it would kill the joy of the game. Yeah, I think so many of these economies that are token-based also are susceptible to moving money from some players to other players so that players who are winning are doing so at the expense of people who are losing money, which doesn't feel good. So there's that. There's so much fraud. You know, Axi Infinity got hacked. And there's just no real way to reverse those transactions or provide any sort of security to players. So I think it'll be interesting to see how these technologies evolve and mature,

but right now we're just focused on making a good game. Yeah, and like kids having to go to their parents for thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars to play a game, it just seems morally corrupt to me. Like, it just gets the whole ethos of joy and fun and et cetera. So you are a producer of games as well as being the CEO. and what was, and I assume for Stormgate, your title, you are the producer as well. That is true. Yeah.

What was your inspiration for this game? You look at, you know, Starcraft alien races, outer space, you know, and Age of Empires, obviously, historical, you know, and everything in between elves and dwarves and other games and Lord of the Rings, fantasy. What did you come to with Stormgate as your aesthetic and why? And then in terms of gameplay, let's get into that and what your thoughts are on modern day RTS gameplay. For sure. Frost Giant as a team has a mix of team members who were involved not just in Blizzard's science fiction RTS, Starcraft, but also Blizzard's high fantasy RTS, Warcraft. And so just as a team, we're fans of both settings. And as we were coming up, with the ideas for our new universe, Stormgate, we incorporated both sets of ideas. We incorporated both science fiction and fantasy into a world that is near future Earth.

There is an experiment gone wrong that unleashes horrific aliens onto our planet. And so those aliens bring the fantasy aspect. but being near future Earth, science is advanced to the point that we have mechs, we have all kinds of advanced technology that doesn't exist today. So, yeah, that kind of that melding of both sci-fi and fantasy, both into one world. What was that great series, that movie where they're fighting the bugs? Oh, God, it was such a great cultural. Starship Troopers.

Starship Troopers. I'm getting a little Starship Trooper vibes. I'm in the zone. Yeah, I think that's such a great story. And certainly, I would imagine that story influenced StarCraft to a certain extent, too. Yes. Yeah. People don't remember Starship Troopers.

If you're a young person and you haven't watched this, it really does hit on a lot of very interesting themes around fascism and like going to war for your country and, you know, risking your life for your country. It's got some really great social commentary in it. I watched it recently. I was going to watch it with my kids, but it has aged incredibly well. The same director, I think Paul Verhoven, I think he did Robocop as well. It's just, yeah, it's just such a great film.

What films inspire you and other source material inspire you in terms of your pursuit and video games? Do you have a genre or a series of favorite movies? I am a fan of so many great films, but I would say for this, A lot of the team are Star Wars fans, not surprisingly. We certainly have the Rings fans, the Matrix fans. I mean, there's so many great film series out there that have influenced us as people growing up through the years.

So when you release a game, there were cinematics and there's gameplay. Explain to the audience the difference between those two things, why they're both important. And then, you know, why you chose to release them now with a game coming out a year from now. How does the marketing of a game work in relation to cinematics and gameplay? There are different schools of thought, and this too has evolved as games themselves evolved. But for us, coming out of Blizzard's story and setting are very important to us. We want to create a rich game world that people are excited to be immersed in and to have a story unfold in. So we've put a lot of effort into world building.

And so we launched, or I should say announced Stormgate with a cinematic at the Summer Games Fest on June 9th. That cinematic tells the story of a member of the human resistance who is seeking a relic and who encounters some of these monstrous aliens from the infernal host. And so there's some conflict that ensues there. Gameplay is something that we plan to share when we're further. along. We want some more development time before we show that off. But we did show some clips just to give people an early glimpse of what our world looks like, at least at this stage in development, which is still pre-alpha. But some games, you know, do a much shorter, like, announce that they're coming and then almost instantaneously you can get in and play the game or experience the beta.

we really want to take the community along with us on this journey and have them give us input as we're developing the game. So we elected to announce much earlier at a stage where we're really just world building and developing the technology that we're going to use to deliver the game to players. Yeah, I mean, it does look beautiful. Again, if you're on Twitter, follow Play Stormgate

and we'll show you a clip of that in talk about in terms of RTSs is there some new concepts you have in terms of gameplay or will we as Starcraft fans, Age of Empires fans just intuitively understand what's going on here? Yeah, great question. Going back to the earlier conversation we had around the first time I saw RTS, it can be an intimidating genre. And we want to reduce that intimidation for new players who are coming into the game. But at the same time, it is super important to us that we don't dumb down the genre. So that players of games like Starcraft or Age of Empires or Command and Conquer come into this game and feel like it's delivering everything they expect in terms of high skill and ability to collect resources, build a base, build troops, just all of those core mechanics that you expect. So reconciling those two things is our biggest challenge as developers on this game.

And we talk about it in try to frame it as we're leaving the skill ceiling where it's always been that it's a high skill ceiling for real-time strategy games. But where the floor, like the barrier to entry used to be up here, we're trying to bring the floor down so that it's easier for new players to get in. But all of the depth is still there once they do. A lot of that is about the on-ramp, that first experience that you have getting into the game. But there are also just a lot of usability improvements that we're making to the interface for the game or to the rules for the game to make it more accessible for new players coming in. Yeah, whenever you get one of these games, they do a kind of like a walkthrough where it's like, hey, build your base, okay, now do this. And they send you on a little mission to teach you how to move units around. you do need how to understand how to group units and move them around and the resource collection.

It does take whatever, an hour or two to kind of get your legs under you. It's kind of like golfing, skiing, kiteboarding, any of these really rewarding sports, snowboarding, the first day or two kind of sucks. You're on your ass a lot. You're trying to figure things out. You feel like an idiot. And then all of a sudden, you know, you catch a vibe and you get up on the board, kiteboarding. I don't know if you've ever done that or if you ski or a snowboard, you know,

you go down a mountain without falling and you catch a couple curves and you're like, oh my God, I'm in this for life. Or I guess I would suppose hitting a golf ball that's hadn't happened to me, hitting the green, you know, or hitting a perfect drive, you're all of a sudden like your brain dopamine goes, whoa, this is like a legit pursuit. Yeah, you touched on something in that that I think is really key for us to learn from as well, that so many of these activities that we get into that our deep skill sets, we get brought in through a friend who's already good at the thing.

And so I think in the past, real-time strategy games have been a very solitary experience. We are trying, even from the beginning, like your first experience with the game, to think about ways to enable it to be a social experience and for you to perhaps come in with somebody who's already good at RTS and still have a good time, even though they're more expert than you are.

that guide on the side concept is the key to skiing. If you're going to learn to ski, you need an instructor. And, you know, it's, when I played, I remember Command and Conquer, we set up four computers, you know, it's 8 o'clock at night, and I just watched other people play and they just sportscast. They just said to me, like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, now I'm doing this, here's why I'm doing this. And then it was like, give me a keyboard.

I'm in, let's go. And then you start learning different strategies, the rush strategy, the fortification strategy, whatever it is. But there is something different today where YouTube exists and Twitch exists. This didn't exist in that era. So it had to be the guide on the side. It had to be what we call in the venture business like over the shoulder virality. Somebody showed you Uber. They showed you com.com. They showed you Robin Hood or Coinbase. And then you downloaded it and they just walked you through it. They were your walkthrough. How much has Twitch and YouTube changed all this? Twitch in many ways came into existence from Starcraft, interestingly.

You know, Justin TV, the precursor to Twitch really was part and parcel with early Starcraft days. So it's so cool to have seen this other aspect, this other vector for people to get exposed to games evolve in tandem with games. And yeah, these days, Twitch and YouTube have become important parts of game marketing, but also learning how to play games. As you said, watching other people play before you come in. We are definitely thinking about ways to try to be synergistic with that. And, you know, the folks at Amazon who on Twitch have been very supportive as well. It would seem like a very easy solution to this would be to have a webinar equivalent. inside of the game, where if I loaded the game, I've never seen anybody do this, and you tell me if it exists, if every night or every two hours there was a tutorial and you can watch live and then just like the Apple store did this, right? In the back, you see people who never had a phone before and they have like a smartphone or an eye movie and they just teach people the basics. Like just doing a nightly thing where somebody picture in a picture just watch it through the game and anybody could watch it would be incredible for teaching people how to play these games.

games. Have you thought about that and incorporating picture and a picture of video of people? Because video is such a new component and you see people streaming the game to Twitch, but I've never seen inside of games. People use headsets and talk, but I've never seen like picture and a picture video. I would love to play StarCraft and have my video on the screen while I'm playing somebody. Is that existing gaming? We've brainstormed a lot about ways to provide access to content on Twitch or on YouTube from within the game. And so we're not at a point where we've developed anything that I can talk about there yet. But I think that is super valuable.

And there are so many personalities from Day 9 and Husky back in the early Starcraft days. These days you see vibe or winter or Router Dam like streamers who are helping players experience the game for the first time and understand what they're seeing. And yeah, providing that connection within the game is just a natural next step. So that's something for us to figure out. All right. We're going to play the clip right now. Here's just a quick clip, and you can talk over in Sportscast, what we're saying. All right.

This is in antigen footage on Unreal Engine 5. We can see some of the human resistance in mechs up against the infernal host coming in. And that was just a very short clip to give you a sense for what the world's going to look like, kind of a tech level of the human resistance and first taste of some of the units that belong to the infernal host. I love it. I love it. I got some Zerg vibes in there and some Starship Trooper vibes in there for sure. How do you think about wagering?

Wagering in the United States has become demystified, the NBA, which was against gambling for decades. and now they are doing not only fantasy sports, but wagering as part of their telecasts. They're giving the point spreads. They're talking, they have the host talking about what bets they made, what parleyes they're doing, what over unders they're doing. It seems to become completely acceptable to wager now. You must have these debates as a company about wagering. How do you think about wagering as something to put into e-sports in the future? Yeah, it's tough for us.

because our audience spans such a broad age range, so really think in the near term about specifically wagering. I think paying into a prize pool for an e-sport that is skill-based, where the winner takes that prize pool, there are probably some models like that that make more sense for games like Stormgate, but we're very sensitive to wanting to be friendly to a broad age rage. And I think that's delicate when it comes to wager. Yeah, introducing 16 and 17-year-olds, 15-year-olds into gambling seems really dangerous,

just like any other adult pursuit. And so how you would separate those. Maybe it's better a third party do that. What are the rules around IP and usage of your game or just games in general? general, what competitions. I've always wondered this. So if I wanted to create a sports league around Stormgate, do I need your permission? Do I need to, you know, make sure it's copacetic with you? Or could I just offer a prize pool of $100,000, you know, across whatever number of games and then just throw my own little Stormgate party, you know, competition?

How does it work today with other games? Most publishers set a prize pool threshold above which you need a direct license from them to run the tournament. But oftentimes beneath that threshold, it's okay to not have a direct license. That seems completely reasonable. Now, what about IP? If I am making a living off of this, Twitch is obviously making a living, a bunch of streamers are making a living. Is there a point at which they should be paying back to the game? game. I mean, I know they're doing a service in some ways of making the game popular, but they're

also using your IP and making millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars a year off of it. How do you think about that? And how does the industry think about it writ large? To the extent that streaming, for example, you brought up Twitch really helps promote the game. I think most publishers are just grateful to see streamers exposing the game to new people live. when it comes down to actually taking the IP and selling something with it, maybe you're making plush toys or, you know, clearly there's a point at which the creator of the ideas, it makes sense that they should participate or have some control over what gets sold

and how their brand gets represented. But yeah, streaming specifically, I think, Frust giant like most publishers, we're taking a very open-minded, just sense of gratitude towards anyone who helps us promote our game to other people. Would seem that some of these gaming studios would be able to create a competitor to Twitch and just say, hey, you know, if you want to stream our game, you're welcome to do it, but please do it at our service. Why haven't the, you know, the people who own these titles just done that, where they make their own Twitch competitor? The biggest benefit to getting exposure is getting exposed to new eyeballs. And so if it's an owned platform where the eyeballs already know about, like you've completely negated that cross-pollination benefit.

So that's the main reason, I would say. Awesome. Well, listen, Tim, you've been very generous with your time. I wish you continued success with this. I cannot wait to give you $100 to be one of the first people in the beta. If you choose to do that, everybody can sign up for the service at playstormgate.com. Playstormgate.com. Go sign up, give me your email address,

and follow Play Stormgate on Twitter. Routing for you. I know this is a really hard business, and it takes a lot of bold, you know, hootspah to get out there and to make your own company to do it. So on behalf of the RTS community, which is incredibly loyal to these games, we're just really excited.

I know I talk to a lot of other people who love these games. It just seems to be like genuine excitement that somebody's making like a really high-quality title for us. So thanks. to the team over there, like, we really appreciate you doing it, and it's going to bring a lot of joy to the world. If you're not into RTS yet, what are you doing? Go download StarCraft 2, get the new age of empires for Redux, whatever they're calling it, and just play some. I think it's a great

thing to play with kids. I think it's incredible for strategic thinking. Like poker, I consider this like chess and poker and real-time strategy are all for me in a way to just be good at decision-making and to play through strategies in your mind, different strategies. I don't know how you look at it philosophically for kids and, you know, for people looking to become good strategists. But maybe you could speak a little to that of the value of this specific genre of games. Yeah, I think games that cause you to work your mind and be strategic really can benefit long-term thinking. And you look at so many folks, you mentioned Alexis O'Hanian, Elon Musk is an RTS player. Toby, the CEO of Shopify is another RTS player.

Both friends of the pot. All three friends are the pot. There you. Yeah. So I think good correlation to thinking games having cerebral benefits long term. Yeah. I think we have to have the return to land parties. I think that's going to be like, it would be a lot of fun.

Pokers become incredibly popular in the entrepreneurial community. I don't know if you play cards. You play cards at all? Absolutely. Oh, you're in Austin, right? No, actually, Irvine, California. Oh, you're, so you got some good card rooms down there. You can play in or, but is it, is poker a big popular thing in the gaming entrepreneurial community as well?

Yeah, and it's interesting how many professional real-time strategy players. So the guys who compete at tournaments are also Texas Holden players. So, yeah, there's some correlation there. It definitely is, you know, trying to make the best decision possible in real time is a big part of poker. You don't get to go back and study and then say, okay, here's my decision. You're on the clock. And there's money on the line. There's wagering.

There's multiple players. There's information. You know, this information you don't know. You might not be know what's going on at the base. You know how many troops they've built up yet. You may not know the person, you know, has a set bomb or something. So it's a really interesting. Where do you start?

Have you started playing PLO yet? Have you gotten that bug? No. Yeah. Be careful. Yeah. I mean, if you want, it's sort of like, I'm trying to think of an equivalent for real-time strategy. that would make sense.

But, you know, when you get four cards, you think of the permutations of two-card possibilities, right, and how they all work together. And the variance becomes just incredible, you know, with aces being cracked, you know, whatever, you're 70, 80%, you know, depending on how many players you're up against and hold them. You know, now you've got aces, you know,

and I don't know, two other random cards in PLO when you're starting with four. Oh, my Lord, you know, somebody else has what's called a right. wrap 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. They've got some suited cards. Whatever's good on the flop, Tim, is going to lose by the river.

It's kind of the opposite of Hold'em in many ways. It's really, go to a casino, play Potlimit in Omaha at the lowest possible, you know, stakes if you can find a $1, $2 game, and it will, it'll blow your mind. It's just so... You make me feel like I need to watch this on Twitch first, so I get my confidence up.

I don't know. You'll get a poker go. is really good. You pay a hundred bucks a year for Poker Go. I'm good friends with Phil Helmuth, and I played on Pokergo before live, high stakes poker. And it's really fun because you know, you get to see the hands and you get to see how people are playing them. But for something like PLO, watching a little bit of streaming would be very beneficial because it is a non, it's not intuitive for Holdham players when they first get into it, which is why they love when Holdham Fish switch gears and go to PLO. Because what served you well,

in Hold'em will not serve you well in this game. I could work against you, in fact. You think you hit top pair and, you know, like this is a good hand or you hit two pair, you know, you hit two pair on the flop. You think this is a great hand. It's like, nope, somebody's got a set. Somebody's got, you know, seven different flush draws and, you know, or whatever. They've got flush draws and straight draws. It's really about hitting two hands in a way.

You hit some pair or two pair on the board on the flop. and then you also have some flush possibilities and you might also have a straight possibilities. It really is mind-blowing game. But continued success, Tim. If you're ever up in the bay and you want to play poker, we've got some fun games up in the bay. Much appreciate it.

Yeah, continued success. And we'll see you all next time on this week and start. Bye-bye. All right, everybody, it's Friday. You know what that means? It's another segment of OK Boomer. Okay, boomer. Yeah, we got producer Rachel right here to tell us

about Richard Mensa, co-founder of Sally S-A-L-L-E-Y. Sally fourth, a thing a boomer would say. What is this company all about? So, Sally is building tools and community for content creators, but honestly, we didn't touch too much on Sally. We mostly talked to Richard about his experience as an international founder and how we got into the space.

Ah, very good. So talking a little bit about what it's like for an international founder to work with maybe American VCs or employees or customers. We get that question a lot. Was there any notation or did you delve into the oppressive emotional labor that Gen Zs are going through during this incredibly challenging, you know, summer? I see a lot of folks really suffering with delays at airports and, you know, music festivals, you know, being overcrowded. So any of that come up. It's probably a bad time to mention that I was just talking to Molly about how.

I couldn't go to a concert this weekend because one of my friends got COVID and it was a big bummer. But no, Richard was actually incredibly positive. He came here all the way from Ghana. He's incredibly thankful for this opportunity. Really enjoys being a founder here. He was also a founder in Ghana. So it was cool hearing about his experience in two different spaces. Yeah.

And what a fascinating. Like what a work ethic, right? He founded two startups while getting a degree in computer science. Awesome. And, you know, just to just touch on, you know, how cool. crushing it was to miss that concert. We now at launch, in order to have more Gen Zs here, I'm starting a new program. This is also to keep people working here because I know how challenging it is sometimes

with these concerts getting missed and, you know, bars closing early, whatever it is. We're now having two, instead of sick days, we're adding two catch-a-vive days here at launch. So anytime you need to catch a vibe, you just press the button, you get two of those a year. If you need to catch a vibe, Rachel, just let us know. Gen Z heaven. It's Gen Z heaven. I'm not kidding. I'm adding two catch-a-vive days.

But if you catch-a-vive day at launch, I'm like a sick day where you pretend and you don't share on social, I'm getting rid of the sick days and replace it with catch-a-vive days because we all know what you do on sick days. You go catch a vibe. So if you catch a vibe day,

you have to be active on social all day and share it into the corporate slack. Is that fair enough, Rachel? I think as long as Nick takes some catch-a-vive days too. Yes, Nick's going to get 0.5 catch-a-vive days for his three years of service, which is actually more like in dog years 21. I mean, it really is.

Please catch a vibe, Nick. And please enjoy this interview with this incredible cool founder, Richard Mentsy, co-founder of Sally. Awesome. Thanks, guys. OK Boomer. I understood the assignment. Thank you so much, Richard, for joining this segment of OK Boomer. So Richard Menza, you're the co-founder of Sally.

And Sally is building business tools and community for content creators. I think Sally is really cool, but I actually want to hear more about your founder's story. I think it's really unique. You're originally from Ghana, your entire path to where you are today. We got to speak about a few weeks ago, and I just knew I really had to have you on the pod. So thank you so much for joining us.

Awesome. Rachel, thanks for the invite. I'm looking forward to sharing a bit more about my background all the way through to Sally. It's quite a bit of a background there. So, yeah, I don't know how long we have, but we have that. We have for a bit. Just as long as it'll take for you to walk us from start to finish.

So I guess I want to start off with you originally being from Ghana. I don't know if I've met that many international founders lately. And if I have, they've moved to the states quite a few years ago. And you've actually just moved here for college, correct? So I came here for actually a master's that was four years ago. So 2018, actually. I could give you the whole speed. But basically I did an undergrad in computer science in Ghana.

and I was looking to, so like, go to a different school and try different culture and be able to immerse myself and new people and new ideas and new experiences. And I was like,

you know what? The best way to do that is go to a different country in the US. And I also like the US, particularly because of the fact that I'm able to, I mean, move faster with what if I'm working on.

So I'm a huge tech startup person. So I did three startups before coming to the US. So I was like, what if I moved to the US and what does that setup? ecosystem to apply because I know that's the best place for VC or the best place for getting the best people like around the world to join the team. And yeah, I was like super excited to come to the US, meet poor people and hopefully build something truly amazing that impacts the world globally.

That's so awesome. So you said you got your master's degree here in the US. What did you study before coming here? Study computer science. So your master's in computer science too. No, it was in business. just a regular business. You told me too when we were speaking, sorry I mixed those up. Yeah.

But you told me that you've always known that you wanted to be a founder who really supported entrepreneurially. Is that because Ghana is a place where entrepreneurs

are like, everybody wants to be one? Or is it your family? Like, where did this inspiration come from? I think it has to do with my mom to some extent because she was always

trying to find like create new businesses beyond what she was doing. Right. So she was supposed to be a teacher. She was a teacher. She finished college and was about to pretty much go into the working force and work in the company. But then she had us.

I was the first kid. So she was like, she had us and she had to like stay home and take care of us. So along the line, I could see her like starting other things. So she's super excited about hospitality. She started like a guest house. And I mean, she gave me, the first book she gave me to read that was her full recommendation was British Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiosaki. And as a kid, you're like, what is this book? about like why would I read this book, but then when you read it, it's like, okay, so it's sort of like

change your mindset slightly about the way to see the world in terms of assets and liability. So for example, like if I go buy, I don't know, a huge box of candy, like that is a liability because I'm just going to keep eating it and it's just going to finish. But if I use that money instead to, to like invest in something that I'm passionate about, I don't know, for some example, let's say like a book that's going to teach me something or like a course or something like that to upskill myself, that becomes an asset. and I should spend more of my time and energy and money investing more in assets. So I got that book when I was like a teenager, like 13, 14.

I was like, this is pretty cool. I kept reading it all the way to the end. And I was like, wow. So then I just got stuck in that whole kind of cycle of books. I read all the books, zero to one, all the books, like pretty much everything across word. We're going to pick a whole list of book recommendations. They were that inspirational. I think that's awesome.

And like you said, before you moved here for your master's degree, you had startups before that, though. Like, Sally's got your first startup, correct? So what was your first startup ever? So it's called Swiper. So during my first year of college, I was actually hoping to get into college for Aerospace Engineering because I had a thing for planes. I still do. But in Ghana, you choose a major and I got my second option, which was computer science, which I was actually pretty bummed out about. I was like, what is this computer science thing?

I cannot build an actual plane with this thing. So, but then after the first semester, I was like, it actually saw the possibilities of being able to, like, build something that millions of people can use with just a computer and internet connection. Like, you don't really need to get any hardware. You don't need to get any huge, like, factory or anything. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. And you look at other companies that did, like, Facebook was pretty much doing about a time.

That was on the same time WhatsApp was coming to Ghana. And I was like, maybe I should build. with my own thing. So the first startup was a year later after that, but what we built was like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter into one app. So instead of using the native apps, you used our app because our app used much less memory on your phone. And our app was like sort of like put, made it much more seamless to switch between apps. So having to use the download of the three apps. We had like a compression algorithm behind it. That would use all these apps to like 1.7 megabytes. And it was pretty lightweight for what they can, what it could actually do. So

That was pretty fun. I got my classmates using it. Everyone was using it. My dad even downloaded the app. That was pretty fun. He was talking about, oh, I have your app on my phone. I'm using it.

That was cool. But yeah, that was my first founder experience. We had an investor even come in along fall building it. And it was a huge eye-opener, like from something we just thought about, like randomly to like go in,

I think once somewhere we just, I built it out in like two months. Then it was pretty much out there in a play store. That's incredible. So that is a huge pivot, though, from what like sadly, does. What made you decide to like jump around the space?

So, based on that previous thing I was working on, I got my classmates and everyone using it, but then I got to this point where I couldn't get a lot more people hearing about it or using it. So it was like, there was this moment where I was like, we have a cool product, people like it. But then how do I get the rest of the world using it? And that was around the same time. I was like, I mean, I got hit to the realization that like distribution is really important, even though you have a good product, you need to figure out a way to get it from people. So I was a technical guy back then. I was like, you'll build it and they will come.

And you have all these people just running towards your product because it's cool. But so based on that one, the next startup I did, I actually was quite intentional about that. So I had a YouTube channel where I was trying to document my journey as a founder in Ghana and just build some following with that one. but I realized how hard it was actually to create content on YouTube more consistently. And I was like, you have to do all these pieces I have to put into it from ideation to editing to to putting it out there. And within like two, three months, I was like, yeah, this is pretty hard. And I just decided to just, I just stopped like without being trying.

Because it was like, well, this is actually a full-time job on its own. So I just, that was like that hot moment. Even though I was trying to build distribution from myself so I don't have to rely on ads or, like, random people somehow. It was really, really hard to build that content flag around myself, which I know so many people who would do the same thing because you talk to so many creators, they're struggling every day and day out, like stay consistent and some of them are burning out and not creating anymore because of the fact that it's super hard to remain consistent.

So that's pretty much what inspired Sally. My co-founder actually was a blogger where she previously worked like a startup and tech newsletter and she also came to understand the problem. We're like, you know what? There's something here. We need to like focus on this and unlocked a new way for creative content that doesn't involve burnout. And it's much, much more fun than it actually is right now. Awesome. And you guys met each other, you and your co-founder.

You met each other in school, correct? So we met in Boston, but she was not in the same school. Like, she was even in school at then. She was, like, graduated. She was working in like a marketing role in like a mid-sized tech company in Boston. And we happened to meet at a, there was a little. at Forbes on a 30 conference in 2018. So we both got invited as like Forbes Fellows for that event.

Yes. And then that's where we matched on some app and we said, okay, let's just sit down and get to know each other for like 30 minutes, maybe some. We don't know what is going to happen. What's going to happen here? And we actually ended up talking for three hours straight and actually closing down the entire restaurant. And it was like, okay, we need to be in touch.

Let's keep in touch. There's something here. So for you guys met in 2018, when did Sally actually start then? How long after that conversation? So, Sally, as it is right now, with the focus on creators and everything, is more started in January. But initially, what we had was something that was connecting, we called it LSX, so the purest name of the product was matching startup teams with creators and media. So the goal there was how do we help these startups get authentic distribution without having to push for it?

So as a marketplace, we had a huge wait list of like 400 plus startups who've raised not of, not of $300 million who wanted to use the product. And we also had creators from across board some huge newsletter writers and also some huge podcasters using it. So we're going to be ramping up with that one,

but we always kept seeing that creators were actually like not, I mean, they say they create content every week or every month, but from our data, we could tell that it was not true because you could see how hard it was for them to keep going.

And we're like, so we're talking to so many creators or like, okay, there's something here we need to like focus on because these creators are like I'm not as constant as they want to be. And also like with my past experience, I was like, yeah, of course, this is quite hard to do. So why wouldn't we just focus on making sure these guys are creating more content and actually

having more fun creating content and not like struggling with all the small pieces they have to take care of? So that's why we decided zeroing on creators. So we killed the other product. We had revenue and everything. We just killed it and everything. And we're like, you know what? Let's focus on creators. and because this is where we think the future is going.

So it's pretty fun. You've really hit the ground running since you moved from Ghana to the States. Do you have good advice for other international founders? There's so much advice out there. But I think for me, it will be like, I mean, what I've seen particularly with most international founders is that they tend to not like just play it somehow small sometimes because they're just trying to like get into the whole system

and like be able to adapt into that. So I think my thing is just have that big vision. If you're going to start a startup, you might as well just shoot for the moon, do something really impactful. So that's one advice I would give. And I want to use like your network is super important because I came to the US with zero network, no one. And that has literally built it up from scratch, getting to know so many new people just to be able to build something truly remarkable what we're doing now. I mean, I met cool people like you because of like meeting other people. So definitely.

network is important and I mean you can build something pretty remarkable because if you think about it like someone like Elon is pretty much international he came from essay to Canada and to the US and we're talking about Tesla and SpaceX now so I think the the capability of international founders is quite huge and we should get more international founders like starting companies and you should probably think of leaving bang because Fang is not the best place to be yeah and how can we the ecosystem in venture capital that is mostly people in the United States they're normally from here, right? How can they be better at supporting international founders? I think it starts with getting to have a lot more international friends, right?

Because I think usually when you're wrapped out with a particular circle, you don't really get to experience what it feels like to see life from a different point of view. So let's say you were born and raised in the Bay Area, you grew up and your dad was a working bank and your whole life is around tech companies. And someone from a different country comes and you don't probably get their point of view.

And even you're building products for, I mean, the world from somewhere in the Bay Area or something like that, you're not really accounting for like multiple cultures around the world because the world is very diverse, very vast. And, I mean, the SF culture is not equal to the culture in, I don't know, like India somewhere or somewhere in Africa or somewhere in Asia. And so I think you should try and immerse yourself, especially if you're building a global company

you want to invest in global teams that are disrupting industries. The best thing for you to do is, like, get out of your comfort zone, meet other people from different parts of the world. And yeah, and when it comes to international founders, sometimes it's hard for people to take early bets on them because genuine. I don't know how, like, the network yet and everything. But, I mean, we know a huge percentage of the current union corners are pretty much founded by international founders, more than 50%.

Yeah. So that is not, I mean, that shouldn't be a reason for you to not say no to. someone because that's human be reason for you to want to bet on them. So, yeah. Is there something that was a lot harder for you starting Sally that you didn't necessarily expect? Let me think about that one. Yeah. After starting, you know, a company in Ghana versus the U.S., I'd love to hear the differences

between the two. I think with the U.S., there's, I see the business environment in the U.S. as more like cooperative. That is quite different. I mean, Ghana is more like, okay, we're a comprehensive. competing with these guys and you're just trying to build software and like trying to make them with amount of money. But the US views, I mean, particularly in the tech scene, it feels more collaborative in some sense. So sometimes like, for example, like in Ghana, before you tell

someone your idea, you'd be like, oh, you wouldn't like sign an NDA or like you don't want to share too much information. But then you was like, particularly in the tech sector, you just talk about ideas and share ideas freely, which is quite different from what I'm used to. And I think that actually is a huge unlock for anything about it from an innovation point of view because of the fact that you can see all the loopholes in the idea. You can also see all the possibilities in the idea, but just talking about it. I mean, there's also a risk factor.

There's a huge risk factor, right? Because, I mean, there are people who have experienced where the ideas have been, like, taken up. They have stories like that. But they are very rare, particularly in the U.S. So, yeah, I think that's one thing that I didn't really expect to how open everything is. And like, and also like the fact, I like how founders here are much more helpful to each other because like again it's a much more open like it's like a big picture kind of thinking so they don't

like see the pie as like very small and they're competing for it but you have like a bigger pie that you're expanding together to create something truly remarkable yeah and in a world of like this violent push for remote work it seems everybody our age absolutely loves remote work um you decide to move to New York city from Boston why did you decide to move here and I, if I'm correct, your co-founder, I believe it also recently moved here. Why do you guys decide to move to New York City? Do you see like this is like a tech hub rather than Boston and are you guys remote? Yeah.

So, I mean, to give you some context, I used, my first city was Boston. I also lived in San Francisco and Denver, then Raleigh and now New York. I feel like New York is the best position city, particularly because of how much less time I've spent commuting, how much talent is in the city. I mean, cost of rent and everything is quite high that I'll give it. But then food is very diverse. I'm a very diverse person. So I think what we're trying to go for is like, what is the best city,

particularly what we're working with. We have a bunch of creators here in New York and a bunch of creators and media folks in LA too. So these are the two main cities that I see could be huge value at for what we're building. And being in New York, I've actually met so many content creators. In fact, we just hired one of them who would be joining the team tomorrow for this first day. He has like 1.7 million people on TikTok. And I met up with him in New York and we became buddies and we just so synergies in there.

We're like, yeah, come join the team as a creator in residence. So yeah, Boston is a cool city. I don't have anything against the city, Boston. But I think, I think, yeah, sitting industries that thrive much better in Boston than they would in other cities. New York seems like the melting pot for like so many different industries and so many different backgrounds and so many different protocols. and it's, I feel like everyone in New York is an outsider,

so you actually feel very homey when you're in New York because everyone is from somewhere, which is something every level of publicity. So you mentioned New York and L.A., but you didn't mention SF. Yeah, I mean, I have my reservations for SF. I used to live there for quite a bit. I was actually there recently about two, three months ago.

I feel like the culture is a bit risk-adverse for me because I feel like I'm very, I like to take on risk and do something pretty remarkable and push the limits, but I feel like when I was in S-F and people I know in S-F seemed like they just want to not push as much. They feel like they know the play. We don't want to keep going with that. I don't know what it is.

But because when I was there, I mean, New York was like open and everything that was in January and March, three-per-a-march and March and like COVID is over and everything in New York and was like living your lives. And S-F was like, oh, like, are you sure COVID is over? Like, I don't want to get COVID. So it's like very discautious. I know it's important to like, we're vaccinated and everything, but it's important to have a culture where people like are willing to take some

setting of risk. I mean, technological risk and also like personal risk, we're able to learn new things. Which I think it's New York is like, yeah, there's so much hustle. People are like, yeah, I'm just whatever happens. If something happens, you just wake up the next morning and New York is alive again, which is something I think is pretty cool. New York is a great.

I've been thinking about this a lot. I have a lot of friends that are, you know, right now in particular, a lot of friends are out in SF getting a little bit of the cooler weather as New York gets crazy hot. And in January, I have some friends also go to SF to avoid New York's crazy cold weather. And I was thinking about it and I was like, I don't know if I even like leaving the city that much in the summer because it really comes alive. And our paths even crossed during there was like a little creator economy meetup at. at a bar and that's how we met. And there are those kind of meetups happening all over New York City all the time.

And I'm not even a founder. I work here. I work at a podcast. You know what I mean? And people are still super willing to meet with you in person. And I feel like coming from the Baltimore area before this and doing short-term Airbnbs for a while, I was like really searching for this sense of community that New York seems to offer not only personally, but on a professional level, you know, working at smart

startups who tend to have a fairly small team. So being able to do things like meet other founders in this space, other people that are in podcasting, it makes the world feel a little bit less massive and helps you just have that, have that face-to-face interaction that a lot of us are missing out on. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that one. I think, I mean, one thing I said about New York,

particularly like that I keep repeating is, in New York is the only city where you can do like three events in the same night because you have some ways. You cannot do that in SF as much. You cannot do that in L.A. It's like everything is closed by. Your time's pretty much goes much further in New York than it can, I think, in other cities when it comes to commuting and stuff.

So, yeah. I love that. I think that's a huge reason why I moved here. Mostly because honestly, a huge reason was I didn't have to have a car. I have a car back home that I share with a bunch of my siblings. And if I moved out, I either would have had to buy my car off my parents or buy a new car. And I was like, oh, like, I'd rather stuck it up, move to a really expensive city and have an excellent form of public transportation, live in an area where I can walk to get my groceries and such.

I also find that the lack of difficulties commuting and being able to take public transport makes me feel more social. Like at default, although as talking as I am, like on the internet, I think that if I was somewhere, or if I lived somewhere where I had to drive

and wasn't able to walk to see people, it would really hold me back. Like when I was living out in the suburbs of Baltimore, I lived really close to the city. Like, I'm not kidding. It might have been like, between a 12 and 20 minute drive to get into the city. And I almost never went.

I went maybe twice a month just because there was that factor of that commuting. It's like, well, I already work from home. At the end of the day, I want to, you know, like work out, have dinner. And by that time, I'm like, you know what, I haven't had to step foot in the car yet. Why? Why go now? And so by being able to have all this really good public transportation and things that are really close and compact, I find that engaging much more the community, especially the tech community, which is a group of people that are more than willing, like you said, to connect

at any time. I'm constantly going into WeWorks, going, checking out people's offices and things like that just to see what's up. I feel very, very thankful that we're able to live in New York during this time in particular, where people are so willing to share their advice and what they're building. I totally agree with you on that one. So I mean, just something I also realized pretty recently was that over the last three, six months, everyone I've met pretty recent. recently has been either coming from LA or SF and moving to New York. So I was like, yeah, like literally I've met so many tech people moving to New York. Yeah, it's so interesting.

Yeah. I wonder why. I don't know. I mean, they have something special, I suppose. Yeah, seriously. It's something like that. Do you have any more advice for people looking to either move to a new city, move to a new country and start a company here?

Yeah, just take their, I mean, I know it's quite daunting because it was quite daunting for me, because I remember that day I was getting on the plane, it was on the evening with my parents, like the gate and everything. I was like leaving. It was quite like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm going to do country.

But came over here, like now we have four years in and I'm loving it. So I think, yeah, so I think what the lesson there is, it's going to take a lot of discomfort. And again, as a founder, I mean,

you should be really comfortable with discomfort and adapting because, again, markets change. People leave. Things happen. companies and you should be able to adapt really fast. So I think even the share fact that you're switching countries shows that you have a lot

of grit, which is extremely important when it comes to starting a company. So just, I mean, just do it. It's going to be hard, but then do it. And it is eventually going to pay off if you also meet the right people and network with the right people. Because if we just move to a different new country and just like in your bubble of people from your country and just like a small set of people you already know, like that's not likely to help out as much.

but you want to like expand your network and meet other people from other backgrounds and yeah just be able to help other people too so that's amazing advice i'm really really excited to see how sally does in the future um where can people find sally you can find us on twitter and LinkedIn, we're just starting up at TikTok soon, but on Twitter, we're at Sally Inc, S-A-L-L-E-Y-I-N-C. On LinkedIn, you could just search Sally in the search bar. There's a company account for that one. And yeah, feel free to, like, give us your feedback, your comments. And we have a newsletter actually called Story Alley.

So if you want to get into what's happening in the creator economy, just subscribe to that. And yeah, we're happy to, like, keep you posted. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining today. Richard, I'm really excited, like I said, to see where Sally goes, and I'll have to check it, check up on you in the next few months. Awesome.

Great chatting, Rachel, and looking forward to seeing your real life again. Right. I'll see you. I'm sure we'll make time next week. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. It is the weekend, but our shows are not over. No, no. No, no. Tons of show coming to you this Sunday. We'll have another great edition of this week in climate startups and V.C. Sunday

school, which you all love, especially if you're on the other side of table. What I'm hearing from people, Molly, is, hey, I'm a founder. I like to listen to VC Sunday School because I then understand the person across from the table. I can negotiate better and I can have a little empathy for their position. So it's really helping both sides of the table. 100%. I keep getting emails from founders that are like, I heard you talk about this and I just wanted to address it specifically. And I'm like, it's working. We also are excited to spend the weekend hanging out with you on the internet. Follow Jason and I on Twitter at Jason and at Mollywood, we're doing co-tweets. Yes, we will be doing co-tweets and I get to see all of the bros and spam and bot accounts

brigating Molly. And so Big Brother is now here and anybody who says something to my little sister is going to get tossed. So be careful in our co-tweet replies. I love the idea that the co-tweet could cause all of this social change where all of a sudden all these people are like, wait, you get treated like crap on the internet. Well, you know. It's kind of awesome. I have to say, I am in a mixed race marriage, and when I was married to somebody who was not a Caucasian,

I did see Asian hate up close and personal where my wife and I would go and, I don't know, she'd be talking to somebody in the service industry or whatever. They'd treat her one way. And I'd be like, they would never speak to me that way. They would just diminish her. And then I go down to the front desk and I need a late checkout. Oh, Mr. Calacanis, of course. She's like, you need a late checkout.

The person's like, I'm sorry, I'm busy. So I think it is actually for empathy. Yeah, it's interesting, right? these co-sweets different eyes. And there are some weird dudes replying to you about some really weird all right stuff. And I'm coming at you guys, so be careful out there.

Also, I just want to say thanks to all the sponsors who make this show happen. Notion, we use it every day. We love it. Squarespace, the most beautiful websites in the world. Masterclass making me smarter every day. I'm going to start taking the Steph Curry three-pointing shooting class

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I'm going to start investing for my... I'm going to put a little crypto in there. I still believe in Bitcoin and Ethereum. I think there's some good stuff out there. All right, everyone, thanks to those partners. It really means a lot that you're supporting the show. Absolutely. Thanks, everybody, and we will be back on Sunday.