Andy Dinh - On Founding TSM, the Evolution of Esports, and Pioneering the World of Competitive Gaming

going well, what's not going well well. I think being reluentless is super important, Like you need to really know what you want and like truly ask yourself, Like if you're only doing it for the money, it's really not worth the other dude, because you love it. Andy dinn is in the house, what's up? And from TSU here Andy from TSM. I mean, if you don't know that name and you don't know this associated with TSM, I

don't know what to tell you. So a very very successful, very influential person sitting across from me in the e sports world, I definitely think you are a pioneer, if not the pioneer in the space. E sports is something that people still to this day do not understand. What do you think the stigma is. I think the stigma has changed over the last decade from you know, gamers being in their basement to now being seen as a

more acceptable path. It's not really there yet in the sense that where parents feel like, hey, my kid is growing up to be a gamer like basketball or football or soccer, but it is definitely more acceptable than before where parents were heavily against it. They're uncomfortable, the didn't know where it was. Now you see a fifteen year olds going to these like massive stadiums and winning millions of dollars. So I do think that there's some general concept. Yeah,

for sure. So ts M massive, right, and you're the founder of this massive empire. For people who have not heard of ts M, give us a little breakdown. So, so TSM is a company that I started when I was seventeen and not to shobby. What were you guys doing at seventeen. There's there's two areas of focus for the business, right. We employee close to hunted gamers that go around competing in these large stadiums across the world,

from like the Staples Center to Medicine Square Garden. And these players they you know, they make millions in their their age ranges from sixteen to up to twenty four. And then we have the other side of our business, which is like a tech driven business that focuses on data and analytics and e sports performance that really helps feel our our gamers, and like with their practice regiment, that product offering is made and created for our pro players.

At the same time, our fans and players also use it too. So we're gonna take it back to the very beginning of the t SM days. Okay, first of all, you're seventeen. Are you still in high school? No, I dropped out of high school. So you drop you drop out, and then the idea comes or the idea comes and then you drop out. So so I dropped out of high school to to go to college early. Okay, that it was a gradual process, and I started while I

was in college and I just go to college part time. Really, were you inspired because you were actually a gamer in real life? I was inspired to be a content creator and just be a competitive player overall through just through YouTube, right, because at that time, YouTube was still early in two thousand and eight where creators were starting to have millions of followers. So I think at that time, Ryan Higa, who had two million followers on YouTube, was the largest

influencer of that time. And I really wanted to create content. But instead of creating fun and engaging content, I wanted to create content around being better at gaming. And so that was our niche. And at that time gaming started to really grow and exploded, at least from a social media perspective, and so I was able to capitalize on that. So I remember in two thousand and eight, that's when the Partner program started. I mean that's when all the

people started really taking content creation much more seriously. When you said you wanted to go on to show people how to become better gamers or what were you doing tutorials? Were you because you weren't competing at that point, so what were you doing? You were just showing gameplay. Yeah, so so the sports didn't really existed in a very small form, and so at that time I had a small form of a community, and what I did was

I created guides. I wrote articles about the game and this route guides in terms of how to play the game better. At the same time, too, though, I created video tutorials online on my own YouTube channel and while playing a game play. Okay, So I had a blog on blogger dot com. I had a YouTube channel on YouTube and just with a few thousand subscribers really and started to grow that over time and just started to

upload daily. I didn't know what I was doing, and learned how to edit, learned how to write while while I was going to college, and you know, like through time, right, YouTube cpims were just really low at that time, and so it was a massive time investment spendings creating videos but would make you were spending twenty to thirty hours. Yeah, yeah, just just did you have time to go to school? I I skipped class a lot. I would imagine it

was very very part time. I started to do uh you know, I think that in college I was particularly a strong student, but my grade started to really drop. At the same time too, I started to see hope, right, So from making like fifty cents a day and went to like twenty said to thirty to forty. It made me more motivated and I started to figure try to figure out other forms of revenue in terms of how to really grow this. So what were some of the

ways that you made money? I think the a couple of ways that we made money was through YouTube and through blogger dot com got it, you know. I learned how to operate a Google ad Sense, learned how to set that up with tags, and um find people to help me on things that I really didn't know how to do. So meanwhile, you're in school, what are you studying? I was at this stage of just doing G education

because it was your first year, right exactly. Okay, I took some college courses whiles in high school, but I wanted to try to finish G when I was like by the time I was seventeen or eighteen, uh and so I was trying to speed through school. But also why speed through? Did you have a plan to be an entrepreneur from the beginning? Were you just trying to get out and do your thing? No, No, no plans at all. I stumbled on it. You just wanted to

be out, exactly. So I was already going to taking college courses in in the summer and winter and night classes walls in high school. So I was already a year ahead in college. So I wanted to finish G because we just couldn't. We couldn't afford to go to a four year university, so it made more sense to go to community college early and take all the g courses. It's a much more cost effective path. All right, glad you did that path instead of taking out a hundred

grand loan. Okay, so you're making money. Finally, you're taking this thing seriously. What are parents thinking back at home? My parents were really worried, right because I made some money, but it was honestly less than minimum wage. They immigrated to the US, and they really focused on education. My stepdad, it was a professor at Santasy State. And my mom, she she's an a student. She really cares about education.

She didn't graduate college until she was forty five, primarily because when she she moved here, right, she needed to provide for the family, and so they take education really seriously. All my siblings had straight a's besides me, and so they were really worried about me. Well, shout out to mom. By the way, can we give a round of a flause for mom who still goes to school graduates. That's awesome.

Good for her. But yeah, that was probably a lot of pressure for you because sibling started doing what they quote un should be doing. But every time I talked to an entrepreneur, they always went against the grain, it seems. And I'm not telling your kids to kick don't don't get out of school, like don't leave it. So I'm

not saying that. But what I am saying is every time I've I've spoken to somebody like you, they kind of had something inside of them that did you have something inside of you that said you wanted something bigger I did. I wanted to fund success. I wanted to provide more from my family. But at the same time too though it was more of a plan B. Right at the end of the day, I knew that there's

a high chance of failure. What was the plan A plane at the end of the day was to finish school really and either focus on finance or medicine, but like different just like doing the research, understanding the path of like what it took to become a doctor. It was a really hard path forward, right, you need to go to school and then medical school and then also

you need to do residency. And that that was like I wanted to find success fast and I wanted to you know, really just go and so had I failed, I probably would have gone into finance. Well, thank god for Lee of Ugen's huh, So, so talk to me about entering into that world, because that kind of shifted everything for you. What year were you and cut were you still in the first year? Second year when you started TSM? I dropped out my second year. Okay, so

you drop out second year? What prompted the dropout? It was it was actually a huge shift where are our blogs started to really growing, our YouTube started to really grow, and even though the revenue wasn't there, we had a massive user base. So I actually convinced my mom to let me take six six months a year off and if I couldn't show success, and I would just drop

the entire project period and focus on school. Right, So I had really twelve months to find success because even though we had a huge user base, we couldn't make any money, and you know, I was spending a ton of time on it, right, that guy almost give up so many times. It was an inflection point where blogger dot com which was taking around of our revenue and also not really monetizing it well because they're plucking through ad sense. So I basically borrowed five thousandllars from my mom,

which she was saving from my from my college situation. Anyways, I was like, hey, you either you know, letting borrow five thousand dollars or I going to go to Wells Fargo and borrow it for a student loan and just use that to hire an engineer to really create a website for me. Right, So, what the website did was instead of it being blogger dot com, uh, it was a CMS that allowed creators to write guides on our website.

So instead of being a guide writer myself, I made it really easy to write legal legends guides, and then I went out to hire people to write guys for me, and then I hired engineers to make it really easy to write guys on our website. How did you know this was the move? I mean, I think that like being an entrepreneur like now, like looking at it from like a present perspective, I didn't really understand the risk involved.

I was only able to see the upside. But honestly, much chances of success was really really low, and I kind of just put a ton of time effort to make it happen. Right. Well, at the end of the day, your risk was five thousand dollars and disappointing your mom and then having to go and do something you probably

your heart wasn't into. But at that age, it's a huge risk, right because you're you're basically tell in your parents, look, this is my one shot and if I don't, and that's not it's not necessarily fair to you to just give yourself one shot. But you gave yourself one shot

and it worked out. But anyway, back to back to what happened, Yeah, I mean I felt like it was huge risk because I was working a minimum wid job before all of this at Traitor Joe's and it took me six months to save a five thousand dollars, right, and in total I needed to I needed fifteen dollars to build up the entire product, So I I used all my savings and then alone from my mom, and then five thousand dollars that I was earning by giving lessons to other people as a as a top player

at that time to pay for the project. Right. But but once we launched it and it's created, it started it really started to blow up from maybe just coupled thousand patriots a day to hundreds of thousands of pagerets to millions. I think at the point where we started to earn eight ten thousand dollars a month was when I was like, Okay, this is a good time. How many months in was that? It was months eleven. That's pretty awesome. I mean before the end of year one,

you were monetizing in a big way. Yeah, it was monthly eleven. But when I completely dropped out, but it um was already two and a half years in and I was really feeling burnt out. There was several stages, like I spent all this money, it just wasn't kind of work because our product was broken all the time, right, We didn't have the best engineers. It was as an

engineer that I meant through gaming. He was also my friend, and he was not only doing it like for a lower rate, but at the same time he wasn't the best, right, so there was a ton of friction there. The product was really never fully optimal, but it was enough for

us to basically pieces together. So as an entrepreneur, you get to a point where you know you get burnt out, or the money is running low, or you're kind of over working with the guy that is a friend, so he's kind of doing a favor, so he's cheaper, but you need to like take it to the next level, and this would be maybe the time that you would try to raise some money, right, did that ever cross your mind? I mean, you were so young and it

was still so scrappy. When did you feel like it was time to go and really blow it up on a bigger level. So, interestingly enough, we we didn't. We didn't ever raised any money until I would say, our Series A, which happened eighteen months ago, so eight years into the business. So we bootstrapped entire business from you know, for the first eight years. Um, how did you get How did you get by doing that? Um? Was it

the scrappy is? Yeah, we were really scrappy. We spent we spent money in the right areas and we didn't invest the things that we just didn't need. I keep saying you were so young, but because I'm so impressed to run a business successfully for that long without it all just crumbling to the ground. There's gotta be a strong person behind that business. What made you qualified to do that? I mean, obviously you were qualified to game, and you knew the Geese sports world, but did you

know the world of business? I didn't write. But because at the same time too, I was also the leader of my team. I learned how to work with a entire team, and I learned how to recruit. I learned how to give people feedback. I learned went to be hard and went to be soft at the same time too.

That I was really fortunate, because really it's like you have to be a part of a nish early on to to really fund the type of success when you're not experienced, right, And I think that, you know, most of my competitors at that time, they were also participating in the sports as a hobby, and I was one of the very few people to go full time on it, to get very seriously try to really make something out of it, whereas most of my competitors were just people

that did it for fun, did it part time. And so I was really lucky that there were there weren't strung competitors in the space. If I was competing against like a forty year old executive that worked at a fortunate company, I think that there was the word of no chance for me to succeed because I was in early. I put in the time, and I was able to just make a lot of mistakes and not not be punished for it. I was able to get to where I am now. Uh, and we skipped forward a lot

just because we were talking. I wanted to get into the finance part of it, just so people can understand it's not easy. And you did make a really big risk at you know, a young age, making a big ask of your mom and also pulling all your trader Joe's money, which will that's a lot, but even as a twenty year old ye old, that's a lot of money to just put into a dream. You formed a team, you were playing on the team. Can you talk me

through when all that happened. Yeah, So, so the sites up at the who whole entire time we had a team. There was no competitive scene at the time, so at the didn't think of this. Like I was a person that was also during the very first tournaments for Legal Legends right, so we had a hardcore community. There wasn't

there was no higher level of play. So I started to host events for people to play at right and then I would go out and I would look for sponsors to sponsor the prize pool for those tournaments and then competing at the same time. That sounds like a major conflict of interest, but at the same time too. There there were no events, right, not really, It's like reserving a basketball court and being like, let's go play exactly and then give us some money if we win,

and we're the best, so we're gonna win. Yeah. So nowadays, right with with all these professional teams, it doesn't make sense to be the tournament operator and also rent. But it didn't exist exactly where so early I I was really competitive. I wanted to play. I wanted to play against people with good and you know, people didn't really take it seriously, and so I wanted to really hang that carret there for people to play. So I take my money, put it as a prize pool, and then

have people play in the computer. You would use your own money for the prize. Yeah. So, because once our website got to that certain stage, right, I just saw it as a market marketing vehicle for our website and our products. So I did that because it was also a hobby of mine. Right really quickly, once we made enough money, what I did was I dropped out of college and I just played full time for fun, and

then I ran ran my business. Oftentimes I would be playing, even though it didn't really bring more back business because it was a huge dimension returns. But but at the same time, it was it was my hobby. Do you remember the first tournament that you put together. I do, so it was really early on and it was just for this currency called riot points where you can use to just buy items, right, and um, you know, it

was really scrappy. We basically posted a form post and then people would sign up by typing, hey, I want to play, and I would post that a schedule and then there was no organization, There were no there weren't tools at all. Right, it was just it's like a group of you know, the guys that the showpen online in Ventrilla at that time, it's technology that's kind of dead now, uh. And there would be maybe a hundred people in this voice chat and I would organize the

event at the same time while competing in it. So from there to the Staples Center playing at Worlds. Can you can you for people who don't really understand how competitive e sports works? How do people get into the tournaments? How is it all types of games? Are they separated by legal legends versus Minecraft? Like how does that work? So it's really different? Right, Like think of each game as a different sport, whether it's tennis, whether it's an

open or football or basketball. Right, it's it's all different in particularly legal legends. Also within the phases of time, it also changed. Right early on when I started to play, it would there would just be open tournaments where any five people they can sign up and there would be uprising and you would go to you would go to like an arena or theater and you would sign up as five and you'd play and be the last man

staying to win. Now it's a lot different with with right Games League Legends franchising, where there are teams owned by the Golden State Warriors. Right, so several several sports owners bought into franchises for League Legends. Now there's ten teams and those are the staple teams in America where you can't join unless you're recruited to. It's it's a

lot different than does TSM fall into that category. Yes, so TSM falls into that category, And what we do now is is a huge process that goes into it. You have to basically be recruited. We are always looking for better players on our on our platform, and you have to play through TSM JR. And then you have to get qualified through them academy and then make it through academy, then you go to the pro team. Is this your own? Yeah? So so it's our it's our own.

It's okay, got it? So not every team operates that way. Every single team has an academy team, but not path below that, Right, they don't have a junior program, got it. So we're we're looking down the funnel to find like the next Lebron James from the next steph Curry? Got it? And and does it work like the NBA where you can get somebody from another team? Yeah? So there are

major buyouts, right, depending on what level. But you know, player buyouts ranged anywhere between like two dollars to millions of dollars depending on how good the player is the prospect is it. Has TSM done that personally? Yeah, we've spent close to million dollars buying out players before. Has it been worth it? You know, it depends on it

depends on the player. Right, So we won't we won't name names, but uh, yeah, no, I think that's a tricky that's a tricky thing anyway because you can never guarantee. But if you are, is it a recruitment process or is our people applying and they're like, look, I don't, I don't you know, for people who don't understand that the process works, there's so many gamers out there, I mean, Twitch has millions and millions of gamers. How do you

even find the good ones? So we're standardizing that process now as we speak, right, But the way the way to do it is there's there's an online challenger leaderboard where you can apply to really prove that you're the best. And most often teams look at that that ladder. Right, So out of a million people, the players that rise to the top two d are the ones that are being looked at, you know, on a day in the

week by week basis, right. And so if you have strong stats, if you perform well, if you're a good teammate, then more than likely you have an opportunity to play at the per level. And then how many team mates are on each team, because I know there's it's not just like five people. It could be up to thirty for you, right, yeah, So in the game it's the five verses five uh, And so oftentimes roster arranges between

I would say seven to ten people. You have different parts of your company that do more than just competitive stuff, right, absolutely, so that there's influencers there, but so that does not count the eight people. There's like a larger group. Well I'm talking about just players that compete. Those are just fun, right. But at the same time too, though, you have to have a diversified approach in terms of building a fan base,

creating content, and also performance. Right. So most established teams have they have a diversified approach more so than just focused on competing, and you guys do that as well. For us, we focus on competing because performance really matters us, not only from a passion perspective. Yeah, it's mainly from a passion perspective, but also like from how we are representative brand or performance really matters us. Winning really matters us. Right,

It's not about the like social media drama. It's about let's let's win some tournaments. Absolutely, And the second part is really creating content that our fans really find value. And so at the end of the day, we're realizes, how do we make our fans better? How do we give them value? So when they play, they think of us, right, And so it goes back to when I first started t SM is that I made guides. I made content so our players so players can learn from us to

play better. And so what does that entail? Do your players have to you know, stream a certain amount of hours? Are you helping create content or help guide the content that they're putting out there? So particular to our our the allergency, there are no requirements around our streaming ours well in terms of just content. In terms of what we try to do, we will we We aimed to create guides on how to play the game better on a month by month basis, so that our players can

always follow the game as they're playing. They could learn from us in terms of how to play better. And where can they find that content? Um, they can find that content on our YouTube channel, on the YouTube channel which has over two million subscribers. When did you see a big growth in the TSM fan base because these are massive now. It honestly it was. It was a casual growth. There was huge growth when we really focused on legal legends and the second phase of growth was

one Fortnite launched. Fortnite was a huge, huge, and every single aspect it really broke uh. I would say it broke through like mainstream pop culture right in the sense that every everyone is with the game. Celebrities in all genres play that game or engage within which way, from football players, basketball players, and musicians. So I thought that was really cool, and then TSM saw a huge growth through that, primarily because we invested into building a team

there early. Do you think that Fortnite and like breaking into mainstream helped legit mis the sports world as an actual career, real world thing. I definitely think it helped. It helped a lot with that specifically in the US. But before Fortnite, rite e sports, which like Fortnite, is

not as large in Asia. In China, it's it's it's already gone there, right, So I think that specifically to the U S, Fortnite really helped with that and played a major role at the same time too that I still don't think it's it's there yet can currently right now, to give your perspective, over the last four or five years. Right, looking five years back, there are only less than there's less than five, maybe five colleges that offered scholarships for

e sports. Now there's over a hundred, right, and there's over two hundred varsity programs for for collegiate sports, which is amazing to put into context about like five to two hundred said through time, Once you know there are thousands of colleges that offer path to scholarships and becoming varsity and it's seen as a college sport, then I think that that would create a funnel at high school level which is also being worked on and then downwards

as well. So so I think that that's at that point the sports would be seen as a very legitimate career. So so if you were a career day and somebody was to say, why is your job so cool? Like what's so great about working in the world of E sports, what would you say to them? Well, I mean I think that just just looking above the sports, right, I think that like above that, it's like creative content, being

a creator. I think that kids understand what it means to be a creator looking at YouTube, looking at Instagram. I think that's a really exciting career because you are creating content and your aending value to other people's life

at scale. Uh and the world is just more connected nowadays, right, And then taking it back from an E sports perspective, I think that I don't I don't think necessarily everyone should grow up wanting to be any sports player, but particularly people that have interested that like competing, and one want to uh to focus on another sport that's an

alternative to what exists today. I think that that's a good career path, not necessarily a good career path for them, a good hobby for them to explore, to see if they could make a creative it. I don't know if that makes sense. No, No, it makes total sense. It's basically like foster your passions and see where where you can take them. And that's something that you clearly did.

I don't think you ever imagined you would build this empire or shape the industry, or maybe you did, it doesn't sound it sounds like you kind of were just like you know, I just wanted to get out of school. But it worked out awesome for you, and I think it's well deserved because you worked your ass off for eight years right before you really felt like you were doing it. Yeah. I mean even to this day, I

still feel like there it needs a lot. That's every entrepreneur literally like you will you you'll sell your team for two billion dollars and still think that you have more to do I just put that in the universe. Did you like that? Absolutely? But yeah, I mean going back to that topic though, I do think it's really important, uh, and I would like I am concerned for kids that like focus on making sports are career too much. I

think that there needs to be a balance. They need to have a plan A, they need to have a plan B. You had a couple of plans. Yeah. No, I think that was really smart of you. And I really respect the fact that you scrappy like you worked hard. You didn't just borrow money from mom. You went to Trader Joe's. You did what you had to do to get to where you are today. So, speaking of today, the present day TSM is massive. Why do you think the team is doing so well? Largely there's there's a

couple of reasons. Right first and foremost, we were first to market, and so we built a huge competitive advantage in terms of understanding the space where to spend our dollars, Whereas within the last two to three years there's a massive VC dollars injected into the sports space and most

of these operators really don't know what they're doing. They don't understand where to basically invest into to turn that into revenue, right, and so because we understand the space really well, we're able to understand where where things will play out, how I'll play out, and so we're investing our dollars much better. The second perspective is that we we've been early so far into Fortnite Leagal Legends, and I think that we were also going to be early.

From a mobile perspective. I think that mobile e sports is going to be the future of um where where gaming is, and so I'm super excited about that. But I think it has to be being early. That's why we're we have a huge advantage. I think being early is definitely an advantage for you one on any platform. But also I think what really sticks out is your strategy. Like you said, you guys have been strategic, you know, you know the back end of things. You're not just

you know. I think a lot of these newer teams are probably just figuring it out as they go. Have you ever collaborated with any of the other teams in any way? I often wonder that. Absolutely from a business perspective, whether it's sales or just overall structure of the ecosystem, we worked together closely, because because that's really important to

build it out right. But at the same time, to you, like there there are our competitors, and it's not structured in a way where at least yet where all these owners do work together to build the ecosystem from a success perspective, So that means like implementation of the league, how do we standardize contracts, how do we work with like players? I think that, like how do we increase the player welfare? Like those are all important topics, but

but it's not at that stage right now. Okay, and you've been on kind of all sides of the coin, from playing on the team to you coach, and now you're you've taken a step back from actively being a

part of it. How's that for you? It's it's it's honest that we've been challenging, right, Like when I when I first retired, waking up at eight am attending meetings was hard, and being responsive to emails for me as a gamer, I would do more like text messages or like just a channel channel chats, right, and so acclimating to the business world was really challenging, making meetings, setting accepting yes on calendar inside exactly instead of just a

text like, yeah, let's meet and talk about this. Yeah, So how do you think you're gonna stay on that side of things? Yeah? I think I'm naturally really competitive person overall, um, and the way like you know when when I played games, I was really competitive. That's that's why that's really excited to me. Now it's my next journey to be a better entrepreneur, be a better CEO, be a better leader. And you know I haven't. I

don't think I've been the best leader. And I think that that's something I'm really focusing on right now in terms of even how to manage people. Right, Like to give you perspective, three years ago, we had had a team of maybe twelve full time employees. Now have seventy full time players and seventy full time staff, right, and so it's like a hundred forty people, and then we have another sixty seventy contractors on top of that, right, And I think that we've been able to really piece

things together. But like from a company management perspective, it's it's not done particularly well. So how do I how do I get better all these things from giving clear direction to managing people, to making everyone's time, more efficient with clear instruction. I'm aboud at a lot of these things. So it's work in progress. I mean, you can't be too bad at it. The thing, you know, it's things aren't falling apart, You're doing well. What would you say,

what's your weak point? My weak point is, I would say being consistent. I think that, like my strong set is being strategic at, but being consistent and holding people accountable and meeting with like my direct reports to mixture that they're getting things done the way I want it. It's kind of my weaker set, right, Why do you think that is? Why do I think that is? It's it's just because I have a scatter brain. I'm focused

on all these things. I love. Adding more and more projects to managing is a little tough for you, yes, but managing people, yeah, Well it's exciting at the same time because I love to work on things that I'm weak at, and I think that's my skill set is I know what I'm weeke at and and I'm able to get people to cover those weaknesses because at the end of the day, what your company is comprises of your employees and your team, right, And so at the

same time, not only my finding people to cover my weaknesses, but I'm also working on them so we can have more success. Well, it's like a piece of advice for any entrepreneurs out there. And also it's okay to have weaknesses, you know. Actually, I think it's the best. That's it's probably gonna be the thing that you're best at by the end of this journey. You know, it'll be the best person manager ever. Is there anything that you think that is misunderstood about the world of e sports and

competitive e sports that you'd like people to know. I I think that it's it's it's going to get there through time. I think that people don't see it as as a sport. I think that's probably the biggest debate of all times, Like, hey, e sports is not really a sport. There's nothing physical about that, and you know, I particularly don't. I don't don't really care, but it's just talking about that topic. I think of the sports, I think of content creation. I think of like what

we're doing right now is influence. Its entertainment at the end of the day, you know, like when when you're watching basketball, right you're not you're watching basketball because it's

entertaining you're watching football because it's entertaining. At the end of the day, like how significant something is is based off of the amount of eyeballs that that watch it, right, So I think that's probably the biggest misconception is that any sport or whatever we do, it's mainly just entertainment content, And then people don't think it's just work it's not physical. Yeah, I think that that bait that debate is really meaningless.

But at the same time too though, I do think that from an e sports perspective, it's really really I mean, it is physical. I've I watched those competitions. I mean people are sweating bullets, You're going crazy. That's stressful. It's very, very stressful. A mental perspective is the brandom muscle you're you're the doctor or the pre med you we answer that question, no, But I mean the sports sponsorships, people make way more money doing that than any quote unquote sport.

I mean you could argue that too, like all the sponsors and my production company also works with a lot of branded deals. Everyone wants to work with the sports right now. Everyone it's like the hot thing that people are now being like, oh, it's cool it's legit. What do you have to say to that. I mean, it's super exciting, right because eighteen thirty four year old male cord cutting, etcetera. It's like exciting for sure, just because

it's hard to reach your audience. And so at the same time, to you know, more people are becoming involved with the sports than traditional sports Sundays right there. There's so many kids that love this particular industry, and so it's really exciting for us, and I'm really excited to be a part of it. It's got to be like and I told you so a moment. I mean not in a mean way, but you know, like I knew

this would be something. I never really thought about it that way, primarily because I can't honestly say that I thought that this was going to be big. I mean you made it. Look at this world that you've created. I really, I really give you the credit for this, and you have to give it to yourself too. I'm making you well. I would say that I did it liked,

but it doesn't matter if you did it ignorantly. Let's I mean, think of all the things that were ignorantly found or whatever, Like, it doesn't matter you you created basically jobs for lots of people, aspirational careers for many gamers. You've shaped in an entire industry. Yeah, And I would go to say that like a lot of other people

do that too. Twitch made a huge role in like calling, made a huge rolling rolling Twitch making it so that millions of people can you create a career out of streaming and content creation, right, And I think that that was a big part in terms of making sports a more viable career. So a lot of people played a big role in it, and I'm really happy to be a part of it earlier. But you're definitely like if there was an All Star basketball team, You've got a

jersey on that team for sure. For sure, for sure. And yeah, twitches massive, and I want to kind of touch on that too. How involved is your team on Twitch? Yeah, so we are one of the largest networks on Twitch, very early on, and I think that Twitch is amazing. We're really focused on creating content there were exclusive on

that platform. I am concerned though, like if you look at like Twitch from like a mobile perspective, or if you look at Twitch like what the Twitch versus YouTube battle like over the last like a year or so, um, they're just major players in the space, but from over like overall, though, it's always good to have multiple options that exists in the market. It's it's really really cool too to see just how many people see it as a full time career versus when I first started, there

was only maybe a dozen people. It's so awesome. It's like you created your own lane. Accept it was a highway that was like a thousand miles wide. So is there anything about the e sports world that in the last year or two since it's become very popular that you kind of makes you cringe a little? Not particularly

which ones do you think? I don't want to. I mean, it's gonna be so obvious when I say this, but I feel like some some of the at least I saw this from a Twitch perspective, some people, once they became like bigger, became very very mainstream and didn't really connect with their community as much. I just feel like, you need to stick to your community and the people that brought you to where you were. And I think a lot of people made a lot of money very

fast and maybe that got to them. I don't know, Yeah, I mean I think that, Uh, it's it's and then it's gonna be what what you want to focus on, right, whether you want to go mainstream and stream us. Like, streaming is really tedious career. The reason why streaming is really stressful is because I was a streaming for two to three years. Is that you're you're broadcasting eight to ten hours a day live where everyone can watch and see you. You have to like, eat, launch, and do

all these things right at the same time too. Though, um, like with YouTube, with being a contracutor, Uh, it's really stressful because you're you're always focused on the numbers. Right, you don't stream for a day or two days, your numbers start going down and it makes you feel bad. So you're now you find yourself streaming so to sevent days a week, and then the burnout, Yeah, and then it leads to burnout and then it's it's it's really

hard balance. And so I think that you know, streamers are large, they're trying to really figure out what they want to do, and they're they're experimenting, right, and you know some of them are making those decisions and they're losing a lot of their falling for it. But like, I think that because it is early, people are going to take very different paths and then they're going to find what's optimal for them and whether Like I think that a lot of people make mistakes in their career.

At the end of the day, you know they learn from it and that they're gonna some of them are not going to ever be able to get to back to where they wore, but that's that's the truth that they made. So what advice would you give somebody who is listening to this interview right now and is inspired and wants to start a company, maybe not in the e sports world, but in any world, what advice would

you give them? Well, I think it's a like it's it's gonna be very general, right, because I think that these habits often will lead to people becoming more successful. I think being relentless is super important. Like you need to really know you want and like truly ask yourself, like am I doing this? Like if you're only doing it for money? The money, it's really not worth it. You have to do because you love it because times are gonna get really tough and you can't can't give up, right,

Most things in life just don't come easy. And if you want to be successful, you have to go the extra mile where other people are not right. You have to network, you have to collaborate. You have to find your advantage, figure out what you're good at, what you're week at, and really focus on what you're good at, and then find other people to help you that. That's probably the number one thing. Go to these events, network people, find people to collaborate with and put the time in.

And then when you when it's not working, be smart about it, look at what you did and analyze what's going well, what's not going well Because a lot of these people that are pursuing these careers they do it and you know they let too much time passed without evaluating what's what's good, what's bad. And you have to really take that time out. You have to pause. You have to look at everything and say and value whether whether you want to continue. So you're at a crossroads.

Do you have a bad day or a bad couple of years or months and you've spent all your savings. What at what point do you turn left to quit turn right to keep going? Because you kept going. I kept going because I I budgeted accordingly right, I lived at home, I didn't spend money on for listenings like clothes or whatever. Things I just didn't need. Like when I started my company and we started to make money,

I didn't just upgrade my life instantly. I I a dollar frozen dinners for I would say two and a half years. Really unhealthy. By the way, how's your health? Are you good? It's good now? I love better now, trust me. But you know it's it's budgeting, right. You need to like you need to have your goals and then you need to plan around it with every aspect of your life. You need to make sure that this was running a business, it's do I have the runway

to keep going right? And so it's it's a financial decision. It's a like decision in terms of how you want to live. So for you, it's very financial the decision. And so you didn't ever have a moment where you were like, I can't do this, I'm not good enough. It wasn't an internal thing. It was how do I set myself up so that because quitting is not an option.

Quitting wasn't on an option in the sense that I just knew that I didn't I didn't want to follow the general path and I didn't want to go back to school just just because I loved what I was doing so much that, like, not making a career was something that absolquency. So I was willing to give up a lot of different aspects to give me a larger runway to make it happen within life, Right, you can't just have the best of both worlds. You have to

take what you want. I think people forget that. Yeah, absolutely, I think there's definitely a misconception on how easy things happen, and people probably don't know that you were really scrapping at your dollar you know, meals for two years because of where you are today. And that's why I think this show is so important, because we need to pull the veil back on these these ideas that everything, oh e. Sports just popped up and here comes TSM. That's not

how it happened. How does your mom feel about her five fell in all our investment? Did she get her return on investment? Absolutely? Uh, My mom was taking care of and you know she she couldn't be more proud, right, She watched it Like when I used to play, she watched every single event. She's probably the most supportive person in my life. And so you know, like I ever already think anyone, it would have to be her in terms of being so supportive be mom. Oh and that's

my mom. So I didn't mean you're the best mom in general. I just meant you're the best comma mom. Anyway, TSAM has some cool stuff going on. You guys are gonna open a facility soon. Can you tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I'm super excited. We're launching our facility sometimes this summer, and I think at least it's going to be one of one of the first

facilities that are focused on actually sports performance. And you know, I think that no one really has it right yet, and so what's so exciting is that we're focusing on it and we we want to stay true to that. So we're thinking of it from like a three sixty angle, whether it's like nutrition or physical working out on Tuesday, or even mentally, or even from a data perspective. Right,

we're tackling it from every single angle. So we're tracking every single event when the players playing, from all the steps they due to, all the moves they make every second by second, where that really doesn't exist in traditional sports.

And then from a nutrition perspective, we're developing a nutrition program that that that it's going that we think it's going to work for the sports and then, like I said, we're going to measure it and fine tune it, and I think that that's going to give us our competitive advantage by focusing on that early words, like, if you look at most gaming facilities now, it's it's it's kind of like a pretty office. Can you explain to people who are not familiar, what is the gaming facilities that

open to the public. Is it just for the team? Yeah? So most people that would name like their office of gaming facility is basically an office where the gamers go and play, and there's a separation between where they live and where they play. I love that. By the way, that needs to happen. You need that mental break. Yeah yeah, okay, sorry, I just had to enter because I never like to work from bed because then it's like I associate working in bed, you know what I mean? Okay, I need

to keep going. Over the last decade of the sports, gamers typically lived in the gaming house and they would play and compete in there. Also in practice exactly now, I think over the last next couple year, you're going to see that separation from your pro career to like their personal life, and most companies are focused on creating that separation. I love that. So is the facility going to be here in l A. Absolutely, Yeah, it's gonna

It's gonna be playing Vista. It's ft okay, awesome. And so for people who aren't aware with the whole scheduling of all the competitions the tournaments, when is your next big tourney? It depends on the specific game, right, But for the league legend specifically, we play on a week by week basis on Olympic in Los Angeles, and that often leads up playoffs and then a stadium final somewhere

in the US. And so we're actually playing this weekend on Twitch and YouTube and so it's it's it's a constant. It's basically a league. And so basically, just to compare, it's kind of like the NBA where you play a regular league and then you get to the playoffs and then you go to the championship, which in your case it is called Worlds. Okay, and the Worlds are in a different city every year. Yeah, it's in a city. It's a different city every year. And then who are

you guys, who's your biggest competition this year? Who's our biggest competition? It honestly changes every single year just because the teams, like there's so many new teams. There's not not that there's new teams. Um, the game is still competitively, is still competitive. You don't really see that one winner winning every year. Okay, so there's not like a I don't know who I was going to say the Lakers, but they've been awful. Yeah, so there's there's not a

golden state. There was traditionally they're called t one skat um, but now it changes every single year. But you've always been in the top three. We we've always been in the top team in our region, but internationally we still haven't found success and we haven't won Worlds yet. So why do you think that is? I think there's a combination of reasons, being that players and other regions they have they have a stronger cultural foundation of how it

plays better as a team. If you look at where the sports originated, right like, if you look at Korea, they've had coaches, they've had sports really has been a career much longer in Korea than the US. And then if you look at China, right, for like the Legends, Like I would say, they have a much larger player base.

And you know, there's a hundred million people that played the Legends on a monthly basis, right, eighty millions of those players are in China, So they have much much larger talent pole to select from, and they have players like they have our program down to like the Dot and so we need a lot of improvement to do. But at the same time we need we need to learn how to train our talent better. Are you excited

about your talent roster this year? I am excited about them, but I think that some of the challenges that we're gonna have is making them play as a team. We have really strong individual players, but the end of the day, League a Legends is a team game. How often did the players switch out? Like, because once they have synergy and harmony, are you going to switch out a player or does that hurt the team? Ultimately? It really depends right on. There could be multiple reasons why you you

change up a roster. Typically for us, we've made very big changes in the last I would say that for the last seven years. So to give your perspective out of the last fourteen championships ever in league we want um six of them, right, we want almost half the championships. Well, every single year we always make large roster changes because we want to really perform at the world's level. Is that the standard is that expected from the team? Are they getting butt hurt when they're traded out or is

that just an expectation. I think that's an expectation for our team. Is that if if we're not a team that can contend at the world stage, then there will be roster changes. Who makes the decisions on roster changes, It's it's our general manager, But most of the roster decisions up to the state were made by me, and I've I've maybe taken a lesser role over the last year and a half. Well, I'm still involved. So you don't think there's a benefit to keeping a team together

versus switching people out. I mean to be candid, I think that I've made some huge mistakes, like, for example, we had a superstar roster that when a seventeen and one. During the regular season, we dominated. We want three seasons back to back in North America, but when we went to the international stage, we we we actually got destroyed, and so I made a quick decision to change roster up and like looking back with like hindset information, it was it was a bad roster decision on my part.

After that, our our team kind of fell apart for a year. We had to rebuild. We lost three championships back to back. It wasn't a great phase of TSM. We're currently rebuilding now. But you know, when you make these big changes, there's of course, of course, but it's now so you never know. You think you guys can get to the top this year. I think it's gonna be challenging. I have a lot of faith in our roster. I think that we can regain our championship status. Awesome, Well,

it was so nice to have you here today. I'm I'm really excited to see what else, not only TSM does, because I know you guys are going to just continue to expand and do more and more outside of what's expected. Um, but just you in general, I mean, if if we could fast forward ten years, where do you think you'll be? I mean you're still you're still so young, So where

do you see yourself? It's really hard to tell, just because we our path and our folks changes all the time, but I think that we're going to have really strong data platform that helps us train our talent. So you're saying we you're still at TSM ten years from now, I think so, yeah. I'm still the majority owner of t s M. I don't see myself really selling the

business anytime soon. I'm super excited to be involved, and I truly I think the space is starting to slow down in the sense that it's it's matured, but I still think that there's still significant growth left. Right. We like, if you look at it, this is still the first generation of the sports. Whereas you look at basketball, fans had kids and their kids started watch their team, and then their fans they had kids. Right, so there's like

three generations where their audience quadruple. Where if you look at the sports, there's multiple things that can happen where the industry explodes. For example, when I used to ply, it was a male dominated industry with five percent female. Now it's like training towards right, and so as that gets to fifty fifty, the audience is going to double. And then as our fans are to have kids, that's also gonna double. So you can really see this growing.

Absolutely Do you think you'll ever pull a Michael Jordan's and retire? Absolutely not. That was not even That was not even like, well, maybe, guys, I'll think about it to give your fans a little hope. You're like, absolutely not. I'm past my prime. You're gonna see you and get my butt kicked. Do you really think so? Yeah? Yeah, I think so. But I think I gets to hold my own against some of the players at the bottom of the league players. But you're done. Yeah, okay, Well,

it was so nice having you here today. I I love that you got to stop in. I know you're really really busy, have a lot of things going on. You have a team to manage, and you're gonna be the number one people manager. Maybe not number one, but but why not? Why not shoot for the stars? Yeah? Absolutely, I'm gonna shoot for the stars number one. Andy didn't everyone from t s M. And I'm sure he's going to do many, many more things in the future. So we're gonna keep an eye on him. We're gonna stop TSM,

We're gonna route them on all season long. I hope you guys had fun to love. Behind the influence of the production of i Heart Radio and TDC Media