Shark Tank's Daymond John Backs Gamestar+

Shark Tank. He's a best selling author, and his latest venture really combining his love of board games and game shows by backing a new interactive streaming platform called game star Plus. Damon John is founder and CEO of Fubu, among many other things. He joins us on the phone from Miami. Damon, it's good to chat with you again. How are you? Oh, it's great chatting with you as always. I'm great, good good. Hey. Um, let's get into what's

what was appealing to you about game Star Plus. It's a mix of a physical board game, next generation app you got IoT tech in there is this the metaverse? You know? I think it is I think I think, you know, I think everything is going to be in the metaverse. But you know, I guess the simplest way to say it for all the listeners, it's kind of like Netflix for game Night, you know, and me being a huge lover of games, and I think, uh, board games.

I think, you know, through this last two years, all of us have picked up some of that old love for board games. This was just a new delivery of form of delivery of board games. And that's why I thought it was an absolutely amazing investment. So all right, you made an investment, like where's it going to go? What's tell us how it's going to play out? Here? I'm thinking about our audience. They're investors and trying to understand and as the technological world continues to really evolve,

where do you see this all going? Well, I think that more people are going to start living in the meta earth and or you know, online and doing what they're doing. But you're bringing the simplicity of Game Night like a Netflix, and I think that for the initial customer. You know, we we're launching and we already launched Family Feud really great, uh I P. You have obviously Steve Harvey there after that we have seen it would marry a Low Piz and Jeopardy with Ken Jennings Wheel of Fortune,

and there's so many more slated. These are all titles of people really love You average out about anywhere from fifteen to twenty dollars for you know a game. But this is a subscription of about three dollars three ninety nine a month and you get you're gonna get tons

of games. And this is definitely something that I think some of the streamers are gonna want to acquire down the road because they need to get more eyeballs and keep more stickiness on their platforms, and I think this is a way to do this without having to compete for more content from other streamers. So talk to us about this platform. You mentioned family few that it is out there and it's streaming, So how many consumers are using it? What's the stickiness of someone who signs on

and stays with it? Well, it too early to tell the stickiness because we just launched it and you can go to Target dot com and get it or going to Target because there are some uh physical components to the game, some cards you may want to have, but it's a little too early to look at that. And you know, listen, after being one shark thank every year seeing people tell me they're going to do a good jillion dollars in the first week. I cannot to give

ums like that. I just yeah, I like the fundamental of knowing the I p s. They're knowing the celebrities, they're knowing my reaches, they're knowing people are moving towards streaming in all different forms, and knowing the metaverse is coming around. I like, I like all the different things in position for success. So is the game right now, damon?

Is it one that's meant to be played when people are physically together or is it to the point now where you can actually play with people who are not in the same space as you and you do this over the internet? Well out right now is going to be physically together, But it's going to grow to that. I mean, there are games that exist in apps that exist they're all separate that obviously you can play separately.

You know, that's nothing new, um, But right now it's physically in the home because then you'll be able to stream all the games to that home and uh and and and and the physical components of there too, a couple of those pieces, so right now you need to be in the same household. Hey David, you know, as you guys build this out, content content, content, and we see it with the streaming services, but that's going to

be true for this platform as well. Is it fair to say that it's gonna you know, there's gonna be maybe as you guys build it out and add content. In terms of profitability, it may take a little while, I would say so, but um, you know, listen to the two founders come from both the board, from the gaming world and from the lightnessing world. I think that there's going to just be a lot of massive I p there and you know if I would have you know, we we already saw this. You know, years ago we

thought the Netflix was something wasn't going to happen. Now you have Kulu, Netflix and all these type of things. I think this is going to be the new normal. What other titles are you thinking of? You mentioned that you have, um seen it with Mario Lopez, Jeopardy with Ken Jennings, Uh, you know Wheel of Fortune coming, You already have family Feud out. How else are you thinking about?

I don't want to call it content. Necessarily it is content, Um, but it's it's kind of it's a little different in the sense of like, you know, it's interactive. Well, we're looking at all ips. You know, one of my favorite ips monopoly of course, but you know we a deal of no deal or you know the price is right Pyramid, you know. I think I think, um, all of these ips go to be on there. What's the acquisition process for getting that intellectual property? Like, is it really tough

to get monopoly? It is? Really, well, it's it's it's somewhat tough, but you have people like myself, Steve Harvey, the great founders who worked over at Sony and various other places. We all have, you know, the right connections of Mattel and have Bro, and I think that they're always trying to expand their IP and put it in

different hands as well. So, um, I don't think this one is going to be as challenging because we're kind of like in that blue ocean space with this, and there's not too many other competitors in this area delivering it on the same platform. So I think it's gonna be fairly easy. Well, what's interesting too, this whole idea of family game night, right right. Uh, that I think about in terms of your potential audience, UM, has to

make it even more attractive. Yeah, because listen, you have you have three to four generations that can live in a household and still all love and value the same game. I mean when when we think about all the shows that are on Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and all these shows that are still a mailers And I just did Celebrity Family few the other day and it brought me back to my child. I've been watched family including family feeling in a long time, and I had the most

amazing time. And I think that when you bring in families around where all of them can appreciate these legendary I p s the legendary games, I think I think it will be a new boost to the gaming market in this sense, to the board game market. Hey, Damon, I gotta ask. A couple of days ago, you conducted a conversation with Facebook formerly Facebook now Meta founder of Mark Zuckerberg, where he really talked about his vision for

the metaverse. Uh. We talked a lot about Facebook. The company's stock is down about since its highs back in um September. Uh, what was the vision that he laid out for the Metaverse to you? And and and at south By Southwest assassinating conversation with him, and I got to more of the human aspect of him. We did go through some of the technical aspects. But you know, when I asked him questions, he sounded like that bright, young, um um customer obsessed entrepreneur that just wants to help

and change people's lives. And I think that as he was talking about the metaverse and all the things that will bring uh, he was looking for more creatives and entrepreneurs to really define what it is. I mean today it's it's it's kind of like where we had the iPhone one. You know, that's where it's really at today. But I mean some of the things we were talking about, how people who are you know, maybe in a wheelchair can now dance and sing and swim and and more

mature people can have that first date again with their wife. Uh. That that obviously brought joy to me. But talking about how we're working, you know, I'm I'm questioning myself should I open an office again. I half my employees don't want to work. I don't want to work in office do want to come in now there's a medium, Damon, We gotta run, so nice to check in with you, Damon. John over at fubou and of course as his latest investments for Tim's enevich um Carollmaster who was safe evening