You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, and listeners of this show will get a seventy five dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go to Indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need, all.
Right, guys, Going back, E y L the edition.
Fitting very fit, very fitting.
So we got a very very exciting episode something that we haven't covered yet. Every every time you think we cover something, it's always something.
Else to cover.
Yeah, this this, this is a big one. So the gaming industry the gaming industry is a multi billion dollar global industry that has turned into a real just everything exploded, It's really exploded. They got the World Series of Fortnite, the World Series. It is the world.
To man.
Yeah, yeah, I was there. I was all right, all right, sixteen.
Crazy, unbelievable, unbelievable. So we're gonna do this episode justice. Yes, Austin Woolrich, who is the CEO and founder of the Players Lounge, So this is a really.
Cool co founder shout that we forget them Players Lounge.
So Players Lounge is a platform where gamers play their favorite video games against others for process. So long story short, you're doing what you're already doing, but you can actually win cash prices, and it's for everybody. It's not like you don't have to be the best player in the world, like you don't have to be the top twenty five, like the World Series of Pokers, like you got to train.
It's like, you know, it's a platform that's actually opened up for everybody and low barriers and entry as far as money is concerned. But you actually can make a lot of money. So they've paid out over twenty five million dollars in twenty nineteen, tens of thousands of users. It's a really big thing.
Yeah, all them days that your mom and dad would tell you to turn the video games off, they might want to start telling you to turn the video games on. Man is it is a huge industry. And like I said, I'm just so I'm so upset that this wasn't around ten years ago.
Yeah.
Yeah, So this this is a new world. This is a new world that we live in where it's like, you know, you don't have to work in corporate America. You can play video games and make money, and you can create a company where you can make money and have other people play video games and turn into a lucrative business. So, first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.
Orse of course I love what you guys do. Thank you so much for.
Having me, no problem.
So yeah, let's get right into it. So players lounge, all right? So what is the process? I I kind of know because I read, but I think it's an interesting story. How do you get because you was at Wesleyan If anybody's not familiar, that's one of the best colleges in America.
I think it's the most expensive one.
Definitely the most expensive.
It cost It costs a lot. It costs a lot of money, so big money. You you you go to.
You know, this extremely prestigious university. What made you want to really go into video gaming as a career.
Yeah, I think video games has just always been a part of my life since I was a kid.
I always been playing since a young young age, and to fund my.
Video game addiction, I would actually sell my old video games that I finished on eBay. And I was actually just looking at my eBay account recently, and I made it in nineteen ninety nine, so I was ten years old, so it was ten years old.
I don't even know how. I couldn't even.
Explain how I was doing it back then, but I was like literally going on the computer, selling like my N sixty four games, my PlayStation games, and getting the money somehow via PayPal, and then going to the game stop or whatever and buying.
The next game that I wanted. And so it's always been a part of my life.
And even a few years later, actually got paid twenty dollars an hour to help some family friends children like beat the games that they were stuck in so they had their own PlayStations or whatever, and they were stuck in i don't know, like Spiral the Dragon or some game like that, and I would just come over and get paid like twenty an hour to just help them beat these games.
So you like a video game tutor.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And I think it was more.
So my family friends kind of engaging and putting some some fuel onto my entrepreneurial spirit and like kind of driving me to continue to go down that path more so than like it actually being a wise investment for them. But but yeah, that's definitely been Biggins has always been a part of my life. And so when I was at Wesley in my freshman year, I actually came across
the site that is now a competitive Player's launch. I'm not going to say their name, but they provide similar offering where you can play video games against other people for money. You're betting on yourself playing vide games against other people around the country for money. And so I've always been really big into FIFA as one of the games that I've invested at, and so I was playing on the site and one summer I won a couple of brand on your FIFA and the money actually hit.
My account, and I was like, I'm the man.
Yeah, it's made more than some kids making in the internship over the summer just playing FIFA for a couple of weeks. I just found like a guy and just took his money, Like fell a little bad. I took that money and went to went to Florida, went to Miami with my boy.
So you know, the crazy part is that, like you said, you were ten in nineteen ninety nine, So like for the kids that are listening now, it's like before you could play online, you had to go to your friend's house to take his money, you know what I'm saying. So once you got online with it, it's like, all right, well this is a new game, right.
So it how I see it is that like you have your certain circles that are wanting to play video games against you for money, and then over a course of course of time, like they're not down to play you anymore because clearly you're better if you got to give odds and stuff like that. And so this platform really expands the pool of people to play against her money.
Exponentially.
It's like every single circle that comes into this one pool, and now you have like thousands and tens of thousand, one hundred thousands of people how to play with for money.
Okay, so yeah, so you say so use that all right? Yeah, so you say that you was playing a FIFA, you won a couple of thousand.
What happens after that?
So that kind of opened my eyes, like looked like this platform, it works, and there's a big opportunity here we could build our own. And so.
I was at Wesleyan playing soccer there and my eventual co founder is Zach and I actually talked about this idea because we played PIFA pretty competitively at college.
We would go into each other's dorm room before a game.
We couldn't be going out on like a Friday because we had a game on Saturday, and so the whole soccer team would go to someone's dorm and just like FIFA, like for money for sure.
So they started they started out as little tournaments in the dorm rooms.
Uh no, that was just like for fun. It didn't have to do with players on. We didn't start players on back then. But like the idea was kind of an inceptualized in that environment where like I just did it on a site for money, and then we're also like experiencing those circles.
I was just talking about in the dorm rooms at college.
And so we started spitball on the idea, but we had soccer, we had school work to do, and it never really evolved beyond just a couple of conversations.
But I can fast forward a little bit.
And so we graduated college in twenty eleven, and then Zach and I ran into each other in twenty fourteen, and that's kind of when the ball got rolling.
So you start, you start.
You got the idea and you want to take it and make it a real company, Right, So what's the first step as far as that is concerned, Like the blueprints that you kind of sitting down with Zach and like, all right, this is the framework on it.
So we had our initial like spitballing of the idea when we were sophomores, and nothing, it didn't really come in fruition. And then graduating twenty eleven and three years later, I'm watching the World Cup and I'm like, damn, I really miss playing FIFA, and so I immediately ordered an Xbox and my friend and I just started playing a couple of games with FIFA, and I was like damn, Like I really missed playing FIFA with my friends and playing.
FIFA for money, and like like just the whole vibe of that.
I really miss that. And so I was thinking, like, Okay, so how can I recreate that experience? Because in New York people have small apartments, and people are working a lot and have conflicting schedules, and so it's not as easy to get people into like a room to play like a bunch of FIFA together as a I was in college, and so I thought of an idea where.
Why don't I just go to bars and say, hey, you guys have.
A Bengo nights, have a trivia night or whatever to bring patronton on a traditionally slow night like a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Why don't I introduce a FIFA night? And so I partnered with a bar in Williamsburg and I had maybe like fifteen or twenty or so of my friends ready to come to this event. And the day before I run into Zach, my college soccer teammate, at the gym.
He just moved back from Brazil because he was at the World Cup, and so I'm like, yeah, we should come to this event, like you're gonna love it.
We're gonna be playing FIFA for money.
It's a tournament, just ten dollars entry fee, and like the wind will get like two hundred.
He's like, damn, that sounds really dope, Like you need help doing it, Like I want to help, And I was like, yeah, for sure, Like this shit is a lot of work.
Setting it up, so I could definitely use some extra hands. And so the first event was it was a great success. We had like maybe fifty people packed into a dive bar in Williamsburg, and we realized that, like there was definitely something here. We recreated that environment that we had playing FIFA in college, where like there was money on the line, everybody was friends, people were meeting new people, we were playing good music. And so before starting Player's Launch,
I was like a full time rap producer. So at these events played like all the music that I wanted to hear, like all the newest rap and all that shit, and so it really made it to like a party at the same time. And that's kind of how Players Lounge. That's how it really started. It was just an event company that hosted FIFA tournaments at bars with cash trucks.
So you guys went from Brooklyn, you killed the city right in Manhattan, then you started spending expanding west, right, didn't you go to San Francisco.
Yeah, we did a couple events in San Francisco.
We went through an accelerator program out there at UC Berkeley at the Business School, and so we threw a couple of events out there, and then we did a partnership with Anheuser Bush and they flew us out to Toronto to do like a big event out there. So we were touching different parts of the country and North America. The Anheiser bushdy was kind of cool just to kind of like explain the value behind that on both sides.
So for us, the value obviously was cash. They were paying us money and they gave us more validity.
And on their end, the value proposition was, hey, we have this screw players lounge and we could present them to bars as a way to bring in more traffic, and in return, the bars will get rid of a millerte tap and add another Anheuser Bush tap.
And so that was kind of the partnership that that we'd drawn up with them.
So as you kept doing it, are the crowds going what are they looking at you say, at in the Brooklyn one you had fifty What are the crowd sizes is looking like? As you keep going around out the country.
So we had different types of events. We had big tournaments with hundreds of people. We had events where like we found a group in Washington, d C. That we're doing similar type of things PIPA tournaments, and we had them come down. They got hotel rooms, and we had a whole World Cup like New York versus DC. So our whole our whole squad that the regulars that came to the players on the events in New York played against the regulars in d C. So that was a
really really fun event. That's probably the funest event we ever did. And then the one in Toronto was pretty big. We had like over one hundred people there, but the majority of it was just like very consistent weekly tournaments or leagues. And so we had a website built where like you had a leaderboard you can see where you
were at any given time. The leaderboards updated in real time, so you could pull out your phone and check the website and see like, oh, you just lost the match, like where'd.
You go up or down? Or whould you go down on the leaderboard.
So it's more like the consistent league and turnament and flow that was really the bread and butter g.
So at what point does this really start to scale and go from because it sounds like, all right, you were doing like in person experiences in Brooklyn, Toronto, La, different places, and with that it kind of grew and became bigger than just the in person bar experience. So at what point does it grow to having you know, the first thousand people that are all over the world using it, And it's really no longer the focus is no longer in person. The focus is more just on the internet.
So after about eighteen months of doing events, uh, there wasn't really that much growth happening, and there was a lot of work, a lot of like sweat, and it was a large capital investment to continuously grow events because you have to buy consoles, you have to buy gains by controllers. Every time you had more people, you needed more of that, and the expenses and revenue weren't growing linearly,
and so we decided to pivot. And the pivot was going back to our conversations that we had in college, like yeah, let's build a digital platform where anyone in the country, anyone in the world can play anyone else online for money. So it's basically expanding that circle that I was telling you about earlier. And so it was around November of twenty fifteen we decided, look, we're gonna pivot from events and focus all of our efforts into
a digital product. And the digital product is gonna have the DNA of the events, which was like a community environment where you can see what's happening, you can see who's playing. It's not like a casino or anything where it's like people are siloed off in their little slot machines and not really interacting. Like no, it's an environment that we create that's popping, and you want to know what other people doing, how much money.
Other people are playing for.
You want to transfer that DNA over into the digital products. And one thing that's really important that I definitely want to share it with everybody is that pivoting is very normal and its majority of startups and successful startups have pivoted at least one time. And so you take kind of what you learn from your initial build your MVP, so you can call the event our minimum viable products.
The event Company.
And so what we learned from the event company was that one hundreds or even thousands of people were willing to travel all across the Trystate, from all across the Try State area to a random dive bar in Williamsburg to play FIFA with the with like minded.
People for five hours until two in the morning. That happened twice a week. So we knew that people were really really trying to do this, and we knew that people were given that people were traveling from very far away, there weren't that many options out there for them. And then we started talking to our customers in person, like what would you want from a digital product, like what would translate.
Over to make you want to use it? And so we learned a lot there and interviews are very key. And so we took all that information that we learned and the clear desire that there isn't a feasible product to allow people to do this from their own homes as opposed to driving like two hours. We took that information said all right, let's scrap the event stuff and go fully digital. And so.
We needed money to build the digital products. And so this is a great story. My co founder Zach.
He got word that a Wedsley and grad probably one of the most successful Wesdy grads. This guy named Strauszelnik. He's the CEO of Take two Interactive. They make grant to photo NBA two K and he's also like.
The chairman of this Viacom CBS conglomerate.
So he's like a real real big dog and he's a Wedsley group. And so we got when that he has these workout classes at six am every Thursday. And Zach could tell anybody like when we were on the soccer team, I hated working out, I hated going to gym, hated lived in weights. I was just on the field, just cooking. But I didn't want to like do any like workouts and shuff like that. But Zach, Zach enjoys it. And so he's like, fuck it, I'm gonna go to
this workout class. I got a friend who invited me, and I'm gonna go every Thursday, which ended up being from like April to November, every Thursday until he's down to have.
A meeting with us. I'm like, all right, go for it. And he was very successful. He went like.
Two three thursdays in a row, didn't get a word with him. Five six thursdays later, maybe said hello, maybe got an introduction, and then eventually he was able to build up enough rapport to be like, hey, look, me and my co founder from Wesley and we started a company and esports company and NBA two K is part
of our vision. We sit down with us and hear about it, and he was like, yeah, for sure, and we went to uh we went to a brunch spot in the upper east side of Strauszonik, and we were so naive at the time and we didn't really like know all this terminology of like evaluation caps and all this stuff, and we and he was just like very polite about it and very understanding. But he was asking us to do like a bunch of like napkin math.
And we're just like, oh shit, like uh, like look at bluster U. And then he ended up investing.
He ended up investing sixty thousand on the spot and he was like, I love what you guys are doing.
I think guys are very committed.
And the digital product is definitely with the way to go kill the events. Digital product is how you make this a billion dollar business. The ceiling on the events side is very low and very capital intensive, and you have a much scalable business on the digital side. And so I'm gonna leave, here's my gym bag. I live at this address, take my gym bag back to my apartment.
And then we got a deal. So we basically have to like find out where this guy lives and take his gym bag to a spot to secure the money.
Why was why was it was that like some kind of just the ritual, Like it was a moment exactly.
That's probably the best analogy. It is definitely a Diddy cheesecake moment. All right, you guys just take my bag, figure out where.
I live and uh oh he didn't. He didn't give you his address. He oh, okay.
It was still kind of weird, weird vibe before we go, before we get to the next thing.
I really wanted to.
I want to, I want to double back on what you just said, because there's a lot of valuable information in that. And the thing that I liked was Okay, So he found out that he worked out at this gym at six o'clock in the morning, but he went there, but he didn't just approach him the first time. It's like, all right, it's like the guy that's like the real creep and he finds out the girl like works in
the coffee shop. If he's like really really like you know what I'm saying into it, he's not just going to go and the first time, he's gonna make himself a regular kind of like, oh, I randomly saw you, like you know what I mean, you kind of hate Sometimes you got to create, you got to create the moment. So I love that because it's like he's intentional about what he wants to do, but he understands that the
first time. If he just went and just spoke to him the first time, it's obvious the only reason why you're coming to this class is to speak to me now to hear what you're talking about. So now you just you don't even speak to him for like five weeks, but he sees you. He kind of is familiar with you. At that point. Then you say hello, Hey, what's up? Hey, Okay,
I acknowledge you. Then you might just say hey, you know, like you know, it starts some small talk and then like a couple months in coming out, it's a conversation. So I think a lot of times, especially with networking, This is why I'm bringing this to this point. Networking a lot of times people it happens to us all the time. People hit us in the DM and they
it's a very selfish like can you help me? Like there's no rapport, there's no trying to bring any value, there's no like can I in turn, it's just like I have an idea.
Here, this is going to be the idea.
Yeah, And it's like it doesn't work like that. Human nature is going to reject you nine times out of ten, even if it's a good idea. You have to take the time, you have to build rapport, and over the course of time, it's like chipping away the iceberg. Then you strike. You wait for the right moment to strike. You just don't go in off the rip.
Exact, wait for that right moan to say, yeah, I'm a Wesleyan grad too, and it's like, oh wait, hold on, let me have this conversation. Right. Sometimes the power of being that commonality like yo, we went to the same school is going to get you in the do it. I couldn't have said, y'all went.
You need to have proper icebreakers, you need to have you have a plan, like as you were saying, like just going in guns blazing with no plan other than to ask for something like ninety nine percent of the people do that.
So immediately that person's gonna write you off because he sees it or she sees it.
Every single day. And so you have to really consider the angles that you're trying to approach people with. And if you come with the right angles and you actually like to think more about it, you increase the likelihood that you're going to get that beneficial result they're looking for.
Yeah, and I like the fact that he told you that the scalable model is not in physical events. And this is even obviously pre Corona, but I think everybody realizes that now. I say this whole the time, like, you don't have to have a strictly online business to
be successful. You can't have a brick and martar. It's just a tremendously harder But if you don't have some kind of revenue stream that comes from online, I don't think you have a successful business at this point because there's too many variables that go into play if you're just relying on live events or brick and martar. And this just accelerated that to me and should show everybody.
Any type of business that you're starting at the very least should have a strong online presence with an online revenue model. And you probably want to look at a business that's just strictly online. It's a lot less overhead. Then it's a lot easier.
Brick and Martys will close. Right, that happens, right, It's tough to shut down the World Wide Web.
You can't impossible what I'm saying.
So obviously you need to have online presence exactly.
Think about all the all the stores, the mom and pop stores that put off We're going to.
Open up our e comm store later, keept putting that off, and now like that could be the fact of life and death for those businesses.
And you got to rush to gravitate to a shopify or a platform like that and rush to create a three pl your third party logistics platform to handle your shipping and all that stuff. So it's a little too it might be too late for a lot of these companies, and something that you really have to always engage in as a business owner entrepreneurs, like where is the industry going?
And if you don't do that, you're gonna you're.
Gonna dare your company is on a complete opposite end of that, specially where it's like everybody's home, plus kids are in front of video games a lot of the day, Plus they are going to play online another plus that's not going anywhere, so that I could imagine how crowded your space be came. We're going to get into that though.
Yeah, for sure.
So we're gonna go into the next segment. We're gonna talk about break down a companies and also talk about the VC side. But yeah, before we go, I just wanted to just like you said, as far as the mom and prop grocery stores, and it's like a lot of times, like I said, you can be a hybrid. I want to just because the show is for entrepreneurs in it because everybody but we have a lot of entrepreneurs I listen to it. So it's like think about
ways to be creative. And I look at Amazon. We referenced Amazon a lot, but Amazon when they when they purchased Whole Foods a few years ago, it was kind of baffling to a lot of people because it's like Whole Foods, if you really know the business, they were
struggling and they've been struggling. But now they've recently turned six Whole Foods into what they call dark stores, which is pretty much just drop shipment centers where people order groceries online now during the pandemic and they're skating ships. So now it's like, okay, this is the play all along.
So now they're emerging. Amazon does that a lot. Where they brought a bookstore, they got Amazon Go grocery store Whole Food So they're a perfect example of like I said, Brick and Martin isn't completely dead, but you have to you have to be able to merge it with some kind of online presence if you still want to have a Brick and Marter situation.
I mean, they started out as a bookstore. Look what they've turned into.
Yeah all right, so yeah, in the next segment, we're going to go into the details and break down the business. So okay, so you got the company up, up and running, so it's interesting business model. I had a couple of questions, So how do players get paid? Like, let's just break this down. So all right, so let's say I'm a gamer and I play Fortnite, right, and you know, I'm just I'm not like, you know, a champion. I'm just
a regular gamer. So I go on your platform, I created user name whatever, and I played like a five dollars Fortnite game.
Is this how this works?
Yeah, So it's similar to fandor or DraftKings or even online poker, even though we're not we're not gambling. We are skill based competitions. That's important, Yes, very important. Going through a lot of legal UH invested a lot in legal opinions to ensure that what we're doing is legal
in the majority of states in the US. So, but it is similar to those models where you make an account and you posit funds into your player's launch account, and so let's say you deposit fifty dollars, then you have a fifty dollars balance in your account that can
be used how you see fit on the platform. And so whether that is playing a ten dollars head to head game that instantaneously matches you up against someone of equal skill for the game type that you want to play for, or a tournament that's like a five dollars entry free and first place gets one thousand dollars, and so you can just kind of spray your balance however you see fit on the platform. And so let's say, for your example, you want to play a game of
Fortnite for ten dollars. You use our matchmaking software to find an opponent of similar skill, someone who has performed similarly on the on the platform, whether they've beaten or played the same players that you have, are in the same wager, average wager amount that you had, their winning percentage, their p and L, and so all these factors are included in our matchmaking system to ensure that you're playing so on of equal skill and so on. You never
you don't feel grossly overmatched against. And so once you find an opponent, then a match lobby is created between the two of you where there's like a match chat where you say, hey, I'm ready to play. There's an informational area where you see their gamer tag and other relevant information that you need. And once you're ready to play your opponent, then you go to your PlayStation or your Xbox and you play that person in the game that you're playing. So in this case Fortnite, it's a
very specific way to play for money. But for those who know how Fortnite works, you drop into a duo's match with your opponent on players lounge, and then whoever gets the most kills in that game wins the money. And so once the match is over, both players report the score back to the app.
And so, Troy, let's say you win.
Five to two, then you put that into the app and the opponent has to confirm the score, and once they do, the money is automatically dispersed in the winner and added to their account. In this scenario, if it's ten dollars per person, we take a ten percent fee from each entry fee and the winner would be getting eighteen in total.
All right, So here's the thing, right, because I'll used to play games a lot, right, and when you're really good at it, and a couple of things. When you're really good at it, there are people who will quit during the game. So what happens then if somebody quits the match, or if there's a lag with the connection, what happens then?
So we've built a massive rule set for every game on our platform for what happens in fairly common situations like a disconnection or throwing lags out, and so we have protocols in place for all of that and in case, so, for example, if the disconnection happens, we tell users to play the rest of the match based on how much
timers remaining. So like if you're playing Madden and the disconnection happens at halftime, then we say start a new game and play the first half, and then you just add up the scores.
And so.
Naturally one would think what happens if someone lies, what happens if X, Y and Z happens.
Or someone says that they won when they really didn't, And so we.
Built a very robust dispute protocol and functionality in the app that basically handles those situations.
And it's very easy to prove that you want to match.
These days, you're one button away from screenshotting a match or recording the last hour.
Of your gameplay.
And so if a dispute happens, we just ask our users to provide some simple evidence to showcase.
Who won that match.
And for what is worth, only one percent of all our matches end up in disputes anyway, and so it's not a very common occurrence.
Yeah, so there's two ends to the spectrum, right, there's the person that gets on a hot streak, and if you've ever had a a sports competitive game, you've gotten on a hot streak. Does it make it harder for people to want to play that person knowing that a, you have twenty six wins in a row, what does that person doing? And then on the opposite end, the person who is had a seven game losing streak, is there analytics to match them with somebody who's doing the same.
Yes, we consider all those factors when it comes to matchmaking. So there's two ways to play on Player's Lounge. You press a button, it's kind of like calling an uber, and we match you up against the best possible person for you, which includes a lot of those factors that you just mentioned.
And that's basically our users trusting us to tell them.
Look like, you don't play video games for a living, clearly, and we want to make sure you don't go up against a pro who's playing on Players' Lounge like ten hours a day, because I just wouldn't make sense and you would probably leave the site after playing that person like a couple or playing a couple of those people in a row. And so that's the number one way to play on players Lounge. The majority or matches happened that way, just pressing a single button and getting matched
up against somebody within less than thirty seconds. And then the other way is if you know the person you want to play, you can just send him a direct challenge. So like, hey, this guy is one of the best FEVA players or Madden players.
On the site.
I'm feeling like I'm cooking these days, so I want to see if I can match up against some of the best players. I'm gonna send him a DM and then he could see my rating on players Lounge. We have a player's Lounge rating, which is score between one and five. So the best player is probably going to be a five, and if I send him a challenge, I'm a two. He's like okay, Like bet a major lunch, send me that.
Challenge, get this money.
Yeah, So we do have things in place so to make sure that like the Sharks, the best players don't necessarily like eat up all the all the minnos and like the majority of the players who well not only are.
Playing to make money, but also.
From our user interviews, and I really want to emphasize, like interviewing your customers is the best thing you could do in your business because you are literally getting like feedback on from the people who are using it the
most and you iterate on that information. But one thing we've learned from our users is that a lot of people don't really care that much about making money a lot like I would think half of our users care about the extra value and excitement that comes from playing video games for money.
Even if it's a dollar. It's a totally different experience.
Your body feels totally different playing that game with a dollar online than if there's nothing on the line.
So we interviewed Mike Brown.
He's a former NFL player that had an equity crowdfunding campaign for a He has an interesting platform where it's what's it called win Win. It's called win win, and it is like esports, but it's for charity. So it's like fantasy sports with for charity. So he was saying that you know a lot of people that play fantasy sports, they don't necessarily play it to win money, like you just said. It's more so the competition, the camaraderie, the
whole thing. So he was like, okay, Like, if you can have the same feel of playing fantasy sports, but you can actually do something good and give to a charity and then you get memorabilia, you get to hang out with an athlete instead of getting paid physical cash. Would that be appealing to you? And a lot of people like that idea and it became really popular. So it's interesting that you that you said that because that that reminds me of what he said. I had a
question as far as on the business side. So you're you're getting you're getting paid, and you're paying people from playing these games like Fortnite and all these other types of games call of Duty. I assume in all these games, are there licensing agreements that you have to have with these individual companies that you're profiting on for ved?
How does that work?
No, there isn't.
We check with that legal counsel on that, and it's more of like using their names and fair use because we don't end up right with the platforms.
We're totally second screen.
Experience at this time, and so what people are actually doing are just like seeing the words like NBA two K and Call of Duty and then just agreeing to play with each other for money on players Lounge with the contract that we essentially create, and then the actual games happens off players Lounge and on their consoles, and so we're not like integrated with the game at any at any point at this time, and so it's kind of the equivalent of like you're trying to sell your
BMW on Craigslist, and so you have to use BMW in order to like give people an understanding of like what you're selling and the type of product and the type of like car you're selling. So it's similar in that vein where it's like we have to tell our users that we offer NBA two K and they want to play two K for money or else they just wouldn't be like a viable product.
We said this earlier, and I don't know if everybody really understands that term game of skill and how that helps an illegal mass, right, because this isn't really good sembling, right, This ash esports is a game of skill? Can you talk about the battle to fight for that term?
For sure? For sure?
I definitely want to like shout out like FanDuel for kind of paving.
The way here.
Nigel Elis is one of my advisors, who's the who's the founder of FanDuel, and so a lot of kind of like the first iterations of players was modeled after that, and so FanDuel they for those who know FanDuel is like daily fantasy sports.
It took a lot of my money.
I love the product, but me too. But real quick, what it is is that you basically set a lineup of players who are.
Playing that day, whether it's in the NBA or NFL, MLB and so, and then they accumulate points based on their performance. And then the more points your team acquires, the more likely you can be in the money, like win money in a tournament. And so they went through a massive legal battle for years with the federal government and like a lot of states to argue against that they were not gambling and that they were a game
of skill. And so the skill argument comes from like, hey, like I can do all my research.
On the teams and the players and the data.
Like if I'm a data scientist, I have a huge upper hand against someone who just like watches sports leisurely.
And they won that battle because it's true it's a game of.
Skill, like if someone really knows their sports, they have a much higher likelihood of beating someone who doesn't really know. And so they paved the way for players Lounge because they spent millions of dollars lobbying and basically state by state getting the conversation going to the point where like, all right, the States are like, Okay, you guys want to making a shitload of money, so we're gonna open it up.
But two, you've proven enough that you are not gambling and you are a game of skill.
And so I'm definitely fortunate for Daily Fantasy kind of paving the way because I didn't really have to go through that, and the landscape was kind of like already the legal and regulatory landscape was already laid out for me.
But that said, I still had to get invest a lot in legal opinions because the key here is like payments, and so the payment processors are really on the front lines when it comes to the government, because like you got to deal with anti money laundering and like all the Patriot Acts stuff, And so when you're moving money in the way that Players Lounge and Daily Fantasy is moving money, you have to be extremely compliant with anti money laundering laws and policies.
And so not only do you have to get your legal opinions straight for the.
Payment processes and the government, but you also need to make sure that you have the right protocols and the right policies when it comes to anti money laundering and the right.
Technical systems.
In place like geofencing and age verification in order to truly be compliant as a business like ours.
So there is an age requirement for play songs, right, it is eighteen years old?
Eighteen okay?
So okay, So like what's the what's the revenue model for you guys? Like do you charge like you take a percentage out of winnings? Do you charge for everybody that plays?
Like?
How does that work?
So it's pretty simple.
We take ten percent from each entry fee, and so if you play a ten dollars match against someone else in the site, then we take one dollar from each entry fee and then the winner will get eighteen.
That's it. That's it. That's just playing very very model.
Yeah. So what's the retention rate? So if so the first person that the person that comes to the to the site, what's the retention rate of people who stay and decide to play more and more.
I would say it's.
In the range of It depends on the game for sure. The game is the type of game that they play. So like Madden NBA two K users retain a lot more than like a Fortnite user, But yeah, I would say like around like twenty over.
Over eight weeks, I believe.
So right now, you guys are in the console, right, so Xbox PlayStation, have you moved over to the PC side? Because I noticed that's I mean there's a lot of games there, counter Strike, League of Legends that are huge. Are you guys in that space as well?
Uh?
Not yet? For various reasons.
One like there just isn't that much representation in console esports. Like the majority of esports as it's known, like mainstream wise are PC games, and.
Like the people that are using our platform.
Really love NBA two K and Madden, and like the esports culture around that of those games like hasn't really been created yet, Like it's still like the foundation might be there, but like the structure hasn't been.
Earners, what's up? You ever walk into a small business and everything just works, Like the checkout is fast, their seats are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before the line even builds. Odds, are they're using Square? We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just feels seamless, whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop up market, or even one
of our merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system. If you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down one of the best tools out there to help you start, run, and grow. It's not just about payments, it's y'all giving you time back so you can focus
on what matters most ready. To see how Square can transform your business, visit Square dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn more that Square dot com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait, don't hesitate. Let's Square handle the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward. This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring, and sure, they definitely can be, but understanding a professional's routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little, day after day. It's like banking with P and C Bank. It might seem boring to save, plan and make calculated decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is what helps you live or more happily. Fulfilled life. P
and C Bank Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank National Association Member atdic.
Hey, I'm Tatiana Manning. I support our Voice of a Customer team at Pgenie. If you're a small business customer, we're here to support you. That's why I want to tell you about our new podcast, Real Talk with PGENI. We know small businesses are dealing with rising costs and
looking for ways to boost their bottom line. On our show, you'll hear from our customer experts with our small Business Engagement team, who will show you effective ways to improve your operations, find important resources, and most of all, save money.
I ride the RAND analysis for the emergency flop ink and based on their usage history, by just making a simple rate change at no costs, it was a twenty five dollars annual savings.
So listen to Real Talk with Pgenie and find more resources for your business by visiting pge dot com for slash.
Real Talk.
Built on top of that, and we want to build that structure like we want to be the go to brand to play in competitive console esports for money. And additionally, like we want to represent the underrepresented because the PC market there's a huge barrier to entry there. So like if you want to be like a quote unquote esports player on the highest level, it's like kind of like golf or a sport like that, we got to invest like a lot. You gotta buy a PC, a crazy PC.
It's like five thousand dollars and you have to invest all that time, and like for a lot of people, that's not an opportunity for them.
And so the consoles are like the the.
Way that they can really play video games. And so we want to like represent the console crowd because the a voice or a brand like associated with that. And then secondly, sorry, the other reason is that PC is pretty rampid. The rampant cheating on PC and it runs pretty.
Rampid, and.
Like it's not trustworthy enough for us to really get into at this time.
That's another big reason.
Okay, so what are the biggest games that people are playing on your platform? Like what's the top three games?
Top three in terms of.
Like wagers are Madden has a sizeable lead NBA two.
K and then the third game.
I think that this time is Call Duty, but it's really close between Call Duty and people.
What's the most somebody has? Do you know, like the most a person has one on your platform?
Yeah, I mean there's a there are a few people of one, like.
At this point, hundreds of thousands of dollars on one game, not like one they didn't like put up one hundred.
We gotta watch that's that's cable television.
Like what's the what's the most you can put on one game?
Like if you just wanted to just say out the Gate, out the Gate as like a new user that's verified their account and like uploaded their ID because we just we didn't make sure you are who you say you are. Out the Gate five hundred. But as you continue to play on players Lounge and like you show that you're like a reputable member of the community, you don't really like try to cheat, people will up your wager limit.
And so there are a.
Handful of people who are betting like five thousand dollars games, but I would say like the majority of the larger tier bets are between like five hundred and two thousand.
So what makes somebody a professional game because a few years back, I won't say how many, I had an opportunity. I was playing this NBA Live and this is when they had the Madden Bus and the NBA Live Bus. I got invited to the bus, and that was based on win percentage. Like I was like ranked No. Five in the world, right.
You weren't playing before we started.
You were really hooping in live.
I was really, like seriously like I would. People were paying me to play for them, and I got up to like number five in the world. I played the number one dude. That's why I talked about the lagging thing, because I was beating them. He lagged and it got disconnected and so I got invited to the bus. But now in this day and age, right, how is somebody considered a professional game? Is there amount of money they've won or is it based on their skill set?
There's a lot of ways it's gonna be a professional gamer these days. So the most traditional way is you get signed to a pro team.
So you get signed to.
Like one hundred Thieves or PAYS or NRG and you represent them on their Legal Legends team or their Call of Duty team or their Counterstrike.
Team, So that's the most traditional way.
Or you can be a content creator that's a professional gamer now too, because like these guys might not be the best in the world, but they're definitely the top one percentile. But they have a charisma about them that's like attractive on camera and people like watching them not only because they're good to have video games, but they have like a persona that resonates.
With a lot of people, like a guy like Ninja. Ninja would be there exactly.
Ninja is a perfect example. Cyber PK, myth tsmd Kwon.
All those dudes, like they're really good. They're like some of the best in the world, but they're not good enough to be pros. But the combination of their charisma on camera and their video game skill set, I would label them as programer doing it for a living.
Your programer.
He's got a million dollar contracts man, that's a pro.
No, it's crazy, but real quick.
Part of the Players Lounge mission is to add a third way. You can be a progamer and like you may not be signed to a.
Team, and you may not be like have to.
We want to provide an opportunity for people to just make money. Enough money to pay their rent or like supplement a primary salary or maybe.
Do it full time.
But they're making like fifty sixty seventy one hundred K year instead of like.
The millions that like sign pros are making.
And so Players Lounge is really creating the infrastructure for like a third way for people to become pro gamers.
Now, yeah, shout out to my guy Marquis too. With the seventy sixes, I just made me think of something. So we were supposed to do something with the seventy six is before this whole Corona thing happened, and I was in Atlantic City, so he invited me to the training facility that they have in Camden, New Jersey, which is right over the river from Philly. So he's given me a tour of the Sixers training facility and he's showing me a room and he was like, you know,
this is our room for gamers. He was like, so every NBA team they have a team of gamers that plays. I think it's a two K competition. He was like, you know, around March, we get a bunch of gamers and they come and he was like it's like training camp, Like they come in all day and they train in the morning and then like they take a lunch break
and then they do different skill work. And he was explaining it to me, and there was a whole boardroom that was dedicated to the gamers for like eight weeks out the year because I guess the NBA has their own tournament. I didn't even know that, but the NBA has their own tournament.
Yeah, they just ran their tournament during Yeah. Yeah, well I think Devin Booker won.
The two K tournament, right, No, but these were just random people.
The random people are doing one now, yeah, yeah.
So the random people are like actual two K the best players in two K. So like what you were talking about before about like getting signing on on the bus like now these days, in twenty twenty, the NBA has actually partnered with NBA two K to create a professional NBA two K league where the Warriors, the Knicks, the Nets. Like I think, I think it's like almost twenty teams now. They all draft pro two K players and they play five on five two K against each other.
And we actually had our two K specialist who was working for players on he got drafted in the most recent draft. So now like one of our boys places for the Hornets as like a power forward in this two K league.
That's crazy. And I see him thrive shout shut out to day That's that's crazy.
Man.
Yea, those those five on fives are pretty intense. And in the event of live sports not being here right now, this is what ESPN is showing. They're showing the five on five two K games. I was sitting there watching the game and I'm like, Yo, this is crazy, Like you were, like, each individual makes their player into my player zone, right, and then as you get skills and attributes, that's how you get drafted. Is that Is that what you're saying that you boy did.
Yeah, there's a there's like a specific mode in two K where you eventually, uh you actually just I guess present yours as being willing to be drafted and there's a whole competition around it. And then like the top like I don't know, one hundred like go to a draft and they may not get drafted, kind of similar to the NBA. Yeah, I think my boy got drafted in like the first round, like the first fifteen picks or something.
It's pretty sad. Yeah, it's the whole it's a whole culture.
It's a whole coach of I gotta get back into it. I'm convinced who coaches man. It is.
The landscape for EST sports is crazy.
Right now, and it's exciting. I mean, it's great for me, great for players. But kind of foresaw this happening back in twenty fourteen when we were hosting the events, and so it's crazy to see how fast the landscape has evolved since then.
Sure, so all right, in the last segment, we're going to bring it home. We're going to talk about the VC process and then also the vision to expand going forward. So in this segment, we're going to talk about something that we've covered before, but not from this angle. So if you're a lawyer listening to the podcast, you know that we've had John Henry. Shout out to John good guy, you know him, John Henry. Okay, he's a he's a superstar VC young Dominican out of New York.
Don't get the Dominican.
Shout out to John Henry. Shout out to Kwame at Black Star Fund. They both are venture capitalists and they explained the process of venture capitalists from that side of the table. But they we haven't covered it from somebody that's actually been in the process of like receiving venture capital money. So a few years ago, you guys raised a few million dollars from a lot of big names.
You've talked about one to take to ceo what's what's the gentleman's name against Strauss Strauszungner and then also I believe the former Yahoo CEO uh Marissa mayor uh Meyer and then uh Marco Ventures, a lot of big names and then biggest name of the big name, the six God himself or be Graham Drake.
Drake is an investing in your company.
So it's interesting because it's like, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, they they don't really they're not seasoned as far as like how Silicon Valley works or how to you know, go about asking for money or what's the process to even audition for these type of you know, the venture capital Yeah, exactly, So.
Can you walk them through that a little bit? Like what what what was?
What was you?
You guys you kind of explained the first one as far as with the take two that was like just the in person rundown, but as far as like the other kid, the moment the other venture capital money that you've received, how'd you go about doing that?
Like, what's the process?
Yeah, there's definitely multiple steps to this process. And so for us, the first step was just trying to raise any money to let us do us let us do this full time, because one thing that I really want to advocate is like, if you have a product and idea that you believe in and you have some proof of concept there, you've got to dive in full time
because the just balancing like your regular life. I know it's not the easiest thing to do for everyone, but I'd highly recommend trying to figure out how.
To do it full time or invest more hours into it.
And so we really were trying to like extend our runway to do players on the first time full time. And so the first investment we got was actually from another member of our Wesleyan soccer team, Mark Murphy, and he was at Goldman and we just told him about it.
He was like, Yo, it's really dope, Like I think I believe in this, and just gave us twenty grand. With that twenty grand, I quit my job and so at that point Zach and I were doing it full time. And then from then on.
That was that was in May of twenty fifteen, and then from then on, we're trying to like extend this twenty grand as long as we can, and we're trying to raise from family and friends. Like, look, we got this idea, like we're going to build a digital product of this event company, and.
It wasn't really working, Like we weren't raising.
Money from brimily and friends just off the deck, and so we had to like really figure.
Out how we were going to build.
The first version of the MVP to be a proof of concept in order to raise some more money. And so that's when Strauss came in and we were able to convince Strauss to invest. We took that money and we hired our cTTO Dan, and then we built the MVP and we.
Launched the MVP of Players launch in February twenty sixteen.
And so for the next year and a half, we're sweating, we're killing ourselves to try to raise some more money to not only pay our rents, but also like invest more in the big business so be able to test marketing strategies and hire people for customer service, because we have customers, but we aren't able to focus on like growing other parts of the business that we have to spend twenty four to seven handling customer service.
So we really had to like invest in the company. And after we launched the MVP, we were able to raise some angel checks here and there.
And so I would recommend if you're at this point, reach out to your friends and family and other relevant people who are investing in you as a person more so than the business or the products or the idea, because off the strength of you as a person, hopefully
have enough social capital. Then like if you have at least something tangible and a vision and like a business plan, hopefully you'll be able to convince some friends and family to cut you with one K check, two K check, three check, three K, five k. And we were just every month just getting those checks in the door in order to pay our rent because we weren't going to
go back to getting a job. We had to continue doing this full time, so that was really difficult, and we were trying to get like the larger checks in the door, like the one hundred K two hundred and three hundred and I must have met with this one specific investor like fifteen times with different materials, different reports, different reviews of our CAC to LDV ratio and like all this stuff and just wasn't willing to pull the trigger.
And so fast forward to around summer of twenty seventeen, we finally got a group that invests in sports teams too. I'm not gonna say which teams can make give away the people, but their NBA teams and English Premier League teams and MLS teams to give us a term sheet and it was for a million dollars for twenty percent of the company.
And that's an okay deal.
But at that point we're like, we have to take this money because like we've been so distracted raising money, trying to raise money, we haven't been able to invest like.
The majority of our time and like actually grow in the business.
And so we have this term sheet and right around this time, Why Combinator has office hours around the country, and what that means is that they have the partners and even the CEO of hy Combinator travel around major cities and provide office hours so entrepreneurs can come in and just talk to them, tell them about their business, and then they can learn more about why Combinator and so what is.
Okay?
Yeah?
What is so that?
It's like a workspace for people to come in, like creatives to come in and pitch ideas, Like what is that?
So why Combinator is the most prestigious accelerated program in the world an accelerator program for startups in the startup since is like they put you through like a quote unquote boot camp for like three to six months, depending on the type of program, and you basically learn as much as you can during this time and id eate your idea, maybe pivot if necessary during this time, and then at the end you have a quote unquote demo day, which is you getting on stage in front of thousands
of investors and pitching your product with the hope to raise money afterwards.
And so Y Commentator is.
By far the most prestigious. And it's actually harder to get into Y Comminator than it is to get into Harvard and Harvard Business School. I think it's twice Like if you go out the numbers, it's twice as hard to get into Y Comedy and.
You apply, like you apply like online, like it's like a school.
Like you like apply for Yeah, So how it works is I'll actually just continue the story, so I'll explain it. We'll get into that, and so, uh, we end up going out office hours with Michael Sibel, who's the CEO of Y Comminator, and he's like, he's like a Silicon Valley legend. Him and his team were the co founders of Twitch and also previously Justin TV if you remember that, but Justin TV became Twitch and Twitch sold to Amazon for a billion dollars and now he's the CEO of
Y Combinator. And so we met with Michael in New York while we have this term sheheit on the table and we tell him about the business.
We tell him that we're generating money.
At that time, I think we were making like seven thousand dollars in revenue a month. And we told him that we've been busting our ass trying to raise money and it wasn't really going well. But now we finally have this term sheet, but it's not the best deal. And he's like, look, I'm gonna hie, I'm gonna give you guys some advice. And Michael's a really cool dude, and he's very matter of fact.
And straight to the point.
He's like, you should not take that deal. I don't care if it's for a million dollars. You should apply to y Combinator. You're generating revenue, so there's a good chance you get in. I can't promise you get in because it's very difficult, but you have a good idea in a space that is booming. I highly recommend you apply. The application deadline is tomorrow, so you better get on it. So we're like, we gotta try it. Why not? So we apply and the application process is like an online
The initial application is online. It's a bunch of questions about your business, about the market, market opportunity, who your team is, why your team should be successful, and then you send like a little video, and then if you get over that hump, then they invite you to an in person interview at the y Combinator campus in Mountain View. I think they've now moved to San Francisco proper, and
so we didn't take the term sheet. We applied to y Combinator, We flew out for the interview, we got proof for an interview, We flew out a week before interview and booked a airbnb. So we invested, like, I don't know, a couple thousand dollars of funds that we didn't really have for an airbnb a week before, and we just grinded and memorize all the questions that we thought that they were able to ask us, that we thought that they were going to ask us, like hundreds,
hundreds of questions. We memorized every single possible answer, and then we walked into the interview, which is like a fifteen minute interview, and like, I'll be honest, I'm pretty.
Sure I blacked out.
I don't really remember what I said, but I knew I was able to answer whatever they asked because I had to answer prepared like anything in the realm of what they asked. I knew I had to answer prepared already. And so we got into y Combinator and that was a life changing experience and that changed the total trajectory of Player's lounge. We wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for Y Combinator.
So through through that, what's it called why Combinator, Yeah, Ye, why Comminator, Okay, And that's the they have a website, common dot com.
Yeah, And just to like really put in a perspective, like I guess the prestige of it and how good they are at finding businesses and also supporting their companies that they invest in. So when you get approved of why commenty, they invest in you, they invest seven percent. They invest like one hundred fifty thousand per seven percent of your business and then you're a part of the White ce network for life. And so some of the companies that have come in why common. There have been.
Airbnb, Twitch, Coinbase, Dropbox, Reddit benefits.
I'm missing a really really big one player's lounge. True, I appreciate you, but yeah, like the gravity of these companies companies are like crazy, and they have seven percent of all those companies that are all worth like north of fifty billion dollars.
At this point in my mind, I'm thinking, like this is like the ultimate shar tank right now, Like when you guys walked in, you made this pitch. So they take seven percent to give you one hundred and fifty. But do they also find more investors or what happens next next?
That's how why come an era end? So for the first for the three months that you're there, like we flew out to the Bay and we stayed in like East Palo Alto, and it's like a it's like a program, and so a couple of times a week you go to the campus and you learn. They teach you vital information about startups, how to grow your business, how to market, what you should be prioritizing, how to build a team,
how to manage a team, uh, everything that's relevant. And they also bring in former why See graduates.
So when I was there, like.
The founders of Reddit came to talk, the founders of Airbnb came to talk. So you're getting some really crazy insightful information during this period, but ninety percent of the time you're working. And so when you're not like doing these like two three hour campus events, you're working on your company. Because you're not working on your company, nothing's moving. And they know that. They're really smart about that. So the misconception behind why Combinator is that like they handhold.
You and build your business for you.
No, they just give you the information the tools to do so. But then you got to put in the work yourself. So we were working like actual fourteen hour days, like waking up, go right to our computers, work, take calls, eat, go to the gym, work, take calls, eat dinner, work till midnight. Go to bed, do the whole thing again for three months straight and then at the end is where you get your reward, hopefully, which.
Is demo Day. And so Demo Day is probably the biggest.
Feeding fest, I guess for investors because y Combinator has such a great track record in investing that all the best investors come out for Demo Day because they already know that if it's vetted by why Comminator, then it's probably gonna be a good company. And so I got on the Demo Day stage and there were thousands of investors in the crowd, and some really big people were there.
There was like NFL players there who come and invest there.
Mersa Meyer was there, the former CEO of Yahoo, and so yeah, I had to get on stage and just pitch players lounge for two minutes with the hope that afterwards we'll get some money in the door and I don't have to worry about fundraising anymore.
I'm in my mind, I'm listening, I'm hearing lose yourself. If that's what's playing in my mind, I'm visiting you right now, like this is your moment. You better not blow this.
More of a drake fan, I gotta definitely shut out more of a Drake fan. I was listening to a lot of Drake at that time. But and then I guess that came to fruition to some.
Extent, you thought it into existence.
It is.
The power of the mind is not a joke, no.
I mean, but that's that's it.
This is an interesting conversation because it's like a lot of times, like even what we talked about Mike Brown before, but he put us on to Draper University, which I'm sure you're familiar with that, and so what you're explaining it sounds like it's like a boot camp for tech entrepreneurs, right, And it's like a lot of times. And that's one of the great things with Earn your Leisure is that it provides exposure to people that have been left out
for a very long period of time. And it's like a lot of times you don't even know what you don't know. And you know, I'm not in the tech field, but you know, I'm in business. I've been in business for a long time and I wasn't aware of this, and it sounds like it's an extremely big thing, and it's like it's so many different things, like this that people don't even have any idea of, like you know,
aspiring entrepreneurs and stuff like that. Like you never know what some information could do, Like somebody might hear this podcast, might apply to it might get accepted, it might become the next Airbnb. They you never know, like you know, it's like the power of information is extremely powerful.
When I saw the word why combinated, I was like, what is that? It was mentioned in a couple of writings. I'm just like, yo, what is that? And now you just open the door to thousands and millions of its man to what it actually is. So kudos to you man to open an the door for us.
Yeah, I'm It's definitely my pleasure.
And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to get on the show is because I learned so much in a similar fashion, just like absorbing content and like figuring out what is what and like you don't know, we don't know, as you said, Ford, and like I didn't know about why commentator, Like I only found out about it through like a friend.
And then like when I said, when I told them we got in, they were like, or we got an interview, They were like, what are you crazy?
Like you just that's like a very small percentile of people even get an interview, And I barely knew what it was at the time, and so when we got in the interview, like I look more into.
It, I was like, wow, like this is a really big deal.
And that's why we invested in the house before to really study and make sure that we crushed the interview, because this is it was a life changing event for myself and my team. And even if players doesn't really pan out, which that's not gonna happen, but the network that you get from Y Commentator allows you to just like it's like a fraternity, it's like a tech attorney.
So like if I needed if I.
Wanted to partner with Twitch, I can just go right to the top because it's a Y Combinator company. If I wanted to talk to like the CEO of Airbnb and put like PlayStations and certain airbnbs, I can hit up founders of Airbnb because of Y Combinator. So it's a very very very incredible.
Tool.
And for sure, like the knowledge, even even spreading the knowledge that it exists can be very helpful to people.
Yeah I didn't not for sure, I didn't know either.
And so all right, so now that that makes sense, where you get all the these venture capital that come from that, right?
Yes, So after demo day, they set up basically a kind of like a speed dating type situation with investors, and so they built tech to basically for investors in the crowds that be on their phones and be like, okay, Players Lounge just went I liked them. I see that they liked Players Lounge, and then we set up meetings in this like speed dating environment. And so the majority of our vcs came from that experience, but the biggest
ones came from like relationships beforehand. And so there's actually an email mailing list called Stealth Mode, which is basically like a network for black entrepreneurs, are minority entrepreneurs in tech, entrepreneurs in tech, and also like relevant business skill sets. And so one of my friends actually added me to the group and did a shout out like thank you for sorry, not thank you, congratulations. Yeah, congratulations to Austin
and Players Lounge for getting into y Combinator. And then immediately a VC at Comcast Adventures.
Kai Bond hit me up and was like, yo, I have a fund that I focus on.
Minority investments under Comcast. I'm also a Wesleyan grad and so I know it doesn't make sense for you to raise right now because your evaluation is gonna skyrocket after a y combinator.
But once it's time for you to raise, like hit me up and I got you.
I'm gonna cut the check. I'm gonna cut the biggest check immediately.
And so he was a man of his word.
I love Kai Bond and Kai Bond of Comcast, which he's now actually courtside A Ventures. Yeah, he cut the biggest check in our round. And he did it before I even got on the demo day stage. I was just like, yeah, I'm raised. I'm going on demo demo days a week from now. He's like, cool, I'm gonna get this check cut before and he invested six hundred thousand dollars pretty quickly.
How does Drake, How does Drake get involved?
It's a great story.
Actually, So I was a music producer, full time music producer before starting Player's launch. So I was just like straight up making rap beats every day.
What's your producer name?
What was it? It was me and and my homie Brandon from UH from our hometown and our produced name was the Arsenal's okay.
Some of our stuff.
Actually we were on French montananis first album. Excuse my French. We did Life is so exciting for Fabulous, we put your tea on it. We did a bunch of stuff for kid Inc. Early on early on kid Inc. So yeah, I mean like that was my life and so obviously I had contacts in the space. And so when I was before I went to y Comminator. My manager at the time his name is also Austin, hit me up and was like, yo, I thought was gonna be like, where are the beats. I haven't gotten beats in a month.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've been starting this company called Player's Lounge. And he's like, oh, we're like, come through to my spot and tell me about it. And so tell him all about it, and he's like very very connected. Obviously he actually manages like post Malone now and some really big people, and so he's like, Yo, this is really dope, Like I want to invest. I want to tell a bunch of my friends to invest
as well. So he connected me with a dude named Sam should Treat and of should Treat Ventures, and so he's cool with Future of the Prince, which is who's Drake's manager, and so she treat Ventures invested in Players Lungs right when we got into Y Combinator.
I was like the first like major investment we got at the time.
And when Drake got on Fortnite with Ninja, he like broke the Internet, and I think, like the conversation happened.
At some point we're like, all right, we got.
To invest in esports. And then so the next time should Treat met with Feature of the Prince. He's like, yo, I just invested in this esports company called Players Lounge, and he connected me with the Future and so I talked to Future on the phone while I was at Y Combinator and he was like love it, like we want in Like that's that's news, that's a that's news. That's great news to me. Like I mean, Drake invested in Players Lounge, Like am I dreaming or what's up?
And he was like all right, bet, Like we're gonna be in touch. Eight months later, goes by, I haven't heard from him and and we're just fine, and then reached out to him and then we ended up meeting in La, so I met him in person. We sat down and it was really funny. We met for forty five minutes, and he was on the phone for like forty two of those minutes.
Go ahead, talk, I'm listening on the phone.
Why, like like like you're talking to him while he's talking to somebody else.
Yeah, up and take a bunch of calls.
Like we're talking about like literally the most desired entertainer in the world. And I'm just watching firsthand, like how busy it must be to manage that person. But he seems to be doing an incredible job to the Prince. And then it's like, cool, we still want to invest, like drop the paperwork. So it's moved forward a little bit. So we dropped the paperwork. He puts me in touch
with like the business team and stuff like that. So paperwork's there and it's just sitting there and sitting there in there, I'm like, all right, cool, no rush, no rush, understand it's like the busiest guy in the world.
And then.
This is like August August twenty twenty eighteen. August twenty eighteen.
Yeah, so he's on tour and my first manager, Anthony, like my day one from from Jersey.
Who like manages the arsenals. He was like, Yo, I'm going to Drake show. You want to come with me?
And it was my birthday, so I'm like, yeah, thank you. That's a great birthday gift. And it's an MSG and we are in a crazy VIP section. I'm like, I've never I've been I've been in music for a little while, but I've never been like put on like this and like showing Travis Scott, Mike Tyson's there, Drake's dad is there, DeMarcus Cousins, Damian Lillard, like Smoke Purp.
We're all just like in this section Kylie Jenner like this section MSG. And then we end up going to the after party, like the private after party.
And so.
I'm there.
I didn't even know we were going there, so I'm like dressing in shorts and shit, look like weird.
I look like a nerd.
And end up just going to this after party and I'm coming out of the bathroom. It's a private after party, like Drake's just there just mingling, like security's not even really on him, and so I'm not pressing or anything, like I know that there's a deal like on the table and I'm not like I'm gonna go up to it like Creatures of Priends or anything and say that like for the exact same reasons why we talked about before, like Strauss and so Creature just sees.
Me at the party.
He didn't even invite me. He's like damn, like how did you get here? Like you know, yeah, but he was just like, oh shit, like I'm glad you're here when you meet Drake, and so he just like brings me over and introduced me to Drake and he's just like, Yo, Drake, this is Austin. He's the founder of Players Lines that I was telling you about, and we're gonna invest in
this company. So I just wanted you guys to meet and I just dab up Drake and like we just say like something nice to meet you or something like that.
I don't know, and yeah, that was that.
And then then the paperwork got signed. So I realized if there was a moral to this story is that one. It's like doing face to face business is a really big deal, especially when you're dealing with like people like Drake, like really big celebrities who like people come to them with dealers all the time. Every day, Like still I get hit up every week, So yo.
Can you hook me up with Drake invest in my company?
And like so I can't imagine how that's happening like outside of myself.
And so what I really what I really got out of that is just like.
Being cordial, like not pressing, like yo, like sign his paperwork, sign his paperwork, Like no, like you got to understand who it is, and like you're not in a rush, like and you don't need the money. You also just raise a lot of money, so like why would you even be pressed. Let the let the let it happen organically,
let it evolve organically. That's exactly what happened. Just my two circles, my old circle, my music circle, and my new circle kind of combined to get this done together, which was a really cool experience looking looking back at it.
A man, now, this is a pleasure. What's the what's the before we wrap this up? What's the scaling model? Like, what what's what's in the future for players lounge?
So first we want to just make the product, uh more social. So like remember I was saying, like the DNA of the events, putting it into the into the app, and like doing more of that, So like having a real platform where you can like follow people what you can do now, but expanding upon that, like seeing what your friends are doing on players Lounge and making it a network for competitive e sports and so like we
have celebrities on our platform. We have NBA players, we have LB players, and they have like verified check marks and stuff like that. So creating the environment similar to like an Instagram or a Twitter where you can like CEO or favorite celebrities like play competitively, and then also like double down on that where you can like create your own esports team and compete for really big prize pools.
And so like let's say you guys create the earn your leisure esports team on players Lounge and you sign like ten Madden players and ten NBA two K players. Then their performance on players Lounge will aggregate into being on the leader board with like a really big prize pool. And so you want to make it a lot more social and a lot more like team oriented, where like you nudge your friend like, hey, have you played on players Lounge this week? Because like our team is fit
on the leader board, we get up the third. That's another one hundred thousand dollars in our pocket.
So that's the kind of like shorter term trajectory that we want to do, and.
Then longer term I kind of I envisioned us being in like a Netflix situation where like we're so big, the publishers may put wagering in their own games because we've proven that people are willing to do it, and we're proven that, like there's a million dollar, hopefully billion dollar business in this, so we may have to create our own video games with wagering in it, like Triple A quality video games, the same way that Netflix is making their own Triple A quality TV content to compete
with the studios.
How many people on the team? It's you and Zach and who else?
We are a decent sized team.
Now we have like twenty full timers and then another like ten part time.
But yeah, Zach and I have the co founders Austin.
It's been a pleasure, Bro, I appreciate it. How can the people follow you contact you? What's the what social media handles?
Website? All of that information?
Yeah? Yeah, on Twitter and Instagram's at world Dynasty spelled w O O L d Y and A S T Y. It's easily confused as world Nasty.
But I'll take you. I'm not even mad at that one.
That might be a nice producer name, to be honest, But I make another beat and then the players lounge handles are at players lunge on Instagram and at underscore players on Twitter, and yeah, hit me up. I mean, I'm very accessible and I really enjoy paying it forward because a lot of people were doing that for me. So if anyone listening wants to like learn more or like have a simple conversation.
Yeah, just just let me know, and uh, I'll make sure I can. I can help you out.
Appreciate that, bro Troy Housekeeping.
Yeah, shout to everybody on patreon dot dot com. I'll probably pay program the five tiers there. You can any tale you like.
You know.
At four and five you get certain incentives such as eyl University, our online school that is the top business school in the world right now, and you also get access to our EYL you private Facebook real estate group which is growing at a rapid pace. Got a lot of incentives there, our book club, our weekly webinars, something that we do on YouTube live that have been calling crazy. A lot of information is being shared, So thank you everybody that's been tuning into that and all the earners
that's been tuning in and showing love. We appreciate it.
Yeah, EYL University is amazing. It's an amazing platform. We bring people on like once a week to kind of teach, so like an extension of like sometimes people come on the podcast, but people have like more engaged questions and it's like a zoom interactive.
It's really dope. So I maybe we can get you on there one time gaming class.
That'd be a file one A.
Yeah, appreciate that. And aswers overliabilities.
Is the merch earn your leasion dot com or you can purchase the merch, So yeah, make sure you check us out on you Alisia dot com. We gotta send you some merch also, and yeah, thank you guys for rocking with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to YouTube, subscribe, like and comment all that. If you listen to it on Apple, Spotify through the same, We greatly appreciate it. Tell a friend and tell a friend,
and yes, uh, thank you guys, rock on us. We'll see you next week.
Pease, please.
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast easy? Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
any longer. Speed up your hiring right now. With Indeed and listeners of this show, we'll get us seventy five doll our sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash p O d k A t z thirteen. Just go to indeed dot com slash p O d KA t z thirteen right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need