The Exchanges

Q When you, you said you tried and it didn't happen. As a result of not raising money, did you do things differently?

A I had to do it differently. Everything that I, everything I saw going on in Silicon Valley was based on large amounts of readily available capital. That means getting the best, you know, co-founder from, you know, Berkeley or Stanford or, and that means like, Like setting up an office on, you know, California Ave. It meant having a full-time, you know, chef and masseuse in the office. It meant, you know, everybody hiring the best people you could, putting them in the office, and, you know, doing everything right there. And later on, it meant doing everything in the cloud, and it meant buying ads on Facebook. It meant, you know, scaling up as quickly as you could. Everything was like spend, spend, spend, spend, because eventually, you Eventually you'll think about monetizing. We did the opposite. We thought about monetizing immediately. Everybody was remote. There was no office. Our engineers were spread all over the world. My co-founder was my college buddy from San Jose state. And you know, it was like, everything was the opposite. And cause we had no money and I'm really grateful for that. Sorry.

AI assessment note: “We did the opposite. We thought about monetizing immediately. Everybody was remote.”

Q At this time, what was the mission? I know it sounds like a strange question, but every company has a mission. You know, I think most of them are pretty fluffy and bullshit, to be honest. Um, how do you think about the mission then and mission driven companies, given this was the time when you had to create it?

A Yeah. The mission was very clear, clearly to serve the chess community. And we were part of the chess community. I mean, Jay was a strong, you know, is a stronger chess player than me. And, but I was very much into the game and we wanted to serve ourselves. We wanted a place that felt fun for us, knowing that if we did that for us, we would serve the chess community more broadly. So the mission at the start was to like, make cool stuff for the chess community. So for a long time, it was serve the chess community only. It later became serve the community and like be the best place to work. And we kind of like, it was very early on that we said, we want this to be a place where we do things differently, but people really love working here and participating with us. So whether you're an employee or a contractor or whether you're a grandmaster, et cetera, you know, we want to be a great partner for you. And so. We wanted really help. I wanted to make a place that I wanted to work, you know, again. So, so we did that and that became a second mission of ours. And then fast forward when COVID came and the Queen's Gambit hit and our numbers like five X overnight, it grew the game of chess five X. And we, before that, had never really thought that we had the tools to grow the game of chess. We thought that people who were interested were interested, and we'll capture that and serve it, …

AI assessment note: “The mission was very clear, clearly to serve the chess community.”

Q When you look at the membership scaling, was there needle moving moments? We'll talk about Queens gambit. We'll talk about COVID, but in the earlier years, was it really a continuous up, but gradual, or were there very strategic, like significant moments where it really inflected?

A There were a couple of moments that things took off. So one was with the kind of Twitch creator streamer influencer. That was a big one. Another one, I'm actually going to give a shout out to Keith. We talked about our, our, our mutual friend Keith. Keith was in the car with me one day and he said, Eric, I like chess. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm not, I'm not like smart enough to do it. And also sometimes I feel like it's too frustrating and I go do the puzzles and I feel like I get all the puzzles wrong. It's not fun. And I was like, man, he, Keith just told me that chess isn't fun, that doing puzzles isn't fun because he gets them wrong. And he, that conversation triggered us to build a product called puzzle rush, where you just start with all the easiest puzzles and then they get harder over time. You feel all this success and all this easy fun, and then it gets hard and you challenge yourself and you fail. But that product was super needle moving for us. It, it, it, it, Lit the world on fire. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this product. Like, it was massive for us. And so there were just these little moments, whether it was product or content, that would, would inflame things and heat things up for a while, and then it would stick.

AI assessment note: “There were a couple of moments that things took off.”

Q What does great fatherhood mean to you and how has your style of parenting changed over time? 23. Now, you know, 45. Um, how's that changed in terms of what being a great father means?

A Yeah, I'm learning still every day what it means to be a great father because it's different a little bit for each kid. I really Try to meet my kids where they are and see the best in them. I think that some kids are easier to parent with certain styles and others. Some kids are more compliant. Some are more willing to please. My older two kids were easiest in some ways. And my younger two who are still at home, I have different challenges and I'm learning there, but like for, I'll give you an example for my 15 year old son. He's so incredibly bright. But he really doesn't love to have people tell him what to do. That includes, you know, but his sister's got, you know, she drives out the, out the door at eight o'clock to go to school, but he doesn't want to be woken up. He doesn't want to be bothered. And so we finally said, Hey, like, all right, we're not going to set an alarm for you. We're not going to, you know, take money from your bank account. If you're late, we're not going to do these things. Just good luck, man. Good luck. So if he misses school, he's gotta Uber to school. He's gotta figure it all out on his own. And that actually makes him happy rather than bumpers down the bowling lane. He wants maximum freedom with maximum consequences. All right.

AI assessment note: “I really Try to meet my kids where they are and see the best in them.”

Q At this time, what was the mission? I know it sounds like a strange question, but every company has a mission. You know, I think most of them are pretty fluffy and bullshit, to be honest. Um, how do you think about the mission then and mission driven companies, given this was the time when you had to create it?

A Yeah. The mission was very clear, clearly to serve the chess community. And we were part of the chess community. I mean, Jay was a strong, you know, is a stronger chess player than me. And, but I was very much into the game and we wanted to serve ourselves. We wanted a place that felt fun for us, knowing that if we did that for us, we would serve the chess community more broadly. So the mission at the start was to like, make cool stuff for the chess community. So for a long time, it was serve the chess community only. It later became serve the community and like be the best place to work. And we kind of like, it was very early on that we said, we want this to be a place where we do things differently, but people really love working here and participating with us. So whether you're an employee or a contractor or whether you're a grandmaster, et cetera, you know, we want to be a great partner for you. And so. We wanted really help. I wanted to make a place that I wanted to work, you know, again. So, so we did that and that became a second mission of ours. And then fast forward when COVID came and the Queen's Gambit hit and our numbers like five X overnight, it grew the game of chess five X. And we, before that, had never really thought that we had the tools to grow the game of chess. We thought that people who were interested were interested, and we'll capture that and serve it, …

AI assessment note: “The mission was very clear, clearly to serve the chess community.”

Q I am kind of very direct, very concise, I don't mess around, and I will guide conversations in a productive way that leads to outcomes. It might not be the most emotionally, like, careful, but it's good. And so I, I guess, what would you advise me? Having experienced this, and then also having come through it, I don't want to lose the concision and Productivity. What do you say?

A It's not, it's not an either, or it's not like be nice and then don't be direct. It's like you can be both. And I think a lot of it has to do with like the number of deposits and withdrawals you make in any relationship. And so it's like your bank account. So you need to have a way more positive interactions with someone. If you're going to have a negative or a more, or what they might Feel as a negative or something. And so I do a lot of positive investing everywhere with everyone in my company, with my kids, with my wife, with all my relationships. And then that, that builds up a buffer of trust and, and, and, you know, kindness and all that. So then if I have a moment of maybe clarity that feels a little bit stinging or a little bit too much or something, they already know that there's a good amount of goodwill that I've built up there. I'm accused of the same. I'm pretty brash at times. I'm not everybody's favorite flavor of ice cream. And, uh, you know, that's all there is to it.

AI assessment note: “It's not an either, or it's like you can be both.”

Q not having money drives creativity in a lot of ways, as we discussed. Customer acquisition is one where traditionally you put money in the funnel. You mentioned the e-commerce business on Google ads, Facebook ads, put money in the funnel, and hopefully it comes out with positive unit econ. They didn't have that money. So how did you do creative customer acquisition And what were some of those big lessons?

A Yeah, we'd totally been burned on, on paid acquisition, and we pretty much made, uh, uh, You know, a very firm rule that we weren't going to do paid acquisition. And so instead we said, we're going to take any money that we have and we're going to put it into content because content drives user value and it drives SEO. So we're, our team has always been very good at like capturing demand on any platform, whether it's Google or, you know, app stores, because we create content, we create value when people interact with that. You know, it signals to the search engines that it's something valuable. And so it's always been an investment in content. The next platform of discoverability after kind of Google and, you know, app stores was YouTube and you got to get content and it's got to be good. And then after that was Twitch and we followed that and then it was shorts and TikTok and we followed that. And so we always followed the content where it was and worked with Really creative people and excellent people. And we invested in the product and we invested in the content and we invested in capturing search, but not paid. So I'm sorry to every, all the businesses that operate on, on, on ad revenue, but you know, we don't participate in that.

AI assessment note: “we're going to put it into content because content drives user value and it drives SEO.”

Q When you look at the membership scaling, was there needle moving moments? We'll talk about Queens gambit. We'll talk about COVID, but in the earlier years, was it really a continuous up, but gradual, or were there very strategic, like significant moments where it really inflected?

A There were a couple of moments that things took off. So one was with the kind of Twitch creator streamer influencer. That was a big one. Another one, I'm actually going to give a shout out to Keith. We talked about our, our, our mutual friend Keith. Keith was in the car with me one day and he said, Eric, I like chess. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm not, I'm not like smart enough to do it. And also sometimes I feel like it's too frustrating and I go do the puzzles and I feel like I get all the puzzles wrong. It's not fun. And I was like, man, he, Keith just told me that chess isn't fun, that doing puzzles isn't fun because he gets them wrong. And he, that conversation triggered us to build a product called puzzle rush, where you just start with all the easiest puzzles and then they get harder over time. You feel all this success and all this easy fun, and then it gets hard and you challenge yourself and you fail. But that product was super needle moving for us. It, it, it, it, Lit the world on fire. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this product. Like, it was massive for us. And so there were just these little moments, whether it was product or content, that would, would inflame things and heat things up for a while, and then it would stick.

AI assessment note: “There were a couple of moments that things took off.”

Q Can I ask you, when you look at these kind of Very strategic and clinical moments in the company's trajectory. Respectfully, a lot of them were outside of your control. When we look at COVID, when we look at Queen's Gambit, no execution that you did drove that. No offense. Um, what do you advise on entrepreneurs given the serendipity, fate, luck of life?

A Be in the right place, man. Like be, be paddling. We, we always say that we're in the boat and we are paddling and our sail is up. And we are, but we're also rowing. And when the wind comes, we're already ready and we're steering and we're doing the best we can, but we're not in charge of when the wind comes. Always. You can try, you can try to find the current and do different things, but you know, you're not wrong that sometimes it's very, it's stuff outside your control that, you know, makes a massive impact in a business. And, you know, we've had several black swan moments, uh, compounding and it's been pretty Pretty phenomenal.

AI assessment note: “Be in the right place, man. Like be, be paddling.”

Q Do kids not need structure? No child wants an alarm clock. Of course they don't. No one wants to get up. Generally speaking, it's, it's human nature to be inherently less Uh, alarm ready or whatever we want to call it. Like, do you not need to do, uh, educate me, but do you not need to instill those guardrails?

A Some, it works well. It works well for some kids who understand that. And there's a little bit of friction and, you know, you kind of help and over time they see and do those things. And that is true for some personalities, for other personalities. Sometimes the best thing is just to get out of the way and let Life takes its course. So I'm not trying to say either approach is best. It's very kid dependent. But the more I tried to structure for my son, the worse outcomes he had. It was counterintuitive because it worked with my other kids and didn't work for him. And so I had to change, you know, my wife and I had to change strategies there.

AI assessment note: “I'm not trying to say either approach is best. It's very kid dependent.”

Q I do too. I've had Anton on the show. I've had Martin Escobarri. I think GA are one of the best, so totally. Did things change post having an institutional investor?

A Of course it changed. But the mission didn't change. And I know you're like, ah, mission driven. Maybe that's BS. It's not BS for us because chess is like, it's a stewardship for us. And we really do feel the mission. I don't know how to do a mission driven insurance arbitrage business, but you can do a mission driven chess business. Their view is drive, you know, maximum shareholder value, but you do that through serving your community and growing your game. And building a great product. And our view is build a great product to serve the community. And okay, fine. It's going to create shareholder value, but it's not, that's just, it's, we're looking at the same thing, but just opposite of each other.

AI assessment note: “Of course it changed. But the mission didn't change.”

Q So anyway, that was going to be my question though, which is like, you know, bluntly an MBA is, Is a non-risky move. It is seeking security, actually, by definition. Brian Halligan at HubSpot said that recently, because he did one too. Um, like, how do you reflect on that? Like, did you want to downside protect? And how do you think about risk?

A I didn't really understand what an MBA was. So I didn't really view it as like a downside protection move for me, or like a career advancement. I mean, it was literally at first, A little bit. I got some career advice. I mean, coming out of college, I was so lost because I was an English major, but I really loved technology and like entrepreneurship, but none of my education prepared me for that. And then I was just kind of scrappy and doing things, but you know, my parents and my in-laws and everyone's like, Hey, you need to go get like a real job and you need to go do some stuff. So I applied to like business school and law school. I didn't get anywhere. I didn't get in anywhere because it was like right after the.com You know, bubble boost, uh, bubble burst in 2001. And I got rejected to every school and I was like, oh man. So then I'm like, all right, I'm just going to go start and do something. And then later it kind of was always in my mind. And then I got pretty unhappy, uh, in the entrepreneurial thing I was doing and thought, you know, actually it was my wife's like, Hey, you need to go back to school. Like you are miserable, like change pace, go do something. And so for me, it was more of like an Like an exploration of myself and like, what did I want to do? Not a fallback.

AI assessment note: “I didn't really view it as like a downside protection move for me”

Q I am kind of very direct, very concise, I don't mess around, and I will guide conversations in a productive way that leads to outcomes. It might not be the most emotionally, like, careful, but it's good. And so I, I guess, what would you advise me? Having experienced this, and then also having come through it, I don't want to lose the concision and Productivity. What do you say?

A It's not, it's not an either, or it's not like be nice and then don't be direct. It's like you can be both. And I think a lot of it has to do with like the number of deposits and withdrawals you make in any relationship. And so it's like your bank account. So you need to have a way more positive interactions with someone. If you're going to have a negative or a more, or what they might Feel as a negative or something. And so I do a lot of positive investing everywhere with everyone in my company, with my kids, with my wife, with all my relationships. And then that, that builds up a buffer of trust and, and, and, you know, kindness and all that. So then if I have a moment of maybe clarity that feels a little bit stinging or a little bit too much or something, they already know that there's a good amount of goodwill that I've built up there. I'm accused of the same. I'm pretty brash at times. I'm not everybody's favorite flavor of ice cream. And, uh, you know, that's all there is to it.

AI assessment note: “It's not an either, or it's not like be nice and then don't be direct.”

Q When you, you said you tried and it didn't happen. As a result of not raising money, did you do things differently?

A I had to do it differently. Everything that I, everything I saw going on in Silicon Valley was based on large amounts of readily available capital. That means getting the best, you know, co-founder from, you know, Berkeley or Stanford or, and that means like, Like setting up an office on, you know, California Ave. It meant having a full-time, you know, chef and masseuse in the office. It meant, you know, everybody hiring the best people you could, putting them in the office, and, you know, doing everything right there. And later on, it meant doing everything in the cloud, and it meant buying ads on Facebook. It meant, you know, scaling up as quickly as you could. Everything was like spend, spend, spend, spend, because eventually, you Eventually you'll think about monetizing. We did the opposite. We thought about monetizing immediately. Everybody was remote. There was no office. Our engineers were spread all over the world. My co-founder was my college buddy from San Jose state. And you know, it was like, everything was the opposite. And cause we had no money and I'm really grateful for that. Sorry.

AI assessment note: “I had to do it differently... We did the opposite. We thought about monetizing immediately.”

Q not having money drives creativity in a lot of ways, as we discussed. Customer acquisition is one where traditionally you put money in the funnel. You mentioned the e-commerce business on Google ads, Facebook ads, put money in the funnel, and hopefully it comes out with positive unit econ. They didn't have that money. So how did you do creative customer acquisition And what were some of those big lessons?

A Yeah, we'd totally been burned on, on paid acquisition, and we pretty much made, uh, uh, You know, a very firm rule that we weren't going to do paid acquisition. And so instead we said, we're going to take any money that we have and we're going to put it into content because content drives user value and it drives SEO. So we're, our team has always been very good at like capturing demand on any platform, whether it's Google or, you know, app stores, because we create content, we create value when people interact with that. You know, it signals to the search engines that it's something valuable. And so it's always been an investment in content. The next platform of discoverability after kind of Google and, you know, app stores was YouTube and you got to get content and it's got to be good. And then after that was Twitch and we followed that and then it was shorts and TikTok and we followed that. And so we always followed the content where it was and worked with Really creative people and excellent people. And we invested in the product and we invested in the content and we invested in capturing search, but not paid. So I'm sorry to every, all the businesses that operate on, on, on ad revenue, but you know, we don't participate in that.

AI assessment note: “we're going to take any money that we have and we're going to put it into content”

Q How did you pay them? What was that structure like? I'm intrigued.

A I mean, it's always been a little different. We've some, some is through kind of like chess.com affiliate. So if someone signs up on chess.com and then they are become a premium subscriber, They'll get a cut of that. Sometimes it was just some cash or an ambassador. Like we would do a year long ambassador for, you know, some dollars. Also, we also create value for them because we then expose them to our community and then they get bigger and make money in their own channels. And so sometimes it's a scratch my back. I'll scratch your back with embedding them on like our platform where people can discover them and then go to their platform. So it's kind of a range of all of those.

AI assessment note: “some is through kind of like chess.com affiliate... Sometimes it was just some cash”

Q Can I ask you, when you look at these kind of Very strategic and clinical moments in the company's trajectory. Respectfully, a lot of them were outside of your control. When we look at COVID, when we look at Queen's Gambit, no execution that you did drove that. No offense. Um, what do you advise on entrepreneurs given the serendipity, fate, luck of life?

A Be in the right place, man. Like be, be paddling. We, we always say that we're in the boat and we are paddling and our sail is up. And we are, but we're also rowing. And when the wind comes, we're already ready and we're steering and we're doing the best we can, but we're not in charge of when the wind comes. Always. You can try, you can try to find the current and do different things, but you know, you're not wrong that sometimes it's very, it's stuff outside your control that, you know, makes a massive impact in a business. And, you know, we've had several black swan moments, uh, compounding and it's been pretty Pretty phenomenal.

AI assessment note: “Be in the right place, man. Like be, be paddling.”

Q What have been the biggest lessons in terms of what it makes takes to make remote work having done it since day one?

A I, I get this question sometimes. I'm like, I don't know if these lessons apply outside of chess. So, uh, you know, apply with caution, but like being super mission driven and having people who really are consumers of your own product, they live the chess world and life. So they get to participate in that thing. And the other crazy thing is that we are nobody's highest paying job. We immediately filter for highest pay. Like if you are looking for your highest paying job, it will not be chess.com. And so anyone who's hoping for that will go take a job somewhere else. And they are here for passion and they're here. We pay as well as we can, but they're never going to leave for money. They stay here for lifestyle. They stay here for mission. They stay here because we care about them and take care of them, but we don't churn people who are just constantly looking for the next most money they can make. Those people don't take jobs at chess.com.

AI assessment note: “being super mission driven and having people who really are consumers of your own product”

Q Do kids not need structure? No child wants an alarm clock. Of course they don't. No one wants to get up. Generally speaking, it's, it's human nature to be inherently less Uh, alarm ready or whatever we want to call it. Like, do you not need to do, uh, educate me, but do you not need to instill those guardrails?

A Some, it works well. It works well for some kids who understand that. And there's a little bit of friction and, you know, you kind of help and over time they see and do those things. And that is true for some personalities, for other personalities. Sometimes the best thing is just to get out of the way and let Life takes its course. So I'm not trying to say either approach is best. It's very kid dependent. But the more I tried to structure for my son, the worse outcomes he had. It was counterintuitive because it worked with my other kids and didn't work for him. And so I had to change, you know, my wife and I had to change strategies there.

AI assessment note: “It's very kid dependent. But the more I tried to structure for my son”

Q Did you have negative, too much negativity in that proportion?

A I think there were times and periods or certain areas with each kid where you really want the best outcome for them in this thing. And so as a parent, you, you fixate on it and you try to I want to fix this. I want to control this. I want to adjust this. And it turns into a lot of negativity and you end up sometimes creating more problems than if you hadn't fixated on it and you had just left it be. And I can think for each of my kids, different moments or things where I was really trying to control or, you know, guardrail or convince or do that and ended up in some ways causing more damage than if I had just kind of let If I had shown more love and just kind of given them the time and space to get there, rather than try to, you know, make it happen.

AI assessment note: “there were times and periods or certain areas with each kid”

Q promote them too in a similar way. And so I mean, would you have done anything different about content? You know, when I look back at mine, I would have moved to YouTube a lot earlier. I was too late to YouTube, not too late. We're on it now and we've done well, but I only did it two years ago and I should have done it five years ago.

A Yeah. I think podcasting is a little different because there was like these other platforms Platforms. And then when did YouTube become a podcasting platform? You know, I think for chess, chess is visual. And so as soon as YouTube came out, we were like, we want to do that. And as soon as, I mean, we were doing live streaming back when it was justin.tv long before it was Twitch. You are very first live event that we really promoted was, you know, Danny wrench is our chief chess officer versus David Cruz, who was, you know, at the time, our head of content, we put a thousand dollars cash on a plate. In between those two guys on there and then have them play chess against each other. And that was kind of the beginning of our kind of our live streaming. And so we had, so, you know, we would put kind of static content on YouTube that was in the, you know, 10 to 30 minute range. And then we would do live shows on, you know, Justin TV or live stream.com and eventually Twitch. But now we stream all over the place, but we were, and then, you know, Facebook was a different strategy. We would do a lot of quotes and memes there. And then, Twitter was a little different. So we've actually been pretty smart on how each platform responds to the different types of content.

AI assessment note: “as soon as YouTube came out, we were like, we want to do that.”

Q No, no, you're clearly not a venture investor. Cause if you were, we ignore the data set that disproves our theory. So there's still some training for you to do, Eric. Um, luckily, luckily you're actually building value. I heard you say before that you're generally unemployable. Um, why do you think that? And what makes you unemployable?

A You know, it's, it's kind of funny. I have like, um, This thing inside of me that if it's like, if it's my mission of something I want to do, I am a hundred percent in, I am 200% in. If it's somebody else's thing they want, it just doesn't motivate me. And it's, this is my dad. And now my 15 year old son is exactly the same. If he wants to do it, he's thousand, he just can't be stopped. But if it's something someone else wants him to do, he cannot be motivated. And so I don't know what it is, man. I don't know what the gene is. Maybe one day we'll know, but, um, you know, and it's not like I'm a non-compliant or disobedient person, but like with my heart's not in it, I can't get there. Um, but if my heart is, nothing can stop me.

AI assessment note: “If it's somebody else's thing they want, it just doesn't motivate me.”

Q Did you have negative, too much negativity in that proportion?

A I think there were times and periods or certain areas with each kid where you really want the best outcome for them in this thing. And so as a parent, you, you fixate on it and you try to I want to fix this. I want to control this. I want to adjust this. And it turns into a lot of negativity and you end up sometimes creating more problems than if you hadn't fixated on it and you had just left it be. And I can think for each of my kids, different moments or things where I was really trying to control or, you know, guardrail or convince or do that and ended up in some ways causing more damage than if I had just kind of let If I had shown more love and just kind of given them the time and space to get there, rather than try to, you know, make it happen.

AI assessment note: “there were times and periods or certain areas... turns into a lot of negativity”

Q How did you pay them? What was that structure like? I'm intrigued.

A I mean, it's always been a little different. We've some, some is through kind of like chess.com affiliate. So if someone signs up on chess.com and then they are become a premium subscriber, They'll get a cut of that. Sometimes it was just some cash or an ambassador. Like we would do a year long ambassador for, you know, some dollars. Also, we also create value for them because we then expose them to our community and then they get bigger and make money in their own channels. And so sometimes it's a scratch my back. I'll scratch your back with embedding them on like our platform where people can discover them and then go to their platform. So it's kind of a range of all of those.

AI assessment note: “some is through kind of like chess.com affiliate”

Q I do too. I've had Anton on the show. I've had Martin Escobarri. I think GA are one of the best, so totally. Did things change post having an institutional investor?

A Of course it changed. But the mission didn't change. And I know you're like, ah, mission driven. Maybe that's BS. It's not BS for us because chess is like, it's a stewardship for us. And we really do feel the mission. I don't know how to do a mission driven insurance arbitrage business, but you can do a mission driven chess business. Their view is drive, you know, maximum shareholder value, but you do that through serving your community and growing your game. And building a great product. And our view is build a great product to serve the community. And okay, fine. It's going to create shareholder value, but it's not, that's just, it's, we're looking at the same thing, but just opposite of each other.

AI assessment note: “Of course it changed. But the mission didn't change.”

Q do? Like Marcello Claw from SoftBank said that actually post kids, he had a reason to fight. Like he had kids to feed. He had, you know, a family to build. And other people are much more candid and say, no, they don't. You, you, if you're going to be a great parent, it takes away from work, but it fulfills you in other ways. Which side are you on?

A I mean, parenting is fulfilling for sure. And does it mean that you can't be as good at your job? Do you have to make choices between those? I would say some people probably do have to make choices, but I will tell you that my situation, and again, this is goes back. I am home when my kids leave in the morning and I am home when they come home. And even that's partly working from home allows me to both put in A lot of work and hours over the week, but also be around and my kids can feel me there. I think people who have to do the grind to go out and they're traveling a ton or spend a lot of time in office, I do think that they may end up sacrificing some of their family success or, uh, whatever, fulfillment.

AI assessment note: “I would say some people probably do have to make choices, but I will tell you”

Q How do you determine success if metrics are not at the forefront of what drives decision-making? Like obviously I run media teams. We are very metrics driven and that helps me assign success or not to someone in some respects. It's the joy of media in a lot of ways. How do you determine success with no, with not a metric first mindset?

A I mean, individually at the company, I think people don't think of success. I think they think of fulfillment. I think they think of effort. I think they think of mission and serving the community and they take joy in that. And so if they do something that is well received by the community or helps us grow the game, they feel good about that. And then, so then how would that manifest in numbers? You know, we, we, we track active users. We track subscribers. We track You know, usage of different things. Um, and people kind of, you know, they know how many members we have and how that's going. And so it's just kind of a general happy go lucky feel, but there are numbers we're starting to look at differently.

AI assessment note: “I think they think of fulfillment. I think they think of effort.”

Q said that you were remote from day one, and I wanted to talk about this, and you know, many of the mutual friends said we had to. Can you help me understand why is remote work better? Because I can't think of a role which is done better remotely, and people disagree with me. And I'm always open to have my mind changed. So make the case for remote, Eric.

A First of all, talent is all over the world. And if you are geographically confined on talent, you have a smaller hiring pool and you are now competing in ways, you know, that are hard. It's hard to compete against these massive dangled comp packages in certain areas and things. It's very hard. I would say that it's, it's been amazing So to have an international team where we have people in India working with people in Serbia, working with people in Argentina, working with people in New York, and it's just a beautiful thing. I don't know how to tell you. It is so beautiful. And because it's mission driven and because the weight, I always say the weight of our mission crushes egos. If you have an ego, this is the wrong place for you. Get out and go find somewhere you can serve yourself. The weight of our mission will crush you. It crushes politics. It crushes bullshit. It crushes egos. And so we're all there to serve the mission. And when all that other stuff is gone, you're now collaborating and serving each other to serve the mission. It works for us. And so we have really smart people who are passionate about what we do, who come from everywhere. And the other thing is, is they feel respected in their lives. They can show up to work when they want. They can do the work that they want. They can walk their dog in the middle of the day. They can take time off. They can do what th…

AI assessment note: “First of all, talent is all over the world. And if you are geographically confined”

Q No, no, you're clearly not a venture investor. Cause if you were, we ignore the data set that disproves our theory. So there's still some training for you to do, Eric. Um, luckily, luckily you're actually building value. I heard you say before that you're generally unemployable. Um, why do you think that? And what makes you unemployable?

A You know, it's, it's kind of funny. I have like, um, This thing inside of me that if it's like, if it's my mission of something I want to do, I am a hundred percent in, I am 200% in. If it's somebody else's thing they want, it just doesn't motivate me. And it's, this is my dad. And now my 15 year old son is exactly the same. If he wants to do it, he's thousand, he just can't be stopped. But if it's something someone else wants him to do, he cannot be motivated. And so I don't know what it is, man. I don't know what the gene is. Maybe one day we'll know, but, um, you know, and it's not like I'm a non-compliant or disobedient person, but like with my heart's not in it, I can't get there. Um, but if my heart is, nothing can stop me.

AI assessment note: “If it's somebody else's thing they want, it just doesn't motivate me.”

Q What are the biggest mistakes you see founders make when they're trying to do remote?

A Well, I think treating people like kind of like assets, you know, kind of treating people like workers who are supposed to do a job rather than like teammates who are on a mission to do something. Everybody wants to be respected and everybody wants to feel like what they're doing has meaning. And I think when people feel that it's like I'm task oriented to do this thing that generates this, that Makes money. I know that's what a business is, and I know that's what work is, but when deep down, when you feel that, I think it's hard to show up when you feel that that's what you're doing. I think when you show up to work and feel like there are people that I care about who are relying on me, or there's a community that cares about what I do, it's very easy to show up for those people.

AI assessment note: “treating people like kind of like assets, you know, kind of treating people like workers”