The Exchanges

Q requires storytelling. You're very good at storytelling. And we chatted before, and you said to me, and a lot of people throw around storytelling as this kind of, you know, oh, it's so important. And, but there's not really much substance to it when you actually dig deeper. You said to me before, there's a science to storytelling that all businesses need to understand. What do you think that is?

A Yeah, I think there's a science and then there's a fundamental principle. So the science is really simple, which is that our brain is constantly scanning for information that helps us survive or thrive. And so your brand has to very clearly communicate how you will do that for that customer. That can take many forms, right? Saving money is a form of survival to our brain, saving time, increasing your status so that you can be part of a tribe, whatever it is, but you've got to very clearly communicate that. And if you confuse You lose. The other thing our brain is doing is constantly trying to conserve calories. So if your message is not super clear, if the brain has to work really hard to figure out why, like how you're actually contributing to that, it will just tune you out. So that's, that's the very basic science of it. And I can talk through the principles of how you do that if it's helpful.

AI assessment note: “the science is really simple, which is that our brain is constantly scanning”

Q Oh my gosh. My brother's just had a, uh, his first baby. And seeing the love that a parent has so kind of viscerally for their child, and I see it in him with his daughter, it kind of, it really gives me goosebumps thinking of like a mother standing there watching in that way. What happens then? You give the thumbs up, and then the recovery process starts? Like,

A No, there was, like, a couple more days of crazy stuff that happened. After that, like, the doctors kind of rushed down, and they, they have these models, like, to assess probability of survival, and they looked at me, and it was, like, well below one percent, and so he turns to my mom to basically say, like, hey, I know this just happened, but you got to understand, like, this isn't pacing to end well, and she says, I understand. He says, you don't understand. His organs are shutting down, and she said, I understand, but two minutes ago, we didn't have a pulse. And now we have a pulse. So what are we going to do about that? And he says, okay, well, there's this thing called an ECMO machine. It's not a great option, but it's our only option, but only about half the people who touch this machine live to tell a story. But the problem is, is we only have one of these things. And then we are at UCLA Santa Monica and this machine is at UCLA Westwood and we've never transported it before. It's never been done. The other problem is there's only two doctors who do this surgery and neither of them are on call and it's father's day. Um, and then Randomly, the guy that I had, like, initially reached out to the doctor, um, happened to be at a bachelor party in Vegas, and he was with the head of cardiology at UCLA, and he said, hey, can you check your phone to see how my buddy's doing? I se…

AI assessment note: “No, there was, like, a couple more days of crazy stuff that happened.”

Q Oh, dude, that's very kind. Now, I was talking to some of your investors before, and they told me that the Genesis was actually a Magic Johnson moment. And so I want to start with Magic Johnson moment to the founding of Amaze. What's the correlation?

A Yeah, we, we were at an event that Magic was hosting for the Boys and Girls Club Where he was auctioning off the chance to play basketball with him and go to a Lakers game, but it was one of those things that was only available to the high net worth individuals sitting in the room. And me and my buddy were in the room, but not high net worth individuals. We were like the guys who get invited last minute to fill the table and come for the free drinks. And so we sat there and watched as the auction went up to 15,000. We were in grad school. We couldn't afford to participate, but Magic was our childhood hero. Like, there's nothing to this day that I would rather do than play basketball with Magic, and so we were driving home, like, that makes no sense. Magic has fans around the world, not just in that room, and celebrities weren't really on social media yet, but we're like, they're gonna be, and they're gonna be able to reach their fans in a whole new way, so if we make it so anybody can donate 10 dollars for the chance to win, you could raise so much more money, so much more awareness, open up a whole new donor base.

AI assessment note: “we make it so anybody can donate 10 dollars for the chance to win”

Q How did that realization come about? That is a big shift.

A We had done a campaign with Daniel Craig, where you got to go to New York, you got to ride around in a one-of-a-kind Aston Martin, and you got to keep the Aston Martin. And it was the first time we'd offered a prize. We thought it would raise 300,000 and it raised 2.1 million. And so I, then I went to our CFO, Nina, and I said, hey, I think we should offer a car. We should go buy a 250,000 dollar McLaren, offer it with just a maze, no talent. Because if we could do that on our own, then we would control our own destiny. We would really have something if we could raise 500,000, let's say. The problem is we only had, like, 900,000 in the bank at that time, so it was a big bet for us, but we took the bet, and then that car coincidentally launched the day before I unexpectedly went into a hospital.

AI assessment note: “We thought it would raise 300,000 and it raised 2.1 million.”

Q willing to go into private markets in this kind of extended privatization window. You're seeing companies like Stripe very publicly say, listen, if you need a 28 year old analyst at a bank to say increase your margins, You probably are not a great business anyway. The idea that you get better discipline is actually just a sign of a poorly managed company. The question then becomes, why go public?

A I mean, there's a lot of reasons to not go public. You know, you don't have to deal with, like, the volatility of the yen carry trade, reducing morale in your business. And if you're Stripe or you're SpaceX, then, you know, you have access to liquidity in ways that are pretty similar to being public. Not every company though is Stripe or SpaceX. It's still the most efficient way to, in most impactful way for most companies to get liquidity for their investors and their shareholders. It's still on the margin, brings down the cost of capital. I mean, it still can be a branding moment for some companies that is important in terms of their international expansion. It's more of a question than it once was, but it's not everybody are those companies.

AI assessment note: “It's still the most efficient way to... get liquidity for their investors and their shareholders.”

Q Oh, dude, that's very kind. Now, I was talking to some of your investors before, and they told me that the Genesis was actually a Magic Johnson moment. And so I want to start with Magic Johnson moment to the founding of Amaze. What's the correlation?

A Yeah, we, we were at an event that Magic was hosting for the Boys and Girls Club Where he was auctioning off the chance to play basketball with him and go to a Lakers game, but it was one of those things that was only available to the high net worth individuals sitting in the room. And me and my buddy were in the room, but not high net worth individuals. We were like the guys who get invited last minute to fill the table and come for the free drinks. And so we sat there and watched as the auction went up to 15,000. We were in grad school. We couldn't afford to participate, but Magic was our childhood hero. Like, there's nothing to this day that I would rather do than play basketball with Magic, and so we were driving home, like, that makes no sense. Magic has fans around the world, not just in that room, and celebrities weren't really on social media yet, but we're like, they're gonna be, and they're gonna be able to reach their fans in a whole new way, so if we make it so anybody can donate 10 dollars for the chance to win, you could raise so much more money, so much more awareness, open up a whole new donor base.

AI assessment note: “if we make it so anybody can donate 10 dollars for the chance to win”

Q How did that realization come about? That is a big shift.

A We had done a campaign with Daniel Craig, where you got to go to New York, you got to ride around in a one-of-a-kind Aston Martin, and you got to keep the Aston Martin. And it was the first time we'd offered a prize. We thought it would raise 300,000 and it raised 2.1 million. And so I, then I went to our CFO, Nina, and I said, hey, I think we should offer a car. We should go buy a 250,000 dollar McLaren, offer it with just a maze, no talent. Because if we could do that on our own, then we would control our own destiny. We would really have something if we could raise 500,000, let's say. The problem is we only had, like, 900,000 in the bank at that time, so it was a big bet for us, but we took the bet, and then that car coincidentally launched the day before I unexpectedly went into a hospital.

AI assessment note: “if we could do that on our own, then we would control our own destiny”

Q What do you mean by not all followers created equal?

A Well, someone like Ronaldo has a massive, you know, at that point, I think he was, he had the most followers on social, but they're actually not incredibly engaged. Whereas like a guy named Sam Heughan, who's on a show called Outlander, which is a kind of a sci-fi romantic show set in Scotland. He's our highest grossing talent of all time, more than George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Matt Damon, or you name it, because he has this community, mostly of women who find him very attractive and have this dream of wanting to go on a date with him. And we made it available. And he's really good at storytelling and engaging his community. And so his follower base was a fraction of those others, but got the greatest outcome.

AI assessment note: “his follower base was a fraction of those others, but got the greatest outcome.”

Q But just pause. We went from 18 K to 300 K, and so just take me to that chasm where you get Brian, and then you put it on Instagram at the time, on Twitter, like, how do you make that jump from 18 to 300?

A Storytelling content. We did a Reddit AMA with him where we seeded the opportunity in the Reddit. Um, back then, like there wasn't even paid advertising on like Facebook and Twitter. We got him on Facebook. We got him on Twitter. We started pushing stuff out and it would just fly. We did a bunch of like short viral videos with him. And then with Aaron, we took it to the next level and we got AMC to be part of it and Netflix to be part of it because they realized it was starting to promote our show and it became this huge thing. It just Spread, and we would do these funny little videos with Aaron, the top 10 reasons you should enter, all this little content that hadn't really been done on social in this way, and it just, it went crazy.

AI assessment note: “Storytelling content. We did a Reddit AMA with him where we seeded the opportunity”

Q What do you mean by not all followers created equal?

A Well, someone like Ronaldo has a massive, you know, at that point, I think he was, he had the most followers on social, but they're actually not incredibly engaged. Whereas like a guy named Sam Heughan, who's on a show called Outlander, which is a kind of a sci-fi romantic show set in Scotland. He's our highest grossing talent of all time, more than George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Matt Damon, or you name it, because he has this community, mostly of women who find him very attractive and have this dream of wanting to go on a date with him. And we made it available. And he's really good at storytelling and engaging his community. And so his follower base was a fraction of those others, but got the greatest outcome.

AI assessment note: “his follower base was a fraction of those others, but got the greatest outcome.”

Q requires storytelling. You're very good at storytelling. And we chatted before, and you said to me, and a lot of people throw around storytelling as this kind of, you know, oh, it's so important. And, but there's not really much substance to it when you actually dig deeper. You said to me before, there's a science to storytelling that all businesses need to understand. What do you think that is?

A Yeah, I think there's a science and then there's a fundamental principle. So the science is really simple, which is that our brain is constantly scanning for information that helps us survive or thrive. And so your brand has to very clearly communicate how you will do that for that customer. That can take many forms, right? Saving money is a form of survival to our brain, saving time, increasing your status so that you can be part of a tribe, whatever it is, but you've got to very clearly communicate that. And if you confuse You lose. The other thing our brain is doing is constantly trying to conserve calories. So if your message is not super clear, if the brain has to work really hard to figure out why, like how you're actually contributing to that, it will just tune you out. So that's, that's the very basic science of it. And I can talk through the principles of how you do that if it's helpful.

AI assessment note: “the science is really simple, which is that our brain is constantly scanning”

Q What was the near death experience? I hear you were like almost dead for like four minutes or dead for four minutes.

A Yeah. I did flatline for four and a half minutes and yeah, I was on the other, you know, I had a whole experience of being on the other side. The way it happened was when I was born, my stomach was twisted and not, I was supposed to die when I was born. They saved me about this crazy surgery then, and then all these years later, the scar tissue from that surgery kind of fully broke off and created a bowel obstruction. Um, and I didn't know it at the time. I just saw that my stomach was getting bigger kind of each day. I went from like three months pregnant to six months pregnant to nine months pregnant.

AI assessment note: “I did flatline for four and a half minutes”

Q Do you not tell yourself that's what's needed? Like, I, I beat myself up, but I tell myself that that's what kicks me in the ass and makes me better. Is that wrong?

A I don't think it's wrong. I think, but I think it evolves. And so I think you have decided if it's still serving you in the way, and it was no longer serving me in the way that it once did. I, I thought like the only way to be motivated was like to beat myself up and be better and you have to be more and you're bad for all these reasons. And then I just learned to be a better friend to myself and recognize that like actually supporting through these things is gonna make me work even harder. It's gonna make me wake, waste less time on repetitive thoughts. You know, like I saw, I read some study the other day from the NSF that said the average person has 30,000 thoughts a day. 80% of them are negative, and 95% of them are repetitive. And I would have bet you I was higher than 80 and 95% on those things. And that's just not that useful.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it's wrong. I think, but I think it evolves.”

Q Oh my gosh. My brother's just had a, uh, his first baby. And seeing the love that a parent has so kind of viscerally for their child, and I see it in him with his daughter, it kind of, it really gives me goosebumps thinking of like a mother standing there watching in that way. What happens then? You give the thumbs up, and then the recovery process starts? Like,

A No, there was, like, a couple more days of crazy stuff that happened. After that, like, the doctors kind of rushed down, and they, they have these models, like, to assess probability of survival, and they looked at me, and it was, like, well below one percent, and so he turns to my mom to basically say, like, hey, I know this just happened, but you got to understand, like, this isn't pacing to end well, and she says, I understand. He says, you don't understand. His organs are shutting down, and she said, I understand, but two minutes ago, we didn't have a pulse. And now we have a pulse. So what are we going to do about that? And he says, okay, well, there's this thing called an ECMO machine. It's not a great option, but it's our only option, but only about half the people who touch this machine live to tell a story. But the problem is, is we only have one of these things. And then we are at UCLA Santa Monica and this machine is at UCLA Westwood and we've never transported it before. It's never been done. The other problem is there's only two doctors who do this surgery and neither of them are on call and it's father's day. Um, and then Randomly, the guy that I had, like, initially reached out to the doctor, um, happened to be at a bachelor party in Vegas, and he was with the head of cardiology at UCLA, and he said, hey, can you check your phone to see how my buddy's doing? I se…

AI assessment note: “No, there was, like, a couple more days of crazy stuff that happened.”

Q Kind of, the bigger we get, the more I seem to doubt myself. Huh, ironically. It's just more people telling me that I'm shit, and that I'm, you know, useless, and, you know, I have my mother to do that. So, um, where do you doubt yourself most today?

A You know, I think it's mostly around people decisions, because people are just hard. There's never kind of a right way or wrong way to do things, so I'm constantly adjusting You know, we have our virtues that we're very serious about living that we, that we reinforce, and one of them is so you can offer feedback, another was raise the bar, and so I'm constantly trying to figure out the right cadence of that. I could give feedback every day to every single person if I wanted to, but that would probably be overkill, and so how do you, how do you continue to raise the bar by also understanding when people are, like, maxed out? We're a very small team. We're only 57 full-time people at that revenue, so it's like...

AI assessment note: “I think it's mostly around people decisions, because people are just hard.”

Q But just pause. We went from 18 K to 300 K, and so just take me to that chasm where you get Brian, and then you put it on Instagram at the time, on Twitter, like, how do you make that jump from 18 to 300?

A Storytelling content. We did a Reddit AMA with him where we seeded the opportunity in the Reddit. Um, back then, like there wasn't even paid advertising on like Facebook and Twitter. We got him on Facebook. We got him on Twitter. We started pushing stuff out and it would just fly. We did a bunch of like short viral videos with him. And then with Aaron, we took it to the next level and we got AMC to be part of it and Netflix to be part of it because they realized it was starting to promote our show and it became this huge thing. It just Spread, and we would do these funny little videos with Aaron, the top 10 reasons you should enter, all this little content that hadn't really been done on social in this way, and it just, it went crazy.

AI assessment note: “Storytelling content. We did a Reddit AMA with him where we seeded the opportunity”

Q How does going through this unbelievable shit storm of pain, death, life, how does that change one's relationship to, to fear?

A Yeah, I mean, it fundamentally changed my relationship to fear when I realized that I was a lot more fear-driven. Fear of what other people thought, fear of not being enough, fear of not being liked or loved, and I used to let that drive a lot of my decision-making. Even what quote-unquote like brave Choices I would make were really made out of fear. Like they're trying to avoid something of happening. And if you really like deconstruct like what fear is, in most cases, it's very rarely like you're running from actual life threat. It's really mostly just a story of some kind of imagined consequences that really only exists in your own brain. And when you realize when you go through something like that is that the, the actual thing is never as bad as the fear of the thing. Death is, is most people's greatest fear. Like I experienced some version of that. I was like, oh, that wasn't actually that bad. I've met a lot of people who've been through trauma or lost everything, you know, lived their greatest fear and then realize, oh, I'm okay. Like I can bounce back from that. So, so what that means now is I think fear is still useful. A lot of you, it can be very motivating. Um, and a lot of people lead by fear and that can work in the short term. If you study the teams or the groups that have done something that is enduring, that is truly world changing over time, they're also able …

AI assessment note: “fundamentally changed my relationship to fear when I realized that I was a lot more fear-driven”

Q Everyone says building a business in the UK is shit. We did Project Europe. You're an American in London. What do people think about building in the UK that isn't how it is?

A I didn't have a ton of preconceived notions coming. I've loved building in the UK. I think there's great talent here. I think there's great educational institutions that create great talent. People are very motivated, like by the collective. I think you get a lot of immigrant talent, so you get a lot of different ways of thinking. So I think it's a great place to run a business. I think it's, I think it's a very dynamic. London is incredibly dynamic. You know, it's the only city in the world where you have a relevant center for politics, a relevant center for entertainment, a relevant center for finance that are within a mile of each other. And so that creates a dynamic, dynamism. I know all the narratives now about, you know, UK and Europe are sinking into the ocean, but like, I just don't, I don't experience that.

AI assessment note: “I know all the narratives now about... UK and Europe... I don't experience that.”

Q Kind of, the bigger we get, the more I seem to doubt myself. Huh, ironically. It's just more people telling me that I'm shit, and that I'm, you know, useless, and, you know, I have my mother to do that. So, um, where do you doubt yourself most today?

A You know, I think it's mostly around people decisions, because people are just hard. There's never kind of a right way or wrong way to do things, so I'm constantly adjusting You know, we have our virtues that we're very serious about living that we, that we reinforce, and one of them is so you can offer feedback, another was raise the bar, and so I'm constantly trying to figure out the right cadence of that. I could give feedback every day to every single person if I wanted to, but that would probably be overkill, and so how do you, how do you continue to raise the bar by also understanding when people are, like, maxed out? We're a very small team. We're only 57 full-time people at that revenue, so it's like...

AI assessment note: “I think it's mostly around people decisions, because people are just hard.”

Q What was the near death experience? I hear you were like almost dead for like four minutes or dead for four minutes.

A Yeah. I did flatline for four and a half minutes and yeah, I was on the other, you know, I had a whole experience of being on the other side. The way it happened was when I was born, my stomach was twisted and not, I was supposed to die when I was born. They saved me about this crazy surgery then, and then all these years later, the scar tissue from that surgery kind of fully broke off and created a bowel obstruction. Um, and I didn't know it at the time. I just saw that my stomach was getting bigger kind of each day. I went from like three months pregnant to six months pregnant to nine months pregnant.

AI assessment note: “I did flatline for four and a half minutes and yeah, I was on the other”

Q Do you not tell yourself that's what's needed? Like, I, I beat myself up, but I tell myself that that's what kicks me in the ass and makes me better. Is that wrong?

A I don't think it's wrong. I think, but I think it evolves. And so I think you have decided if it's still serving you in the way, and it was no longer serving me in the way that it once did. I, I thought like the only way to be motivated was like to beat myself up and be better and you have to be more and you're bad for all these reasons. And then I just learned to be a better friend to myself and recognize that like actually supporting through these things is gonna make me work even harder. It's gonna make me wake, waste less time on repetitive thoughts. You know, like I saw, I read some study the other day from the NSF that said the average person has 30,000 thoughts a day. 80% of them are negative, and 95% of them are repetitive. And I would have bet you I was higher than 80 and 95% on those things. And that's just not that useful.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it's wrong. I think, but I think it evolves.”

Q willing to go into private markets in this kind of extended privatization window. You're seeing companies like Stripe very publicly say, listen, if you need a 28 year old analyst at a bank to say increase your margins, You probably are not a great business anyway. The idea that you get better discipline is actually just a sign of a poorly managed company. The question then becomes, why go public?

A I mean, there's a lot of reasons to not go public. You know, you don't have to deal with, like, the volatility of the yen carry trade, reducing morale in your business. And if you're Stripe or you're SpaceX, then, you know, you have access to liquidity in ways that are pretty similar to being public. Not every company though is Stripe or SpaceX. It's still the most efficient way to, in most impactful way for most companies to get liquidity for their investors and their shareholders. It's still on the margin, brings down the cost of capital. I mean, it still can be a branding moment for some companies that is important in terms of their international expansion. It's more of a question than it once was, but it's not everybody are those companies.

AI assessment note: “most impactful way for most companies to get liquidity for their investors”

Q How does going through this unbelievable shit storm of pain, death, life, how does that change one's relationship to, to fear?

A Yeah, I mean, it fundamentally changed my relationship to fear when I realized that I was a lot more fear-driven. Fear of what other people thought, fear of not being enough, fear of not being liked or loved, and I used to let that drive a lot of my decision-making. Even what quote-unquote like brave Choices I would make were really made out of fear. Like they're trying to avoid something of happening. And if you really like deconstruct like what fear is, in most cases, it's very rarely like you're running from actual life threat. It's really mostly just a story of some kind of imagined consequences that really only exists in your own brain. And when you realize when you go through something like that is that the, the actual thing is never as bad as the fear of the thing. Death is, is most people's greatest fear. Like I experienced some version of that. I was like, oh, that wasn't actually that bad. I've met a lot of people who've been through trauma or lost everything, you know, lived their greatest fear and then realize, oh, I'm okay. Like I can bounce back from that. So, so what that means now is I think fear is still useful. A lot of you, it can be very motivating. Um, and a lot of people lead by fear and that can work in the short term. If you study the teams or the groups that have done something that is enduring, that is truly world changing over time, they're also able …

AI assessment note: “the actual thing is never as bad as the fear of the thing”

Q Everyone says building a business in the UK is shit. We did Project Europe. You're an American in London. What do people think about building in the UK that isn't how it is?

A I didn't have a ton of preconceived notions coming. I've loved building in the UK. I think there's great talent here. I think there's great educational institutions that create great talent. People are very motivated, like by the collective. I think you get a lot of immigrant talent, so you get a lot of different ways of thinking. So I think it's a great place to run a business. I think it's, I think it's a very dynamic. London is incredibly dynamic. You know, it's the only city in the world where you have a relevant center for politics, a relevant center for entertainment, a relevant center for finance that are within a mile of each other. And so that creates a dynamic, dynamism. I know all the narratives now about, you know, UK and Europe are sinking into the ocean, but like, I just don't, I don't experience that.

AI assessment note: “I know all the narratives now about... UK and Europe are sinking into the ocean”

Q How did you model your creative machine on his? What did you change or do?

A The process with which they ideate that then goes to a room where they beat up the ideation and, like, stress test it, and then the, like, the testing and how they learn from the episodes before. At one point we were producing 400 celebrity videos a year, you know, and our team, like, figured out that process, was really good at learning from that process. Like, that's why we, like, that's why we were the only ones who did a celebrity that made it. We've committed WME, tried to do it, CAA tried to do it. Even Airbnb and Groupon at the time tried to do, but that machine is why we were able to beat them, um, and so we learned watching that from him.

AI assessment note: “The process with which they ideate that then goes to a room where they beat up”

Q How did you model your creative machine on his? What did you change or do?

A The process with which they ideate that then goes to a room where they beat up the ideation and, like, stress test it, and then the, like, the testing and how they learn from the episodes before. At one point we were producing 400 celebrity videos a year, you know, and our team, like, figured out that process, was really good at learning from that process. Like, that's why we, like, that's why we were the only ones who did a celebrity that made it. We've committed WME, tried to do it, CAA tried to do it. Even Airbnb and Groupon at the time tried to do, but that machine is why we were able to beat them, um, and so we learned watching that from him.

AI assessment note: “and so we learned watching that from him.”