The Exchanges

Q Donaldson's gonna be here in the afternoon, who you know, Alex. Um, can you just explain What the creator economy is, like, why has it just blossomed like this, and like, what is the ultimate goal at a meta level? Is it just that, like, to, to break the distribution model so that you're, like, just explain what that movement is, and why so many people are part of it.

A So people recently discovered that creators are pretty similar to small and medium sized businesses, or in Jimmy's case, like an actual legitimate huge business. He's going to be speaking later. Um, but basically what they learned is that it's easier to turn attention into capital than it is to turn capital into attention. And what that means, and what that means is when you have An audience, especially if they're around a particular niche, they can also be kind of like the future customers to your product. Um, and that's why you see people like Mr. Beast starting Feastables, or Logan Paul starting Prime, but I think one of the trends that we're going to increasingly see is founders connecting with some kind of creator partner for organic distribution, but also to kind of get more insight into product development, because those creators are not just marketers, they're people who live and breathe Their audience's feedback and are really aware about the specific niche they're working on.

AI assessment note: “it's easier to turn attention into capital than it is to turn capital into attention”

Q to convert that to different things, right? Um, do you, how do you, do you get pulled in a thousand different directions, like, oh, wait, hold on, I need to now repurpose this for TikTok, and, oh, hold on, I need to do this on X, and wait, the, the Twitch economics are kind of crappy, like, just explain the day-to-day of like, how do, how do you build distribution?

A Yeah, so I think one of the things that is the trickiest is when you start on one particular platform and learning how to expand outwards. So for me, I started on Twitch, which is basically you're streaming for eight hours a day, you're talking to the audience, it's not filtered, you're just being yourself. YouTube, as you'll also see from Jimmy later, is completely different. The best YouTubers in the world, they're planning out their thumbnails before, they're planning out their titles, they won't even put a video out if the thumbnail and title aren't good, Whereas with streaming, there's no thumbnails, there's no titles, it doesn't really matter. So what creators usually do at the start is they try to repurpose their content and put it onto other platforms, and that's what we did as well. We would just take our Twitch stream and put them on YouTube. And that's a good way to get started, maybe get to the first, like, couple 100,000 of followers, but when you actually want to grow on a platform, you have to make content that's organic for it, because it'll do 10 to a hundred times better. So it's actually a skill where you have to learn how to Turn your content and make it work on all platforms, and then once you have the know-how, you can hire people to outsource it who can then do it for you.

AI assessment note: “when you actually want to grow on a platform, you have to make content that's organic”

Q to talk about your dad for a second, because I asked you how'd you get so good at this, and you said, Well, my dad loved to play games with me. And we had Jenny just yesterday talking about, hey, more women should play strategy games. So, I was wondering if you could just unpack how you were raised, and what gave you the love of competition, games, and strategy?

A So, I'm from a Romanian family, and my parents immigrated to the U.S., and then to Canada, basically the rags to riches story, where they came here with nothing. But one thing that my dad really loved, and is really common in Romanian culture, is games, and chess in particular. So when I was six years old, my dad started teaching me how to play chess, and I really loved it, because it was something that we would do for fun. Um, he would trash talk me as a six year old, If he would ever beat me, he would make me write him notes saying like, I lost to the beautiful, gorgeous master, my dad. I will never be better than him. And he would frame these.

AI assessment note: “when I was six years old, my dad started teaching me how to play chess”

Q Can you tell us what your streaming business has turned into and kind of all the different aspects of that as a business for you?

A Yeah, um, so it started with just me streaming on Twitch, and I actually convinced my little sister to not go to college and come join me and, and come to the channel. She's right there in the corner, shy. So, we joined the two of us, and it basically grew from something where we started on Twitch, and then we went to all platforms, so we expanded onto YouTube, onto TikTok, and then we also started expanding genres, so I've been doing more poker, my sister's been getting more into DJing, we've been putting on some really big events, we threw a chess event on Twitch that broke the record chip number, and we had almost a 100,000 live concurrents watching.

AI assessment note: “we expanded onto YouTube, onto TikTok, and then we also started expanding genres”

Q about in the pod some ways back involving Hans Niemann, a player who has kind of kicked off chess.com and maybe some other places too for alleged cheating. Magnus said he wouldn't play with him. Now, I guess, There was a statement that Chess.com is allowing him back. Magnus said he will play with him. Can you give us an update on, like, what the chess world thinks happened there?

A Yeah, and maybe I'll give some general background a little bit more so the audience has it too. Basically, the best chess, and I know they talked about it on the pod, but just in case. Um, so the best chess player in the world was playing against a talented junior. He was in the top 50, um, of all players in the world. Top 10 for all juniors. And he was this chess player who had risen really quickly, like, a hundred to 200 points, which was unheard of for his skill level, and he ended up beating Magnus, and Magnus the next day withdrew from the tournament, which is the first time Magnus has ever done anything, and it basically led to Magnus accusing him of cheating, and Hans coming out with a public interview saying he's never cheated on the board, but he has cheated online when he was, you know, 16 or very young. Chess.com saw this, and because he said that information about cheating on their site, they wanted to correct the information. So they came out and they said, actually, he's cheated online in hundreds of games, including events that were for money. Um, and then he got uninvited from some larger tournament, and basically what ended up happening is it blew up into this giant controversy where people on Han's side was saying they haven't been able to prove the cheating over the board. He admitted to online, that's very different, and then Uh, people on Magnus' side were …

AI assessment note: “This was recently resolved where Hans has been able to get back onto chess.com.”

Q Just say a little bit more about that. What, what, what, like, how do you see that playing out?

A So, I can talk in my particular example. Right now, I, I'm one partnered with Chess.com, but I'm also working on a startup that's trying to reinvent Chess by adding some video game elements. We're calling it Chess. So when, as a co-founder in this company, there's the operator, and there's myself as the second co-founder, and what I'm going to do is help with the distribution when the product's out. But right now, in all the play testing, um, I basically have people from my community who can be beta testing, And being able to give feedback, but I really have seen the trends of what works in chess. So I, I've basically talked to like dozens of companies that are trying to, uh, start something in the chess space. I've seen what works and what hasn't. I've seen what my audience has responded to. So then when I'm partnering with a startup, it's not just like, hey, post this on your story. Get people to go use it. But it's more like, what does your audience actually like? What products that are different to chess have they used? Which ones works? Which ones haven't?

AI assessment note: “when I'm partnering with a startup, it's not just like, hey, post this on your story”

Q Well, no, I mean, you know what podcasting means to men, right? Food therapy.

A Oh, yeah. No, that, that, that makes sense. That makes sense. So, five minutes on the clock. Everybody playing only has five minutes. I have five minutes. They have five minutes. If anybody runs out of time, the game is over. So if they manage to stall me enough, and they're just running my clock on one board, I can lose. Every time they make a move, they get an extra two seconds increment. This is just so that if I only have 10 seconds on one clock, I could at least run there, not lose on time, and the way it works is they can make moves at any point. Um, I think we're gonna have a little eval bar on the screen behind, so if you don't play chess, you can kind of look at that. There we go. There we go. So you can look at that. If, if the eval bar, you could see more of white than black. Alex, mine doesn't work. That means I'm, uh, it's because that's an illegal move.

AI assessment note: “So, five minutes on the clock. Everybody playing only has five minutes.”