The Exchanges

Q How did it happen? So the game's blowing up, and what, you get an email from Mark Pincus, or how does that happen?

A The game's blowing up, and not only is it so big, it's literally sucking the user base out of every single other game on the market. And so that's Zynga, that's EA, that's like everybody else who's about to report earnings and talk about their DAU and MAU, and you know, I have these videos of The download numbers and the counter is just broken because there's, you know, there's a million drawings happening every five seconds. And so, you know, Mark knew somebody on my board. They invited me to the headquarters. I was a joker, so I entered my name as Dr. Dre from the company NWA coming in. I thought maybe somebody would know I was there or whatever. Uh, ultimately there were five or six companies that were really interested in buying it because it was just The trajectory was so big, and I think they were playing offense, like, they clearly was like, these guys are some mobile game savants, and I think they were playing defense because they were bleeding all of their users across everywhere.

AI assessment note: “Mark knew somebody on my board. They invited me to the headquarters.”

Q Well, I want to start with the story, uh, cause your stories are legendary. You came to our, our basketball camp, camp FM. And, uh, you didn't even play basketball, which is the best part. You were my favorite person there, and you didn't even play basketball, which is the funniest part. Can you tell the story of, uh, OMG Pop and what happened there?

A Yeah. So, uh, OMG Pop was a gaming website built entirely in Flash. Started with this incredibly creative guy, Charles Mormon, who grew up playing Game Boys in his garage. It was like, I wish the internet could connect us to play together. Uh, and we made a ton of really fun games and we actually had success. And it's a weird story because In some ways, like we imagine that businesses either succeed or fail, but what happens like if you're in the middle and we had millions of people who played our games. The problem is that Farmville came out and they had a hundred million people who played their games. And all of a sudden millions of people who played your games was kind of way lamer than a hundred million people who played your game on Facebook. And we, we did our thing, but then the world changed and it was Facebook games and it was all of these other things. And so, at what point do you come back to the board and you're just like, well, we're You know, we're kind of running out of money and they're like, well, why do we want to invest in something that is good, but not great? Uh, and so I remember we went back and we were like, okay, so let's say that we cut all the snacks, like how much runway would that increase for us? Um, and the answer was one day. And at some point you're just like, well, am I in the runway extending business? Am I in the business of taking something?…

AI assessment note: “OMG Pop was a gaming website built entirely in Flash. Started with this incredibly creative”

Q Wait, did he, did he, did he hang up without saying bye? Yeah. That's awesome.

A That's what the agents do. They roll calls. He had a list of 300 people. Hey, hey, how you doing, Larry, David, goodbye, whatever, and then he's on to the next one, and they understood it, and I was an idiot. I just wasn't from that environment, so I didn't really understand it, so I'd be talking, and I'd look, and I'd just see the time on my phone, because he'd have hung up, and he'd on to the next call, um, and I just think there's this incredible personal force and momentum that he has, and sometimes I think for some people, They have that, but it can lead to a really toxic work environment, and there are all kinds of exposures. I think he loves life. He enjoys everything. He's very funny, and I think he could, he could have both of those in a way, and he was good at understanding what made you tick and connecting with that. I think Richard is really different. Richard is very laid back, but very cool, and I remember going to this Meeting at Virgin Mobile in Canada, and he wanted to talk to all the people in the phone room, the customer support people, and people just don't do that. And he basically just tells them this story about when he lost his virginity, like, no pun intended. And it's this very funny story where he humanizes himself, and he's just this regular guy, and he's not talking to the C-suite. He's talking to all people who answer the phone, and they just leave…

AI assessment note: “he'd have hung up, and he'd on to the next call”

Q a 24 year old, you know, ambitious person who just wants to have an interesting life, want to have a great life. They don't really know exactly what they want. What's your approach? Like what does Dan think you should be doing in your twenties? You know, what do you think you should be doing in your thirties? How do you, what is like the nutshell of your career advice?

A First of all, there's a lot of ways you can learn about the world. I learned about the world by being a public school teacher. I learned about the world by, you know, giving guitar lessons. Like there's so many different ways. And I think that, so I, I have this thing where I, I just, I really don't like to hire people who went to business school and I'm kind of anti-MBA because to me, if there's a funnel and it starts when you're like five years old and you ask, why is the sky blue? Why do people walk on two legs? That funnel goes through the education system, and then it gets to business school, and then it narrows, and it closes, and they're just like, this is the way you do things. And then you've lost all that, like, pie in the sky, whatever. So I kind of say to young people, like, your twenties, it's like the time for you to get fired from a job, the time for you to stay up way too late and go to a club, time for you to, like, Take a Euro pass across England. A time for you, for your friend to say, I'm going to do this crazy thing, and you're like, yes. You know, the time to just say yes, and do all those things, and ingest and experience as much of the world as possible. A, because all of those experiences come and form you in some way, like, if I didn't go to the concert, or I didn't sing at a soccer show, or I didn't do any of these other things like that, I don't thin…

AI assessment note: “your twenties, it's like the time for you to... ingest and experience as much of the world as possible”

Q And did you believe, or where was the belief? Because, you know, startups are a roller coaster. You have the initial surge where this is going to be awesome. You have the trough of despair, the trough of sorrow where you're, it feels like nothing's working, and then sounds like you were at the end. Where was the morale at the time?

A I didn't get up on a podium and say, hey, y'all, we're going to be out of business in five months, so polish up that resume. Uh, and we had millions of users. I mean, our average time on site was like four and a half hours and people loved us. It's just that the scale at which they loved us was not the scale at which was happening when Facebook transformed the gaming business. And of course, like all the money is focused on you. And then they're like, oh shit, bright, shiny objects, Zynga, Farmville, anything that ends in Ville. And they all ran over there and you're like, Hey, what's up? A couple million users, and they're like, cool, cool.

AI assessment note: “I didn't get up on a podium and say, hey, y'all, we're going to be out of business”

Q Well, where'd they come up with that number?

A Um, I think they were looking at probably We were making a ton of money because, uh, we had so many screens in the game when you go back and forth and back and forth. So we're trending out of advertising revenue. You're looking at, you know, roughly kind of how much is an MAU or a DAU interesting to you. And so we bring it to the board and the board is ecstatic because we go from being like, oh, should we essentially wind this thing down to now we have this thing that's popular and somebody wants to buy it. And so they're like, great, like a hundred and twenty million dollars. I was like, this thing is worth two hundred and fifty million dollars. Cause like anyone, I'm extremely high on my own supply at that time. And you know, there's this moment where basically the message they're saying to me is like, you're the CEO, but it's not your company. It's our company. Like you don't control this thing. And there's kind of a subtle message from me to them being like, well, fine, fucking sell this thing without me. Cause this thing is worth so much money. And that's 50% complete delusion, and arrogance, and adrenaline, and all the other things that happen. Uh, you know, when you're in the desert, and you have a couple million users, and now you have hundreds of millions of users. And part of me thinking, like, maybe I actually am right, and like, maybe it is worth more. And so they g…

AI assessment note: “trending out of advertising revenue. You're looking at, you know, roughly kind of how much”