Andy Dinh, the founder of TSM, is a pioneer in the world of competitive gaming. If you aren't already familiar, Team SoloMid (TSM) is a professional esports organization that has shaped the industry. On this episode, Andy talks about what it was like starting TSM, the challenges that came with building it, the evolution of the world of Esports, and who he is as a gamer versus as a founder. Andy was very candid about mistakes he made along the way, and how they led him to the success that he has now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Radio and t DC Media. That's gonna be a big
setback there. But m VP is not the one we're
worried about. Is they're just a setback here for t
s M. Who is going to do it? Ts M,
you're your champions. Go to these events, network people, find
people to collaborate with, put the time in, be smart
(00:20):
about it, look at what you did, and analyze what's
going well, what's not going well well. I think being
reluentless is super important, Like you need to really know
what you want and like truly ask yourself, Like if
you're only doing it for the money, it's really not
worth the other dude, because you love it. Andy dinn
is in the house, what's up? And from TSU here
(00:40):
Andy from TSM. I mean, if you don't know that
name and you don't know this associated with TSM, I
don't know what to tell you. So a very very successful,
very influential person sitting across from me in the e
sports world, I definitely think you are a pioneer, if
not the pioneer in the space. E sports is something
that people still to this day do not understand. What
(01:02):
do you think the stigma is. I think the stigma
has changed over the last decade from you know, gamers
being in their basement to now being seen as a
more acceptable path. It's not really there yet in the
sense that where parents feel like, hey, my kid is
growing up to be a gamer like basketball or football
or soccer, but it is definitely more acceptable than before
where parents were heavily against it. They're uncomfortable, the didn't
(01:24):
know where it was. Now you see a fifteen year
olds going to these like massive stadiums and winning millions
of dollars. So I do think that there's some general concept. Yeah,
for sure. So ts M massive, right, and you're the
founder of this massive empire. For people who have not
heard of ts M, give us a little breakdown. So,
so TSM is a company that I started when I
(01:46):
was seventeen and not to shobby. What were you guys
doing at seventeen. There's there's two areas of focus for
the business, right. We employee close to hunted gamers that
go around competing in these large stadiums across the world,
from like the Staples Center to Medicine Square Garden. And
these players they you know, they make millions in their
(02:07):
their age ranges from sixteen to up to twenty four.
And then we have the other side of our business,
which is like a tech driven business that focuses on
data and analytics and e sports performance that really helps
feel our our gamers, and like with their practice regiment,
that product offering is made and created for our pro players.
At the same time, our fans and players also use
(02:28):
it too. So we're gonna take it back to the
very beginning of the t SM days. Okay, first of all,
you're seventeen. Are you still in high school? No, I
dropped out of high school. So you drop you drop out,
and then the idea comes or the idea comes and
then you drop out. So so I dropped out of
high school to to go to college early. Okay, that
it was a gradual process, and I started while I
(02:50):
was in college and I just go to college part time. Really,
were you inspired because you were actually a gamer in
real life? I was inspired to be a content creator
and just be a competitive player overall through just through YouTube, right,
because at that time, YouTube was still early in two
thousand and eight where creators were starting to have millions
of followers. So I think at that time, Ryan Higa,
(03:10):
who had two million followers on YouTube, was the largest
influencer of that time. And I really wanted to create content.
But instead of creating fun and engaging content, I wanted
to create content around being better at gaming. And so
that was our niche. And at that time gaming started
to really grow and exploded, at least from a social
media perspective, and so I was able to capitalize on that.
So I remember in two thousand and eight, that's when
(03:31):
the Partner program started. I mean that's when all the
people started really taking content creation much more seriously. When
you said you wanted to go on to show people
how to become better gamers or what were you doing tutorials?
Were you because you weren't competing at that point, so
what were you doing? You were just showing gameplay. Yeah,
so so the sports didn't really existed in a very
(03:51):
small form, and so at that time I had a
small form of a community, and what I did was
I created guides. I wrote articles about the game and
this route guides in terms of how to play the
game better. At the same time, too, though, I created
video tutorials online on my own YouTube channel and while
playing a game play. Okay, So I had a blog
(04:11):
on blogger dot com. I had a YouTube channel on
YouTube and just with a few thousand subscribers really and
started to grow that over time and just started to
upload daily. I didn't know what I was doing, and
learned how to edit, learned how to write while while
I was going to college, and you know, like through time, right,
YouTube cpims were just really low at that time, and
so it was a massive time investment spendings creating videos
(04:36):
but would make you were spending twenty to thirty hours. Yeah, yeah,
just just did you have time to go to school?
I I skipped class a lot. I would imagine it
was very very part time. I started to do uh
you know, I think that in college I was particularly
a strong student, but my grade started to really drop.
At the same time too, I started to see hope, right,
(04:57):
So from making like fifty cents a day and went
to like twenty said to thirty to forty. It made
me more motivated and I started to figure try to
figure out other forms of revenue in terms of how
to really grow this. So what were some of the
ways that you made money? I think the a couple
of ways that we made money was through YouTube and
through blogger dot com got it, you know. I learned
how to operate a Google ad Sense, learned how to
(05:17):
set that up with tags, and um find people to
help me on things that I really didn't know how
to do. So meanwhile, you're in school, what are you studying?
I was at this stage of just doing G education
because it was your first year, right exactly. Okay, I
took some college courses whiles in high school, but I
wanted to try to finish G when I was like
by the time I was seventeen or eighteen, uh and
(05:38):
so I was trying to speed through school. But also
why speed through? Did you have a plan to be
an entrepreneur from the beginning? Were you just trying to
get out and do your thing? No, No, no plans
at all. I stumbled on it. You just wanted to
be out, exactly. So I was already going to taking
college courses in in the summer and winter and night
classes walls in high school. So I was already a
year ahead in college. So I wanted to finish G
(06:00):
because we just couldn't. We couldn't afford to go to
a four year university, so it made more sense to
go to community college early and take all the g courses.
It's a much more cost effective path. All right, glad
you did that path instead of taking out a hundred
grand loan. Okay, so you're making money. Finally, you're taking
this thing seriously. What are parents thinking back at home?
My parents were really worried, right because I made some money,
(06:22):
but it was honestly less than minimum wage. They immigrated
to the US, and they really focused on education. My stepdad,
it was a professor at Santasy State. And my mom,
she she's an a student. She really cares about education.
She didn't graduate college until she was forty five, primarily
because when she she moved here, right, she needed to
provide for the family, and so they take education really seriously.
(06:43):
All my siblings had straight a's besides me, and so
they were really worried about me. Well, shout out to mom.
By the way, can we give a round of a
flause for mom who still goes to school graduates. That's awesome.
Good for her. But yeah, that was probably a lot
of pressure for you because sibling started doing what they
quote un should be doing. But every time I talked
(07:04):
to an entrepreneur, they always went against the grain, it seems.
And I'm not telling your kids to kick don't don't
get out of school, like don't leave it. So I'm
not saying that. But what I am saying is every
time I've I've spoken to somebody like you, they kind
of had something inside of them that did you have
something inside of you that said you wanted something bigger
I did. I wanted to fund success. I wanted to
provide more from my family. But at the same time
(07:25):
too though it was more of a plan B. Right
at the end of the day, I knew that there's
a high chance of failure. What was the plan A
plane at the end of the day was to finish
school really and either focus on finance or medicine, but
like different just like doing the research, understanding the path
of like what it took to become a doctor. It
was a really hard path forward, right, you need to
(07:45):
go to school and then medical school and then also
you need to do residency. And that that was like
I wanted to find success fast and I wanted to
you know, really just go and so had I failed,
I probably would have gone into finance. Well, thank god
for Lee of Ugen's huh, So, so talk to me
about entering into that world, because that kind of shifted
(08:06):
everything for you. What year were you and cut were
you still in the first year? Second year when you
started TSM? I dropped out my second year. Okay, so
you drop out second year? What prompted the dropout? It
was it was actually a huge shift where are our
blogs started to really growing, our YouTube started to really grow,
and even though the revenue wasn't there, we had a
massive user base. So I actually convinced my mom to
(08:28):
let me take six six months a year off and
if I couldn't show success, and I would just drop
the entire project period and focus on school. Right, So
I had really twelve months to find success because even
though we had a huge user base, we couldn't make
any money, and you know, I was spending a ton
of time on it, right, that guy almost give up
so many times. It was an inflection point where blogger
(08:49):
dot com which was taking around of our revenue and
also not really monetizing it well because they're plucking through
ad sense. So I basically borrowed five thousandllars from my mom,
which she was saving from my from my college situation. Anyways,
I was like, hey, you either you know, letting borrow
five thousand dollars or I going to go to Wells
Fargo and borrow it for a student loan and just
use that to hire an engineer to really create a
(09:09):
website for me. Right, So, what the website did was
instead of it being blogger dot com, uh, it was
a CMS that allowed creators to write guides on our website.
So instead of being a guide writer myself, I made
it really easy to write legal legends guides, and then
I went out to hire people to write guys for me,
and then I hired engineers to make it really easy
to write guys on our website. How did you know
(09:30):
this was the move? I mean, I think that like
being an entrepreneur like now, like looking at it from
like a present perspective, I didn't really understand the risk involved.
I was only able to see the upside. But honestly,
much chances of success was really really low, and I
kind of just put a ton of time effort to
make it happen. Right. Well, at the end of the day,
your risk was five thousand dollars and disappointing your mom
(09:51):
and then having to go and do something you probably
your heart wasn't into. But at that age, it's a
huge risk, right because you're you're basically tell in your parents, look,
this is my one shot and if I don't, and
that's not it's not necessarily fair to you to just
give yourself one shot. But you gave yourself one shot
and it worked out. But anyway, back to back to
what happened, Yeah, I mean I felt like it was
(10:13):
huge risk because I was working a minimum wid job
before all of this at Traitor Joe's and it took
me six months to save a five thousand dollars, right,
and in total I needed to I needed fifteen dollars
to build up the entire product, So I I used
all my savings and then alone from my mom, and
then five thousand dollars that I was earning by giving
lessons to other people as a as a top player
at that time to pay for the project. Right. But
(10:35):
but once we launched it and it's created, it started
it really started to blow up from maybe just coupled
thousand patriots a day to hundreds of thousands of pagerets
to millions. I think at the point where we started
to earn eight ten thousand dollars a month was when
I was like, Okay, this is a good time. How
many months in was that? It was months eleven. That's
pretty awesome. I mean before the end of year one,
(10:59):
you were monetizing in a big way. Yeah, it was
monthly eleven. But when I completely dropped out, but it
um was already two and a half years in and
I was really feeling burnt out. There was several stages,
like I spent all this money, it just wasn't kind
of work because our product was broken all the time, right,
We didn't have the best engineers. It was as an
(11:19):
engineer that I meant through gaming. He was also my friend,
and he was not only doing it like for a
lower rate, but at the same time he wasn't the best, right,
so there was a ton of friction there. The product
was really never fully optimal, but it was enough for
us to basically pieces together. So as an entrepreneur, you
get to a point where you know you get burnt out,
or the money is running low, or you're kind of
(11:41):
over working with the guy that is a friend, so
he's kind of doing a favor, so he's cheaper, but
you need to like take it to the next level,
and this would be maybe the time that you would
try to raise some money, right, did that ever cross
your mind? I mean, you were so young and it
was still so scrappy. When did you feel like it
was time to go and really blow it up on
a bigger level. So, interestingly enough, we we didn't. We
(12:03):
didn't ever raised any money until I would say, our
Series A, which happened eighteen months ago, so eight years
into the business. So we bootstrapped entire business from you know,
for the first eight years. Um, how did you get
How did you get by doing that? Um? Was it
the scrappy is? Yeah, we were really scrappy. We spent
we spent money in the right areas and we didn't
(12:24):
invest the things that we just didn't need. I keep
saying you were so young, but because I'm so impressed
to run a business successfully for that long without it
all just crumbling to the ground. There's gotta be a
strong person behind that business. What made you qualified to
do that? I mean, obviously you were qualified to game,
and you knew the Geese sports world, but did you
know the world of business? I didn't write. But because
(12:45):
at the same time too, I was also the leader
of my team. I learned how to work with a
entire team, and I learned how to recruit. I learned
how to give people feedback. I learned went to be
hard and went to be soft at the same time too.
That I was really fortunate, because really it's like you
have to be a part of a nish early on
to to really fund the type of success when you're
not experienced, right, And I think that, you know, most
(13:08):
of my competitors at that time, they were also participating
in the sports as a hobby, and I was one
of the very few people to go full time on it,
to get very seriously try to really make something out
of it, whereas most of my competitors were just people
that did it for fun, did it part time. And
so I was really lucky that there were there weren't
strung competitors in the space. If I was competing against
like a forty year old executive that worked at a
(13:30):
fortunate company, I think that there was the word of
no chance for me to succeed because I was in early.
I put in the time, and I was able to
just make a lot of mistakes and not not be
punished for it. I was able to get to where
I am now. Uh, and we skipped forward a lot
just because we were talking. I wanted to get into
the finance part of it, just so people can understand
it's not easy. And you did make a really big
(13:52):
risk at you know, a young age, making a big
ask of your mom and also pulling all your trader
Joe's money, which will that's a lot, but even as
a twenty year old ye old, that's a lot of
money to just put into a dream. You formed a team,
you were playing on the team. Can you talk me
through when all that happened. Yeah, So, so the sites
up at the who whole entire time we had a team.
There was no competitive scene at the time, so at
(14:13):
the didn't think of this. Like I was a person
that was also during the very first tournaments for Legal
Legends right, so we had a hardcore community. There wasn't
there was no higher level of play. So I started
to host events for people to play at right and
then I would go out and I would look for
sponsors to sponsor the prize pool for those tournaments and
then competing at the same time. That sounds like a
(14:33):
major conflict of interest, but at the same time too.
There there were no events, right, not really, It's like
reserving a basketball court and being like, let's go play
exactly and then give us some money if we win,
and we're the best, so we're gonna win. Yeah. So nowadays,
right with with all these professional teams, it doesn't make
sense to be the tournament operator and also rent. But
it didn't exist exactly where so early I I was
(14:55):
really competitive. I wanted to play. I wanted to play
against people with good and you know, people didn't really
take it seriously, and so I wanted to really hang
that carret there for people to play. So I take
my money, put it as a prize pool, and then
have people play in the computer. You would use your
own money for the prize. Yeah. So, because once our
website got to that certain stage, right, I just saw
it as a market marketing vehicle for our website and
(15:16):
our products. So I did that because it was also
a hobby of mine. Right really quickly, once we made
enough money, what I did was I dropped out of
college and I just played full time for fun, and
then I ran ran my business. Oftentimes I would be playing,
even though it didn't really bring more back business because
it was a huge dimension returns. But but at the
same time, it was it was my hobby. Do you
remember the first tournament that you put together. I do,
(15:40):
so it was really early on and it was just
for this currency called riot points where you can use
to just buy items, right, and um, you know, it
was really scrappy. We basically posted a form post and
then people would sign up by typing, hey, I want
to play, and I would post that a schedule and
then there was no organization, There were no there weren't
(16:00):
tools at all. Right, it was just it's like a
group of you know, the guys that the showpen online
in Ventrilla at that time, it's technology that's kind of
dead now, uh. And there would be maybe a hundred
people in this voice chat and I would organize the
event at the same time while competing in it. So
from there to the Staples Center playing at Worlds. Can
(16:21):
you can you for people who don't really understand how
competitive e sports works? How do people get into the tournaments?
How is it all types of games? Are they separated
by legal legends versus Minecraft? Like how does that work?
So it's really different? Right, Like think of each game
as a different sport, whether it's tennis, whether it's an
open or football or basketball. Right, it's it's all different
(16:44):
in particularly legal legends. Also within the phases of time,
it also changed. Right early on when I started to play,
it would there would just be open tournaments where any
five people they can sign up and there would be
uprising and you would go to you would go to
like an arena or theater and you would sign up
as five and you'd play and be the last man
staying to win. Now it's a lot different with with
(17:05):
right Games League Legends franchising, where there are teams owned
by the Golden State Warriors. Right, so several several sports
owners bought into franchises for League Legends. Now there's ten
teams and those are the staple teams in America where
you can't join unless you're recruited to. It's it's a
lot different than does TSM fall into that category. Yes,
so TSM falls into that category, And what we do
(17:25):
now is is a huge process that goes into it.
You have to basically be recruited. We are always looking
for better players on our on our platform, and you
have to play through TSM JR. And then you have
to get qualified through them academy and then make it
through academy, then you go to the pro team. Is
this your own? Yeah? So so it's our it's our own.
It's okay, got it? So not every team operates that way.
(17:47):
Every single team has an academy team, but not path
below that, Right, they don't have a junior program, got it.
So we're we're looking down the funnel to find like
the next Lebron James from the next steph Curry? Got it?
And and does it work like the NBA where you
can get somebody from another team? Yeah? So there are
major buyouts, right, depending on what level. But you know,
(18:07):
player buyouts ranged anywhere between like two dollars to millions
of dollars depending on how good the player is the
prospect is it. Has TSM done that personally? Yeah, we've
spent close to million dollars buying out players before. Has
it been worth it? You know, it depends on it
depends on the player. Right, So we won't we won't
name names, but uh, yeah, no, I think that's a
(18:29):
tricky that's a tricky thing anyway because you can never guarantee.
But if you are, is it a recruitment process or
is our people applying and they're like, look, I don't,
I don't you know, for people who don't understand that
the process works, there's so many gamers out there, I mean,
Twitch has millions and millions of gamers. How do you
even find the good ones? So we're standardizing that process
now as we speak, right, But the way the way
(18:51):
to do it is there's there's an online challenger leaderboard
where you can apply to really prove that you're the best.
And most often teams look at that that ladder. Right,
So out of a million people, the players that rise
to the top two d are the ones that are
being looked at, you know, on a day in the
week by week basis, right. And so if you have
strong stats, if you perform well, if you're a good teammate,
(19:14):
then more than likely you have an opportunity to play
at the per level. And then how many team mates
are on each team, because I know there's it's not
just like five people. It could be up to thirty
for you, right, yeah, So in the game it's the
five verses five uh, And so oftentimes roster arranges between
I would say seven to ten people. You have different
(19:34):
parts of your company that do more than just competitive stuff, right, absolutely,
so that there's influencers there, but so that does not
count the eight people. There's like a larger group. Well
I'm talking about just players that compete. Those are just fun, right.
But at the same time too, though, you have to
have a diversified approach in terms of building a fan base,
creating content, and also performance. Right. So most established teams
(19:57):
have they have a diversified approach more so than just
focused on competing, and you guys do that as well.
For us, we focus on competing because performance really matters us,
not only from a passion perspective. Yeah, it's mainly from
a passion perspective, but also like from how we are
representative brand or performance really matters us. Winning really matters us. Right,
It's not about the like social media drama. It's about
(20:17):
let's let's win some tournaments. Absolutely, And the second part
is really creating content that our fans really find value.
And so at the end of the day, we're realizes,
how do we make our fans better? How do we
give them value? So when they play, they think of us, right,
And so it goes back to when I first started
t SM is that I made guides. I made content
so our players so players can learn from us to
(20:39):
play better. And so what does that entail? Do your
players have to you know, stream a certain amount of hours?
Are you helping create content or help guide the content
that they're putting out there? So particular to our our
the allergency, there are no requirements around our streaming ours
well in terms of just content. In terms of what
we try to do, we will we We aimed to
(21:01):
create guides on how to play the game better on
a month by month basis, so that our players can
always follow the game as they're playing. They could learn
from us in terms of how to play better. And
where can they find that content? Um, they can find
that content on our YouTube channel, on the YouTube channel
which has over two million subscribers. When did you see
a big growth in the TSM fan base because these
are massive now. It honestly it was. It was a
(21:24):
casual growth. There was huge growth when we really focused
on legal legends and the second phase of growth was
one Fortnite launched. Fortnite was a huge, huge, and every
single aspect it really broke uh. I would say it
broke through like mainstream pop culture right in the sense
that every everyone is with the game. Celebrities in all
genres play that game or engage within which way, from
(21:45):
football players, basketball players, and musicians. So I thought that
was really cool, and then TSM saw a huge growth
through that, primarily because we invested into building a team
there early. Do you think that Fortnite and like breaking
into mainstream helped legit mis the sports world as an
actual career, real world thing. I definitely think it helped.
(22:08):
It helped a lot with that specifically in the US.
But before Fortnite, rite e sports, which like Fortnite, is
not as large in Asia. In China, it's it's it's
already gone there, right, So I think that specifically to
the U S, Fortnite really helped with that and played
a major role at the same time too that I
still don't think it's it's there yet can currently right now,
to give your perspective, over the last four or five years. Right,
(22:29):
looking five years back, there are only less than there's
less than five, maybe five colleges that offered scholarships for
e sports. Now there's over a hundred, right, and there's
over two hundred varsity programs for for collegiate sports, which
is amazing to put into context about like five to
two hundred said through time, Once you know there are
thousands of colleges that offer path to scholarships and becoming
(22:51):
varsity and it's seen as a college sport, then I
think that that would create a funnel at high school
level which is also being worked on and then downwards
as well. So so I think that that's at that
point the sports would be seen as a very legitimate career.
So so if you were a career day and somebody
was to say, why is your job so cool? Like
what's so great about working in the world of E sports,
(23:11):
what would you say to them? Well, I mean I
think that just just looking above the sports, right, I
think that like above that, it's like creative content, being
a creator. I think that kids understand what it means
to be a creator looking at YouTube, looking at Instagram.
I think that's a really exciting career because you are
creating content and your aending value to other people's life
at scale. Uh and the world is just more connected nowadays, right,
(23:33):
And then taking it back from an E sports perspective,
I think that I don't I don't think necessarily everyone
should grow up wanting to be any sports player, but
particularly people that have interested that like competing, and one
want to uh to focus on another sport that's an
alternative to what exists today. I think that that's a
good career path, not necessarily a good career path for them,
a good hobby for them to explore, to see if
(23:55):
they could make a creative it. I don't know if
that makes sense. No, No, it makes total sense. It's
basically like foster your passions and see where where you
can take them. And that's something that you clearly did.
I don't think you ever imagined you would build this
empire or shape the industry, or maybe you did, it
doesn't sound it sounds like you kind of were just
like you know, I just wanted to get out of school.
But it worked out awesome for you, and I think
(24:16):
it's well deserved because you worked your ass off for
eight years right before you really felt like you were
doing it. Yeah. I mean even to this day, I
still feel like there it needs a lot. That's every
entrepreneur literally like you will you you'll sell your team
for two billion dollars and still think that you have
more to do I just put that in the universe.
Did you like that? Absolutely? But yeah, I mean going
(24:39):
back to that topic though, I do think it's really important, uh,
and I would like I am concerned for kids that
like focus on making sports are career too much. I
think that there needs to be a balance. They need
to have a plan A, they need to have a
plan B. You had a couple of plans. Yeah. No,
I think that was really smart of you. And I
really respect the fact that you scrappy like you worked hard.
You didn't just borrow money from mom. You went to
(25:00):
Trader Joe's. You did what you had to do to
get to where you are today. So, speaking of today,
the present day TSM is massive. Why do you think
the team is doing so well? Largely there's there's a
couple of reasons. Right first and foremost, we were first
to market, and so we built a huge competitive advantage
in terms of understanding the space where to spend our dollars,
Whereas within the last two to three years there's a
(25:21):
massive VC dollars injected into the sports space and most
of these operators really don't know what they're doing. They
don't understand where to basically invest into to turn that
into revenue, right, and so because we understand the space
really well, we're able to understand where where things will
play out, how I'll play out, and so we're investing
our dollars much better. The second perspective is that we
we've been early so far into Fortnite Leagal Legends, and
(25:44):
I think that we were also going to be early.
From a mobile perspective. I think that mobile e sports
is going to be the future of um where where
gaming is, and so I'm super excited about that. But
I think it has to be being early. That's why
we're we have a huge advantage. I think being early
is definitely an advantage for you one on any platform.
But also I think what really sticks out is your strategy.
(26:04):
Like you said, you guys have been strategic, you know,
you know the back end of things. You're not just
you know. I think a lot of these newer teams
are probably just figuring it out as they go. Have
you ever collaborated with any of the other teams in
any way? I often wonder that. Absolutely from a business perspective,
whether it's sales or just overall structure of the ecosystem,
we worked together closely, because because that's really important to
(26:26):
build it out right. But at the same time, to you,
like there there are our competitors, and it's not structured
in a way where at least yet where all these
owners do work together to build the ecosystem from a
success perspective, So that means like implementation of the league,
how do we standardize contracts, how do we work with
like players? I think that, like how do we increase
the player welfare? Like those are all important topics, but
(26:48):
but it's not at that stage right now. Okay, and
you've been on kind of all sides of the coin,
from playing on the team to you coach, and now
you're you've taken a step back from actively being a
part of it. How's that for you? It's it's it's
honest that we've been challenging, right, Like when I when
I first retired, waking up at eight am attending meetings
was hard, and being responsive to emails for me as
(27:10):
a gamer, I would do more like text messages or
like just a channel channel chats, right, and so acclimating
to the business world was really challenging, making meetings, setting
accepting yes on calendar inside exactly instead of just a
text like, yeah, let's meet and talk about this. Yeah,
So how do you think you're gonna stay on that
side of things? Yeah? I think I'm naturally really competitive
(27:33):
person overall, um, and the way like you know when
when I played games, I was really competitive. That's that's
why that's really excited to me. Now it's my next
journey to be a better entrepreneur, be a better CEO,
be a better leader. And you know I haven't. I
don't think I've been the best leader. And I think
that that's something I'm really focusing on right now in
terms of even how to manage people. Right, Like to
(27:54):
give you perspective, three years ago, we had had a
team of maybe twelve full time employees. Now have seventy
full time players and seventy full time staff, right, and
so it's like a hundred forty people, and then we
have another sixty seventy contractors on top of that, right,
And I think that we've been able to really piece
things together. But like from a company management perspective, it's
(28:14):
it's not done particularly well. So how do I how
do I get better all these things from giving clear
direction to managing people, to making everyone's time, more efficient
with clear instruction. I'm aboud at a lot of these things.
So it's work in progress. I mean, you can't be
too bad at it. The thing, you know, it's things
aren't falling apart, You're doing well. What would you say,
(28:35):
what's your weak point? My weak point is, I would
say being consistent. I think that, like my strong set
is being strategic at, but being consistent and holding people
accountable and meeting with like my direct reports to mixture
that they're getting things done the way I want it.
It's kind of my weaker set, right, Why do you
think that is? Why do I think that is? It's
(28:55):
it's just because I have a scatter brain. I'm focused
on all these things. I love. Adding more and more
projects to managing is a little tough for you, yes,
but managing people, yeah, Well it's exciting at the same
time because I love to work on things that I'm
weak at, and I think that's my skill set is
I know what I'm weeke at and and I'm able
to get people to cover those weaknesses because at the
(29:16):
end of the day, what your company is comprises of
your employees and your team, right, And so at the
same time, not only my finding people to cover my weaknesses,
but I'm also working on them so we can have
more success. Well, it's like a piece of advice for
any entrepreneurs out there. And also it's okay to have weaknesses,
you know. Actually, I think it's the best. That's it's
probably gonna be the thing that you're best at by
the end of this journey. You know, it'll be the
best person manager ever. Is there anything that you think
(29:39):
that is misunderstood about the world of e sports and
competitive e sports that you'd like people to know. I
I think that it's it's it's going to get there
through time. I think that people don't see it as
as a sport. I think that's probably the biggest debate
of all times, Like, hey, e sports is not really
a sport. There's nothing physical about that, and you know,
(30:00):
I particularly don't. I don't don't really care, but it's
just talking about that topic. I think of the sports,
I think of content creation. I think of like what
we're doing right now is influence. Its entertainment at the
end of the day, you know, like when when you're
watching basketball, right you're not you're watching basketball because it's
entertaining you're watching football because it's entertaining. At the end
of the day, like how significant something is is based
(30:20):
off of the amount of eyeballs that that watch it, right,
So I think that's probably the biggest misconception is that
any sport or whatever we do, it's mainly just entertainment content,
And then people don't think it's just work it's not physical. Yeah,
I think that that bait that debate is really meaningless.
But at the same time too though, I do think
that from an e sports perspective, it's really really I mean,
it is physical. I've I watched those competitions. I mean
(30:42):
people are sweating bullets, You're going crazy. That's stressful. It's very,
very stressful. A mental perspective is the brandom muscle you're
you're the doctor or the pre med you we answer
that question, no, But I mean the sports sponsorships, people
(31:04):
make way more money doing that than any quote unquote sport.
I mean you could argue that too, like all the
sponsors and my production company also works with a lot
of branded deals. Everyone wants to work with the sports
right now. Everyone it's like the hot thing that people
are now being like, oh, it's cool it's legit. What
do you have to say to that. I mean, it's
super exciting, right because eighteen thirty four year old male
(31:27):
cord cutting, etcetera. It's like exciting for sure, just because
it's hard to reach your audience. And so at the
same time, to you know, more people are becoming involved
with the sports than traditional sports Sundays right there. There's
so many kids that love this particular industry, and so
it's really exciting for us, and I'm really excited to
be a part of it. It's got to be like
and I told you so a moment. I mean not
(31:48):
in a mean way, but you know, like I knew
this would be something. I never really thought about it
that way, primarily because I can't honestly say that I
thought that this was going to be big. I mean
you made it. Look at this world that you've created.
I really, I really give you the credit for this,
and you have to give it to yourself too. I'm
making you well. I would say that I did it liked,
(32:13):
but it doesn't matter if you did it ignorantly. Let's
I mean, think of all the things that were ignorantly
found or whatever, Like, it doesn't matter you you created
basically jobs for lots of people, aspirational careers for many gamers.
You've shaped in an entire industry. Yeah, And I would
go to say that like a lot of other people
(32:33):
do that too. Twitch made a huge role in like calling,
made a huge rolling rolling Twitch making it so that
millions of people can you create a career out of
streaming and content creation, right, And I think that that
was a big part in terms of making sports a
more viable career. So a lot of people played a
big role in it, and I'm really happy to be
a part of it earlier. But you're definitely like if
(32:53):
there was an All Star basketball team, You've got a
jersey on that team for sure. For sure, for sure.
And yeah, twitches massive, and I want to kind of
touch on that too. How involved is your team on Twitch? Yeah,
so we are one of the largest networks on Twitch,
very early on, and I think that Twitch is amazing.
We're really focused on creating content there were exclusive on
that platform. I am concerned though, like if you look
(33:14):
at like Twitch from like a mobile perspective, or if
you look at Twitch like what the Twitch versus YouTube
battle like over the last like a year or so, um,
they're just major players in the space, but from over
like overall, though, it's always good to have multiple options
that exists in the market. It's it's really really cool
too to see just how many people see it as
a full time career versus when I first started, there
was only maybe a dozen people. It's so awesome. It's
(33:37):
like you created your own lane. Accept it was a
highway that was like a thousand miles wide. So is
there anything about the e sports world that in the
last year or two since it's become very popular that
you kind of makes you cringe a little? Not particularly
which ones do you think? I don't want to. I mean,
(33:58):
it's gonna be so obvious when I say this, but
I feel like some some of the at least I
saw this from a Twitch perspective, some people, once they
became like bigger, became very very mainstream and didn't really
connect with their community as much. I just feel like,
you need to stick to your community and the people
that brought you to where you were. And I think
a lot of people made a lot of money very
(34:19):
fast and maybe that got to them. I don't know, Yeah,
I mean I think that, Uh, it's it's and then
it's gonna be what what you want to focus on, right,
whether you want to go mainstream and stream us. Like,
streaming is really tedious career. The reason why streaming is
really stressful is because I was a streaming for two
to three years. Is that you're you're broadcasting eight to
ten hours a day live where everyone can watch and
(34:41):
see you. You have to like, eat, launch, and do
all these things right at the same time too. Though, um,
like with YouTube, with being a contracutor, Uh, it's really
stressful because you're you're always focused on the numbers. Right,
you don't stream for a day or two days, your
numbers start going down and it makes you feel bad.
So you're now you find yourself streaming so to sevent
days a week, and then the burnout, Yeah, and then
(35:03):
it leads to burnout and then it's it's it's really
hard balance. And so I think that you know, streamers
are large, they're trying to really figure out what they
want to do, and they're they're experimenting, right, and you
know some of them are making those decisions and they're
losing a lot of their falling for it. But like,
I think that because it is early, people are going
to take very different paths and then they're going to
(35:24):
find what's optimal for them and whether Like I think
that a lot of people make mistakes in their career.
At the end of the day, you know they learn
from it and that they're gonna some of them are
not going to ever be able to get to back
to where they wore, but that's that's the truth that
they made. So what advice would you give somebody who
is listening to this interview right now and is inspired
and wants to start a company, maybe not in the
e sports world, but in any world, what advice would
(35:46):
you give them? Well, I think it's a like it's
it's gonna be very general, right, because I think that
these habits often will lead to people becoming more successful.
I think being relentless is super important. Like you need
to really know you want and like truly ask yourself,
like am I doing this? Like if you're only doing
it for money? The money, it's really not worth it.
You have to do because you love it because times
(36:07):
are gonna get really tough and you can't can't give up, right,
Most things in life just don't come easy. And if
you want to be successful, you have to go the
extra mile where other people are not right. You have
to network, you have to collaborate. You have to find
your advantage, figure out what you're good at, what you're
week at, and really focus on what you're good at,
and then find other people to help you that. That's
(36:29):
probably the number one thing. Go to these events, network people,
find people to collaborate with and put the time in.
And then when you when it's not working, be smart
about it, look at what you did and analyze what's
going well, what's not going well Because a lot of
these people that are pursuing these careers they do it
and you know they let too much time passed without
evaluating what's what's good, what's bad. And you have to
(36:52):
really take that time out. You have to pause. You
have to look at everything and say and value whether
whether you want to continue. So you're at a crossroads.
Do you have a bad day or a bad couple
of years or months and you've spent all your savings.
What at what point do you turn left to quit
turn right to keep going? Because you kept going. I
(37:12):
kept going because I I budgeted accordingly right, I lived
at home, I didn't spend money on for listenings like
clothes or whatever. Things I just didn't need. Like when
I started my company and we started to make money,
I didn't just upgrade my life instantly. I I a
dollar frozen dinners for I would say two and a
half years. Really unhealthy. By the way, how's your health?
Are you good? It's good now? I love better now,
(37:34):
trust me. But you know it's it's budgeting, right. You
need to like you need to have your goals and
then you need to plan around it with every aspect
of your life. You need to make sure that this
was running a business, it's do I have the runway
to keep going right? And so it's it's a financial decision.
It's a like decision in terms of how you want
to live. So for you, it's very financial the decision.
And so you didn't ever have a moment where you
(37:56):
were like, I can't do this, I'm not good enough.
It wasn't an internal thing. It was how do I
set myself up so that because quitting is not an option.
Quitting wasn't on an option in the sense that I
just knew that I didn't I didn't want to follow
the general path and I didn't want to go back
to school just just because I loved what I was
doing so much that, like, not making a career was
something that absolquency. So I was willing to give up
(38:18):
a lot of different aspects to give me a larger
runway to make it happen within life, Right, you can't
just have the best of both worlds. You have to
take what you want. I think people forget that. Yeah, absolutely,
I think there's definitely a misconception on how easy things happen,
and people probably don't know that you were really scrapping
at your dollar you know, meals for two years because
(38:39):
of where you are today. And that's why I think
this show is so important, because we need to pull
the veil back on these these ideas that everything, oh e.
Sports just popped up and here comes TSM. That's not
how it happened. How does your mom feel about her
five fell in all our investment? Did she get her
return on investment? Absolutely? Uh, My mom was taking care
of and you know she she couldn't be more proud, right,
(39:01):
She watched it Like when I used to play, she
watched every single event. She's probably the most supportive person
in my life. And so you know, like I ever
already think anyone, it would have to be her in
terms of being so supportive be mom. Oh and that's
my mom. So I didn't mean you're the best mom
in general. I just meant you're the best comma mom. Anyway,
(39:21):
TSAM has some cool stuff going on. You guys are
gonna open a facility soon. Can you tell us a
little bit about that. Yeah, I'm super excited. We're launching
our facility sometimes this summer, and I think at least
it's going to be one of one of the first
facilities that are focused on actually sports performance. And you know,
I think that no one really has it right yet,
and so what's so exciting is that we're focusing on
(39:43):
it and we we want to stay true to that.
So we're thinking of it from like a three sixty angle,
whether it's like nutrition or physical working out on Tuesday,
or even mentally, or even from a data perspective. Right,
we're tackling it from every single angle. So we're tracking
every single event when the players playing, from all the
steps they due to, all the moves they make every
second by second, where that really doesn't exist in traditional sports.
(40:04):
And then from a nutrition perspective, we're developing a nutrition
program that that that it's going that we think it's
going to work for the sports and then, like I said,
we're going to measure it and fine tune it, and
I think that that's going to give us our competitive
advantage by focusing on that early words, like, if you
look at most gaming facilities now, it's it's it's kind
of like a pretty office. Can you explain to people
who are not familiar, what is the gaming facilities that
(40:26):
open to the public. Is it just for the team? Yeah?
So most people that would name like their office of
gaming facility is basically an office where the gamers go
and play, and there's a separation between where they live
and where they play. I love that. By the way,
that needs to happen. You need that mental break. Yeah yeah, okay, sorry,
I just had to enter because I never like to
work from bed because then it's like I associate working
(40:48):
in bed, you know what I mean? Okay, I need
to keep going. Over the last decade of the sports,
gamers typically lived in the gaming house and they would
play and compete in there. Also in practice exactly now,
I think over the last next couple year, you're going
to see that separation from your pro career to like
their personal life, and most companies are focused on creating
that separation. I love that. So is the facility going
to be here in l A. Absolutely, Yeah, it's gonna
(41:10):
It's gonna be playing Vista. It's ft okay, awesome. And
so for people who aren't aware with the whole scheduling
of all the competitions the tournaments, when is your next
big tourney? It depends on the specific game, right, But
for the league legend specifically, we play on a week
by week basis on Olympic in Los Angeles, and that
often leads up playoffs and then a stadium final somewhere
(41:32):
in the US. And so we're actually playing this weekend
on Twitch and YouTube and so it's it's it's a constant.
It's basically a league. And so basically, just to compare,
it's kind of like the NBA where you play a
regular league and then you get to the playoffs and
then you go to the championship, which in your case
it is called Worlds. Okay, and the Worlds are in
a different city every year. Yeah, it's in a city.
(41:53):
It's a different city every year. And then who are
you guys, who's your biggest competition this year? Who's our
biggest competition? It honestly changes every single year just because
the teams, like there's so many new teams. There's not
not that there's new teams. Um, the game is still competitively,
is still competitive. You don't really see that one winner
winning every year. Okay, so there's not like a I
(42:15):
don't know who I was going to say the Lakers,
but they've been awful. Yeah, so there's there's not a
golden state. There was traditionally they're called t one skat um,
but now it changes every single year. But you've always
been in the top three. We we've always been in
the top team in our region, but internationally we still
haven't found success and we haven't won Worlds yet. So
why do you think that is? I think there's a
(42:37):
combination of reasons, being that players and other regions they
have they have a stronger cultural foundation of how it
plays better as a team. If you look at where
the sports originated, right like, if you look at Korea,
they've had coaches, they've had sports really has been a
career much longer in Korea than the US. And then
if you look at China, right, for like the Legends,
(42:58):
Like I would say, they have a much larger player base.
And you know, there's a hundred million people that played
the Legends on a monthly basis, right, eighty millions of
those players are in China, So they have much much
larger talent pole to select from, and they have players
like they have our program down to like the Dot
and so we need a lot of improvement to do.
(43:18):
But at the same time we need we need to
learn how to train our talent better. Are you excited
about your talent roster this year? I am excited about them,
but I think that some of the challenges that we're
gonna have is making them play as a team. We
have really strong individual players, but the end of the day,
League a Legends is a team game. How often did
the players switch out? Like, because once they have synergy
and harmony, are you going to switch out a player
(43:38):
or does that hurt the team? Ultimately? It really depends
right on. There could be multiple reasons why you you
change up a roster. Typically for us, we've made very
big changes in the last I would say that for
the last seven years. So to give your perspective out
of the last fourteen championships ever in league we want
um six of them, right, we want almost half the championships. Well,
(44:00):
every single year we always make large roster changes because
we want to really perform at the world's level. Is
that the standard is that expected from the team? Are
they getting butt hurt when they're traded out or is
that just an expectation. I think that's an expectation for
our team. Is that if if we're not a team
that can contend at the world stage, then there will
be roster changes. Who makes the decisions on roster changes,
(44:21):
It's it's our general manager, But most of the roster
decisions up to the state were made by me, and
I've I've maybe taken a lesser role over the last
year and a half. Well, I'm still involved. So you
don't think there's a benefit to keeping a team together
versus switching people out. I mean to be candid, I
think that I've made some huge mistakes, like, for example,
(44:43):
we had a superstar roster that when a seventeen and one.
During the regular season, we dominated. We want three seasons
back to back in North America, but when we went
to the international stage, we we we actually got destroyed,
and so I made a quick decision to change roster
up and like looking back with like hindset information, it
(45:04):
was it was a bad roster decision on my part.
After that, our our team kind of fell apart for
a year. We had to rebuild. We lost three championships
back to back. It wasn't a great phase of TSM.
We're currently rebuilding now. But you know, when you make
these big changes, there's of course, of course, but it's
now so you never know. You think you guys can
(45:24):
get to the top this year. I think it's gonna
be challenging. I have a lot of faith in our roster.
I think that we can regain our championship status. Awesome, Well,
it was so nice to have you here today. I'm
I'm really excited to see what else, not only TSM does,
because I know you guys are going to just continue
to expand and do more and more outside of what's expected. Um,
but just you in general, I mean, if if we
(45:46):
could fast forward ten years, where do you think you'll be?
I mean you're still you're still so young, So where
do you see yourself? It's really hard to tell, just
because we our path and our folks changes all the time,
but I think that we're going to have really strong
data platform that helps us train our talent. So you're
saying we you're still at TSM ten years from now,
(46:06):
I think so, yeah. I'm still the majority owner of
t s M. I don't see myself really selling the
business anytime soon. I'm super excited to be involved, and
I truly I think the space is starting to slow
down in the sense that it's it's matured, but I
still think that there's still significant growth left. Right. We like,
if you look at it, this is still the first
generation of the sports. Whereas you look at basketball, fans
(46:29):
had kids and their kids started watch their team, and
then their fans they had kids. Right, so there's like
three generations where their audience quadruple. Where if you look
at the sports, there's multiple things that can happen where
the industry explodes. For example, when I used to ply,
it was a male dominated industry with five percent female.
Now it's like training towards right, and so as that
(46:51):
gets to fifty fifty, the audience is going to double.
And then as our fans are to have kids, that's
also gonna double. So you can really see this growing.
Absolutely Do you think you'll ever pull a Michael Jordan's
and retire? Absolutely not. That was not even That was
not even like, well, maybe, guys, I'll think about it
to give your fans a little hope. You're like, absolutely not.
(47:13):
I'm past my prime. You're gonna see you and get
my butt kicked. Do you really think so? Yeah? Yeah,
I think so. But I think I gets to hold
my own against some of the players at the bottom
of the league players. But you're done. Yeah, okay, Well,
it was so nice having you here today. I I
love that you got to stop in. I know you're
really really busy, have a lot of things going on.
You have a team to manage, and you're gonna be
(47:35):
the number one people manager. Maybe not number one, but
but why not? Why not shoot for the stars? Yeah? Absolutely,
I'm gonna shoot for the stars number one. Andy didn't
everyone from t s M. And I'm sure he's going
to do many, many more things in the future. So
we're gonna keep an eye on him. We're gonna stop TSM,
We're gonna route them on all season long. I hope
(47:55):
you guys had fun to love. Behind the influence of
the production of i Heart Radio and TDC Media
Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Radio and t DC Media. That's gonna be a big
setback there. But m VP is not the one we're
worried about. Is they're just a setback here for t
s M. Who is going to do it? Ts M,
you're your champions. Go to these events, network people, find
people to collaborate with, put the time in, be smart
(00:20):
about it, look at what you did, and analyze what's
going well, what's not going well well. I think being
reluentless is super important, Like you need to really know
what you want and like truly ask yourself, Like if
you're only doing it for the money, it's really not
worth the other dude, because you love it. Andy dinn
is in the house, what's up? And from TSU here
(00:40):
Andy from TSM. I mean, if you don't know that
name and you don't know this associated with TSM, I
don't know what to tell you. So a very very successful,
very influential person sitting across from me in the e
sports world, I definitely think you are a pioneer, if
not the pioneer in the space. E sports is something
that people still to this day do not understand. What
(01:02):
do you think the stigma is. I think the stigma
has changed over the last decade from you know, gamers
being in their basement to now being seen as a
more acceptable path. It's not really there yet in the
sense that where parents feel like, hey, my kid is
growing up to be a gamer like basketball or football
or soccer, but it is definitely more acceptable than before
where parents were heavily against it. They're uncomfortable, the didn't
(01:24):
know where it was. Now you see a fifteen year
olds going to these like massive stadiums and winning millions
of dollars. So I do think that there's some general concept. Yeah,
for sure. So ts M massive, right, and you're the
founder of this massive empire. For people who have not
heard of ts M, give us a little breakdown. So,
so TSM is a company that I started when I
(01:46):
was seventeen and not to shobby. What were you guys
doing at seventeen. There's there's two areas of focus for
the business, right. We employee close to hunted gamers that
go around competing in these large stadiums across the world,
from like the Staples Center to Medicine Square Garden. And
these players they you know, they make millions in their
(02:07):
their age ranges from sixteen to up to twenty four.
And then we have the other side of our business,
which is like a tech driven business that focuses on
data and analytics and e sports performance that really helps
feel our our gamers, and like with their practice regiment,
that product offering is made and created for our pro players.
At the same time, our fans and players also use
(02:28):
it too. So we're gonna take it back to the
very beginning of the t SM days. Okay, first of all,
you're seventeen. Are you still in high school? No, I
dropped out of high school. So you drop you drop out,
and then the idea comes or the idea comes and
then you drop out. So so I dropped out of
high school to to go to college early. Okay, that
it was a gradual process, and I started while I
(02:50):
was in college and I just go to college part time. Really,
were you inspired because you were actually a gamer in
real life? I was inspired to be a content creator
and just be a competitive player overall through just through YouTube, right,
because at that time, YouTube was still early in two
thousand and eight where creators were starting to have millions
of followers. So I think at that time, Ryan Higa,
(03:10):
who had two million followers on YouTube, was the largest
influencer of that time. And I really wanted to create content.
But instead of creating fun and engaging content, I wanted
to create content around being better at gaming. And so
that was our niche. And at that time gaming started
to really grow and exploded, at least from a social
media perspective, and so I was able to capitalize on that.
So I remember in two thousand and eight, that's when
(03:31):
the Partner program started. I mean that's when all the
people started really taking content creation much more seriously. When
you said you wanted to go on to show people
how to become better gamers or what were you doing tutorials?
Were you because you weren't competing at that point, so
what were you doing? You were just showing gameplay. Yeah,
so so the sports didn't really existed in a very
(03:51):
small form, and so at that time I had a
small form of a community, and what I did was
I created guides. I wrote articles about the game and
this route guides in terms of how to play the
game better. At the same time, too, though, I created
video tutorials online on my own YouTube channel and while
playing a game play. Okay, So I had a blog
(04:11):
on blogger dot com. I had a YouTube channel on
YouTube and just with a few thousand subscribers really and
started to grow that over time and just started to
upload daily. I didn't know what I was doing, and
learned how to edit, learned how to write while while
I was going to college, and you know, like through time, right,
YouTube cpims were just really low at that time, and
so it was a massive time investment spendings creating videos
(04:36):
but would make you were spending twenty to thirty hours. Yeah, yeah,
just just did you have time to go to school?
I I skipped class a lot. I would imagine it
was very very part time. I started to do uh
you know, I think that in college I was particularly
a strong student, but my grade started to really drop.
At the same time too, I started to see hope, right,
(04:57):
So from making like fifty cents a day and went
to like twenty said to thirty to forty. It made
me more motivated and I started to figure try to
figure out other forms of revenue in terms of how
to really grow this. So what were some of the
ways that you made money? I think the a couple
of ways that we made money was through YouTube and
through blogger dot com got it, you know. I learned
how to operate a Google ad Sense, learned how to
(05:17):
set that up with tags, and um find people to
help me on things that I really didn't know how
to do. So meanwhile, you're in school, what are you studying?
I was at this stage of just doing G education
because it was your first year, right exactly. Okay, I
took some college courses whiles in high school, but I
wanted to try to finish G when I was like
by the time I was seventeen or eighteen, uh and
(05:38):
so I was trying to speed through school. But also
why speed through? Did you have a plan to be
an entrepreneur from the beginning? Were you just trying to
get out and do your thing? No, No, no plans
at all. I stumbled on it. You just wanted to
be out, exactly. So I was already going to taking
college courses in in the summer and winter and night
classes walls in high school. So I was already a
year ahead in college. So I wanted to finish G
(06:00):
because we just couldn't. We couldn't afford to go to
a four year university, so it made more sense to
go to community college early and take all the g courses.
It's a much more cost effective path. All right, glad
you did that path instead of taking out a hundred
grand loan. Okay, so you're making money. Finally, you're taking
this thing seriously. What are parents thinking back at home?
My parents were really worried, right because I made some money,
(06:22):
but it was honestly less than minimum wage. They immigrated
to the US, and they really focused on education. My stepdad,
it was a professor at Santasy State. And my mom,
she she's an a student. She really cares about education.
She didn't graduate college until she was forty five, primarily
because when she she moved here, right, she needed to
provide for the family, and so they take education really seriously.
(06:43):
All my siblings had straight a's besides me, and so
they were really worried about me. Well, shout out to mom.
By the way, can we give a round of a
flause for mom who still goes to school graduates. That's awesome.
Good for her. But yeah, that was probably a lot
of pressure for you because sibling started doing what they
quote un should be doing. But every time I talked
(07:04):
to an entrepreneur, they always went against the grain, it seems.
And I'm not telling your kids to kick don't don't
get out of school, like don't leave it. So I'm
not saying that. But what I am saying is every
time I've I've spoken to somebody like you, they kind
of had something inside of them that did you have
something inside of you that said you wanted something bigger
I did. I wanted to fund success. I wanted to
provide more from my family. But at the same time
(07:25):
too though it was more of a plan B. Right
at the end of the day, I knew that there's
a high chance of failure. What was the plan A
plane at the end of the day was to finish
school really and either focus on finance or medicine, but
like different just like doing the research, understanding the path
of like what it took to become a doctor. It
was a really hard path forward, right, you need to
(07:45):
go to school and then medical school and then also
you need to do residency. And that that was like
I wanted to find success fast and I wanted to
you know, really just go and so had I failed,
I probably would have gone into finance. Well, thank god
for Lee of Ugen's huh, So, so talk to me
about entering into that world, because that kind of shifted
(08:06):
everything for you. What year were you and cut were
you still in the first year? Second year when you
started TSM? I dropped out my second year. Okay, so
you drop out second year? What prompted the dropout? It
was it was actually a huge shift where are our
blogs started to really growing, our YouTube started to really grow,
and even though the revenue wasn't there, we had a
massive user base. So I actually convinced my mom to
(08:28):
let me take six six months a year off and
if I couldn't show success, and I would just drop
the entire project period and focus on school. Right, So
I had really twelve months to find success because even
though we had a huge user base, we couldn't make
any money, and you know, I was spending a ton
of time on it, right, that guy almost give up
so many times. It was an inflection point where blogger
(08:49):
dot com which was taking around of our revenue and
also not really monetizing it well because they're plucking through
ad sense. So I basically borrowed five thousandllars from my mom,
which she was saving from my from my college situation. Anyways,
I was like, hey, you either you know, letting borrow
five thousand dollars or I going to go to Wells
Fargo and borrow it for a student loan and just
use that to hire an engineer to really create a
(09:09):
website for me. Right, So, what the website did was
instead of it being blogger dot com, uh, it was
a CMS that allowed creators to write guides on our website.
So instead of being a guide writer myself, I made
it really easy to write legal legends guides, and then
I went out to hire people to write guys for me,
and then I hired engineers to make it really easy
to write guys on our website. How did you know
(09:30):
this was the move? I mean, I think that like
being an entrepreneur like now, like looking at it from
like a present perspective, I didn't really understand the risk involved.
I was only able to see the upside. But honestly,
much chances of success was really really low, and I
kind of just put a ton of time effort to
make it happen. Right. Well, at the end of the day,
your risk was five thousand dollars and disappointing your mom
(09:51):
and then having to go and do something you probably
your heart wasn't into. But at that age, it's a
huge risk, right because you're you're basically tell in your parents, look,
this is my one shot and if I don't, and
that's not it's not necessarily fair to you to just
give yourself one shot. But you gave yourself one shot
and it worked out. But anyway, back to back to
what happened, Yeah, I mean I felt like it was
(10:13):
huge risk because I was working a minimum wid job
before all of this at Traitor Joe's and it took
me six months to save a five thousand dollars, right,
and in total I needed to I needed fifteen dollars
to build up the entire product, So I I used
all my savings and then alone from my mom, and
then five thousand dollars that I was earning by giving
lessons to other people as a as a top player
at that time to pay for the project. Right. But
(10:35):
but once we launched it and it's created, it started
it really started to blow up from maybe just coupled
thousand patriots a day to hundreds of thousands of pagerets
to millions. I think at the point where we started
to earn eight ten thousand dollars a month was when
I was like, Okay, this is a good time. How
many months in was that? It was months eleven. That's
pretty awesome. I mean before the end of year one,
(10:59):
you were monetizing in a big way. Yeah, it was
monthly eleven. But when I completely dropped out, but it
um was already two and a half years in and
I was really feeling burnt out. There was several stages,
like I spent all this money, it just wasn't kind
of work because our product was broken all the time, right,
We didn't have the best engineers. It was as an
(11:19):
engineer that I meant through gaming. He was also my friend,
and he was not only doing it like for a
lower rate, but at the same time he wasn't the best, right,
so there was a ton of friction there. The product
was really never fully optimal, but it was enough for
us to basically pieces together. So as an entrepreneur, you
get to a point where you know you get burnt out,
or the money is running low, or you're kind of
(11:41):
over working with the guy that is a friend, so
he's kind of doing a favor, so he's cheaper, but
you need to like take it to the next level,
and this would be maybe the time that you would
try to raise some money, right, did that ever cross
your mind? I mean, you were so young and it
was still so scrappy. When did you feel like it
was time to go and really blow it up on
a bigger level. So, interestingly enough, we we didn't. We
(12:03):
didn't ever raised any money until I would say, our
Series A, which happened eighteen months ago, so eight years
into the business. So we bootstrapped entire business from you know,
for the first eight years. Um, how did you get
How did you get by doing that? Um? Was it
the scrappy is? Yeah, we were really scrappy. We spent
we spent money in the right areas and we didn't
(12:24):
invest the things that we just didn't need. I keep
saying you were so young, but because I'm so impressed
to run a business successfully for that long without it
all just crumbling to the ground. There's gotta be a
strong person behind that business. What made you qualified to
do that? I mean, obviously you were qualified to game,
and you knew the Geese sports world, but did you
know the world of business? I didn't write. But because
(12:45):
at the same time too, I was also the leader
of my team. I learned how to work with a
entire team, and I learned how to recruit. I learned
how to give people feedback. I learned went to be
hard and went to be soft at the same time too.
That I was really fortunate, because really it's like you
have to be a part of a nish early on
to to really fund the type of success when you're
not experienced, right, And I think that, you know, most
(13:08):
of my competitors at that time, they were also participating
in the sports as a hobby, and I was one
of the very few people to go full time on it,
to get very seriously try to really make something out
of it, whereas most of my competitors were just people
that did it for fun, did it part time. And
so I was really lucky that there were there weren't
strung competitors in the space. If I was competing against
like a forty year old executive that worked at a
(13:30):
fortunate company, I think that there was the word of
no chance for me to succeed because I was in early.
I put in the time, and I was able to
just make a lot of mistakes and not not be
punished for it. I was able to get to where
I am now. Uh, and we skipped forward a lot
just because we were talking. I wanted to get into
the finance part of it, just so people can understand
it's not easy. And you did make a really big
(13:52):
risk at you know, a young age, making a big
ask of your mom and also pulling all your trader
Joe's money, which will that's a lot, but even as
a twenty year old ye old, that's a lot of
money to just put into a dream. You formed a team,
you were playing on the team. Can you talk me
through when all that happened. Yeah, So, so the sites
up at the who whole entire time we had a team.
There was no competitive scene at the time, so at
(14:13):
the didn't think of this. Like I was a person
that was also during the very first tournaments for Legal
Legends right, so we had a hardcore community. There wasn't
there was no higher level of play. So I started
to host events for people to play at right and
then I would go out and I would look for
sponsors to sponsor the prize pool for those tournaments and
then competing at the same time. That sounds like a
(14:33):
major conflict of interest, but at the same time too.
There there were no events, right, not really, It's like
reserving a basketball court and being like, let's go play
exactly and then give us some money if we win,
and we're the best, so we're gonna win. Yeah. So nowadays,
right with with all these professional teams, it doesn't make
sense to be the tournament operator and also rent. But
it didn't exist exactly where so early I I was
(14:55):
really competitive. I wanted to play. I wanted to play
against people with good and you know, people didn't really
take it seriously, and so I wanted to really hang
that carret there for people to play. So I take
my money, put it as a prize pool, and then
have people play in the computer. You would use your
own money for the prize. Yeah. So, because once our
website got to that certain stage, right, I just saw
it as a market marketing vehicle for our website and
(15:16):
our products. So I did that because it was also
a hobby of mine. Right really quickly, once we made
enough money, what I did was I dropped out of
college and I just played full time for fun, and
then I ran ran my business. Oftentimes I would be playing,
even though it didn't really bring more back business because
it was a huge dimension returns. But but at the
same time, it was it was my hobby. Do you
remember the first tournament that you put together. I do,
(15:40):
so it was really early on and it was just
for this currency called riot points where you can use
to just buy items, right, and um, you know, it
was really scrappy. We basically posted a form post and
then people would sign up by typing, hey, I want
to play, and I would post that a schedule and
then there was no organization, There were no there weren't
(16:00):
tools at all. Right, it was just it's like a
group of you know, the guys that the showpen online
in Ventrilla at that time, it's technology that's kind of
dead now, uh. And there would be maybe a hundred
people in this voice chat and I would organize the
event at the same time while competing in it. So
from there to the Staples Center playing at Worlds. Can
(16:21):
you can you for people who don't really understand how
competitive e sports works? How do people get into the tournaments?
How is it all types of games? Are they separated
by legal legends versus Minecraft? Like how does that work?
So it's really different? Right, Like think of each game
as a different sport, whether it's tennis, whether it's an
open or football or basketball. Right, it's it's all different
(16:44):
in particularly legal legends. Also within the phases of time,
it also changed. Right early on when I started to play,
it would there would just be open tournaments where any
five people they can sign up and there would be
uprising and you would go to you would go to
like an arena or theater and you would sign up
as five and you'd play and be the last man
staying to win. Now it's a lot different with with
(17:05):
right Games League Legends franchising, where there are teams owned
by the Golden State Warriors. Right, so several several sports
owners bought into franchises for League Legends. Now there's ten
teams and those are the staple teams in America where
you can't join unless you're recruited to. It's it's a
lot different than does TSM fall into that category. Yes,
so TSM falls into that category, And what we do
(17:25):
now is is a huge process that goes into it.
You have to basically be recruited. We are always looking
for better players on our on our platform, and you
have to play through TSM JR. And then you have
to get qualified through them academy and then make it
through academy, then you go to the pro team. Is
this your own? Yeah? So so it's our it's our own.
It's okay, got it? So not every team operates that way.
(17:47):
Every single team has an academy team, but not path
below that, Right, they don't have a junior program, got it.
So we're we're looking down the funnel to find like
the next Lebron James from the next steph Curry? Got it?
And and does it work like the NBA where you
can get somebody from another team? Yeah? So there are
major buyouts, right, depending on what level. But you know,
(18:07):
player buyouts ranged anywhere between like two dollars to millions
of dollars depending on how good the player is the
prospect is it. Has TSM done that personally? Yeah, we've
spent close to million dollars buying out players before. Has
it been worth it? You know, it depends on it
depends on the player. Right, So we won't we won't
name names, but uh, yeah, no, I think that's a
(18:29):
tricky that's a tricky thing anyway because you can never guarantee.
But if you are, is it a recruitment process or
is our people applying and they're like, look, I don't,
I don't you know, for people who don't understand that
the process works, there's so many gamers out there, I mean,
Twitch has millions and millions of gamers. How do you
even find the good ones? So we're standardizing that process
now as we speak, right, But the way the way
(18:51):
to do it is there's there's an online challenger leaderboard
where you can apply to really prove that you're the best.
And most often teams look at that that ladder. Right,
So out of a million people, the players that rise
to the top two d are the ones that are
being looked at, you know, on a day in the
week by week basis, right. And so if you have
strong stats, if you perform well, if you're a good teammate,
(19:14):
then more than likely you have an opportunity to play
at the per level. And then how many team mates
are on each team, because I know there's it's not
just like five people. It could be up to thirty
for you, right, yeah, So in the game it's the
five verses five uh, And so oftentimes roster arranges between
I would say seven to ten people. You have different
(19:34):
parts of your company that do more than just competitive stuff, right, absolutely,
so that there's influencers there, but so that does not
count the eight people. There's like a larger group. Well
I'm talking about just players that compete. Those are just fun, right.
But at the same time too, though, you have to
have a diversified approach in terms of building a fan base,
creating content, and also performance. Right. So most established teams
(19:57):
have they have a diversified approach more so than just
focused on competing, and you guys do that as well.
For us, we focus on competing because performance really matters us,
not only from a passion perspective. Yeah, it's mainly from
a passion perspective, but also like from how we are
representative brand or performance really matters us. Winning really matters us. Right,
It's not about the like social media drama. It's about
(20:17):
let's let's win some tournaments. Absolutely, And the second part
is really creating content that our fans really find value.
And so at the end of the day, we're realizes,
how do we make our fans better? How do we
give them value? So when they play, they think of us, right,
And so it goes back to when I first started
t SM is that I made guides. I made content
so our players so players can learn from us to
(20:39):
play better. And so what does that entail? Do your
players have to you know, stream a certain amount of hours?
Are you helping create content or help guide the content
that they're putting out there? So particular to our our
the allergency, there are no requirements around our streaming ours
well in terms of just content. In terms of what
we try to do, we will we We aimed to
(21:01):
create guides on how to play the game better on
a month by month basis, so that our players can
always follow the game as they're playing. They could learn
from us in terms of how to play better. And
where can they find that content? Um, they can find
that content on our YouTube channel, on the YouTube channel
which has over two million subscribers. When did you see
a big growth in the TSM fan base because these
are massive now. It honestly it was. It was a
(21:24):
casual growth. There was huge growth when we really focused
on legal legends and the second phase of growth was
one Fortnite launched. Fortnite was a huge, huge, and every
single aspect it really broke uh. I would say it
broke through like mainstream pop culture right in the sense
that every everyone is with the game. Celebrities in all
genres play that game or engage within which way, from
(21:45):
football players, basketball players, and musicians. So I thought that
was really cool, and then TSM saw a huge growth
through that, primarily because we invested into building a team
there early. Do you think that Fortnite and like breaking
into mainstream helped legit mis the sports world as an
actual career, real world thing. I definitely think it helped.
(22:08):
It helped a lot with that specifically in the US.
But before Fortnite, rite e sports, which like Fortnite, is
not as large in Asia. In China, it's it's it's
already gone there, right, So I think that specifically to
the U S, Fortnite really helped with that and played
a major role at the same time too that I
still don't think it's it's there yet can currently right now,
to give your perspective, over the last four or five years. Right,
(22:29):
looking five years back, there are only less than there's
less than five, maybe five colleges that offered scholarships for
e sports. Now there's over a hundred, right, and there's
over two hundred varsity programs for for collegiate sports, which
is amazing to put into context about like five to
two hundred said through time, Once you know there are
thousands of colleges that offer path to scholarships and becoming
(22:51):
varsity and it's seen as a college sport, then I
think that that would create a funnel at high school
level which is also being worked on and then downwards
as well. So so I think that that's at that
point the sports would be seen as a very legitimate career.
So so if you were a career day and somebody
was to say, why is your job so cool? Like
what's so great about working in the world of E sports,
(23:11):
what would you say to them? Well, I mean I
think that just just looking above the sports, right, I
think that like above that, it's like creative content, being
a creator. I think that kids understand what it means
to be a creator looking at YouTube, looking at Instagram.
I think that's a really exciting career because you are
creating content and your aending value to other people's life
at scale. Uh and the world is just more connected nowadays, right,
(23:33):
And then taking it back from an E sports perspective,
I think that I don't I don't think necessarily everyone
should grow up wanting to be any sports player, but
particularly people that have interested that like competing, and one
want to uh to focus on another sport that's an
alternative to what exists today. I think that that's a
good career path, not necessarily a good career path for them,
a good hobby for them to explore, to see if
(23:55):
they could make a creative it. I don't know if
that makes sense. No, No, it makes total sense. It's
basically like foster your passions and see where where you
can take them. And that's something that you clearly did.
I don't think you ever imagined you would build this
empire or shape the industry, or maybe you did, it
doesn't sound it sounds like you kind of were just
like you know, I just wanted to get out of school.
But it worked out awesome for you, and I think
(24:16):
it's well deserved because you worked your ass off for
eight years right before you really felt like you were
doing it. Yeah. I mean even to this day, I
still feel like there it needs a lot. That's every
entrepreneur literally like you will you you'll sell your team
for two billion dollars and still think that you have
more to do I just put that in the universe.
Did you like that? Absolutely? But yeah, I mean going
(24:39):
back to that topic though, I do think it's really important, uh,
and I would like I am concerned for kids that
like focus on making sports are career too much. I
think that there needs to be a balance. They need
to have a plan A, they need to have a
plan B. You had a couple of plans. Yeah. No,
I think that was really smart of you. And I
really respect the fact that you scrappy like you worked hard.
You didn't just borrow money from mom. You went to
(25:00):
Trader Joe's. You did what you had to do to
get to where you are today. So, speaking of today,
the present day TSM is massive. Why do you think
the team is doing so well? Largely there's there's a
couple of reasons. Right first and foremost, we were first
to market, and so we built a huge competitive advantage
in terms of understanding the space where to spend our dollars,
Whereas within the last two to three years there's a
(25:21):
massive VC dollars injected into the sports space and most
of these operators really don't know what they're doing. They
don't understand where to basically invest into to turn that
into revenue, right, and so because we understand the space
really well, we're able to understand where where things will
play out, how I'll play out, and so we're investing
our dollars much better. The second perspective is that we
we've been early so far into Fortnite Leagal Legends, and
(25:44):
I think that we were also going to be early.
From a mobile perspective. I think that mobile e sports
is going to be the future of um where where
gaming is, and so I'm super excited about that. But
I think it has to be being early. That's why
we're we have a huge advantage. I think being early
is definitely an advantage for you one on any platform.
But also I think what really sticks out is your strategy.
(26:04):
Like you said, you guys have been strategic, you know,
you know the back end of things. You're not just
you know. I think a lot of these newer teams
are probably just figuring it out as they go. Have
you ever collaborated with any of the other teams in
any way? I often wonder that. Absolutely from a business perspective,
whether it's sales or just overall structure of the ecosystem,
we worked together closely, because because that's really important to
(26:26):
build it out right. But at the same time, to you,
like there there are our competitors, and it's not structured
in a way where at least yet where all these
owners do work together to build the ecosystem from a
success perspective, So that means like implementation of the league,
how do we standardize contracts, how do we work with
like players? I think that, like how do we increase
the player welfare? Like those are all important topics, but
(26:48):
but it's not at that stage right now. Okay, and
you've been on kind of all sides of the coin,
from playing on the team to you coach, and now
you're you've taken a step back from actively being a
part of it. How's that for you? It's it's it's
honest that we've been challenging, right, Like when I when
I first retired, waking up at eight am attending meetings
was hard, and being responsive to emails for me as
(27:10):
a gamer, I would do more like text messages or
like just a channel channel chats, right, and so acclimating
to the business world was really challenging, making meetings, setting
accepting yes on calendar inside exactly instead of just a
text like, yeah, let's meet and talk about this. Yeah,
So how do you think you're gonna stay on that
side of things? Yeah? I think I'm naturally really competitive
(27:33):
person overall, um, and the way like you know when
when I played games, I was really competitive. That's that's
why that's really excited to me. Now it's my next
journey to be a better entrepreneur, be a better CEO,
be a better leader. And you know I haven't. I
don't think I've been the best leader. And I think
that that's something I'm really focusing on right now in
terms of even how to manage people. Right, Like to
(27:54):
give you perspective, three years ago, we had had a
team of maybe twelve full time employees. Now have seventy
full time players and seventy full time staff, right, and
so it's like a hundred forty people, and then we
have another sixty seventy contractors on top of that, right,
And I think that we've been able to really piece
things together. But like from a company management perspective, it's
(28:14):
it's not done particularly well. So how do I how
do I get better all these things from giving clear
direction to managing people, to making everyone's time, more efficient
with clear instruction. I'm aboud at a lot of these things.
So it's work in progress. I mean, you can't be
too bad at it. The thing, you know, it's things
aren't falling apart, You're doing well. What would you say,
(28:35):
what's your weak point? My weak point is, I would
say being consistent. I think that, like my strong set
is being strategic at, but being consistent and holding people
accountable and meeting with like my direct reports to mixture
that they're getting things done the way I want it.
It's kind of my weaker set, right, Why do you
think that is? Why do I think that is? It's
(28:55):
it's just because I have a scatter brain. I'm focused
on all these things. I love. Adding more and more
projects to managing is a little tough for you, yes,
but managing people, yeah, Well it's exciting at the same
time because I love to work on things that I'm
weak at, and I think that's my skill set is
I know what I'm weeke at and and I'm able
to get people to cover those weaknesses because at the
(29:16):
end of the day, what your company is comprises of
your employees and your team, right, And so at the
same time, not only my finding people to cover my weaknesses,
but I'm also working on them so we can have
more success. Well, it's like a piece of advice for
any entrepreneurs out there. And also it's okay to have weaknesses,
you know. Actually, I think it's the best. That's it's
probably gonna be the thing that you're best at by
the end of this journey. You know, it'll be the
best person manager ever. Is there anything that you think
(29:39):
that is misunderstood about the world of e sports and
competitive e sports that you'd like people to know. I
I think that it's it's it's going to get there
through time. I think that people don't see it as
as a sport. I think that's probably the biggest debate
of all times, Like, hey, e sports is not really
a sport. There's nothing physical about that, and you know,
(30:00):
I particularly don't. I don't don't really care, but it's
just talking about that topic. I think of the sports,
I think of content creation. I think of like what
we're doing right now is influence. Its entertainment at the
end of the day, you know, like when when you're
watching basketball, right you're not you're watching basketball because it's
entertaining you're watching football because it's entertaining. At the end
of the day, like how significant something is is based
(30:20):
off of the amount of eyeballs that that watch it, right,
So I think that's probably the biggest misconception is that
any sport or whatever we do, it's mainly just entertainment content,
And then people don't think it's just work it's not physical. Yeah,
I think that that bait that debate is really meaningless.
But at the same time too though, I do think
that from an e sports perspective, it's really really I mean,
it is physical. I've I watched those competitions. I mean
(30:42):
people are sweating bullets, You're going crazy. That's stressful. It's very,
very stressful. A mental perspective is the brandom muscle you're
you're the doctor or the pre med you we answer
that question, no, But I mean the sports sponsorships, people
(31:04):
make way more money doing that than any quote unquote sport.
I mean you could argue that too, like all the
sponsors and my production company also works with a lot
of branded deals. Everyone wants to work with the sports
right now. Everyone it's like the hot thing that people
are now being like, oh, it's cool it's legit. What
do you have to say to that. I mean, it's
super exciting, right because eighteen thirty four year old male
(31:27):
cord cutting, etcetera. It's like exciting for sure, just because
it's hard to reach your audience. And so at the
same time, to you know, more people are becoming involved
with the sports than traditional sports Sundays right there. There's
so many kids that love this particular industry, and so
it's really exciting for us, and I'm really excited to
be a part of it. It's got to be like
and I told you so a moment. I mean not
(31:48):
in a mean way, but you know, like I knew
this would be something. I never really thought about it
that way, primarily because I can't honestly say that I
thought that this was going to be big. I mean
you made it. Look at this world that you've created.
I really, I really give you the credit for this,
and you have to give it to yourself too. I'm
making you well. I would say that I did it liked,
(32:13):
but it doesn't matter if you did it ignorantly. Let's
I mean, think of all the things that were ignorantly
found or whatever, Like, it doesn't matter you you created
basically jobs for lots of people, aspirational careers for many gamers.
You've shaped in an entire industry. Yeah, And I would
go to say that like a lot of other people
(32:33):
do that too. Twitch made a huge role in like calling,
made a huge rolling rolling Twitch making it so that
millions of people can you create a career out of
streaming and content creation, right, And I think that that
was a big part in terms of making sports a
more viable career. So a lot of people played a
big role in it, and I'm really happy to be
a part of it earlier. But you're definitely like if
(32:53):
there was an All Star basketball team, You've got a
jersey on that team for sure. For sure, for sure.
And yeah, twitches massive, and I want to kind of
touch on that too. How involved is your team on Twitch? Yeah,
so we are one of the largest networks on Twitch,
very early on, and I think that Twitch is amazing.
We're really focused on creating content there were exclusive on
that platform. I am concerned though, like if you look
(33:14):
at like Twitch from like a mobile perspective, or if
you look at Twitch like what the Twitch versus YouTube
battle like over the last like a year or so, um,
they're just major players in the space, but from over
like overall, though, it's always good to have multiple options
that exists in the market. It's it's really really cool
too to see just how many people see it as
a full time career versus when I first started, there
was only maybe a dozen people. It's so awesome. It's
(33:37):
like you created your own lane. Accept it was a
highway that was like a thousand miles wide. So is
there anything about the e sports world that in the
last year or two since it's become very popular that
you kind of makes you cringe a little? Not particularly
which ones do you think? I don't want to. I mean,
(33:58):
it's gonna be so obvious when I say this, but
I feel like some some of the at least I
saw this from a Twitch perspective, some people, once they
became like bigger, became very very mainstream and didn't really
connect with their community as much. I just feel like,
you need to stick to your community and the people
that brought you to where you were. And I think
a lot of people made a lot of money very
(34:19):
fast and maybe that got to them. I don't know, Yeah,
I mean I think that, Uh, it's it's and then
it's gonna be what what you want to focus on, right,
whether you want to go mainstream and stream us. Like,
streaming is really tedious career. The reason why streaming is
really stressful is because I was a streaming for two
to three years. Is that you're you're broadcasting eight to
ten hours a day live where everyone can watch and
(34:41):
see you. You have to like, eat, launch, and do
all these things right at the same time too. Though, um,
like with YouTube, with being a contracutor, Uh, it's really
stressful because you're you're always focused on the numbers. Right,
you don't stream for a day or two days, your
numbers start going down and it makes you feel bad.
So you're now you find yourself streaming so to sevent
days a week, and then the burnout, Yeah, and then
(35:03):
it leads to burnout and then it's it's it's really
hard balance. And so I think that you know, streamers
are large, they're trying to really figure out what they
want to do, and they're they're experimenting, right, and you
know some of them are making those decisions and they're
losing a lot of their falling for it. But like,
I think that because it is early, people are going
to take very different paths and then they're going to
(35:24):
find what's optimal for them and whether Like I think
that a lot of people make mistakes in their career.
At the end of the day, you know they learn
from it and that they're gonna some of them are
not going to ever be able to get to back
to where they wore, but that's that's the truth that
they made. So what advice would you give somebody who
is listening to this interview right now and is inspired
and wants to start a company, maybe not in the
e sports world, but in any world, what advice would
(35:46):
you give them? Well, I think it's a like it's
it's gonna be very general, right, because I think that
these habits often will lead to people becoming more successful.
I think being relentless is super important. Like you need
to really know you want and like truly ask yourself,
like am I doing this? Like if you're only doing
it for money? The money, it's really not worth it.
You have to do because you love it because times
(36:07):
are gonna get really tough and you can't can't give up, right,
Most things in life just don't come easy. And if
you want to be successful, you have to go the
extra mile where other people are not right. You have
to network, you have to collaborate. You have to find
your advantage, figure out what you're good at, what you're
week at, and really focus on what you're good at,
and then find other people to help you that. That's
(36:29):
probably the number one thing. Go to these events, network people,
find people to collaborate with and put the time in.
And then when you when it's not working, be smart
about it, look at what you did and analyze what's
going well, what's not going well Because a lot of
these people that are pursuing these careers they do it
and you know they let too much time passed without
evaluating what's what's good, what's bad. And you have to
(36:52):
really take that time out. You have to pause. You
have to look at everything and say and value whether
whether you want to continue. So you're at a crossroads.
Do you have a bad day or a bad couple
of years or months and you've spent all your savings.
What at what point do you turn left to quit
turn right to keep going? Because you kept going. I
(37:12):
kept going because I I budgeted accordingly right, I lived
at home, I didn't spend money on for listenings like
clothes or whatever. Things I just didn't need. Like when
I started my company and we started to make money,
I didn't just upgrade my life instantly. I I a
dollar frozen dinners for I would say two and a
half years. Really unhealthy. By the way, how's your health?
Are you good? It's good now? I love better now,
(37:34):
trust me. But you know it's it's budgeting, right. You
need to like you need to have your goals and
then you need to plan around it with every aspect
of your life. You need to make sure that this
was running a business, it's do I have the runway
to keep going right? And so it's it's a financial decision.
It's a like decision in terms of how you want
to live. So for you, it's very financial the decision.
And so you didn't ever have a moment where you
(37:56):
were like, I can't do this, I'm not good enough.
It wasn't an internal thing. It was how do I
set myself up so that because quitting is not an option.
Quitting wasn't on an option in the sense that I
just knew that I didn't I didn't want to follow
the general path and I didn't want to go back
to school just just because I loved what I was
doing so much that, like, not making a career was
something that absolquency. So I was willing to give up
(38:18):
a lot of different aspects to give me a larger
runway to make it happen within life, Right, you can't
just have the best of both worlds. You have to
take what you want. I think people forget that. Yeah, absolutely,
I think there's definitely a misconception on how easy things happen,
and people probably don't know that you were really scrapping
at your dollar you know, meals for two years because
(38:39):
of where you are today. And that's why I think
this show is so important, because we need to pull
the veil back on these these ideas that everything, oh e.
Sports just popped up and here comes TSM. That's not
how it happened. How does your mom feel about her
five fell in all our investment? Did she get her
return on investment? Absolutely? Uh, My mom was taking care
of and you know she she couldn't be more proud, right,
(39:01):
She watched it Like when I used to play, she
watched every single event. She's probably the most supportive person
in my life. And so you know, like I ever
already think anyone, it would have to be her in
terms of being so supportive be mom. Oh and that's
my mom. So I didn't mean you're the best mom
in general. I just meant you're the best comma mom. Anyway,
(39:21):
TSAM has some cool stuff going on. You guys are
gonna open a facility soon. Can you tell us a
little bit about that. Yeah, I'm super excited. We're launching
our facility sometimes this summer, and I think at least
it's going to be one of one of the first
facilities that are focused on actually sports performance. And you know,
I think that no one really has it right yet,
and so what's so exciting is that we're focusing on
(39:43):
it and we we want to stay true to that.
So we're thinking of it from like a three sixty angle,
whether it's like nutrition or physical working out on Tuesday,
or even mentally, or even from a data perspective. Right,
we're tackling it from every single angle. So we're tracking
every single event when the players playing, from all the
steps they due to, all the moves they make every
second by second, where that really doesn't exist in traditional sports.
(40:04):
And then from a nutrition perspective, we're developing a nutrition
program that that that it's going that we think it's
going to work for the sports and then, like I said,
we're going to measure it and fine tune it, and
I think that that's going to give us our competitive
advantage by focusing on that early words, like, if you
look at most gaming facilities now, it's it's it's kind
of like a pretty office. Can you explain to people
who are not familiar, what is the gaming facilities that
(40:26):
open to the public. Is it just for the team? Yeah?
So most people that would name like their office of
gaming facility is basically an office where the gamers go
and play, and there's a separation between where they live
and where they play. I love that. By the way,
that needs to happen. You need that mental break. Yeah yeah, okay, sorry,
I just had to enter because I never like to
work from bed because then it's like I associate working
(40:48):
in bed, you know what I mean? Okay, I need
to keep going. Over the last decade of the sports,
gamers typically lived in the gaming house and they would
play and compete in there. Also in practice exactly now,
I think over the last next couple year, you're going
to see that separation from your pro career to like
their personal life, and most companies are focused on creating
that separation. I love that. So is the facility going
to be here in l A. Absolutely, Yeah, it's gonna
(41:10):
It's gonna be playing Vista. It's ft okay, awesome. And
so for people who aren't aware with the whole scheduling
of all the competitions the tournaments, when is your next
big tourney? It depends on the specific game, right, But
for the league legend specifically, we play on a week
by week basis on Olympic in Los Angeles, and that
often leads up playoffs and then a stadium final somewhere
(41:32):
in the US. And so we're actually playing this weekend
on Twitch and YouTube and so it's it's it's a constant.
It's basically a league. And so basically, just to compare,
it's kind of like the NBA where you play a
regular league and then you get to the playoffs and
then you go to the championship, which in your case
it is called Worlds. Okay, and the Worlds are in
a different city every year. Yeah, it's in a city.
(41:53):
It's a different city every year. And then who are
you guys, who's your biggest competition this year? Who's our
biggest competition? It honestly changes every single year just because
the teams, like there's so many new teams. There's not
not that there's new teams. Um, the game is still competitively,
is still competitive. You don't really see that one winner
winning every year. Okay, so there's not like a I
(42:15):
don't know who I was going to say the Lakers,
but they've been awful. Yeah, so there's there's not a
golden state. There was traditionally they're called t one skat um,
but now it changes every single year. But you've always
been in the top three. We we've always been in
the top team in our region, but internationally we still
haven't found success and we haven't won Worlds yet. So
why do you think that is? I think there's a
(42:37):
combination of reasons, being that players and other regions they
have they have a stronger cultural foundation of how it
plays better as a team. If you look at where
the sports originated, right like, if you look at Korea,
they've had coaches, they've had sports really has been a
career much longer in Korea than the US. And then
if you look at China, right, for like the Legends,
(42:58):
Like I would say, they have a much larger player base.
And you know, there's a hundred million people that played
the Legends on a monthly basis, right, eighty millions of
those players are in China, So they have much much
larger talent pole to select from, and they have players
like they have our program down to like the Dot
and so we need a lot of improvement to do.
(43:18):
But at the same time we need we need to
learn how to train our talent better. Are you excited
about your talent roster this year? I am excited about them,
but I think that some of the challenges that we're
gonna have is making them play as a team. We
have really strong individual players, but the end of the day,
League a Legends is a team game. How often did
the players switch out? Like, because once they have synergy
and harmony, are you going to switch out a player
(43:38):
or does that hurt the team? Ultimately? It really depends
right on. There could be multiple reasons why you you
change up a roster. Typically for us, we've made very
big changes in the last I would say that for
the last seven years. So to give your perspective out
of the last fourteen championships ever in league we want
um six of them, right, we want almost half the championships. Well,
(44:00):
every single year we always make large roster changes because
we want to really perform at the world's level. Is
that the standard is that expected from the team? Are
they getting butt hurt when they're traded out or is
that just an expectation. I think that's an expectation for
our team. Is that if if we're not a team
that can contend at the world stage, then there will
be roster changes. Who makes the decisions on roster changes,
(44:21):
It's it's our general manager, But most of the roster
decisions up to the state were made by me, and
I've I've maybe taken a lesser role over the last
year and a half. Well, I'm still involved. So you
don't think there's a benefit to keeping a team together
versus switching people out. I mean to be candid, I
think that I've made some huge mistakes, like, for example,
(44:43):
we had a superstar roster that when a seventeen and one.
During the regular season, we dominated. We want three seasons
back to back in North America, but when we went
to the international stage, we we we actually got destroyed,
and so I made a quick decision to change roster
up and like looking back with like hindset information, it
(45:04):
was it was a bad roster decision on my part.
After that, our our team kind of fell apart for
a year. We had to rebuild. We lost three championships
back to back. It wasn't a great phase of TSM.
We're currently rebuilding now. But you know, when you make
these big changes, there's of course, of course, but it's
now so you never know. You think you guys can
(45:24):
get to the top this year. I think it's gonna
be challenging. I have a lot of faith in our roster.
I think that we can regain our championship status. Awesome, Well,
it was so nice to have you here today. I'm
I'm really excited to see what else, not only TSM does,
because I know you guys are going to just continue
to expand and do more and more outside of what's expected. Um,
but just you in general, I mean, if if we
(45:46):
could fast forward ten years, where do you think you'll be?
I mean you're still you're still so young, So where
do you see yourself? It's really hard to tell, just
because we our path and our folks changes all the time,
but I think that we're going to have really strong
data platform that helps us train our talent. So you're
saying we you're still at TSM ten years from now,
(46:06):
I think so, yeah. I'm still the majority owner of
t s M. I don't see myself really selling the
business anytime soon. I'm super excited to be involved, and
I truly I think the space is starting to slow
down in the sense that it's it's matured, but I
still think that there's still significant growth left. Right. We like,
if you look at it, this is still the first
generation of the sports. Whereas you look at basketball, fans
(46:29):
had kids and their kids started watch their team, and
then their fans they had kids. Right, so there's like
three generations where their audience quadruple. Where if you look
at the sports, there's multiple things that can happen where
the industry explodes. For example, when I used to ply,
it was a male dominated industry with five percent female.
Now it's like training towards right, and so as that
(46:51):
gets to fifty fifty, the audience is going to double.
And then as our fans are to have kids, that's
also gonna double. So you can really see this growing.
Absolutely Do you think you'll ever pull a Michael Jordan's
and retire? Absolutely not. That was not even That was
not even like, well, maybe, guys, I'll think about it
to give your fans a little hope. You're like, absolutely not.
(47:13):
I'm past my prime. You're gonna see you and get
my butt kicked. Do you really think so? Yeah? Yeah,
I think so. But I think I gets to hold
my own against some of the players at the bottom
of the league players. But you're done. Yeah, okay, Well,
it was so nice having you here today. I I
love that you got to stop in. I know you're
really really busy, have a lot of things going on.
You have a team to manage, and you're gonna be
(47:35):
the number one people manager. Maybe not number one, but
but why not? Why not shoot for the stars? Yeah? Absolutely,
I'm gonna shoot for the stars number one. Andy didn't
everyone from t s M. And I'm sure he's going
to do many, many more things in the future. So
we're gonna keep an eye on him. We're gonna stop TSM,
We're gonna route them on all season long. I hope
(47:55):
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