Nick Cuomo, co-founder and CEO of AllStar.gg, discusses how his platform revolutionizes content creation for everyday gamers, enabling them to share gameplay highlights effortlessly. The episode explores the challenges of engaging in gaming content creation, the importance of community, and valuable advice for aspiring creators.
• AllStar.gg’s technology automates video creation from gameplay data
• The platform empowers everyday gamers to share their highlights
• Current gaming platforms primarily serve elite players
• User acquisition relies on curiosity and seamless integration of highlights
• Nick shares insights from his fundraising journey, including investment from Mark Cuban
• Advice for aspiring content creators includes patience, consistency, and community engagement
All Links: linktr.ee/startup_recruiting
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/riecekeck/
Twitter/X: x.com/tech_headhunter
Recruitment: www.mindhire.ai
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@seedtoexitpod
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our end user is the everyday gamer, and what we do
is we enable them to create andshare content with each other.
And that's kind of the paradigmshift.
That's not something that hasreally existed before in games,
and our mission is to connectgamers to their content.
So our belief is that if youcan make it far simpler and
(00:22):
easier to make content that'sgood and watchable, that is kind
of the missing piece of thepuzzle of how do you create, you
know, a real kind of connectivetissue around gaming and kind
of own this, you know, sort ofsocial network opportunity.
And so we started with themedia.
We built and invented thisproprietary technology to make
(00:42):
it so that anyone can generatethis media, and invented this
proprietary technology to makeit so that anyone can generate
this media and then that allowsyou to build, you know sort of a
platform and network around it.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Today, I'm thrilled to host Nick Cuomo, CEO and
co-founder of AllStargg, aplatform that is redefining how
gamers create and share theirhighlights.
(01:46):
Nick's journey spans fromprofessional gaming to scaling
businesses like Blue FountainMedia and Movable Inc.
All-star.
Let Rhys Likewise Appreciateyou having me Absolutely Well.
I love gaming, as I think Italked about a little bit in the
episode with Brian Cho, so I'mreally excited to talk to you.
Tell me a little bit more aboutwhat inspired you to create
All-Star.
(02:06):
Obviously, you used to be a progamer yourself in the past.
How did that shape either thedevelopment of the company or
the inspiration to found it?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so my pro gamer background is in Counter-Strike
.
I played a whole heck of a lotof it in high school and college
and I felt like I was good butnot getting enough recognition.
So I made a couple of moviesand I did it the hard way.
I spent thousands of hourscapturing and curating and
(02:34):
editing and then I'd convincesomeone to host it on their
website.
There was no YouTube or Twitchand then I had to figure out a
way to distribute the video topeople.
There was no Facebook or socialmedia and that kind of left a
big impression on me.
It worked.
My content went viral.
The next tournament I went to,people wanted to watch me play,
(02:55):
shake my hand.
It was really, really cool Kindof left a big impression.
I started All Star 15X yearslater and it was a really really
impactful part of that journeybecause what I did was something
I was fortunate to be able todo.
I was lucky.
I was creative, technical, fastcomputer, a lot of free time.
(03:17):
Most gamers don't have any ofthat.
So All-Star really istechnology that automates a lot
of what I did and makes itavailable to anyone.
So we kind of say that weenable gamers to share their
gameplay more easily thanposting a selfie and you know,
when I made my content, it had abig impact on like launching
(03:39):
e-sports career and I realizedthat, like most gamers kind of
want to do the same thing butthey just don't have the same
capabilities.
So our technology levels theplaying field.
We take out all of the sort offriction, the effort.
You don't need to be creative,you don't even need to be live
streaming or recording yourscreen.
We actually take data from thegame and we render it into video
(04:00):
out of these things called demoor replay files, and it's
actually the same things that Iused to create video when I was
playing, so you'd record thesedemos every time you played.
You'd watch the whole game back, you'd make video from that.
So it really was.
You know, all-star is very muchborn out of that, that origin
story and that insight that youknow it was.
(04:20):
It's a really high impact formof content.
Many gamers want to make it andvery few can.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So so you did a lot of this.
You know pre the websites weall know and use now pre social
media, but now we do have socialmedia, we do have YouTube, we
do have Twitch.
So what?
What gap are you feeling then?
That these platforms don't?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, so distribution has definitely gotten a lot
more easy in social media, butthere's really nothing for
gamers like discord andcommunications tool.
Twitch is more like televisionthan anything else.
Uh, things like YouTube, tikTOK they're crowded.
Uh, and most social mediaplatforms, uh, that have gaming
media in it are really producedby a very small subset of of
(05:00):
gamers.
It's like your top, you know0.01% so like influencers, uh,
professional gamers, pro teamsyour top, you know 0.01% so like
influencers, professionalgamers, pro teams and, like you
know, big organizations liketournaments and things like that
.
So that is, who creates thecontent?
The people that consume it aregenerally the gamers themselves,
and that's kind of we flippedthe model, that is, who creates
(05:21):
content with Allstar.
So our end user is the everydaygamer and what we do is we
enable them to create and sharecontent with each other, and
that's kind of the paradigmshift.
That's not something that hasreally existed before in games
and our mission is to connectgamers to their content.
So our belief is that, if youcan make it far simpler and
(05:45):
easier to make content that'sgood and watchable.
That is kind of the missingpiece of the puzzle of how do
you create, you know, a realkind of connective tissue around
gaming and kind of own this,you know sort of social network
opportunity.
And so we started with themedia.
We built and invented thisproprietary technology to make
(06:05):
it so that anyone can generatethis media and then that allows
you to build, you know, sort ofa platform and network around it
.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So starting a company is obviously a big leap.
You had the chops to do ityourself, but what was the early
feedback?
Like Like, who were the firstcouple of people you told?
What did they think of the idea?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
early feedback, like who were the first couple of
people you told?
What did they think of the idea?
First person was my co-founderand CTO, gavin.
We met at a digital agencycalled BlueFound Media where I
started my career.
After pro gaming, I did design,after design I got into the
agency side Turns out it's veryuseful to know how to you know
(06:44):
design and code websites andthen if you can talk to clients
and sell stuff and manage things.
You know agencies back thendigital agencies were.
You know those people were inshort supply so I had a really
kind of quick rise.
The company grew really fastand I actually hired Gavin onto
my accounts team and we werelike opposite in a lot of ways.
(07:05):
He was super technical while Iwas like very creative.
So I would, you know, annoy thedesigners by getting hands-on
with design projects and like hewould annoy the developers by
getting like hands-on in thecode.
And I knew something was likedifferent about him when a
website would go down.
You know normally you know Ihave to like phone the project
manager.
You know normally you know Ihave to like phone the project
(07:25):
manager.
You know be like we got to getthe site back up.
He would just pop open aterminal window and you know it
would disappear and the sitewould come back up.
And I learned he was likerebooting the servers himself
and so that you know kind of wewe connected through just being
friends through games.
We both played the same gamesLike that was how we became
close.
We complemented each otherreally well on the team.
(07:46):
So after I left and I went on toMovable Inc, which was a
venture-backed MarTech in NewYork, gavin stayed on at Blue
Fountain.
He became their director ofoperations as they got acquired
by a public tech company calledPactera and so we used to hang
out after work.
I still live, you know, I livedin Brooklyn, he was in Harlem
at the time, now he's in Jersey.
We used to meet up after workin like Midtown and we would go
(08:09):
hang out at, you know, wolftonesor Churchill's and I, you know,
I had this kind of idea for awhile, actually like All-Star as
an idea.
The first time I pitchedsomething in this was actually I
think I was like 19 years old.
I went to it was called the CPL, the Cyber Athlete Professional
League, and they it was theworldwide Counter-Strike
(08:29):
tournament in Dallas, Texas,twice a year in the Hilton
ballroom and and I went thereand I was just, you know, I was
on one of my first like semi-proteams and we're playing in this
big tournament.
And and I saw the manager ofthis team, complexity, this guy,
jason Lake, he's still inesports, he's still a very
well-known figure and I rememberI kind of, like you know,
tugged on his coat.
I was like hey, excuse me, sir,my name's like Nick Ants Cuomo.
(08:52):
I have this idea.
I think we could sellCounter-Strike movies and I
didn't really know how to sellit.
I didn't know get why my movieswere successful, but I was like
there's money here, there wasan opportunity here, and I felt
like more people wanted this.
And he was like very nice, heaccepted the pitch.
You know, he was like thanks,like oh, you know, let's stay in
(09:15):
touch and maybe, you know,we'll figure this out at some
point.
And obviously nothing happened.
But so that was like the firstperson I ever kind of pitched a
general idea to what All-Starreally became.
I just Gavin and I met up afterwork and I was like listen, man,
like I think there's somethinghere.
Creator economy is exploding,esports is exploding.
I still play.
Every app sucks, no one gets it.
(09:37):
I think I get it and I'm likeyou know, do you think this is
technically feasible?
Could we get, you know, demosor watch games, get the data,
render the video in the cloud?
And he was like maybe, butit'll never work.
That was the first reaction waslike maybe, but it's never
going to work.
So so one of the like definingthings that I think you know has
(10:00):
always carried me forward in mycareer is I am the most
persistent to a fault, veryannoying, in sales, like you
know, I'd never give up, andeven when you're like please
give up, I'm like no, so I don'tgive up.
So, you know, a couple of weeksgo by, we go back to the bar
and we're hanging out.
I'm like all right.
So I'm like I put a spreadsheettogether, I'm like it's going
to work and I, you know we laidout the numbers and started to
(10:22):
dig in and he was like OK, he'slike we should do this.
I was like all right, and then,I think, a week or two later, we
put in our two weeks notice atour jobs, we bootstrapped the
company for 18 months andeveryone thought we were nuts,
because we're not your typical22-year-old founder who's
dropping out of college, not anasset to their names.
(10:42):
We's, like you know, we're inour thirties, very well
established successful techcareers, but we saw a bigger
opportunity.
I think we both were ready forsome change and I was excited to
, you know, really jump backinto games with all of this
professional career experiencenow that I have in product
development, in marketing, insales, in tech, in venture
(11:03):
scaling tech and yeah.
So that's kind of the originstory and I think we're in year
five and everyone also thoughtwe're a little less crazy once
Mark Cuban invested in ourpre-seed than all of our friends
and family were like, okay, wefeel better about this decision.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
We'll get there.
Why didn't he think it was agood idea at first?
Why didn't he think it wasgoing to work?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
The economics are very complicated, right, if you
think about, like, what we do,we're rendering video in the
cloud.
Uh, videos heavy, it'sexpensive.
Rendering it doesn't make itcheaper.
Uh, you know, dealing with thedata that you render it out of
doesn't make it cheaper.
Uh, the the sort of viraldynamics of, like how you would
grow a business like this, youknow, can you monetize it fast
(11:51):
enough to deal with the costs?
And then, like, as first timefounders, can we raise enough
capital to get to scale to dothat?
And like, is there ever a pointwhere, if certain assumptions
were true, could this be aprofitable business?
(12:12):
And that was kind of where thethings were.
You know, that was his biggestconcerns and so we just dug in
and, you know, you start tounderstand and it's interesting,
we still execute things todaythat were thought of back then,
before we were even an officialcompany.
Because it was like thatdiscussion and that, you know,
sort of beating up the idea gaveus the levers that we still
pull to this day to reduce thecost per clip or increase the
(12:36):
you know, you know sort ofgrowth rate of the company and,
you know, reduce the expenses onhosting.
It's all related.
We pulled apart those variables.
Once he saw that, once I sawthat, and he was like yeah, this
, I agree, that's not, you know,unbelievable.
That was kind of the final Lovethat.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So Cuban invested in your pre-seed round, which I can
imagine was a huge boost forcredibility, visibility all of
the above Very good.
How did you make that happen?
What was that process like?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah.
So our second investor in thecompany was actually our lawyer,
neil Friedman.
He's still our lawyer, and Iremember we started a company we
had to find a lawyer.
You know I talked to like 10 or11 different.
You know we wanted a small,independent practitioner.
We were bootstrapping.
So I'm like I'm not spendingother people's money, I don't
want a white shoe, you know,huge retainer and and he was a
(13:33):
similar stuff.
He was like a startup lawyerand small practice.
We hit it off.
He was like you guys are soimpressive, this is so exciting.
He's like I would like toinvest and I didn't even know if
your lawyer could invest.
So I'm Googling, like you know,can your lawyer invest in your
startup?
They can.
That's not that abnormal.
I was like great.
So he invested, neil and hiswife.
(13:54):
They had a relationship to Cubanthrough his wife's work, and so
the opportunity to syndicatethe pre-seed materials to him
presented itself, and she hadsent it over to Mark, and so the
timing was not the best.
I was actually at JFK Airportabout to go to Florence, italy,
(14:18):
with my then girlfriend, nowwife, and it was our you know,
engagement trip and I hadn'tgone on vacation for like three
years, so it was like a big tripgo to Italy.
We're at the airport, neil'slike calling me in a panic.
He's like Cuban replied he hasquestions.
I'm like what, okay, so youknow?
We're like banging out theemail because you know, every
(14:40):
second counts, right.
It's like now I'm in sales mode, like this is, we have a live
one here and and he is askingquestions directly they're smart
questions and so we like bangout the reply, calling our name.
Literally the gates are closing.
Barely made it on the plane.
You know, long story short, shesaid yes, he yes.
He said yes, I had like it.
(15:01):
I don't felt like 30 pounds,like a very heavy gamer laptop
with me.
Uh, just, you know, throughitaly, I would like you know we
get an email, I would stop atfind a cafe with wi-fi and, uh,
reply back to him and, granted,he was understanding.
Uh, and you know, he gave me afew days in the first weekend we
were there before we startedreally going and digging in,
(15:23):
because I think Neil's wifeexplained like, yeah, nick just
got to Italy with his girlfriend, they're going to get engaged.
He was like, all right, havethem reach out to me on Monday.
And then you know, but it was,we got into due diligence by the
end of the trip.
So not the most relaxingvacation, but super memorable,
really really cool.
So not the most relaxingvacation, but super memorable,
really, really cool.
And it was just you know, hejust he loves email, I love
(15:44):
email, so just lots of emailback and forth and just he got
it immediately.
And his questions were verydeeply technical, which I really
appreciated because it wasn'the didn't care about a lot of
the fluff that many investorscare about, which you know a lot
of founders kind of grown at,because it's like okay, you know
(16:06):
culture.
It's like I, you know thatwe're going to.
Culture is important, yes, butlike at this stage, it's like
how does the technology work?
Does that scale?
So that was the stuff.
He was like you know, does howdoes the tech work?
Does it work with Fortnite?
That was one of his questionsand was like, yeah, like we
started, we had to go and dosome diligence and I was like,
yes, it will work with fortnight.
And we actually just launchedone of our first fortnight
partners, uh, just a few monthsago and, uh, so we have a huge,
(16:30):
huge uh network in fortnightgrowing at this point.
So it's pretty cool stuff and Ijust loved how hands-on he was.
You would not expect that out ofsomeone like him, right, right.
So you didn't even pitch himlive.
It was all over email.
No Shark Tank, all email.
Never spoke to the guy on thephone.
I haven't met him in personStill to this day.
He will reply to any emailwithin 20 minutes and when we
(16:50):
used to send out very frequentinvestor newsletter updates, he
would be the first person toopen them every time.
I don't know how he does that,but that's probably why he's a
billionaire if I had to guess.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
So, wow, that's incredible.
What do you?
What do you send out in yourinvestor newsletter updates?
I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Um, so we used to, so those two um.
We haven't done that sinceseries a.
We've just got a lot morefocused on um, working with the
board, executing the business,and uh, you and we'll send out
updates.
At this point, like twice ayear, is kind of where we're at.
(17:29):
In the past we used to have amore generic newsletter that
would go out to like a prospectinvestor list and existing
investor list, so it's kind oflike a corporate newsletter
geared towards investors.
So it's like company updates,product development, hiring,
milestones, but nothing toosensitive.
And then for our existinginvestor base I typed really
fast.
That was always my pro gamerskill.
(17:51):
I am very fast on a keyboard,so, as you might imagine, very
long-winded when I talk and whenI type.
So it was very easy for me toprovide like long form, detailed
updates and you know, just golike kind of function by
function, like product marketing, growth, finances, you know
talent, whatever, and you knowthe milestones.
(18:13):
Then there'll be like a summary,executive summary, on you know
my view as CEO, as the state ofthe business, the good, the bad,
and then kind of looking ahead.
And I think the investors havealways appreciated that we don't
sugarcoat and we'll alwaysprovide a balance of like this
is going really well.
This is not, and this is whatwe're doing about it.
(18:36):
And I think investors arethey're used to a lot of
founders be very rosy,everything's super positive, and
that's never the truth.
You know, if you've ever builta business, you do execution.
Some days suck really bad andyou're like where's the you know
face punch going to come from,and then other days are like
cloud nine.
Oh my god, everything's goingamazing.
And so I think a lot of themore builder investors get that
(18:58):
and they're suspicious ifeverything's positive because
that's just never, never thecase.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, that's so funny .
I just had Cal Patel on fromBright Insights.
They're in digital health,they're serious, and he said
almost that exact same thing.
He's like if you tell yourinvestors everything's good,
someone is lying.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's true .
I mean, even the best companyon earth, it's not going that
well.
You know, there's good andthere's bad.
That's life.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
So how do you, since you're more on the B2C side, how
do you?
Speaker 1 (19:31):
target your user base in terms of user acquisition
and growth.
Yeah, so this is kind of oursecret weapon not so secret
anymore.
So the nature of our technology.
So Allstar is kind of leadinglike a paradigm shift.
And that is until us gamersmade content by live streaming
or recording their screen.
So you had to have an appinstalled, you had to be.
You know, creating video fromthe client device you're playing
(19:53):
a game on in real timeIntroduces a lot of issues.
You lose frame rate, you'reeating up your connection, your
storage.
It's distracting you from thegame.
You might forget to create aclip because you're too focused
on making the moments happen.
So that prevents a lot ofgamers from making content.
One in four gamers want tocreate.
Less than 0.01% do, and that,believe, is a technology gap.
(20:20):
Everyone makes content on socialmedia.
40 to 60% of monthly userscontribute to platforms like
Snapchat, instagram, tiktok.
It's because we all have phonein our pocket.
You don't really have that in agame.
It's like you're on the phonewhile you're playing the game.
It's not the most conducive wayto create content.
(20:43):
You're also stuck with what yousee, so you can't take 20
selfies in a row and only postthe best one.
So our technology gives peoplethe ability to do that because
we render it in the cloud.
It's off of game data, it'sserver side, so there's nothing
happening on your client.
We can't impact performance.
So this was our sort ofconsumer user value prop.
(21:03):
The nature of how we achievedthat, by making this a server
side technology, opened up auser acquisition strategy that
to this date, we've had a hardtime finding anyone that's done
something like this.
So that makes it really hard tolike, plan and optimize because
it's like a net new channel.
So the channel that we'veeffectively invented are like
(21:24):
personalized, cloud generatedgame highlights.
So what we do is we offer freeAPIs to partners and we have a
developer portal and it's kindof like Stripe for game
highlights.
So if you're building a website, you're building a desktop app,
a mobile app, and you'refocused on a game that we focus
on, like Counter-Strike,fortnite, league of Legends,
(21:46):
dota 2, there's probably a halfdozen other games coming up on
the roadmap but these likehardcore, multiplayer,
competitive games.
If you're building somethingfor those games, you're probably
accessing the same data that weuse to make video and you wish
you had video and no one hasvideo because making video from
(22:07):
that data is insane.
So that's like the whole reasonwe exist is because, like
that's, it's a crazy thing to do.
So we have like two datacenters.
We have like physical metalhardware.
We just set up a new rack, theother, I think literally this
week, you know, make one clip, asecond and we have an API and
people plug in and they requestcontent and we render it and
(22:29):
deliver it and then that videoplayer that's embedded basically
exposes the gamer to ourproduct.
So the experience you thinkabout it from the gamer's
perspective is they play a game,they use a product they already
love and then, like magicallyout of thin air, their like
1080p, 60, high powered gamerselfie is just waiting for them.
(22:50):
They didn't have to have an appinstalled, they didn't press a
button, they weren't streaming,and so the first thing you get
is curiosity.
They're like how did they makea video from the game that I
just played?
I wasn't doing anything to dothat.
The second thing is they startto think how that could work and
then it basically explains allof the questions they might have
(23:10):
about our product.
Because gamers are smart, theyput two and two together.
They're like, oh, they hadaccess to the demos, the replays
, the server they rendered thevideo for me.
They probably know who I amfrom my Steam login or something
, and that's a really great wayto educate people about a very
complicated product.
It's very difficult to explainto someone on a landing page how
(23:33):
All-Star works.
It's very easy to explain tosomeone by just showing it to
them, and so it's kind of neat.
We put the best part of ourproduct as the first thing
someone sees and that's how weacquire most of our users.
About two thirds of our newmonthly users come from
basically our partner network,which spans three games Counter-
(23:55):
, league of Legends and Fortnite, with partners on the way and
other games and that partnernetwork represents a combined
reach of upwards of 20 millionmonthly gamers.
We're only really tapping intoone twentieth of that right now.
So there's some really excitinggrowth in store for us and it's
really interesting because it'sagain a very novel channel and
(24:20):
it's awesome to own your useracquisition channel.
But you know, I'm sure that inthe early days of, like you know
, google paid search and dealingwith SEO and kind of inventing
this plane while you're flyingit, you know it's a typical
startup thing is it comes with aunique set of challenges that
you're not going to really beable to read a book on or, you
(24:41):
know, talk to somebody and getthe answers.
You kind of have to just be init and deal with the react to
the pressures that driveinnovation.
So that's really what's kind ofpushed us forward and helped us
get to one clip, a second, andhelped us do this scalably,
where we're not just burningthrough our bank account in a
month.
So it's a really, really coolway to acquire users, in my
(25:03):
opinion.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It is.
I mean, yeah, you've basicallytaken the show.
Don't tell principle to theextreme.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Surprise and delight yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So okay, so you integrate with a few different
games right now and I know youmentioned you have a few more on
the roadmap.
Is there any sort of plan toexpand and I didn't mentioned?
You have a few more on theroadmap.
Is there any sort of plan toexpand?
And I didn't hear youspecifically say this, but it
sounds like it's just forconsole or for PC or Mac at this
point.
Do you have any plans to expandto console?
Is that just something that'snot technologically feasible?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, we clip across all platforms and devices right
now in Fortnite actually.
So we create videos in thecloud out of their Fortnite
tournaments that people enterright from the Fortnite launcher
, and these tournaments are runacross mobile, console and PC,
(25:52):
and so that's what's kind ofneat about All-Star is our
technology doesn't care, itdoesn't know the difference, it
doesn't matter.
All the content looks the same.
It's just the gameplay, it'sjust the data of the match.
It's what happened, as if youwere watching it live.
So that is kind of our bigvision is that, ultimately, this
is how all gameplay should beshared is starting at the
(26:15):
gameplay data and rendering thatserver side instead of trying
to capture that client side atdifferent resolutions, different
graphics qualities, differentsort of technical challenges,
and so we're currently doingthat across platforms and
devices.
But our long term is really togo into the game engines and
abstract this out and be boththe replay and the UGC
(26:39):
infrastructure, both the replayand the UGC infrastructure, and
that will enable us to reallyscale us out across generally
any game.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
On any platform or device Got it, and so, from a
scaling perspective, obviouslythere's a financial component to
that, and you've continued toraise.
You raised an $18 millionSeries A.
What was that process like?
Do you plan to raise again?
How are you thinking aboutthings from a fundraising and
growth standpoint?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah.
So I think there's a bit ofalways raising money in a
startup that's kind of ends upbeing your next milestone, even
if you're not thinking about it.
It's like you close around andthen you're like, all right,
let's execute, let's build, andthen a few months go by and
you're like, all right, likewhat's the next sort of
milestone between us and our bigvision?
(27:25):
It's like usually another round.
So you know, we'll likely lookto raise more financing in the
next year.
We're not under the gun orfeeling too much pressure there,
but I think for us, thefundraising cycle itself, Series
A, was tough.
It was a tough year.
I had a lot of people reach outand were like whoa, like crazy,
(27:47):
you know, can't believe youraised a Series A during, you
know, 2023.
And yeah, I don't have anyparticular like this is the
magic bullet of how we did that.
It was, you know, just the samething we always do when we
raise.
We run a pretty tight process.
We put together, you know,really good material.
(28:08):
We focus really hard on theiterative feedback of
understanding where investorsare getting hung up or what you
know they're getting reallyexcited about.
How do we kind of bring thatmore to the surface and then
just grinding.
You know I have a lot ofbackground in sales so I'm very
used to being on the road, uh,spending a lot of time just back
to back to back meetings and um.
(28:29):
You know we'll usually go togdc.
I think last year I went to gdcand I had, uh, 30 meetings in
three days.
So it's a long.
It's a long couple of days, um.
But you know that's the kind ofenergy you put in and I don't
know if any.
I honestly don't think any ofthose meetings converted to
financing.
But I can tell you that thenoise that that makes and the
(28:51):
sort of energy input and outputthat's how sales has always
worked for me is.
You know, you work really,really hard over here and then
the success starts to happenover there.
So that is a bit of how Idescribe the process.
But there's usually the stagesof finding, creating your list,
getting out there, doing theinitial pitching, seeing who's
(29:11):
going to move into deeperdiligence and questions than
actually real due diligencebefore a term sheet, or
sometimes term sheet before realdue diligence, and then you
have legal and closing and legalwas a bit protracted there
because we had a very large captable from our earlier rounds.
There was a lot of complexthings that needed to get
(29:32):
cleaned up by very expensive lawfirms, so that was one lesson
learned is actually probablyshould have paid the more
expensive law firms a littleearlier in the company.
It would have saved us a bunchof money at Series A.
But you know it's first timedoing this, so live and learn.
I guess that's exactly what Iwas going to say, live and learn
.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
What advice would you give to gamers that are I know
you mentioned?
You know 25% want to createcontent, but only 0.
1% or 0.01% do so for the forthe vast majority who are not.
What advice would you give themin terms of growing their
personal brand and making themost of platforms like all-star
or other ones?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah.
So I think it depends on whatkind of creator you want to be.
You know, if you're justcreating for fun, to share and
connect with your friends, thenyou don't really have to think
too much about it.
I think you just need to findthe tool that suits your style.
I think for the competitive youknow, multiplayer gamers,
(30:28):
esports, players, all stars isreally the best solution.
It doesn't have an impact onyour performance.
You don't have to worry aboutcreating content while you're
playing.
You just press a button, and oryou don't even press a button,
you come to the website afterthe match is over.
Find the match, find the moment, share it.
That experience is much more,you know, attuned to that type
(30:50):
of gamer.
Now, if you're trying to be aninfluencer, you want to really
make money.
Now, if you're trying to be aninfluencer, you want to really
make money.
So we have some products comingout that will enable brands to
work with our community ofgamers to drive engagement and
growth and to directlyincentivize the gamer.
I'm a big believer that.
I think advertising in games isa little broken and I think no
(31:12):
one's really cracked the nut ofhow you extract, you know, real
revenue out of advertising andgames.
And it's because they don'tunderstand gamers.
Gamers are, you know, playinggames that are highly immersive.
You don't really want todisrupt that immersion.
They expect a very high ROIfrom their entertainment dollars
.
So, you know, if you're tryingto monetize them even further,
(31:35):
that is going to leave them alittle upset.
You know they could spend zerodollars on a free to play game
and play it for 10,000 hours.
So you're going to, you knownow you're going to start to,
you know, expect them to sitthrough a bunch of ads or, you
know, have a worse gameplayexperience.
So you make money.
That's not really going to fly.
That's not really going to fly.
(31:58):
And then I think the last pieceis that all of the stuff the
brands really want, like gettinginto the games, reaching gamers
with good reporting, brandsafety, very expensive.
Influencers are very expensive,hard to manage.
Platforms, programmatic, veryblockable Ad blockers are very
popular.
Twitch you know very few gamers.
I think 0.1% of Twitchstreamers make median income.
(32:20):
So the vast majority of Twitchstreamers are trying and burning
out and stuff like that.
So my message would be you know, be patient, try All-Star in a
couple of months.
We started to launch more ofthese competitions, we're
bringing brands in to sponsorthem, and our whole sort of
angle is sort of user generatedcontent marketing, uh, but
(32:41):
driven through a uh, a platformand a technology where, uh, it's
not so much a uh high frictionendeavor, it's more automated,
uh, and and the gamer directlyearns from this, right.
So we're cutting out themiddleman.
It's not just the influencergetting paid there.
There's no, you know.
It's like let's get the gamerincentivized to drive results
for the brands and put them intothe gameplay in a way that
(33:02):
doesn't disrupt the game.
So that's what's coming for usand I think the best practices
still apply for any creator.
It's like create content that'snew, find your niche, make it
stand out, and you got to beconsistent and persistent.
You know you have to have thatschedule.
It's like my dad always saidyou know if you're going to open
a store and you know you haveto make your hours and be
(33:25):
consistent, because otherwise acustomer is going to show up and
say I expect them to be open.
It's, you know, whatever 1030on a Friday, but they're not
open yet, right?
So, as a streamer or a YouTubecreator, you have to like make
content on a schedule.
You know you need to setexpectations and meet them with
your audience.
And then I think you have tojust be across every channel.
(33:46):
I think you saw this as TikTokexploded.
Youtube and Twitch creators hadto you know, flood the TikTok,
that's where their audience was.
They were gonna lose that mindshare if they didn't follow them
there.
Everyone has a Discord community.
You have to have a place toconnect with people directly.
So I think that stuff is superimportant and it's hard.
It's very, very hard.
(34:08):
So we're trying to make it alittle easier for that.
We're calling them kind of likenano influencers, where, if
you're really good at a game,you know you've got an
interesting take on content,you've got something unique to
bring to the table.
We can help connect you withbrands.
And you know, maybe you're notgoing to quit your job tomorrow
but you know, perhaps you'regoing to have an easier time
(34:28):
buying groceries, you're goingto have some extra spending
money to buy a new set ofheadphones, something like that.
So that's kind of where we'retaking things, but it's a tough
gig.
Creating is hard, very noisy,very competitive.
Most people want to be creatorsthe younger you go.
I think 80% of Gen Z wants tobe a content creator.
So it's a very, verycompetitive market.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, I mean, I fully resonate with a lot of what you
said there, even as a creator.
In the context of this podcast,right Like every every Tuesday
at 6 am Central is when Ipublish the new episode, and
there and there have been Mondaynights where I'm like God damn
it, I didn't edit it yet I gotto jump on and do it and it's.
You know, I don't, I don't have.
Yeah, exactly, and it's not likeI have 100000 listeners and
(35:11):
there's going to be a bunch ofpeople opening it up.
It's like, but if you don'thave that consistency, you're
never going to build it and getthere in the first place.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, so yeah, that's the hard part.
It's also like building acompany.
You know it's there's these uh,it's like they're crossing the
chasm idea where you knowthere's this period where you're
just kind of working, you'relike what am you're never going
to cross that chasm, you'renever going to get to the other
side without you know theconsistency, and just you know
(35:41):
it's like kind of I guess if youbuild it they will come.
I don't always agree with that.
I think some people conflatethat with like I can build a
product with no distribution.
It's like that's not what I'msaying, but for content it makes
a lot of sense.
If you build it and market itproperly, they will come.
Yeah, not as catchy, but Not ascatchy but probably a little
(36:02):
chur.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
So final question then, just on a little bit more
of a personal note You'reobviously a former pro gamer
yourself.
You have very deep roots withinthe gaming community.
What's something that you wishmore people understood, either
about gamers or just the gamingindustry in general?
Uh, I will.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Let's see here I'll have.
I'll give advice to threedifferent groups of people here,
because I think I would have adifferent thing to say for
everyone.
I think for founders gettinginto games if you're coming from
, not games like traditionalbusiness just be aware that
there are founders and companiesand people out there that have
(36:43):
more of a gamer mindset thanlike a professional business
person mindset.
It's just a very different typeof personality to deal with.
They play the game differently.
They'll, you know, do thingswhere you're like that's they
play.
They play the game differently.
They'll, you know, do thingswhere you're like that's
unprofessional or being.
You know, I wouldn'tnecessarily do something like
that, but they're thinking likea gamer, they're not thinking
(37:07):
like a business person.
And once I understood that andand you know I've had some
interesting experiences in inthe industry it just kind of the
light bulb went off and and youknow I went back to my pro
gamer days and I was like I knowhow to deal with this.
This is a, you know, Iunderstand that mindset.
So that's, you know, sometimesyou're dealing with the gamer,
not the business person, even iftheir title and their role and
their accomplishments and theamount of money they raise is is
(37:28):
business.
You know, I think to investors,you gotta the teams they have
to care about games.
You gotta be passionate.
You know it's the same thinglike uh, there was the clean
tech.
Uh, there's like a whole youknow sort of the bubble, uh,
years back.
Uh, there's a lot of likecompanies that were started by
like you know kind of uh clean,you know clean shaven executives
(37:52):
and and guys in suits andsalespeople and you know,
salesperson I was an executivebut I'm a gamer Like these.
You know, all these clean techcompanies were started by people
that weren't technical, theyweren't engineers.
And there's this great kind ofexcerpt in Zero to One by Peter
Thiel where he talks about thatlike they just started passing
on anyone that didn't look likean engineer because there was so
(38:14):
many companies that were beingfounded, pitching for funding.
And you know, clean tech is,like you know read it in
backwards tech that's clean.
So if, like you're not a techperson, you don't understand
engineering, like you'reprobably not going to have a
good time solving that problem.
You might be able to raise abunch of money but, like you
know you're, you're solvingclimate issues through
(38:35):
technology.
So you kind of have to startthere.
So if you're investing in games, like you gotta be investing in
gamers and they gotta be likeyou know it has to have been a
real big part of their life andI think also that, like deep
personal connection gets youpast the hard part.
Um, you know there's a lot ofups and downs we were talking
about this earlier in inbuilding a company and running a
(38:57):
startup, and the ups and thedowns, uh, get a lot easier when
you're really passionate aboutwhat you do.
So I think you have both.
That, you know wants to be a proor wants to create like a
(39:19):
career out of it, and yeah, Ithink you need to just stick
with it.
Practice makes perfect and youknow the idea that someone is
just so talented that that's whythey're successful, I think is
a fallacy and I think the youknow, the only thing that luck
really gives people is the righttime and place to be able to
practice a lot, and I think ifyou do 10,000 hours of anything,
(39:42):
it'll be amazing.
I think anyone could be a progamer.
Anyone could be a professionalinfluencer.
You got to just really, reallywant it and you got to just not
give up and you got to go realreal far, real hard.
So yeah, that's my threecohorts of.
Uh, you know, if I ever I cango back in time and, you know,
give myself advice in thesedifferent sorts of mindsets,
(40:02):
that's probably what it'd be.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Well, that's some incredible advice, Um, nick,
thank you for that and thank youfor coming on in general.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Thanks, reese.
I appreciate having me.
This was great.
I really enjoyed theconversation.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Thanks for listening to See to Exit.
If you enjoyed the episode,don't forget to subscribe and
we'll see you next time.
Our end user is the everyday gamer, and what we do
is we enable them to create andshare content with each other.
And that's kind of the paradigmshift.
That's not something that hasreally existed before in games,
and our mission is to connectgamers to their content.
So our belief is that if youcan make it far simpler and
(00:22):
easier to make content that'sgood and watchable, that is kind
of the missing piece of thepuzzle of how do you create, you
know, a real kind of connectivetissue around gaming and kind
of own this, you know, sort ofsocial network opportunity.
And so we started with themedia.
We built and invented thisproprietary technology to make
(00:42):
it so that anyone can generatethis media, and invented this
proprietary technology to makeit so that anyone can generate
this media and then that allowsyou to build, you know sort of a
platform and network around it.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Today, I'm thrilled to host Nick Cuomo, CEO and
co-founder of AllStargg, aplatform that is redefining how
gamers create and share theirhighlights.
(01:46):
Nick's journey spans fromprofessional gaming to scaling
businesses like Blue FountainMedia and Movable Inc.
All-star.
Let Rhys Likewise Appreciateyou having me Absolutely Well.
I love gaming, as I think Italked about a little bit in the
episode with Brian Cho, so I'mreally excited to talk to you.
Tell me a little bit more aboutwhat inspired you to create
All-Star.
(02:06):
Obviously, you used to be a progamer yourself in the past.
How did that shape either thedevelopment of the company or
the inspiration to found it?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so my pro gamer background is in Counter-Strike
.
I played a whole heck of a lotof it in high school and college
and I felt like I was good butnot getting enough recognition.
So I made a couple of moviesand I did it the hard way.
I spent thousands of hourscapturing and curating and
(02:34):
editing and then I'd convincesomeone to host it on their
website.
There was no YouTube or Twitchand then I had to figure out a
way to distribute the video topeople.
There was no Facebook or socialmedia and that kind of left a
big impression on me.
It worked.
My content went viral.
The next tournament I went to,people wanted to watch me play,
(02:55):
shake my hand.
It was really, really cool Kindof left a big impression.
I started All Star 15X yearslater and it was a really really
impactful part of that journeybecause what I did was something
I was fortunate to be able todo.
I was lucky.
I was creative, technical, fastcomputer, a lot of free time.
(03:17):
Most gamers don't have any ofthat.
So All-Star really istechnology that automates a lot
of what I did and makes itavailable to anyone.
So we kind of say that weenable gamers to share their
gameplay more easily thanposting a selfie and you know,
when I made my content, it had abig impact on like launching
(03:39):
e-sports career and I realizedthat, like most gamers kind of
want to do the same thing butthey just don't have the same
capabilities.
So our technology levels theplaying field.
We take out all of the sort offriction, the effort.
You don't need to be creative,you don't even need to be live
streaming or recording yourscreen.
We actually take data from thegame and we render it into video
(04:00):
out of these things called demoor replay files, and it's
actually the same things that Iused to create video when I was
playing, so you'd record thesedemos every time you played.
You'd watch the whole game back, you'd make video from that.
So it really was.
You know, all-star is very muchborn out of that, that origin
story and that insight that youknow it was.
(04:20):
It's a really high impact formof content.
Many gamers want to make it andvery few can.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So so you did a lot of this.
You know pre the websites weall know and use now pre social
media, but now we do have socialmedia, we do have YouTube, we
do have Twitch.
So what?
What gap are you feeling then?
That these platforms don't?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, so distribution has definitely gotten a lot
more easy in social media, butthere's really nothing for
gamers like discord andcommunications tool.
Twitch is more like televisionthan anything else.
Uh, things like YouTube, tikTOK they're crowded.
Uh, and most social mediaplatforms, uh, that have gaming
media in it are really producedby a very small subset of of
(05:00):
gamers.
It's like your top, you know0.01% so like influencers, uh,
professional gamers, pro teamsyour top, you know 0.01% so like
influencers, professionalgamers, pro teams and, like you
know, big organizations liketournaments and things like that
.
So that is, who creates thecontent?
The people that consume it aregenerally the gamers themselves,
and that's kind of we flippedthe model, that is, who creates
(05:21):
content with Allstar.
So our end user is the everydaygamer and what we do is we
enable them to create and sharecontent with each other, and
that's kind of the paradigmshift.
That's not something that hasreally existed before in games
and our mission is to connectgamers to their content.
So our belief is that, if youcan make it far simpler and
(05:45):
easier to make content that'sgood and watchable.
That is kind of the missingpiece of the puzzle of how do
you create, you know, a realkind of connective tissue around
gaming and kind of own this,you know sort of social network
opportunity.
And so we started with themedia.
We built and invented thisproprietary technology to make
(06:05):
it so that anyone can generatethis media and then that allows
you to build, you know, sort ofa platform and network around it
.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So starting a company is obviously a big leap.
You had the chops to do ityourself, but what was the early
feedback?
Like Like, who were the firstcouple of people you told?
What did they think of the idea?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
early feedback, like who were the first couple of
people you told?
What did they think of the idea?
First person was my co-founderand CTO, gavin.
We met at a digital agencycalled BlueFound Media where I
started my career.
After pro gaming, I did design,after design I got into the
agency side Turns out it's veryuseful to know how to you know
(06:44):
design and code websites andthen if you can talk to clients
and sell stuff and manage things.
You know agencies back thendigital agencies were.
You know those people were inshort supply so I had a really
kind of quick rise.
The company grew really fastand I actually hired Gavin onto
my accounts team and we werelike opposite in a lot of ways.
(07:05):
He was super technical while Iwas like very creative.
So I would, you know, annoy thedesigners by getting hands-on
with design projects and like hewould annoy the developers by
getting like hands-on in thecode.
And I knew something was likedifferent about him when a
website would go down.
You know normally you know Ihave to like phone the project
manager.
You know normally you know Ihave to like phone the project
(07:25):
manager.
You know be like we got to getthe site back up.
He would just pop open aterminal window and you know it
would disappear and the sitewould come back up.
And I learned he was likerebooting the servers himself
and so that you know kind of wewe connected through just being
friends through games.
We both played the same gamesLike that was how we became
close.
We complemented each otherreally well on the team.
(07:46):
So after I left and I went on toMovable Inc, which was a
venture-backed MarTech in NewYork, gavin stayed on at Blue
Fountain.
He became their director ofoperations as they got acquired
by a public tech company calledPactera and so we used to hang
out after work.
I still live, you know, I livedin Brooklyn, he was in Harlem
at the time, now he's in Jersey.
We used to meet up after workin like Midtown and we would go
(08:09):
hang out at, you know, wolftonesor Churchill's and I, you know,
I had this kind of idea for awhile, actually like All-Star as
an idea.
The first time I pitchedsomething in this was actually I
think I was like 19 years old.
I went to it was called the CPL, the Cyber Athlete Professional
League, and they it was theworldwide Counter-Strike
(08:29):
tournament in Dallas, Texas,twice a year in the Hilton
ballroom and and I went thereand I was just, you know, I was
on one of my first like semi-proteams and we're playing in this
big tournament.
And and I saw the manager ofthis team, complexity, this guy,
jason Lake, he's still inesports, he's still a very
well-known figure and I rememberI kind of, like you know,
tugged on his coat.
I was like hey, excuse me, sir,my name's like Nick Ants Cuomo.
(08:52):
I have this idea.
I think we could sellCounter-Strike movies and I
didn't really know how to sellit.
I didn't know get why my movieswere successful, but I was like
there's money here, there wasan opportunity here, and I felt
like more people wanted this.
And he was like very nice, heaccepted the pitch.
You know, he was like thanks,like oh, you know, let's stay in
(09:15):
touch and maybe, you know,we'll figure this out at some
point.
And obviously nothing happened.
But so that was like the firstperson I ever kind of pitched a
general idea to what All-Starreally became.
I just Gavin and I met up afterwork and I was like listen, man,
like I think there's somethinghere.
Creator economy is exploding,esports is exploding.
I still play.
Every app sucks, no one gets it.
(09:37):
I think I get it and I'm likeyou know, do you think this is
technically feasible?
Could we get, you know, demosor watch games, get the data,
render the video in the cloud?
And he was like maybe, butit'll never work.
That was the first reaction waslike maybe, but it's never
going to work.
So so one of the like definingthings that I think you know has
(10:00):
always carried me forward in mycareer is I am the most
persistent to a fault, veryannoying, in sales, like you
know, I'd never give up, andeven when you're like please
give up, I'm like no, so I don'tgive up.
So, you know, a couple of weeksgo by, we go back to the bar
and we're hanging out.
I'm like all right.
So I'm like I put a spreadsheettogether, I'm like it's going
to work and I, you know we laidout the numbers and started to
(10:22):
dig in and he was like OK, he'slike we should do this.
I was like all right, and then,I think, a week or two later, we
put in our two weeks notice atour jobs, we bootstrapped the
company for 18 months andeveryone thought we were nuts,
because we're not your typical22-year-old founder who's
dropping out of college, not anasset to their names.
(10:42):
We's, like you know, we're inour thirties, very well
established successful techcareers, but we saw a bigger
opportunity.
I think we both were ready forsome change and I was excited to
, you know, really jump backinto games with all of this
professional career experiencenow that I have in product
development, in marketing, insales, in tech, in venture
(11:03):
scaling tech and yeah.
So that's kind of the originstory and I think we're in year
five and everyone also thoughtwe're a little less crazy once
Mark Cuban invested in ourpre-seed than all of our friends
and family were like, okay, wefeel better about this decision.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
We'll get there.
Why didn't he think it was agood idea at first?
Why didn't he think it wasgoing to work?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
The economics are very complicated, right, if you
think about, like, what we do,we're rendering video in the
cloud.
Uh, videos heavy, it'sexpensive.
Rendering it doesn't make itcheaper.
Uh, you know, dealing with thedata that you render it out of
doesn't make it cheaper.
Uh, the the sort of viraldynamics of, like how you would
grow a business like this, youknow, can you monetize it fast
(11:51):
enough to deal with the costs?
And then, like, as first timefounders, can we raise enough
capital to get to scale to dothat?
And like, is there ever a pointwhere, if certain assumptions
were true, could this be aprofitable business?
(12:12):
And that was kind of where thethings were.
You know, that was his biggestconcerns and so we just dug in
and, you know, you start tounderstand and it's interesting,
we still execute things todaythat were thought of back then,
before we were even an officialcompany.
Because it was like thatdiscussion and that, you know,
sort of beating up the idea gaveus the levers that we still
pull to this day to reduce thecost per clip or increase the
(12:36):
you know, you know sort ofgrowth rate of the company and,
you know, reduce the expenses onhosting.
It's all related.
We pulled apart those variables.
Once he saw that, once I sawthat, and he was like yeah, this
, I agree, that's not, you know,unbelievable.
That was kind of the final Lovethat.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So Cuban invested in your pre-seed round, which I can
imagine was a huge boost forcredibility, visibility all of
the above Very good.
How did you make that happen?
What was that process like?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah.
So our second investor in thecompany was actually our lawyer,
neil Friedman.
He's still our lawyer, and Iremember we started a company we
had to find a lawyer.
You know I talked to like 10 or11 different.
You know we wanted a small,independent practitioner.
We were bootstrapping.
So I'm like I'm not spendingother people's money, I don't
want a white shoe, you know,huge retainer and and he was a
(13:33):
similar stuff.
He was like a startup lawyerand small practice.
We hit it off.
He was like you guys are soimpressive, this is so exciting.
He's like I would like toinvest and I didn't even know if
your lawyer could invest.
So I'm Googling, like you know,can your lawyer invest in your
startup?
They can.
That's not that abnormal.
I was like great.
So he invested, neil and hiswife.
(13:54):
They had a relationship to Cubanthrough his wife's work, and so
the opportunity to syndicatethe pre-seed materials to him
presented itself, and she hadsent it over to Mark, and so the
timing was not the best.
I was actually at JFK Airportabout to go to Florence, italy,
(14:18):
with my then girlfriend, nowwife, and it was our you know,
engagement trip and I hadn'tgone on vacation for like three
years, so it was like a big tripgo to Italy.
We're at the airport, neil'slike calling me in a panic.
He's like Cuban replied he hasquestions.
I'm like what, okay, so youknow?
We're like banging out theemail because you know, every
(14:40):
second counts, right.
It's like now I'm in sales mode, like this is, we have a live
one here and and he is askingquestions directly they're smart
questions and so we like bangout the reply, calling our name.
Literally the gates are closing.
Barely made it on the plane.
You know, long story short, shesaid yes, he yes.
He said yes, I had like it.
(15:01):
I don't felt like 30 pounds,like a very heavy gamer laptop
with me.
Uh, just, you know, throughitaly, I would like you know we
get an email, I would stop atfind a cafe with wi-fi and, uh,
reply back to him and, granted,he was understanding.
Uh, and you know, he gave me afew days in the first weekend we
were there before we startedreally going and digging in,
(15:23):
because I think Neil's wifeexplained like, yeah, nick just
got to Italy with his girlfriend, they're going to get engaged.
He was like, all right, havethem reach out to me on Monday.
And then you know, but it was,we got into due diligence by the
end of the trip.
So not the most relaxingvacation, but super memorable,
really really cool.
So not the most relaxingvacation, but super memorable,
really, really cool.
And it was just you know, hejust he loves email, I love
(15:44):
email, so just lots of emailback and forth and just he got
it immediately.
And his questions were verydeeply technical, which I really
appreciated because it wasn'the didn't care about a lot of
the fluff that many investorscare about, which you know a lot
of founders kind of grown at,because it's like okay, you know
(16:06):
culture.
It's like I, you know thatwe're going to.
Culture is important, yes, butlike at this stage, it's like
how does the technology work?
Does that scale?
So that was the stuff.
He was like you know, does howdoes the tech work?
Does it work with Fortnite?
That was one of his questionsand was like, yeah, like we
started, we had to go and dosome diligence and I was like,
yes, it will work with fortnight.
And we actually just launchedone of our first fortnight
partners, uh, just a few monthsago and, uh, so we have a huge,
(16:30):
huge uh network in fortnightgrowing at this point.
So it's pretty cool stuff and Ijust loved how hands-on he was.
You would not expect that out ofsomeone like him, right, right.
So you didn't even pitch himlive.
It was all over email.
No Shark Tank, all email.
Never spoke to the guy on thephone.
I haven't met him in personStill to this day.
He will reply to any emailwithin 20 minutes and when we
(16:50):
used to send out very frequentinvestor newsletter updates, he
would be the first person toopen them every time.
I don't know how he does that,but that's probably why he's a
billionaire if I had to guess.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
So, wow, that's incredible.
What do you?
What do you send out in yourinvestor newsletter updates?
I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Um, so we used to, so those two um.
We haven't done that sinceseries a.
We've just got a lot morefocused on um, working with the
board, executing the business,and uh, you and we'll send out
updates.
At this point, like twice ayear, is kind of where we're at.
(17:29):
In the past we used to have amore generic newsletter that
would go out to like a prospectinvestor list and existing
investor list, so it's kind oflike a corporate newsletter
geared towards investors.
So it's like company updates,product development, hiring,
milestones, but nothing toosensitive.
And then for our existinginvestor base I typed really
fast.
That was always my pro gamerskill.
(17:51):
I am very fast on a keyboard,so, as you might imagine, very
long-winded when I talk and whenI type.
So it was very easy for me toprovide like long form, detailed
updates and you know, just golike kind of function by
function, like product marketing, growth, finances, you know
talent, whatever, and you knowthe milestones.
(18:13):
Then there'll be like a summary,executive summary, on you know
my view as CEO, as the state ofthe business, the good, the bad,
and then kind of looking ahead.
And I think the investors havealways appreciated that we don't
sugarcoat and we'll alwaysprovide a balance of like this
is going really well.
This is not, and this is whatwe're doing about it.
(18:36):
And I think investors arethey're used to a lot of
founders be very rosy,everything's super positive, and
that's never the truth.
You know, if you've ever builta business, you do execution.
Some days suck really bad andyou're like where's the you know
face punch going to come from,and then other days are like
cloud nine.
Oh my god, everything's goingamazing.
And so I think a lot of themore builder investors get that
(18:58):
and they're suspicious ifeverything's positive because
that's just never, never thecase.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, that's so funny .
I just had Cal Patel on fromBright Insights.
They're in digital health,they're serious, and he said
almost that exact same thing.
He's like if you tell yourinvestors everything's good,
someone is lying.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's true .
I mean, even the best companyon earth, it's not going that
well.
You know, there's good andthere's bad.
That's life.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
So how do you, since you're more on the B2C side, how
do you?
Speaker 1 (19:31):
target your user base in terms of user acquisition
and growth.
Yeah, so this is kind of oursecret weapon not so secret
anymore.
So the nature of our technology.
So Allstar is kind of leadinglike a paradigm shift.
And that is until us gamersmade content by live streaming
or recording their screen.
So you had to have an appinstalled, you had to be.
You know, creating video fromthe client device you're playing
(19:53):
a game on in real timeIntroduces a lot of issues.
You lose frame rate, you'reeating up your connection, your
storage.
It's distracting you from thegame.
You might forget to create aclip because you're too focused
on making the moments happen.
So that prevents a lot ofgamers from making content.
One in four gamers want tocreate.
Less than 0.01% do, and that,believe, is a technology gap.
(20:20):
Everyone makes content on socialmedia.
40 to 60% of monthly userscontribute to platforms like
Snapchat, instagram, tiktok.
It's because we all have phonein our pocket.
You don't really have that in agame.
It's like you're on the phonewhile you're playing the game.
It's not the most conducive wayto create content.
(20:43):
You're also stuck with what yousee, so you can't take 20
selfies in a row and only postthe best one.
So our technology gives peoplethe ability to do that because
we render it in the cloud.
It's off of game data, it'sserver side, so there's nothing
happening on your client.
We can't impact performance.
So this was our sort ofconsumer user value prop.
(21:03):
The nature of how we achievedthat, by making this a server
side technology, opened up auser acquisition strategy that
to this date, we've had a hardtime finding anyone that's done
something like this.
So that makes it really hard tolike, plan and optimize because
it's like a net new channel.
So the channel that we'veeffectively invented are like
(21:24):
personalized, cloud generatedgame highlights.
So what we do is we offer freeAPIs to partners and we have a
developer portal and it's kindof like Stripe for game
highlights.
So if you're building a website, you're building a desktop app,
a mobile app, and you'refocused on a game that we focus
on, like Counter-Strike,fortnite, league of Legends,
(21:46):
dota 2, there's probably a halfdozen other games coming up on
the roadmap but these likehardcore, multiplayer,
competitive games.
If you're building somethingfor those games, you're probably
accessing the same data that weuse to make video and you wish
you had video and no one hasvideo because making video from
(22:07):
that data is insane.
So that's like the whole reasonwe exist is because, like
that's, it's a crazy thing to do.
So we have like two datacenters.
We have like physical metalhardware.
We just set up a new rack, theother, I think literally this
week, you know, make one clip, asecond and we have an API and
people plug in and they requestcontent and we render it and
(22:29):
deliver it and then that videoplayer that's embedded basically
exposes the gamer to ourproduct.
So the experience you thinkabout it from the gamer's
perspective is they play a game,they use a product they already
love and then, like magicallyout of thin air, their like
1080p, 60, high powered gamerselfie is just waiting for them.
(22:50):
They didn't have to have an appinstalled, they didn't press a
button, they weren't streaming,and so the first thing you get
is curiosity.
They're like how did they makea video from the game that I
just played?
I wasn't doing anything to dothat.
The second thing is they startto think how that could work and
then it basically explains allof the questions they might have
(23:10):
about our product.
Because gamers are smart, theyput two and two together.
They're like, oh, they hadaccess to the demos, the replays
, the server they rendered thevideo for me.
They probably know who I amfrom my Steam login or something
, and that's a really great wayto educate people about a very
complicated product.
It's very difficult to explainto someone on a landing page how
(23:33):
All-Star works.
It's very easy to explain tosomeone by just showing it to
them, and so it's kind of neat.
We put the best part of ourproduct as the first thing
someone sees and that's how weacquire most of our users.
About two thirds of our newmonthly users come from
basically our partner network,which spans three games Counter-
(23:55):
, league of Legends and Fortnite, with partners on the way and
other games and that partnernetwork represents a combined
reach of upwards of 20 millionmonthly gamers.
We're only really tapping intoone twentieth of that right now.
So there's some really excitinggrowth in store for us and it's
really interesting because it'sagain a very novel channel and
(24:20):
it's awesome to own your useracquisition channel.
But you know, I'm sure that inthe early days of, like you know
, google paid search and dealingwith SEO and kind of inventing
this plane while you're flyingit, you know it's a typical
startup thing is it comes with aunique set of challenges that
you're not going to really beable to read a book on or, you
(24:41):
know, talk to somebody and getthe answers.
You kind of have to just be init and deal with the react to
the pressures that driveinnovation.
So that's really what's kind ofpushed us forward and helped us
get to one clip, a second, andhelped us do this scalably,
where we're not just burningthrough our bank account in a
month.
So it's a really, really coolway to acquire users, in my
(25:03):
opinion.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It is.
I mean, yeah, you've basicallytaken the show.
Don't tell principle to theextreme.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Surprise and delight yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So okay, so you integrate with a few different
games right now and I know youmentioned you have a few more on
the roadmap.
Is there any sort of plan toexpand and I didn't mentioned?
You have a few more on theroadmap.
Is there any sort of plan toexpand?
And I didn't hear youspecifically say this, but it
sounds like it's just forconsole or for PC or Mac at this
point.
Do you have any plans to expandto console?
Is that just something that'snot technologically feasible?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, we clip across all platforms and devices right
now in Fortnite actually.
So we create videos in thecloud out of their Fortnite
tournaments that people enterright from the Fortnite launcher
, and these tournaments are runacross mobile, console and PC,
(25:52):
and so that's what's kind ofneat about All-Star is our
technology doesn't care, itdoesn't know the difference, it
doesn't matter.
All the content looks the same.
It's just the gameplay, it'sjust the data of the match.
It's what happened, as if youwere watching it live.
So that is kind of our bigvision is that, ultimately, this
is how all gameplay should beshared is starting at the
(26:15):
gameplay data and rendering thatserver side instead of trying
to capture that client side atdifferent resolutions, different
graphics qualities, differentsort of technical challenges,
and so we're currently doingthat across platforms and
devices.
But our long term is really togo into the game engines and
abstract this out and be boththe replay and the UGC
(26:39):
infrastructure, both the replayand the UGC infrastructure, and
that will enable us to reallyscale us out across generally
any game.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
On any platform or device Got it, and so, from a
scaling perspective, obviouslythere's a financial component to
that, and you've continued toraise.
You raised an $18 millionSeries A.
What was that process like?
Do you plan to raise again?
How are you thinking aboutthings from a fundraising and
growth standpoint?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah.
So I think there's a bit ofalways raising money in a
startup that's kind of ends upbeing your next milestone, even
if you're not thinking about it.
It's like you close around andthen you're like, all right,
let's execute, let's build, andthen a few months go by and
you're like, all right, likewhat's the next sort of
milestone between us and our bigvision?
(27:25):
It's like usually another round.
So you know, we'll likely lookto raise more financing in the
next year.
We're not under the gun orfeeling too much pressure there,
but I think for us, thefundraising cycle itself, Series
A, was tough.
It was a tough year.
I had a lot of people reach outand were like whoa, like crazy,
(27:47):
you know, can't believe youraised a Series A during, you
know, 2023.
And yeah, I don't have anyparticular like this is the
magic bullet of how we did that.
It was, you know, just the samething we always do when we
raise.
We run a pretty tight process.
We put together, you know,really good material.
(28:08):
We focus really hard on theiterative feedback of
understanding where investorsare getting hung up or what you
know they're getting reallyexcited about.
How do we kind of bring thatmore to the surface and then
just grinding.
You know I have a lot ofbackground in sales so I'm very
used to being on the road, uh,spending a lot of time just back
to back to back meetings and um.
(28:29):
You know we'll usually go togdc.
I think last year I went to gdcand I had, uh, 30 meetings in
three days.
So it's a long.
It's a long couple of days, um.
But you know that's the kind ofenergy you put in and I don't
know if any.
I honestly don't think any ofthose meetings converted to
financing.
But I can tell you that thenoise that that makes and the
(28:51):
sort of energy input and outputthat's how sales has always
worked for me is.
You know, you work really,really hard over here and then
the success starts to happenover there.
So that is a bit of how Idescribe the process.
But there's usually the stagesof finding, creating your list,
getting out there, doing theinitial pitching, seeing who's
(29:11):
going to move into deeperdiligence and questions than
actually real due diligencebefore a term sheet, or
sometimes term sheet before realdue diligence, and then you
have legal and closing and legalwas a bit protracted there
because we had a very large captable from our earlier rounds.
There was a lot of complexthings that needed to get
(29:32):
cleaned up by very expensive lawfirms, so that was one lesson
learned is actually probablyshould have paid the more
expensive law firms a littleearlier in the company.
It would have saved us a bunchof money at Series A.
But you know it's first timedoing this, so live and learn.
I guess that's exactly what Iwas going to say, live and learn
.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
What advice would you give to gamers that are I know
you mentioned?
You know 25% want to createcontent, but only 0.
1% or 0.01% do so for the forthe vast majority who are not.
What advice would you give themin terms of growing their
personal brand and making themost of platforms like all-star
or other ones?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah.
So I think it depends on whatkind of creator you want to be.
You know, if you're justcreating for fun, to share and
connect with your friends, thenyou don't really have to think
too much about it.
I think you just need to findthe tool that suits your style.
I think for the competitive youknow, multiplayer gamers,
(30:28):
esports, players, all stars isreally the best solution.
It doesn't have an impact onyour performance.
You don't have to worry aboutcreating content while you're
playing.
You just press a button, and oryou don't even press a button,
you come to the website afterthe match is over.
Find the match, find the moment, share it.
That experience is much more,you know, attuned to that type
(30:50):
of gamer.
Now, if you're trying to be aninfluencer, you want to really
make money.
Now, if you're trying to be aninfluencer, you want to really
make money.
So we have some products comingout that will enable brands to
work with our community ofgamers to drive engagement and
growth and to directlyincentivize the gamer.
I'm a big believer that.
I think advertising in games isa little broken and I think no
(31:12):
one's really cracked the nut ofhow you extract, you know, real
revenue out of advertising andgames.
And it's because they don'tunderstand gamers.
Gamers are, you know, playinggames that are highly immersive.
You don't really want todisrupt that immersion.
They expect a very high ROIfrom their entertainment dollars
.
So, you know, if you're tryingto monetize them even further,
(31:35):
that is going to leave them alittle upset.
You know they could spend zerodollars on a free to play game
and play it for 10,000 hours.
So you're going to, you knownow you're going to start to,
you know, expect them to sitthrough a bunch of ads or, you
know, have a worse gameplayexperience.
So you make money.
That's not really going to fly.
That's not really going to fly.
(31:58):
And then I think the last pieceis that all of the stuff the
brands really want, like gettinginto the games, reaching gamers
with good reporting, brandsafety, very expensive.
Influencers are very expensive,hard to manage.
Platforms, programmatic, veryblockable Ad blockers are very
popular.
Twitch you know very few gamers.
I think 0.1% of Twitchstreamers make median income.
(32:20):
So the vast majority of Twitchstreamers are trying and burning
out and stuff like that.
So my message would be you know, be patient, try All-Star in a
couple of months.
We started to launch more ofthese competitions, we're
bringing brands in to sponsorthem, and our whole sort of
angle is sort of user generatedcontent marketing, uh, but
(32:41):
driven through a uh, a platformand a technology where, uh, it's
not so much a uh high frictionendeavor, it's more automated,
uh, and and the gamer directlyearns from this, right.
So we're cutting out themiddleman.
It's not just the influencergetting paid there.
There's no, you know.
It's like let's get the gamerincentivized to drive results
for the brands and put them intothe gameplay in a way that
(33:02):
doesn't disrupt the game.
So that's what's coming for usand I think the best practices
still apply for any creator.
It's like create content that'snew, find your niche, make it
stand out, and you got to beconsistent and persistent.
You know you have to have thatschedule.
It's like my dad always saidyou know if you're going to open
a store and you know you haveto make your hours and be
(33:25):
consistent, because otherwise acustomer is going to show up and
say I expect them to be open.
It's, you know, whatever 1030on a Friday, but they're not
open yet, right?
So, as a streamer or a YouTubecreator, you have to like make
content on a schedule.
You know you need to setexpectations and meet them with
your audience.
And then I think you have tojust be across every channel.
(33:46):
I think you saw this as TikTokexploded.
Youtube and Twitch creators hadto you know, flood the TikTok,
that's where their audience was.
They were gonna lose that mindshare if they didn't follow them
there.
Everyone has a Discord community.
You have to have a place toconnect with people directly.
So I think that stuff is superimportant and it's hard.
It's very, very hard.
(34:08):
So we're trying to make it alittle easier for that.
We're calling them kind of likenano influencers, where, if
you're really good at a game,you know you've got an
interesting take on content,you've got something unique to
bring to the table.
We can help connect you withbrands.
And you know, maybe you're notgoing to quit your job tomorrow
but you know, perhaps you'regoing to have an easier time
(34:28):
buying groceries, you're goingto have some extra spending
money to buy a new set ofheadphones, something like that.
So that's kind of where we'retaking things, but it's a tough
gig.
Creating is hard, very noisy,very competitive.
Most people want to be creatorsthe younger you go.
I think 80% of Gen Z wants tobe a content creator.
So it's a very, verycompetitive market.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, I mean, I fully resonate with a lot of what you
said there, even as a creator.
In the context of this podcast,right Like every every Tuesday
at 6 am Central is when Ipublish the new episode, and
there and there have been Mondaynights where I'm like God damn
it, I didn't edit it yet I gotto jump on and do it and it's.
You know, I don't, I don't have.
Yeah, exactly, and it's not likeI have 100000 listeners and
(35:11):
there's going to be a bunch ofpeople opening it up.
It's like, but if you don'thave that consistency, you're
never going to build it and getthere in the first place.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, so yeah, that's the hard part.
It's also like building acompany.
You know it's there's these uh,it's like they're crossing the
chasm idea where you knowthere's this period where you're
just kind of working, you'relike what am you're never going
to cross that chasm, you'renever going to get to the other
side without you know theconsistency, and just you know
(35:41):
it's like kind of I guess if youbuild it they will come.
I don't always agree with that.
I think some people conflatethat with like I can build a
product with no distribution.
It's like that's not what I'msaying, but for content it makes
a lot of sense.
If you build it and market itproperly, they will come.
Yeah, not as catchy, but Not ascatchy but probably a little
(36:02):
chur.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
So final question then, just on a little bit more
of a personal note You'reobviously a former pro gamer
yourself.
You have very deep roots withinthe gaming community.
What's something that you wishmore people understood, either
about gamers or just the gamingindustry in general?
Uh, I will.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Let's see here I'll have.
I'll give advice to threedifferent groups of people here,
because I think I would have adifferent thing to say for
everyone.
I think for founders gettinginto games if you're coming from
, not games like traditionalbusiness just be aware that
there are founders and companiesand people out there that have
(36:43):
more of a gamer mindset thanlike a professional business
person mindset.
It's just a very different typeof personality to deal with.
They play the game differently.
They'll, you know, do thingswhere you're like that's they
play.
They play the game differently.
They'll, you know, do thingswhere you're like that's
unprofessional or being.
You know, I wouldn'tnecessarily do something like
that, but they're thinking likea gamer, they're not thinking
(37:07):
like a business person.
And once I understood that andand you know I've had some
interesting experiences in inthe industry it just kind of the
light bulb went off and and youknow I went back to my pro
gamer days and I was like I knowhow to deal with this.
This is a, you know, Iunderstand that mindset.
So that's, you know, sometimesyou're dealing with the gamer,
not the business person, even iftheir title and their role and
their accomplishments and theamount of money they raise is is
(37:28):
business.
You know, I think to investors,you gotta the teams they have
to care about games.
You gotta be passionate.
You know it's the same thinglike uh, there was the clean
tech.
Uh, there's like a whole youknow sort of the bubble, uh,
years back.
Uh, there's a lot of likecompanies that were started by
like you know kind of uh clean,you know clean shaven executives
(37:52):
and and guys in suits andsalespeople and you know,
salesperson I was an executivebut I'm a gamer Like these.
You know, all these clean techcompanies were started by people
that weren't technical, theyweren't engineers.
And there's this great kind ofexcerpt in Zero to One by Peter
Thiel where he talks about thatlike they just started passing
on anyone that didn't look likean engineer because there was so
(38:14):
many companies that were beingfounded, pitching for funding.
And you know, clean tech is,like you know read it in
backwards tech that's clean.
So if, like you're not a techperson, you don't understand
engineering, like you'reprobably not going to have a
good time solving that problem.
You might be able to raise abunch of money but, like you
know you're, you're solvingclimate issues through
(38:35):
technology.
So you kind of have to startthere.
So if you're investing in games, like you gotta be investing in
gamers and they gotta be likeyou know it has to have been a
real big part of their life andI think also that, like deep
personal connection gets youpast the hard part.
Um, you know there's a lot ofups and downs we were talking
about this earlier in inbuilding a company and running a
(38:57):
startup, and the ups and thedowns, uh, get a lot easier when
you're really passionate aboutwhat you do.
So I think you have both.
That, you know wants to be a proor wants to create like a
(39:19):
career out of it, and yeah, Ithink you need to just stick
with it.
Practice makes perfect and youknow the idea that someone is
just so talented that that's whythey're successful, I think is
a fallacy and I think the youknow, the only thing that luck
really gives people is the righttime and place to be able to
practice a lot, and I think ifyou do 10,000 hours of anything,
(39:42):
it'll be amazing.
I think anyone could be a progamer.
Anyone could be a professionalinfluencer.
You got to just really, reallywant it and you got to just not
give up and you got to go realreal far, real hard.
So yeah, that's my threecohorts of.
Uh, you know, if I ever I cango back in time and, you know,
give myself advice in thesedifferent sorts of mindsets,
(40:02):
that's probably what it'd be.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Well, that's some incredible advice, Um, nick,
thank you for that and thank youfor coming on in general.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Thanks, reese.
I appreciate having me.
This was great.
I really enjoyed theconversation.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Thanks for listening to See to Exit.
If you enjoyed the episode,don't forget to subscribe and
we'll see you next time.
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