Indie Megabooth's Digital Nomad Kelly Wallick

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kelly (00:01):
And you run and build a company like, you know, is
the culture of this companygonna produce something period?
Or is it gonna producesomething good?
Is it gonna producesomething bad?
Like, and so it actuallyput a lot of weight on
that, that component of it.
And then the secondary kindof consideration for us
too is like, how do theyfit into the community?
You know, and like, eitherpersonality wise or within

(00:23):
inside of the portfolio or justlike, you know, and do, do we
wanna spend time with thesepeople for the next 10 years?
You know, like, do wewanna be on the, the
founder journey with them?

Alex (00:33):
That was Kelly Wallick, the amazing Kelly Wallick,
partner at One Up Ventures,founder of Indie Mega
Booth, talking about how theproject is really the team.
I say this all the time, I gotcalled out once for not really
making that happen once, when,when was that It doesn't feel
good to let somebody down.

(00:54):
And I had let somebodydown, you know.
Happens, you know, I feel badabout it, but you gotta learn.
You gotta live,learn and move on.
But, I really like Kelly.
and you know, she's got areally interesting background
from, I mean, she went toschool for STEM sciencey stuff.
Really got into,did she graduate?
I can't remember.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We, we interview a lotof people that came in.
Chemistry did.

(01:15):
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We didn't talk about the oldcollege degree, but, Kelly's one
of the, the unique individualsin our industry who I think came
into the industry through thisidea of the gaming community.
and it's been a threadthroughout her career.
Yeah.
From That's very fascinating.
Yeah.
Just being on the, verymuch on the indie side.
Still kind of on the Indieside, but on the institutional

(01:36):
finance part of the indie side,which, occup occupy, occupies
some rare air, partnered upwith her good buddy, Ed Fries.
So, really great conversation.
Really great to be able toget, Kelly onto the podcast.
You're gonna love it.
What's happeningwith you, Aaron?
What's going onBesides, besides your.
Irritable Cabbage syndrome.

(01:56):
Yeah, I know.
Maybe you don't wantto talk about that.

Aaron (01:58):
I think I'm getting old.
'cause I'm like, man,cabbage is delicious.
I'm like, what the heck?
I've been like grilling itup and stuff with like meat.
Really?
Is that what you'redoing with it?
Yeah.
And I put some balsamicvinegar on there and like
other spices and then meats.
Look at you foodie McGee.
That sounds pretty good.
And then, yeah, it's like,holy moly, this is delicious.

(02:20):
and then with potatoes andthen with, have you gone vegan?
No, I ate meat.
My brother kills a lotof animals and gives
him, gives me the meat.
So I have a lot of, I havea lot of super organic meat.
Not everybody knows that.
That's where themeat comes from.
Speaking of, hey, what do youthink about hunting games?

(02:40):
Have you ever playeda hunting game before?
Like when you go hunting deer?
So like,

Alex (02:45):
briefly?
oh yeah,

Aaron (02:47):
we did.

Alex (02:47):
I

Aaron (02:47):
remember those.
It's not really

Alex (02:48):
my jam, you know.

Aaron (02:50):
We did it once.
Right.
We were in industrialtoys when we were doing
some r and d. That's whenI first played that way.
Yeah.
We looked like deer hunter.
Yeah, I remember Deer Hunter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Deer hunter.
Surprisingly.
Really good game.

Alex (03:00):
You know, it's, that's actually really interesting.
Like, I'll play, an FPSbattlefield, you know,
soldiers, whatever.
But it's like you, they're

Aaron (03:09):
hunting the animals, like,

Alex (03:11):
yeah.
Yeah.

Aaron (03:11):
So you're okay with head shotting?
A a, a father of five?
No, but that guy's probably afucker, you know, it's like,
he's like, he has differentpolitical views and he's a
mean, he's, he's horrible.
No.
Okay.
But see, it's a digital, but be

Alex (03:24):
the cute little, that'd be

Aaron (03:27):
the cute little deer.
And then they like these,some of these deer hunter
games do like x-ray.
You have to shoot'em in the heart.
Oh.
And like they show youthe organs and stuff.
Yeah.
And

Alex (03:36):
that's fun.
What I wanted to say, I guess.

Aaron (03:38):
Huh?
You like that?
Well, it's, it's, the point wasthat it's actually fun gameplay.
I don't like the setting.
I'm, I agree with you.
It's kind of weird,like, you know.
And I don't know why.
It's weird, but it is.
and I can't explain whygoing into battlefield and,
and killing 50 humans isnot, it's not weird anyways.

(04:01):
But I had this, thisexperience where I'm like,
wow, this is really fun.
And then I, I, that gamechanged how I look at other
games, for example, like.
There's, there's drivinggames like Snow Runner, right.
These games you would neverplay, but, but they're
actually phenomenal.
Like they'reactually really good.

(04:22):
you know, and but the butthe setting isn't something

Alex (04:25):
that you naturally gravitate to.

Aaron (04:26):
Yeah, exactly.
You know, kind oflike, but just as a

Alex (04:29):
game, it's a really fun, like mechanically or just like,
you know, the meta, whatever.
It's just, it's really fun.
But it's not your style.

Aaron (04:36):
It's not my style, but, yeah.
But there's a good game play.
Like, have you everplayed TRO, for example?
Oh yeah.
I love tro.
Yeah.
So I like card stuff, butthat's a game that like my.
Brother Pro.
Let me just say family memberprobably won't play your, your

Alex (04:49):
animal killing brother.
But he probablywouldn't play tro.
Is that what you're, what didyou have for lunch today, sir?
What did I, I had, oh,I had some leftovers.
It was chicken, youknow, an animal meat.
Okay.
And dead animal.
Little, little kaba.
I made, I made somechicken kebab last time.
Chicken Kabbalah?
Yeah.
No kebab.

(05:09):
Kebab.
Come on.
I, I'm just sayingthat like the indie, I

Aaron (05:12):
think it's connected to

Alex (05:13):
like the, you know, you what?
I'm starting to feel alittle bad, you know?
'cause Kelly's probablylistening to this episode
'cause it's her episode.
And this is the intro.
Sorry, Kelly.

Aaron (05:22):
This is great.

Alex (05:23):
What are you talking about?
It's good.
Is this good?
Actually, I'm not sorry, Kelly.
This is probably thebest one we've ever done.

Aaron (05:28):
I bet you have.
Kelly played honey.
I don't think one of thehunting games she'd like it.

Alex (05:34):
You think so?
I think so.
I'm gonna follow up on that.
Yeah, we should.
All right.
Enjoy our conversationwith Kelly Wallack.
It's a good one.
And we shall see youon the other side.
Welcome to thisweek's Fourth Curtain.
Friends, today we welcometo the program, the one
and only Kelly Wallick.
I have gotten to know Kellyover the last couple of years

(05:55):
as our game studio is a part ofher investment funds portfolio.
How lucky are we?
Kelly is an investor andpartner at One-Up Ventures,
and she's also the CEO andfounder of the Indie Mega Booth.
And for many years wasthe chairperson of the
Independent Games Festival.
I had a game, that was partof the, IGF and the really

(06:19):
one that I, I personallymade, but I was invite Yeah.
Advising a student team,that, had, I have, I have
a. Look at that computer.
I have it right back there.
Showcase winner.
hey, the devil's tuning fork.
Oh, devil.
Nice.
And then, Octo dadwas the Oh yeah, Phil.
Same program.

(06:40):
Year, year after.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So huge fan.
Huge fan.
Great.
yeah, me too.
Yeah.
Great to see you, Kelly.

Kelly (06:47):
Yeah.
Good to see you.
How are you?
Thanks so much for the invite.

Alex (06:48):
Where, where, where are you, you know, in the, in
the pre-roll you were talkingabout your setup and the sun
setting, so I don't thinkyou're on the west Coast.

Kelly (06:58):
No.
So I'm technically okay.
I'm currently, I'm on anEast Coast time zone, but
I am currently in Barbados.
so I'm really, I'm reallyclose to the equator and so
something that I didn't realizeabout it is that the days are
basically always 12 hours long.
Kind of like, it's like slightlylonger in the summer, but like
by like an hour or something.
So the sun basically like risesand sets here the same time

(07:19):
essentially all year round.
So it's kind of like six to six.

Alex (07:22):
You're really roughing it.
yeah, it's terrible.
Andactually, you know, maybe that's
a, that's not a bad place tostart because you know, I have
gotten to hang out with youa little bit and I remember
you telling me at one point,and I don't know if this is
still the case for you, thatyou were kind of, I don't
know if you called it sort oflike a nomadic lifestyle, but
like not necessarily havingexactly a home base in your.

Kelly (07:45):
Yeah.

Alex (07:46):
And moving around.
Is that, are youstill doing that?

Kelly (07:48):
Yeah, kind of.
I mean, Barbados is a littlebit of the home base now.
if I, if I take it way back, Igrew up in a military family.
So we moved like basicallyall the time, like every
probably two or three years.
And then when my parentsdivorced, we moved to
Pennsylvania, which iswhere my family is from.
So I spent a decent amount oftime there through high school.
And then I went tocollege at Penn State.

(08:10):
but basically after that I just,I am like moving constantly.
I think I'm really like, kindof used to it and I like it
and I like the novelty andI like being in new places
and I really enjoy traveling.
and so when I first startedup the mega booth, I had
been living in Boston at thetime, well, Cambridge, but
Boston, proud and independentRepublic of Cambridge.
And I decided I wantedto like, travel a bunch

(08:31):
while I was doing it.
And I didn't reallyneed to be anywhere.
and I was gonnastart my own company.
And it was like, one of thefun things about this is
like, I don't need an office.
I don't need a home.
I don't like, you know,have kids and a car and a
house and all this stuff.
so I put all my things at mymom's house in Pennsylvania and
then I just kinda like livedall over the world for a good,
like maybe four, four-ish years.

(08:53):
Three or four years.
but,

Alex (08:55):
but this was back at the beginning of Indie Mega Booth.
So pre COVID, right?

Kelly (08:58):
Yeah, yeah.
Way pre COVID.
Okay.
So people

Alex (09:01):
weren't doing this really?
No.
This must have beenvery much a novelty.

Kelly (09:05):
Yeah, there wasn't even a name for it.
Now it's like digital nomad.
I just was like, I mean, notthat I was like, I'm homeless.
Just like I don't, I don'tlike live somewhere, you know?
Like I would go homeand stay at my mom's
place between traveling,

Alex (09:16):
billing address, but.
What do you do?
Yeah, I think it through

Kelly (09:20):
everything is at my mom's house.
And actually it's funnybecause like I use it, the
mega booth is like, that'slike the home office basically.
You know, like all of my mailhas gone there for like many
years because I'm, I'm changingaddresses so often, even when I
wasn't traveling that like, it'sthe only place that I have that
is like permanent enough that I.
Get access to stuff regularly.
So like, my mom also dida ton of administrative

(09:42):
work for the mega booth.
So she was like, she ran ourpayroll and like helped me keep
track of all the paperwork.
And she like has anemail address there.
So like people used to joke andcall her Diane from payroll.
And so like my mom, my mom like,kind of helped run the mega
booth and still, still doeslike all my mail goes there.
Can we, people would

Alex (10:00):
joke like, like, like business associates
or like friends and familywould call your Yeah.
Your mom Diane from payroll.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Can we, can we tellthe listeners what the
Indie Mega Booth is?
Yes.
That's a good, good.
yes, please do.

Kelly (10:12):
The short version, it's like a showcase for
independent game developers.
it ran for about 10 years.
we closed it downwhen COVID happened.
'cause it was very event-based.
I'll talk aboutthat in a second.
and we tried to do a little bitof a reboot a few years ago, but
it just didn't pan out really.
and so now it's just kind oflike permanently in hiatus.
but.

(10:33):
The kind of like flow for itwas that people would submit
their games to us, we wouldreview them, we would make a
selection, and then we wouldhelp them showcase at consumer
facing events generally.
So we had, big events thatwe would do at PAX East
and PAX West each year.
we had a small showcasethat we did at GDC.
we used to co organize an event,in Kyoto called Bit Summit.

(10:54):
and we had a megaBooth showcase there.
and then we would kind of dovarious things like around
Europe or Asia or just kind oflike as, as invited, I guess.
it, but the kind of likelongstanding ones where
PAX East and PAX West,and GDC and we showcased.
Oh my God, I think it was likeover 800 companies and maybe
a thousand games, I think inthe 10 years that it have ran.

(11:16):
Wow.
Yeah.
And so it also kind ofbecame a community, which is
something that's like kindof a thread throughout my
work, and a like a way forpeople kinda like a stepping
stone into the industry.
So we did a lot of thingsaround like connecting people
up with like platform holdersand publishers and funders,
but also each other, youknow, like other people, that

(11:37):
were also making indie games.
and we had a lot of like,grant and scholarship programs.
We did a lot of advocacy workto like help, like new and
up and coming people, makeit in the games industry.
And so it, it's kind of likea, I don't know, like a little
like kind of festival insideof conferences, but then also
like external to that it waslike a way for people to get
to know each other and kindof navigate, making games

(12:00):
together in the industry.

Alex (12:01):
That is awesome.
no, it really is.
But I'm, I'm curious likethe, how did it start?
Were you like, and actuallymaybe let's rewind a little bit.
Yeah.
Just based between moving aroundmilitary, family, Pennsylvania
and Indie mega Booth, whatwas, what happened in there?

(12:22):
Like, did you growup with games?
Did you, did you school,was there tech games stuff?

Kelly (12:28):
Yeah, so actually I grew up playing games.
my dad was really intocomputers and, I learned
like how to use computersfrom a really young age.
So I learned how to likeprogram, you know, out
of like books and stuff.
I used to be ableto program in qba.
I'm like not a good programmer,but it's like, I, I understand.
I actually liked learning it.
if you have AI

Alex (12:48):
now, you're, you're a great programmer.

Kelly (12:50):
I know.
I've actually been messingaround with it to try.
I made a lemonadestand, Gabe and Gau.
Nice.
Yeah.
Which was nice.
But I was like, you stillkind of need, even for me,
I was like, I still need.
Like, there was still stuffI had to go into and be
like, okay, this didn't,it didn't do it right.
Yeah.
yeah.
But I was really fascinated withcomputers and all through like
middle school and high school,I actually like learned some,
like, there was like computerclasses at my school and stuff.

(13:12):
And so, you know, I tookthose and my dad would
like, take apart computersand show us like how they
physically worked and stuff.

Alex (13:18):
What, what was his, what was his job?

Kelly (13:20):
He was in the Marines, but he was going to like,
I think he was doing hispostgraduate or some, some
sort of graduate schoolwork in like mathematics.
and he, like, he liked computersand I think, you know, was like
learning about them kind of atthe same time that the military,
I think was developing like theinternet, like when they used it

(13:41):
in like the Pentagon and stuff.
So he like would talkabout this thing.
Okay.
You know, that was like, not.
Not real at the time.

Alex (13:48):
I remember my, my uncle, worked in the, for defense
contractors doing, I knowhe worked on the Polaris
submarine, which Oh, crazy.
Crazy.
Yeah.
But when we first got our firstcomputer, the only thing he
cared about was if we got amodem for you kids modems was
how you could connect to anothercomputer back in the day.

(14:10):
So yeah.
When you're just talking aboutthe beginning of the internet
and your right, your dadhaving that kind of exposure
and sounds like maybe kind oflike a. Techy, nerdy kind of.

Kelly (14:19):
Yeah.
And like

Alex (14:21):
interest.
That makes a lot of sense there.

Kelly (14:23):
Yeah.
And like we had, he had likethe house kind of like run up
with all this like wiring cableand stuff to get internet.
Like when it was firstpublicly available when we were
living in Northern Virginia.
This was before my parentsdivorced, when my life
became like very different.
but you know, like we, yeah,we had the mo, we had all
this stuff and I racked upan insane bill 'cause it
was like by the hour andI was like, I was like 11.

(14:46):
You had to go talk to DiDiane from accounting Yeah.
Diane for payroll.
I got, yeah, I got, it's,I mean, I said a cr like I
would sneak down at nightand like also the internet
had like 50 web pages.
So, you know, I would likeread them all, spend all
this time on my computer.
but I got, I got ina lot of trouble.
I got banned from theinternet for a couple months.
yeah.
But video games were alwayskind of like a part of that too.

(15:09):
Like, you know, wealways had like.
Nintendo and my Uncle Atari,and I think there was like
a fascination with it.
but I mostly play PC games.
Like I'm, I really likemanagement simulation games.
Like I've played theSims basically since
the day it came out.
city builders, allthat kind of stuff.
mm-hmm.
My, my dad considered citybuilders, like educational
games or like sim games.

(15:29):
Yeah.
Like kind of educational games.
So it was like sim spenta lot of time on those.
Sim City or were there,

Alex (15:34):
were there other ones besides Sim City
that you were into?
Oh my

Kelly (15:36):
God.
There's like, there's sim,an sim tower, SIM Earth.
There were a lot ones.
Yeah.
Any, yeah.
Anything of the word sim in it.
A lot of like, I don't know ifyou remember these, they were
like reader rabbit and, there'sone like, with people solving
mysteries and stuff aboutdinosaurs and just like, we had
one where you can make dinosaursand it would print it out on
a printer, but it was like ados, you know, like the, like

(15:58):
the printers that would like golike this for like 20 minutes.
Yep.
Yep.
so yeah, a lot ofthese, so no control.
Mostly Nintendo.
So like, started off with justregular Nintendo and then,
yeah, we kind of stayed aNintendo family all the way up
through, and I had a PlayStationin, or PS two in college.
and then I had a 360, I think.

(16:20):
But mostly I think by thattime I just sort of gave
up on playing consoles.
I just played on pc.
'cause most of the kinds ofgames that I play like don't
really work well on console.
And also they're kindof expensive and hard to
like carry around withyou all over the place.
And at some point I waslike, this is, I don't know,
there's too many buttons.
It's gonna a little complicated.

Alex (16:39):
Might not be that, that close to an outlet.
Okay.
Yeah.
Understood.

Kelly (16:42):
But I actually, I worked at a EB games when
I was in college, which waslike, they got bought by
GameStop later, but if anybodyremembers EB games, electronics

Alex (16:51):
Boutique.
Yes.
That was the eb.
Yeah.

Kelly (16:54):
Yeah.
And that was around the timethat I, I forget the switch, the
original switch was launching.
And that was like crazy.
There was also like some stuffwith like, wait, like World
Warcraft And Did you say you

Alex (17:06):
were in, in college when the switch came out?
Is that what I just heard?
Yeah, I think it was

Kelly (17:10):
the switch.
Yeah.

Alex (17:11):
Oh, you're so young.

Aaron (17:14):
That was like 10 years ago, right?
Seven, eight years.

Kelly (17:19):
Yeah.
I was in college, so Igraduated in 2001 from high
school, so it was kinda likelate, late college for me.
okay.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, so I, I workedat like a video game store,
which was fun, you know, andI got to learn a bunch about
games and stuff then and, yeah.
And always, yeah,always played them.

(17:40):
But I actually went to schoolfor chemistry, so I went to
school for sciences and Oh,

Alex (17:44):
that's right.
I've read this.
You, I have a BS in chemistry.

Kelly (17:48):
I do.
Yeah.

Alex (17:50):
My, my daughter just graduated with a, a BA in
chemistry, but she's headingto, grad school to get PhD.

Kelly (17:57):
Oh, that's great.
Yeah.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah, so it was,

Alex (18:00):
she was gonna thinking about doing this independent
games festival thing or a PhD,

Kelly (18:04):
you know, it was weird.

Alex (18:05):
And it went, it went

Kelly (18:06):
with the PhD.

Aaron (18:08):
So why chemistry?
Yes.

Kelly (18:11):
well, so I really liked computers.
I felt like I was okay atprogramming, but I didn't
really like the mathpart of it all that much.
And I really liked, withchemistry that you could
like physically do stuff.
Like, I think I'm more ofa hands-on kinda learner.
Also, computers and computerscience and all that stuff
was like a little new.
And so it wasn't likeclear what the jobs were.
It was like, you could kindof go for computer science or

(18:32):
you could go for like, likeit, you know, like kind of
like tech work with computers.
And I wasn't sure if Iwanted to do either of those.
And so I was just like, oh,well, like being a scientist is
like, I enjoy the like, physicalcomponent of it a bit more.
And it seems like it's a jobthat's like, will be around,
you know, like it wasn'tclear to me whether computers
would be like a job or not.

(18:53):
and so yeah, so I decidedto go in for chemistry
and then, I worked, I justgot my bachelor's degree.
Took me a little whileto go through college.
I got my bachelor's degreeand then when I graduated
I worked at a, startup thatwas at like founded by some
grad students at Penn State.
worked there for a little bitand then I got a job at MIT,

(19:15):
which is why I moved to Boston.
So I was, managing one ofthese, it was like a chemical
engineering lab, but it was kindof doing interdisciplinary work
and focused a lot more on, likebiotech, kind of before they
had biotech like, biochemistry,like specific programs there.
there's a whole crazy storythat goes along with that.
And then I worked at anotherstartup, that got founded

(19:38):
kind of out of that lab thatI was doing some research in.
And then at that point Iwas like, I don't, I was
like, I don't know whatI'm doing with land life.
Like, I wasn't sure if I liked,like my career I like was
looking into doing food science.
There was a lot of stuff I likedabout it, but like, unless I
went back to school and gotlike a graduate, like a PhD
or did my postdoc or I starteda biotech company, which was
something I was actually lookinginto at the time that I was

(20:00):
like looking about doing games.

Aaron (20:03):
doing what?
Biotech.
Doing what Like cyber eyes?
Yeah,

Kelly (20:08):
cyber actually.
So le less exciting than that.
It was kind of morepharmaceutical related.
'cause I had a lot ofspecialized training,
and these things calledbioreactors, which is what
you use to like, grow, growthe stuff that you use to make
pharmaceutical stuff basically.
I mean, that's a very highlevel, unintelligent way to
say it, but it's like a, avery kinda like, yeah, it's
a, a really specialized areaand not a lot of people at

(20:30):
the time had experience in it.
And so, I think my originalidea was like put like pulling
together some of the peoplethat I liked working with
and doing some like consult,like consulting stuff.
And then potentially some like,you know, I don't know, building
some things out of that.
'cause like I said, I likedthe building component of it.
yeah.
And then my youngest sister, shewent to school for electrical

(20:51):
engineering, but then reallygot into programming and she was
also in Boston and so she hadwanted to start a game studio
and she was like, there's allthese game meetups in Boston.
But she was like, I don'treally wanna go by myself
'cause I don't know anybody.
And so she's like, willyou come, will you come
to these meetups with me?
and so I started going tomeetups with her and also,
we went to PAC Feast, likethe very first one that they

(21:12):
had when it was still inthe Heinz Convention Center.
yeah.
And I just reallylove the people.
Like, I, I don't know,it was kinda like I
found my people, I guess.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Like going to these eventsand I really loved it.
And so.
I got a job at a contract shopin like, outside of Boston
and learned like projectmanagement and got more involved

(21:33):
in like learning how likesoftware development works.
And we did some game stuff,but also, like, you know,
work for hire things like, youknow, enterprise software and
websites and games with randomIP that don't make sense, you
know, just kind of whatever.

Alex (21:51):
but it wasn't, it wasn't a like a per se game studio.
It's like a No.
A outsourcing,

Kelly (21:56):
yeah.

Alex (21:56):
Company that was doing programming and.

Kelly (21:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So

Alex (22:00):
stuff that intersected games.
Got it.
Okay.
Right.

Kelly (22:03):
Yeah.
And we did some games work,but it was like, kind of like,
I, I would, I don't know, theywere small, small projects
and kind of like mm-hmm.
For higher things.
Like they weren't, youknow, like internally
kind of like designed anddeveloped sort of thing.
and then that was around thetime when I started, yeah,
organizing the mega boothsand getting more involved
in like, the communitybuilding side of stuff.
And so, eventually thatbecame more work than

(22:26):
what my day job was.
And it seemed fun andit was kind of gaining
popularity and I was like,okay, this is my chance.
I can like, finally start acompany, you know, like, which
I've always wanted to do.
so I quit that job about likemaybe two years in, and I ran
the mega booth full time forlike about 10 years after that.

Alex (22:42):
So this, how, how far outta college were you when
you started Mega Booth?

Kelly (22:48):
it was a while.
'cause I think I was like 28or something when I started it.
Okay.
So I, yeah.
So

Alex (22:56):
you did a couple jobs.

Kelly (22:57):
Yeah.
A

Alex (22:58):
couple startups.

Kelly (22:59):
Yeah.

Alex (23:00):
Started going to PAX.
Is your sisterworking in games now?

Kelly (23:05):
Yeah, she is.
She works at, inter slot.
She's like one of their,like lead programmers.
Oh yeah.
Oh,

Alex (23:11):
right on.

Kelly (23:12):
Yeah,

Alex (23:13):
they're awesome.
yeah.
Hey, are they in your portfolio?

Kelly (23:17):
no.
No.

Alex (23:18):
No.
Okay.
What's actually funny

Kelly (23:19):
is they also submitted to the mega
booth and we rejected them.
Ah, I'll explain my reasons.
But it's definitely one of thosethings where it's like, it's
the proof that like, if anybodytells you that they know what's
going on and they can predicta hit, like they're full of it.
Even, even people doit professionally.
I feel like, sorry, I was

Aaron (23:37):
gonna ask you about that.
What was the criteria toget into the mega booth?
Like, what was like the goal?
Like the, did y'all wannahave like a, like was there
like a, we were gonna havethese kinds of games only,
or, and obviously Indie.

Kelly (23:49):
Yeah.
Was

Aaron (23:49):
there, like, what were y'all looking for?

Kelly (23:51):
Yeah, so it was really kind of, it's interesting
'cause it's kind of similarto the thesis for the One Up
Fund slightly, where it waslike we were kind of trying
to create a snapshot ofwhat the games industry was.
I mean, that we kindof backed into that.
But, when we first starteddoing it, it's interesting
'cause I, I don't think ofmyself as someone who's like,
like would be doing curation orsomething, or, or like, because

(24:13):
it's almost like a, yeah,it's like a curatorial role.
And when people, when westarted getting more games
than we had space for or, youknow, that I, I didn't know
what to do with everything.
I was like, okay, we need tostart like, 'cause at first
it just sort of started offwith like a group of people
that were like in the industrythat knew each other that
was like, you know, allhad kind of quality games.
And then as word spread morepeople that like we didn't know

(24:34):
or weren't familiar with theirprojects were like interested.
And so we started buildingwhat became like a fairly
complex like curatorial system.
But I remember people likewould play because I was
enlisting help from peopleand they would play the games.
They're like, well, Idon't like this game, or I
don't like the genre game.
And I'm like, well, thisis not the games that
you like showcase, right?
Like, this is meant tobe like a showcase for

(24:54):
like everybody, right?
and it kind of gave me thisperspective on like, how
do you view, how do youview things through lots of
different lenses, you know?
And so it was kind of acombination of trying to get
good representation of, ofkind of what we thought was
going on in the industry atthe time, and then also sort
of bumping up the stuff thatwe wanted to see more of.

(25:15):
and then kind of likehighlighting trends and like
I said, like doing kind ofbehind the scenes advocacy work
to like get, you know, morein different kinds of voices
involved in the industry.
you know, and with this,the case of among us.
So that game I think, hadbeen out for a little while.
You know, we played it,we actually had a couple
discussions about it.
but one of the things wasthat like getting internet at

(25:35):
the show is really expensive.
And also, doing like a, likea local network hookup thing
would like kind of work.
But games like that alsotended to show really well
on the conference floor.
'cause it's like you get allyour friends and you're at a
conference and you're having agood time and you play the game.
And then these games would comeout and just like flop, you
know, because it was like, theywere like, oh, it was like, it

(25:57):
seems so popular at the show.
Right.
But it was like, becausethe, the experience and the
circumstances were like notable to be recreated at home.
So there's like a couplethings going on with it.
And we tended not to show stuffthat had been out for a while
or, you know, there's like kindof a bunch of like random, like
external criteria that just wentinto like, okay, like how can
we help to like call this out?

(26:18):
and you know, but generallywe were really looking to
try to like, yeah, get a goodrepresentation of, of what
we thought was was going on.
And also just to helpto like support as many
teams doing like cool andinteresting things as possible.
I used to have an unofficialmotto for the mega booth.
Which I refined a littlebit later was like, I don't
wanna work with assholes.
Mm-hmm.

(26:38):
So it was kind of like,I was like, I'm gonna
have my own company.
That's a good

Alex (26:41):
motto for anyone.
That's a pretty good criteria.
Yeah.

Kelly (26:44):
Yeah.

Alex (26:44):
So

Kelly (26:45):
I was like, if I'm gonna have my own company,
like I wanna work with likecool people, you know, and
like, I want, I want to like,yeah, I wanna enjoy the time
that I'm putting into this andlike supporting the kinds of
people and projects and stuffthat I wanna see in the world.
So we would also say no tothings that were like cool
games, but seemed like,you know, there's a lot of
like, issues with the teamor, you know, whatever.
just because I was like, it'snot really like, it's not

(27:07):
worth it at that point for me.
Not worth it.

Aaron (27:08):
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Can I ask a question?
Sorry.
Yeah.
Come on Alex.
I know.
Go ahead.
I all the time.
Alex.
Alex.
Okay.
So this Alex might knowthe answer to this.
I don't think people listeningknow the answer to this.
And I sure as hell don't knowthe answer to this, which
is like, too, I know the

Kelly (27:27):
answer.

Aaron (27:28):
I'm Yeah, you definitely know the answer.
Okay.
And if you don't wannaanswer this, it's okay.

Kelly (27:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.

Aaron (27:33):
Because I'm trying to figure it out.
'cause I, I just gotback from GenCon and I
understand when people haveBooth there, like Yeah.
What they're doing.
How does, how does theIndie mega Booth make money?
If that, like, solike, Hey, I was

Kelly (27:47):
gonna ask that same

Alex (27:48):
question.
Do we're connected?
Well, I was gonna ask it alittle differently, which is
Yeah, because I'm, I'm gonnapile on Aaron's question.
Okay.
Because it, 'cause the wayyou introduced the beginning
of Indie Mega Booth is yousaid, this was my opportunity
to start a company.
I always wanted tostart a company.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
which, the way I hear that is,you know, there's also sorts

(28:08):
of really cool, great outcomescoming from Indie Mega Booth,
but the impetus for startingit was, Hey, it's a business.
so was it a. Was that likethe number one intention?
Like

Kelly (28:20):
not really.
I call it company now, we gonnacall company it this thing

Alex (28:22):
or company?
No, and

Kelly (28:24):
I mean, it never really made money.
So, so if it wasn't, if itwas a business, it was a a,
I mean, it was successfulas, and it was stable.
But I think that, so when Ilook back at it now, I'm like,
I wanted to start a company, butwhen I say I wanted to start a
company, what I actually meantwas I wanna work for myself and
I wanna be in charge of things.
And I was like, I think the,one of the things that I
hate the most is like, makingother people's mistakes.

(28:45):
And so, like working injobs where I was having to
do things like, you know,that were being dictated
by other people, I alwayssort of struggled with it.
you know, I, I mentioneda little bit of this, but
like, once my parents gotdivorced, our financial
situation changed drastically.
and you know, we grew uppretty poor and so I had
had a lot of like, hours,like my first job was at
a McDonald's and I've beenworking since I was a teenager.

(29:05):
And it's like a lot of like,you know, like people telling
you what to do on hours thatyou don't like, and just a
bunch of this kind of like,it feels very constricting.
And so the idea of.
Being able to like run my ownbusiness was more about like
the freedom that I felt likethat was gonna give me, and also
the opportunity to just like,basically do whatever I wanted.
You know, like I'm like,I can leave my stuff in my

(29:25):
mom's basement and travelthe world, you know, and like
work and like, nobody's gonnahassle me about like whether
I'm answering emails at theright time or something.
'cause like that'smy decision now.
Yeah.
so it was a littlemore about that.
And then also I justthought that the
opportunity was really neat.
Like it was this thing that kindof was coming about in my life.
'cause the first time that Iran it, it was just a little
bit more to like get toknow people in the industry

(29:46):
and like learn about it.
and so at, at the time, there'sa studio in, Boston called Fire
Hose Games and a AAN runs it.
And he had been kind of liketalking to people about putting
together this like, indiespace but didn't really wanna
like, logistically run it.
And I was like, oh,well I'll run it.
'cause I'm like curious,you know, like to meet
more people and likelearn about the industry.

(30:08):
and so I had kind of doneit as like an experiment
and then people reallyseemed to enjoy it.
And so I was like, okay,well I'll do it again.
and then it just kind of keptlike snowballing from there.
So it was a little bitmore like, I had like
followed this, the threadof this thing that seemed
to be picking up traction.
And I was also like soliciting.
And I still do that.
Like, I like to solicit advicefrom people and from the
community about like, whatdo they actually want outta

(30:29):
this, you know, and like, whatworks and what doesn't work?
So I didn't really think of it.
I mean, I didn't even call it abusiness or a company for like,
probably six or seven years.
Like, I really didn't likethe idea that I was like doing
something capitalist, you know?
Mm-hmm.
I was pretty disdainful of theidea of earning money, which is
like a whole other thing now.

(30:49):
What's your

Alex (30:49):
title?

Kelly (30:50):
I know, I know, I know.
My journey on my relationshipwith money is like a very
long, that's, we do not havetime for all this podcast.
That's one of my

Alex (30:56):
questions.
Podcast.

Kelly (30:57):
Yeah.
But, but so it,

Alex (30:58):
it, it obviously sustained itself for many years.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah.

Kelly (31:01):
So, so the way that we ended up.
The financial motto isbasically a sponsorship based.
And so we had sponsors likeXbox and PlayStation and
stuff, and and they would,the, those sponsorships
covered the cost of staffessentially throughout the year.
And then all of the boothspaces were just paid
outright by the teams.
like I said, we had grant andscholarship programs that were

(31:21):
run through other sponsors thatwe would use to help offset
those costs, like when we could.
but basically we werejust sort of like a middle
person, for like the actualsale of the show floor.
We negotiated like discountson the spacing and, you know,
like where we were located.
And we also helped to like.
Basically coordinate all ofthe timing on the orders.
'cause like, if you've evershown at a conference before,

(31:43):
it's like there's an a crazyamount of stuff that you don't
know, that you don't knowuntil you like, are getting
into the process and there'sa lot of deadlines and unions
and vendors and rules and likestuff that you just, oh yeah.
And you're like, youknow, you're like, what?
Where do I buy signage?
And so like, we kind of likeended up with, like kind
of a, a, you know, a pileof vendors that we liked

(32:03):
working with people thatwere through the conference.
And then we would have amailing list, like in the lead
up to it where everybody wouldshare, like, you know, ask each
other questions and say like,okay, like for people who've
done this before, like, is thepadding on the carpet worth it?
And like, you know, whatsize TV should I get?
And so like, people wouldhelp each other out,
in the process of it.
So it really made it likea lot more, not turnkey.

(32:24):
'cause we were, we had anarea called the Mini Booth.
It was a little moreturnkey, but it was kinda
like helping people.
Navigate this in the easiestway possible so they could
just show up and like,hopefully be successful.
you know, and over time itbecame like a draw for press
and, you know, publisherswould do walkthroughs and
we'd walk through with oursponsors and so it was really
kind of like, you know, thisis sort of all in one package.

(32:46):
Yeah.
and we would run networkingevents and stuff outside of
that, like, you know, partiesand stuff during, during the
thing, with our sponsors and,but yeah, it was, it was all
sponsorship based and so wewere pretty like break even,
you know, like I think we werekind of functionally running
as a nonprofit for a long time,even though we weren't, and
like every six months I wasessentially fundraising for like
10 years, which when I look backat it, I'm like, that's bananas.

(33:08):
But we never really got toa point where we could grow.
And that was somethingI'd been thinking about
in the, in the year or twoleading up to the pandemic.
And I had actually like,started thinking of
it more as a business.
And you know, after,after almost a decade I'm
like, what am I doing?
You know, here, like I was like,at least I was starting to pay
myself and you know, like I was,it was like, it was, you know,
be able to like support me andstuff, but I was like, what

(33:30):
is, what is my end goal here?
You know, like, whatam I doing with this?
And like, can Iretire off of this?
You know what I mean?
Like what am what'shappening here?
and so I'd been exploringways about trying to fundraise
or potentially like sell itor do do something with it.
And I was kind of in themiddle of all of that when
the pandemic happened.
And then at that pointI was pretty burnt
out to say the least.
And like, it just kind offelt like the hand of God

(33:51):
came down and was like, stop.
And I was like, okay, I'll stop.
So it never really kind oflike, like I was able to support
myself for a little bit afterthat and I had had some savings
and, you know, so, and we didthis like, steam sale that we
organized at the end, whichpeople were super gracious
about, like donating into.
and so that let me like,give the staff like a couple

(34:13):
months of severance, whichwasn't something, you know,
that we had saved up for.
And so it was kinda likea, a smooth landing,
I guess, in the end.
but it never really,yeah, I don't know.
It, it was like in thisweird stasis point Yeah.
Where it was like we kindof didn't have the time and
money and resources to grow.
And every time that we triedto do it, it would just get
like sideswiped by like, wellnow we have a priority of

(34:34):
like a new conference and newsponsors and stuff like that.
and it's still somethingthat like, I think, not that
I like struggle with, but Ijust think that like my, my.
The way that I deal withmoney is like, it's money
and money out, right?
Like it's, I think the ideaof like borrowing or like,
like spending against futurestuff and like the things that
I feel like you might need todo or like take investment or

(34:55):
something to like grow as acompany is something that I
think, especially at the time Iwas like really not financially
comfortable with like, the ideaof having debt or something.
To me it was like, mm-hmm.
It was like, no.

Alex (35:05):
What was that you think, a part of how you
grew up, you know, you weretalking about the financial
situation growing up and how,how you always had a job and

Kelly (35:15):
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, it was like,yeah, it was pretty broke
for a very long time.
Getting through collegeis really difficult.
I've struggled a lot with it,you know, like, it was like,
am I paying rent or am I buyingfood and am I paying my bills?
You know, and like my familydidn't really have money that I
could borrow off of them either.
And so it was kind ofthis like, there wasn't a

(35:35):
safety net in it, you know?
and I had to go and a decentamount of debt to make
my way through college.
And so then when I gotout and I kind of on.
Like, got myself outta that.
I was like, I still don't do it.
You know, like, I'm like, Istill, I have, I have no, you
know, like I think I, I mightget a car loan again soon.
you know, but like, otherthan that, I'm just like,

(35:56):
I'm very, and, and I thinkalso too, the idea of like
handling, like the volume ofmoney that we were handling,
even just for like the showswas like more than I had like
ever seen in my life or like,you know, anybody in my family
had ever seen in their life.
And so it was just like, Iwas like, I don't know what
to do with this kind of stuff.
and it's funny getting intotech stuff and, I mean, not,
not as much games, but thereis a lot of this in games

(36:17):
and in tech in general aslike, I don't know too many
people who grew up in the samefinancial situation that I had.
And so it's kind of hardto like, I'm like, where
do you, I don't know.
Like I had to learn a bunchof stuff along the way and
kind of fake my understandingof like the world and the
social etiquette of like,being in these spaces and
going to dinners that werelike, to me, an insane
amount of money, you know?

(36:39):
And so it waskinda like a whole.
A whole weird learningprocess that like completely

Alex (36:43):
different ends of the spectrum, back then way.

Kelly (36:47):
Yeah,

Alex (36:48):
I wanna

Aaron (36:49):
hear about that.
Like,

Kelly (36:50):
what do you mean?
Like I totally knowwhat these forks do.
Yeah.
Basically the

Alex (36:56):
for thing.

Kelly (36:57):
Yeah.

Alex (36:59):
Alright, well, so I mean, I guess that goes
through the pandemic.
What was the timingof joining One-Up?
Was it, you know,joining up with Ed?
Was that, was there a gap?
Yes.

Kelly (37:09):
No.
So that was actually, Istarted working on the One-Up
Fund prior to the Pandemic,actually, not too much before,
but right when he founded it.
So, a mutual friend hadreached out and was like, oh,
like this guy Ed is startingthis fund and like, you
should really talk to him.
He wants to build a communityand like, I think that you
would be a good fit for it.

(37:29):
I was also still doing the IGFat the time, which was sort of
like a part-time, a part-timejob for me on the side.
So I kind of would take oncontracts to help supplement
my income at the mega Booth.
'cause like I wasn't reallygetting paid enough to like
co I was cobbling together afull salary, you know, through
a couple different things.
And,

Alex (37:46):
that's, we call that side hustle today, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.

Kelly (37:51):
Yeah.
Now there's only fancywords for this stuff.
I just used to like nothave a home and then work
digital nomad side hustle.

Alex (37:57):
Yes.
Yeah.
Sounds way better thana homeless and scraping
by on a second job.
Okay.

Kelly (38:01):
Yeah, exactly.
and so, yeah, I didn't knowEd, I didn't really know
anything about venture funds,but I was like, I'll talk to
this person, you know, and seewhat the deal is and, I really
liked, our conversation wasreally good and I feel like
we had a lot of shared valuesabout the, what we wanted to
see in the industry and, youknow, the way that he talked
about the community and stuff.

(38:22):
And, so I initially joined justpart-time to run and build a
community side, which, whichI did for a handful of years.
and so I, I did that throughthis, the early part of the
pandemic, which again, wasvery helpful because I had
to close the makeup booth.
So it was like I was stilldoing the IGF and the one up
fund, but I was kind of takinga burnout break, I guess is
like a good way to say it.

(38:43):
Like I just spent a lot oftime resting and thinking
about what I wanted to do next.
and when I felt like I waskind of ready to start working
again, we were just finishingup, making investments outta
the first fund and we're likethinking about, or you know,
presumably thinking aboutgoing into doing a second fund.
And so then that's whenI joined full-time.
So I've been full-timeor as a partner for like.

(39:06):
Three-ish years orsomething, three, four years.
And then I was doing thejust part-time community
stuff for the three orfour years before that.
So the fund's been around forsix or seven years I think now.
And like I've been there, like,I think Ed was just paying
me outright before, 'causeit wasn't like formed yet.
Like no money had come in.
And so I think, I thinkEd, but I was like, I'm
not working for free.
So I was like, so I thinkEd Good Ed made me for you.

(39:29):
Yeah.
we, we

Alex (39:30):
should maybe describe a little bit, like who Ed
is and the, and the fund.
Yeah.
So Ed is the ED Freezewho we've had on, yeah.
Was my boss episodeat Microsoft.
One of the, the, the fathergodfathers of the industry,
particularly the Xbox.
he really

Aaron (39:45):
likes fish.
You should givehim a fish present,

Kelly (39:49):
a digital, a

Aaron (39:49):
digital fish,

Kelly (39:51):
for his screensaver days.
Yeah.

Aaron (39:53):
Yeah.
We'll be right back if youlike what you're hearing like
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Aaron (43:01):
Back to the show.

Alex (43:02):
I have gotten to know a fair amount of different,
investors in, particularlyin the games industry
over the last, I don'tknow, 10, 15 years or so.
Yeah.
And your guys'approach is different.
Yeah.
Like the thesis behindhow investments are made.
I think probably the criteria,criteria around which you sort

(43:25):
of have conviction, where toinvest, and then how you're
involved with the group offolks that you invest in.
All very unique.
and I love it.
Yeah.
you want, can you justmaybe kind of like
describe some of that?
yeah, a little bit.

Kelly (43:43):
Yeah.
So, you know, like Isaid, I think there's a
lot of shared kind of.
Species or values or whatever,you know, with the mega booth.
and now that I, now that Iunderstand the VC space a bit
more and I've learned moreabout it and I see what other
people doing are doing, I, itis, yes, it is very unique.
I also really appreciate theway that Ed like set it up.
I think it was very smart.
I mean, he's a smart guy.

(44:04):
clearly I knew that when wetalked, but then later I was
like, oh, that's clearly true.
and so we make a largenumber of investments.
So we make about 50investments per a fund.
and part of the point ofthat is kind of to get like
a snapshot of the industry tohave like a broad and diverse
portfolio approach, whichis kind of similar to what
publishers will do, which is,you know, what Ed had been

(44:26):
doing partially at Microsoft.
And, and the way thatnbc, that you can do that
number of investments isto do follow on investing.
And so.
We actually, we did a talkat GDC a few years ago that
we put on the one up website.
There's, there's like four tabs.
ed and I made thiswebsite in WordPress us,
so it's very minimal.
but, but there's a linkto a video there, so if

(44:49):
anybody's watching this,it's like really interested
in learning about like, howthe VC space works for games.
We kind of did a, like anequity investing 1 0 1, talk
that like describes whata lot of this terminology
is and you know, the.
Things that you mighthear and the deal terms
and stuff like that.
So there's a thingcalled a lead investor.
When you have a priced round,which is just like a, a way

(45:10):
of, equity investing andequity investing is different
from project financing,which is kind of closer like
publishing and stuff, whichis what people are used to.
And equity is when you'rebuying like a portion of
somebody's company insteadof like getting proceeds
from a project for example.
There's a bunch of differentways you can set it up.
but a priced round, which isthe typical way that people will
raise money, has a thing calleda lead investor and they set

(45:33):
the valuation of the company,they set the deal terms, they
typically put in the most money.
and as part of that one isyou have to do a lot of work.
There's a lot oflike legal stuff.
you have to form the board,you have to have somebody
sit on the board, which,you know, somebody you can
probably sit, this is from Ed'sexperience 'cause he has more
board experience than I do.
But I would agree, youcould probably sit on six

(45:54):
or seven boards before itstarts to kind of become.
A full-time job or more.
And so if you're a leadinvestor, you have to have a
pretty big staff, to be ableto support the kinds of work
that you're doing with it.
and so there's a lot of peoplethat do follow on investing.
'cause it's just, it'stechnically easier.
It's you like the returns don'thave to be as crazy, you know,

(46:15):
like all of, like your staffcan be smaller, all the stuff.
But then, because there'sso many people doing follow
on investing, like why wouldsomebody take your money
over somebody else's money?
Because it's like, once the leadis in, then everybody's like,
oh yeah, me too, me too, me too.
You know?
So they like throwin their money.
in theory.
it's hard to raise rightnow, so I don't know how true
that is, but, so you get thelead and then the follow ons
can just kind of like Yeah.

(46:36):
Hang onto the, hang onto it.
And so one of his thoughtson this was like, how can we
get more people interestedin taking our money instead
of other people's money?
And that's where like thecommunity aspect of it comes in.
And so it's like, howcan we do a value add?
that's reallyimportant to the teams.
and then also something thatlike means a lot to both of us.
And so Ed's been part of a, adeveloper community for a long

(46:59):
time that he is found verymeaningful, that he really
loves and like this model iskind of based off of that.
And so when we first talked,you know, he like is very
passionate about what he wantedthe community to look like.
And like even kind ofdescribes it as like, we're
a community with a BC rapper.
You know, it's like thecommunity is the center part
of it and the BC thing is justthis like thing that is like
holding it together technically.

(47:21):
and you know, for me it waskind of like taking what
worked for me and what I reallyloved about the Mega Booth
and like putting that intothe concept of this founder
community, with the portfolio.
And then the very excitingthing for me was that
there was a budget.
'cause the mega boothnever had a budget.
So everything that Iever wanted to do, we
never had any money for.
but the one up fund hasmoney, which is great 'cause

(47:43):
when you run a venturefund, the way that the fund.
Administers itself.
I don't know, like pays foritself is that you get a
thing called management fees,from the overall investment
and you get that throughthe lifetime of the fund.
and so those management feesare what we use to like pay for
all the community initiatives.
And because we keep the teamsmall, we can like reinvest
a bunch of that, that moneyand resources and stuff

(48:05):
back into the community.
And so, you know, we onlyinvest in game studios.
We only invest in games content.
So it's like not tools ortechnologies or platforms
we invest globally.
You know, we investacross all genres and all
different types of founders.
And, and so in that wayit's like, it's kind of
similar to like, I guess thespirit of the mega booth.

(48:25):
yeah.
And then we connect them allup and it's, you know, they.
And talk to each other on Slackchannels and ask questions.
we run virtual meetups,we run workshops, we
do a yearly retreat.
We buy data and analytics.
You know, it's like we havepurchasing programs with
discount codes and it'sjust like everything that
we can think of to do totry to help, to support.

Alex (48:44):
And there's merch.
Hey, there's merch.
Yeah.
I got my, my hat.
Yeah.

Kelly (48:48):
Nice.
Wait until you see the notesfor the actually shirt.
Actually didn't bring

Alex (48:51):
it.
I actually justhad it on my shirt.
Oh

Kelly (48:52):
really?

Alex (48:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Every once, you know, believeit or not, I have a bad hair
day every once in a while.
I know it's hard

Kelly (48:58):
to believe.
Sometimes I'll do calls with,people from like indie studios
and stuff and they'll bewearing a mega booth shirt.
Like, 'cause we used todo mega booth shirts every
year and we would like everyshow we would do a different
design and so people wouldlike collect them and stuff.
Yes.
And a lot of times peoplewould be like, I didn't
wear this on purpose.
It's just my favorite t-shirt.

Alex (49:15):
And I don't know if this is changing now.
So this is a question toyou, for you, I think.
Yeah.
But like a lot of VCs thatwe would talk to in, in
the last 10 years, they're.
It sort of feels likethey're on the hunt for
the, you know, the unicorn.
It's like, okay, yeah.
Is what you're doing scalable?
Oh yeah, we're gonna grow.
Like, no, I mean like, is this ahundred billion dollar scalable?
Right, right.
We're making a video game.

(49:36):
Maybe.
I probably not, you know?
Yeah, it's, and it's like,but it feels to me like that's
not really your guys' vibe.

Kelly (49:44):
It's funny because I actually think that this way
of investing in the gamesindustry is like the best in
I, I mean, maybe I'll just sayonly way to do it, but that's
maybe me being biased about it.
But I do think, you know, frommy experience with the mega
booth and the IGF, so we didn'teven really talk about that.
But like, just forexample, like the mega
booth, we would get like.
Three to 400 submissionsevery six months.

(50:06):
And then the IGF was gettingabout like 700 to a thousand
submissions once a year.
And for the mega booth, atleast for I would say eight
or nine of the years, I playedbasically every single game.
later I was having a team and,you know, I wouldn't kind of
play, you know, I wouldn'tplay every single thing, but I
would play most of the stuff.
and then for IGFI was managingthe jury and judging process.

(50:28):
And so I was also like reviewingall of the information and,
you know, helping manage the QAand like the jury discussions.
And so, you know, I've probablylooked at like literally
thousands and thousands andthousands of games over 10
now, 15 years, and I've seenwhich have been successful
and which ones haven't.
And which ones submitto the mega booth, which

(50:49):
ones submit to IGF, whichones go to publishers,
which ones get investment?
And like I said, I think.
There's been a handful ofgames that maybe I could
have been like, yes, thisis totally, like, a hundred
percent gonna be a hit, maybe.
And like, I, I just thinkthat it is like, it's so hard.
Like it's, it's a combinationof so many things that
are like in your controland out of your control.

(51:10):
And, you know, like, like I'llgo back to among again, not to
just keep talking about it, butI mean, one of the reasons that
that game did well is 'causethere was a global pandemic,
which I was not mm-hmm.
On my Bingo card.
among us.
Among

Aaron (51:21):
us.
Oh, among us.
Yeah.
That was a, yeah, yeah.
That's a noisy week.
Like, I was like, I was

Kelly (51:25):
not like, oh yeah.
A global pandemic willforce everybody to be
inside their houses.
And then a social deductiongame that's really fun
and easy to pick up willtotally be the next You.
Like, no way.
Like there's no waythat I would, I would've
ever predicted that.
Right.
And so, you know, and I think,I mean, you know, how long it
takes to game, make a game,but it's like you can work
on something for years andlike culturally stuff chi

(51:46):
shifts or changes in yourfavor or out of your favor.
And so it's really likeyou can kind of, you can.
Put this littleconglomerate together.
Right.
but I actually don't envythe situation where people
are in, where they're like,only making a small number
of guesses on what's gonnabe a hit or not a hit.
And then also stufflike Minecraft.
Like I played, like, I like notChung around in the indie scene.

(52:08):
Like I knew him, you know,when it was like, not even
really a playable game yet.
Like, it just like, likedevelopers were just
playing it and stuff.
And like, I mean, I thoughtit was cool, but I didn't
think like, you know, 15multi billion later it would
be like whatever it is.
And so like, I think that the,the way that you kind of need
to like, yeah, look at this isthrough like this lens of like,

(52:32):
like you can sorta, you cansort of guess, but then like
the rest is sort of left up to,you know, whatever is going on
in the universe at the moment.
Right.
whether it's gonna hit or not.

Alex (52:42):
Well, you know, like don't put all your eggs
in in one basket and Yeah.
You know, make, make a a, aportfolio of investments and.
You're, you're more likelyto, to find winners.

Kelly (52:53):
yeah.
And I also think backing many

Alex (52:54):
horses.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Kelly (52:55):
And I think also investing in games is
difficult for a couple reasons.
Like I, I am, now that I havemore experience in investing,
I think probably investing,investing in any field, I would
imagine is kind of difficult.
But I, I think that investingin a field that is like
creative and artistic andcultural and social is,
is much harder for people.
Unless, like I said, like, youknow, for me I realize like,

(53:17):
oh, the skillset that I haveis like this kind of like being
able to do curatorial stuff.
Like look at things andbe like, what, what is the
cultural value of this?
What people would like this?
You know, like what are the,what's the background of it?
Like, you know, looking at itin this kind of holistic way.
And also like, I, I loveart and music and culture
and pop culture and like allthis other kind of stuff.
And so those thingsto me don't scare me.

(53:39):
Like they're not confusingor, you know, I don't need
numbers to back it up and awhole bunch of other stuff.
But I think that likewhen you're investing in.
Games, you know, which arein entertainment media and
have all this other kindof stuff along with it.
You need a lot of like fuzzylogic to kind of invest in it.
Mm-hmm.
And so I think just tellingsomeone like, Hey, just
make a billion dollar game.
Like, I don't know, it'skind of like, hey, be a

(54:02):
be a bestselling author.
Like, hey, be the best artist.
Like, hey, be, beBeyonce or something.
And it's like, okay.
Like lots of people havethe idea like, I would
love to be Beyonce.
Not easy.
Yeah.
That's identifyingthat as easy auto.
Yeah.
Doing it is like way harder.
Yeah.

Alex (54:18):
Yeah.
So you, I mean you you, you setsome numbers about the number
of kind of like submissionsyou would get at Indie Mega
Booth in IGF and I imagine itone up, it's, it's not all that
different in terms of Yeah,

Kelly (54:29):
yeah.
You get a,

Alex (54:30):
probably a lot of folks want investment and
you only have somebody to do.
Yeah.
So you must have some,the fuzzy logic must
have, you must be, can youdescribe the fuzzy logic?
Like how, what, what is

Aaron (54:41):
fuzzy logic?

Alex (54:42):
What, what makes, what makes you go,
Hey, this, we should.
Let's look at this a secondtime, or let's consider this.
Yeah, let's actuallyinvest here.

Kelly (54:50):
Yeah.
It's funny, because it'sactually in some ways a
little more, it's a littlemore narrow in the one up
fund because of like the waythat our model is set up.
And so there's a lot of kindof like, I don't, I don't know
if they're called sales safe.
There's a lot of kind of likecheckpoints that people would
have to get through before wecould like technically even
do the investment, you know?
So it's like they haveto be raising, so we
invest at seed stage.
So it's like they need to beraising at seed stage, they

(55:11):
need to be raising a certainamount of money, which is
typically between, I'd say maybenow a little bit more between
like two and 7 million, buttypically three to 7 million.
They need to have a leadinvestor and needs to
be a game, you know?
And so like once you kind oflike use all that criteria
to, like, it eliminatesa large number of stuff.
we do talk to teams evenif they're not raising

(55:32):
that amount or you know,like kind of depending
on what the situation is.
and so like once we're kindof inside of that criteria
and they also have to want toraise equity investment, right?
So like not a publishingdeal or project financing or.
Kickstarter or whatever otherthings that they're doing.
so kind of once you'rein that, you know, I'm

(55:52):
like, how far should I godown the whole process?
So we have a couple like avenuesfor people sending us stuff.
Like we have a contact formon the website that's like
cold contact form that peoplecan send us stuff and we
literally, like, I literallyreview everything and there,
and then Ed and I have a call,once a week where we review the
stuff that's like potentiallyinteresting on whether we
wanna have a call or not.
I'd say a large portionof those, I end up just

(56:14):
sending them, like additionalinformation about how investing
works and, you know, if theyraise more money or, you know,
trying to point them kindof in the right direction.
and then we also get referralsfrom other investors.
We get referrals from thecommunity, and, you know, people
that I know and that Ed knows,and then we'll generally if we.
Something, you know, catchesour attention about it.

(56:34):
Like it falls with insideof all that criteria, the
game looks interesting.
The team either seemsexperienced or seems to like,
kind of know what they're doingor don't know what they're
doing in a way that's good.
But sometimes we, sometimes weget a lot of like, you know, I
have never made a game before.
I work in a totallyunrelated field.
I am spending $40 tomake the next moa.

(56:56):
It's like stuff that'sjust like wildly mismatched
from an understanding oflike what the reality is of
like making a video game.
then we'll typicallytake like a, a pitch
meeting with the team.
And for us, like, and for mein particular, and I found this
with almost everything, I feellike the team matters a lot more
than people give it credit for.
I think that people really focuson the project and the game

(57:16):
and the idea and like, there'sa lot of cool game ideas and
a lot of people have a lot ofreally interesting ideas and
like, you know, I love seeingsomething new and unique and
like a twist on somethingor, but really it's like if
the team can't execute on it.
None of it matters.
Right?
And executing on itcan mean like they're

(57:36):
technically executing on it.
But there's also, I mean,you've run companies, I've
run companies, like there'sa lot of stuff, there's a lot
of emotional things and twistsand turns and hurdles, and it
goes well, and it goes bad.
And like there's just, there'sso much other stuff in there
and like, you need to be able tonavigate that in a way that gets
you to some end point, right?
Or to be able to like, kindof, I don't wanna say like

(57:59):
handle the, the pressure ofit necessarily, but it's like,
can you, can you run a, canyou run and build a company?
Like, you know, is theculture of this company gonna
produce something period?
Or is it gonna producesomething good?
Is it gonna producesomething bad?
Like, and so it actuallyput a lot of weight.
On that, that component of it.
And then the secondary kindof consideration for us

(58:20):
too is like, how do theyfit into the community?
You know, and like, kind oflike, either personality wise or
with inside of the portfolio orjust like, you know, and do, do
we wanna spend time with thesepeople for the next 10 years?
You know, like, do wewanna be on the, the
founder journey, with them?
And so it's kind of likea combination of a lot
of different things.

(58:40):
And we're looking at gameslike so early that the, the
concept a lot of times like, it,it's not like it doesn't mean
anything, but it's, I would beshocked if anybody made exactly
the game that they describedto us and they're pitching.
I know, right?
That would be crazy.
So,

Alex (58:56):
so yeah.
So you probably have asgood a view as anybody.
but the few times that I've beenworking on sort of publisher
side where I've, I've beeninvolved in portfolio management
and you see a lot of games.
Yeah.
And it, yeah, it often.
I think almost as a rule,it's very hard to create what
you put on paper on day one.
Right.
And often you don't evenwant to do that by the time

(59:16):
you get to the halfway for,you know, the substantive
parts of development.
are, are there.
So I Do you say the fund'sbeen going six or seven years?
Yeah, I, I forget exactly.
You must have some folks thatare kind of, their games are
out, maybe they've exited.
how was the thesis planpanning out in terms

(59:38):
of results, I guess?

Kelly (59:39):
Yeah, so we haven't had a formal exit yet.
Well actually we had one tinyexit, but it kind of like,
like basically we resold someshares of, like, sold some
shares of one of the studios.
and because they, like,they got crowded out in a
later round anyways, it wasnot like a typical exit.
It was kind of like a weirdlittle thing that just
threw some money back intothe management fee pot.

(01:00:00):
So we have about likethree, four years left
on the first fund.
And so, I'm gonna zoom backlike a tiny bit on this.
And so say, when I said aventure fund runs for 10
years, so ours is set up for10 years plus, there's two one
year extensions that we can doif all of our investors vote
that they wanna let it extend.
we haven't gottento that point yet.

(01:00:22):
So I'm not totally a hundredpercent clear on how this
works, but basically at theend of the 10 years, like
something has to happen.
Like we may have to sell ourshares on a secondary market, or
we need, we need to do somethingto try to like get our investors
their money back essentially.
Because like investors, Ithought that this was crazy
when I first learned this.
investors don't make any moneyuntil you sell their com,
until you sell your company.

(01:00:42):
So it's like, if your game doeswell, there's some asterisk
and weird little things aroundthis, but it's like if you
put out a game and it's makingmoney, the investors aren't
like making money off of that.
They make money when you're,when you are, Like when
you get bought or you sellor you IPO or something.
and then the share, the ownersand shareholders get money back.

(01:01:03):
and so at, at the end ofthat 10 years, something,
something has to happen.
Not totally clear what itis yet 'cause I haven't
gotten there yet, so Ihaven't experienced it.
But some, something willhappen at the 10 year mark.
It's gonna be exciting.
It's gonna exciting,exciting, whatever.
Whatever it is, whateverthe thing is, it's
gonna be thrilling.
and so, so we have about likethree or four years left until
we hit that 10 year mark.
And this is also kind of aperiod where over the last

(01:01:26):
year or so, so especially'cause the market's been
difficult, companies havegone out of business.
Some companies haveswitched to code dev, some
are kind of zombie mode.
some are getting games out,some are starting to look, you
know, potentially exciting.
But none of themhave really hit that.
Like they've had a big hit andthey're potentially getting
acquired in, in an amount thatwould like return to the fund.
But there's, you know,conversations and there's

(01:01:48):
things that, that are happening.
Around that.
And so I do think thatthere's still high potential.
we also, I would say havehad a smaller number of
companies go out of businessthan it seems like every
other fund that we talk to.
Mm-hmm.
Is surprised by our numbers.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm like, okay, that's good.
so I do feel like our model isworking in that sense, and I
think that like a lot of peoplein the community help each

(01:02:09):
other out and try to supporteach other through like it
being a tough time and likenavigating that situation.
So I, I like to thinkthat hopefully that
contributes somewhat to it.
and you know, this is kind oflike the reason to have this
kind of like big wide horizontaltype of investing is so that
like, at some point, I mean,most publishers are like this
too, is like, there's basicallygonna be one thing that returns

(01:02:31):
everything and generally.
Otherwise, it's just kind oflike everything is either in
the middle or it sort of like,you know, falls to the wayside.
And so the hope is that atsome point we've placed kind
of enough good bets at enoughgood times across a broad
enough spectrum that whensomething hits, you know,
like we'll be there for it.
So on paper, the fundis actually doing like
fairly well, especiallycomparatively, to other funds.

(01:02:54):
But because there hasn't beenlike an actual literal exit
yet, then there's not kindof like an actual return on
it yet, if that makes sense.
Mm-hmm.
the second fund I think isactually like, really strong.
you know, we have learned alot from investing outta the
first fund and there's a lotof really cool companies in it.
We're actually stillinvesting out of that one.
so there's still, you know, alot of potential even though

(01:03:15):
that's basically comingup on like three years in.
And so it's like a very,very, very long game.
I still feel convincedthat it's gonna do well.
Like I said, I, I think it'sa smart way to go about doing
the investing and I feel likeif this model doesn't work,
then I'm not quite sure.
What the approachwould actually be.
I am doing a round table atDice Europe where actually I,

(01:03:36):
I wanna like, talk about thisis kind of discuss like where
the gaps in funding and likewhat are some ideas about like,
you know, how basically, thelofty goals, like how do we
fix funding the games industry?
Yeah.
But, but I'm really curiousabout this stuff, you know?

Alex (01:03:51):
Yeah.
Hot, hot topic I thinkfor a lot of folks.
Yeah.
building in, in games rightnow, it's, yeah, it's, it's
been a challenging few years.
It, it sort of feels to me likea, a a lot of the, a lot of the
sort of the big challenge that,that hits the, the, the news.
And we see a lot of layoffsor tend to happen at the
bigger companies, the biggerbudgets, bigger games.

(01:04:12):
And for a while there it sortof felt like, been kind of
a little bit of a resurgencein sort of indie game
making where the budgets arelower, the risks are lower.
Maybe you couldspread risk around.
Do you see that?
Are you seeing that or Yeah.

Kelly (01:04:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Is that real?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, whenI had first started the mega
booth, I think it was maybe2011 or 2012, we had, I think
our first showcase was in 2012,but we had started kind of
organizing in 2011, you know,it was a few years after 2008.
And so it was like, there waskind of this like big falling
apart of a lot of like, which,you know, was history that I
wasn't aware of at the time.

(01:04:46):
but I, I think a kind of semisimilar thing had been going
on where a lot of the indiestudios that we were seeing
were actually coming out of likelayoffs or large AAA studios.
Mm-hmm.
Or kind of like thebreakups of big companies
or, you know, people justbeing like, you know.
I dunno if I can curse onthis, but like, fuck it.
I'm just gonna go out on my own.
And like, and you know,

Alex (01:05:07):
how do you feel about being called a
venture capitalist?
I don't like with your, thatwas one of my questions you
kind of touched on, it'slike you've done all this
stuff to elevate the indiedeveloper and community and,
and now you're a vc, you know?
Yeah.

Kelly (01:05:23):
I don't think I've ever told people that I, you're the

Alex (01:05:25):
best vc.
Thank you.
You're the best vc.
but how, like,

Kelly (01:05:29):
put that on a t-shirt.
How best vc.
Yeah.

Alex (01:05:31):
How, how, how do, how do you square it philosophically?

Kelly (01:05:34):
It's funny because I think it's because I'm still
doing what I want to do, youknow, and I, so, and if I
wanna be like, less kind ofjokey about it, like, one
of the things that I reallythought about when I was
thinking about taking on doingthe partner role was that the
thing that I saw with the megabooth a lot was that like.
When it came down to it,whoever made the decisions
about what got fundedwas like, what mattered.

(01:05:54):
You know, like I could help asmuch as I wanted to, I could
see all these cool things.
We could try and do this andwe could do that, but like
when it came down to it, ifsomebody on some, you know,
three or four levels up in acorporation didn't want the
deal to happen, or didn'tcare or didn't like women or
whatever, like, you know, thingsjust like wouldn't get funded.
And so, you know, I thinkthat there's a lot of power

(01:06:15):
in being able to like, makethat kind of impact, like make
decisions about how money isdistributed, which is like not
a saying that I think a lot ofpeople like me get access to.
And so when I like had anopportunity to be able to
be in a decision makingposition about like, who is
getting funding, you know,and who is getting the money?
I'm like, that's a reallypowerful opportunity that

(01:06:36):
I think could have like ahuge amount of impact and
as long as I could do itthe way that I wanted to.
Right.
And so, like, you know, ed andI, I don't think I've ever.
I really disagreedon an investment.
Like, and so, you know, tokind of end the conversation
about like, how, you know,what's the fuzzy logic on it?
You know, we'll take a pitchmeeting and we discuss it
afterwards and like, you know,what we thought about it and
what we thought about the teamand like, we're pretty much

(01:06:58):
always, yeah, always on thesame page about like what we're
interested in investing in.
And if I really wannapush for something I can.
And if he really wants to pushfor something, he can, you know,
but like, I, I think that we'repretty, we're very aligned on
like what we think about theindustry and what we think about
people and what we think aboutthe projects and what we hope to
see and all that kind of stuff.
And so, you know, I, I don'tthink that I would do VC

(01:07:22):
investing any other way.
Do you know what I mean?
Mm-hmm.
Like, I don't.
Mm-hmm.
And like, and I thinkbecause I get to do it.
On the terms that I want.
And with someone who kind of haslike similarly weirdly radical
ideas that I do that wasn't,or wasn't totally freaked out
by my radical ideas that I,like in our first call, I was
like, I'm gonna pick some crazyshit and just see what he says.
Yeah.
You know, thatmakes a lot sense.

Alex (01:07:43):
Yeah.
I mean, you both havekind of, I, I would say
non-traditional VC backgrounds.
You didn't even come outof like Morgan Stanley,
you didn't get MBAs, yeah.
And follow thattrack, et cetera.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think you builtat something really
unique, you know?
Yeah.
Thank

Kelly (01:07:58):
you.
Yeah.
And we come at it from likereally loving the developer
community and loving gamesand loving the industry.
And so like, you know, we'relooking at it from like that
lens as the number one thing,and not saying that other
VCs don't, but you know, Ithink that like being, being
able to do it this way.
Makes sense to me.
And also like it has thiscomponent of building community
and like working with a bunchof people that I like and you

(01:08:19):
know, helping founders, whichis really similar to like
helping indie developers 'causethey're just basically kind
of like small startups thatare trying to like find their
way and figure out somethingand make something kind of
like, you know, unique andcreative and, and trusting.

Aaron (01:08:33):
You had the per perfect training for this role.
How would someone go?
What would you recommend?
'cause someone listeningto this podcast, probably
as they're listening to it,'cause they wanna pitch a game,

Kelly (01:08:46):
do you have

Aaron (01:08:46):
anything like, hey, you know, these are some things
you should, you know, theseare the T's you should cross.
These are the lowercasejs, you should dot.

Kelly (01:08:53):
Yeah.

Aaron (01:08:53):
You know, like, yes.

Kelly (01:08:55):
It's interesting.
I'm actually in the processof trying to write a blog
post about like how to puttogether a good pitch deck.
'cause I feel like that'sanother question we got a
lot of, I would say like,number one thing, I mean,
it's my talk, so I like it.
But you know, like go and watchthat talk that I mentioned
that's on the website.
'cause I think that thatgives a lot of good like,
like foundational backgroundinformation on just like what
an equity investor is gonnajust like technically be looking

(01:09:16):
for and like, you know whatyou can kind of expect to go
through the process and likewhat yeah, like what you would
be, what are the trade-offs,you know, on the whole thing.
I would also say, technically,I'll just go to the pitch deck
thing real quick, is like, thereis a surprising number of pitch
decks that I look at that justdo not give me any information.
Like, they don't tell me whothe team is, they don't tell

(01:09:37):
me how much money they want.
Like, it's not even reallyquite clear what they're making.
It's very confusing the numberof pitch decks that I get that
just do not say what they want.
I'm like, okay, I dunno whatto do with this information.
And so, you know, Iwould really encourage.
Encourage people to, youknow, think, think about it
from the other, like fromthe person who's gonna be
looking at it, but like,definitely highlight the team
and highlight them early.

(01:09:58):
And definitely don't be afraidto ask for what you want.
You know, like, I'm not afraidof looking at people's money
numbers, you know, and I thinkthat this also comes from, I see
this a lot with indie developersand like, you know, people
would be like, I need $27,483and 15 cents to make this game.
And I'm like, that's a verysmall, specific number.
And like, I don't thinkthat it's gonna be that.

(01:10:20):
And then when you askpeople about it, they're
like, well, I have to eat.
And like, you know, and like,this person won't work for free.
And I'm like, that's all fine.
Like, just please factor in.
Like, everybody is eating,everybody is getting paid.
It's not gonna bean exact number.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, don't be afraidto just like ask, like
actually ask for the numberthat you, that you need.
but the other thing that Idon't think people think of

(01:10:40):
when they're putting togethera pitch deck is like, that's
your opportunity to like.
I dunno, maybe dream soundslofty, but this is like where
you get to like sit down andlike architect out and like
design and really like, thinkabout like, who are you and
like what are you building andlike, what is the team and the
culture that you wanna make?
And you know, like whatare the milestones that
are gonna get you there?
And like, what happens ifthat doesn't happen and what

(01:11:01):
happens after our first game?
And you know, like it's,you're not gonna get, once you
start the company, like you'rerunning, you know, like you're
sprinting on a weird marathonthat may or may not end,
you know, at any given time.
And you're not gonna have a lotof time to sit down and like,
sink and design and like dreamabout like what this thing
is that you're gonna build.

(01:11:21):
And I think, you know, forme some of this is like
a, like this is, is maybeadvice somebody should have
told me, but like, I'm avery like, do it, do it.
You know, like, I'm like, ah,it just seems to be working.
I'm just gonnakeep running this.
Mega thing, you know,and like I'll just
figure it out on the way.
And I think there's somethingto be said for that.
And a lot of entrepreneurs are,you know, minded in that way,
which I think works really well.

(01:11:41):
but I would really encouragepeople to like, use it as
a time to just like reallythink about what you're doing
and what you're building.
And so that ends up gettingreflected in the way that you're
pitching it to an investoror you're pitching it to a
publisher is like, if you'reonly kind of thinking about it
in a very narrow scope, or youclearly haven't kind of sought
through the whole budget, oryou know, who's gonna be working
on this thing and what's gonnahappen, you know, that's gonna

(01:12:01):
come across in your deck.
And so this is like as muchfor you kind of as it is
for the people that you'regonna be showing it to.

Alex (01:12:07):
Good stuff.
Kelly, thank you somuch for spending.
We kept you long.
Oh, that's fine.
This is my

Kelly (01:12:14):
last thing for the day.
So this is, this is whatI, so what do, what do you

Alex (01:12:17):
do?
Like, what do youdo in Barbados?
Like, like are you goheading to the beach?
Is it like, I wanted to Googleit while we were talking.
Do you have like a mopeddown there that you kind of
fool it around the island on?
Or is it an island?
It's It's an island.

Kelly (01:12:28):
Yeah.
It's an island that hasa population about, I
think 300,000 people andit's like fairly small.
and so, well it's dark rightnow, so actually, and I'm
getting ready to like doinga bunch of traveling soon.
So I'm actually gonna workon packing, because I'm
flying out next week andgonna be gone for a while.
but yeah, we do a ton ofsnorkeling, so we're on like
the Caribbean ocean side,so it's like really clear.

(01:12:51):
And this is a, a coral reefisland, not a volcanic island,
which is really interesting.
Okay.
So there's coralreef everywhere.
So the snorkelingis like amazing.
Are you

Alex (01:12:58):
like right on the beach?

Kelly (01:13:00):
we're across the street from the beach.
Not right on it, but yeah.
Across the street.
Right.
It is beautiful.
Aaron, we should have,should become VCs.

Alex (01:13:07):
Look at this.

Kelly (01:13:09):
I would've did this anyways.
I was already doingstuff like this.
Far as a vc, that's the joyof the digital nomad life.
You,

Alex (01:13:18):
you are living the dream, Kelly.
You're totally living.
You're not, you'renot tied to anything.
You have complete freedom.
You're living on the beach inBarbados and you get to see
a thousand games a year and,empower and enable, like-minded
folks to be successful.
I love it.

Kelly (01:13:36):
Yeah.
It's a beautiful thing.
It's really nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Alex (01:13:39):
Thank you again.
Yeah.
I am really looking forward.
I think I'm gonna seeyou in the uk Yes.
In part of your travels.
I'm really lookingforward to it.

Kelly (01:13:47):
Yeah.
I'm really excited about it.
We also have cool newswag, so I'm very excited
about that as well.
All right.
Hey, bring it.
Can

Alex (01:13:52):
Alex, I can leave this hat at home.
There might be a new one.
No, take that oneand bring me one.
It's gonna be a bowler.
It's gonna be, we'regonna be, it's gonna
be a bowler, you know.
Oh man.
That way, that's such areally good idea to cowboy.
I shoulda did

Kelly (01:14:06):
that.
Yeah.
I appreciate you guysasking me and yeah, thanks
so much for the time.
Right on.

Aaron (01:14:12):
We'll see you Ron.

Kelly (01:14:13):
All right.

Aaron (01:14:14):
So I have a question.
Maybe you can answer.
Okay, we're rolling in.
Really interesting interview.
I learned a lot.
I have a lot of questionsstill, and I didn't think
it would be okay to ask thequestions while we were talking.
I was kind of holding on.
I give you permission to ask anyquestion you want at any time.
Well, it's like,'cause I don't need the

Alex (01:14:33):
permission, but maybe it feels

Aaron (01:14:35):
good to hear it, you know when I say it.
Okay.
Yeah.
I don't know.
'cause there is a world, thereis tact and there's class
and a lot of times you, whenyou're, as you're leveling
up as a human in society,you, you, you, you don't
know what questions are okay.
And which ones are not okay.

Alex (01:14:52):
Ah, okay.
You see what I'm saying?
But, but we try to be classy.
Yeah.
So put a little bit of, havea conservative lens on that.
Like, oh, maybe Ishouldn't ask this one.
'cause it might be, okay.
Well, tell, tell me.
Tell me what.
What was the oneyou were gonna ask

Aaron (01:15:07):
about?
The one I, okay, so the firstone was, I thought it'd be
okay, was like, well how doesthe indie booth think money?
'cause I have no idea.
Like, sponsorship.
That's, that's an okay question.
Yeah, that's a go.
And you did kind of ask it.
I did, I did.
I straight up asked it.
The other question, and,and this is a hard one, is
like, 'cause she's a partner.
She the, she's a partner.
So is, it's not her money,it's, it's, it's Mr.

(01:15:29):
Freeze's money, right?
Well it's the investors' money.
The, the investors' money.
Yes.
So the money is not hers.
It comes from otherpeople and she manages
where that money goes

Alex (01:15:39):
basically.
yeah.
Although often, often when a,when there's a venture fund
like that, the operators,the partners have some of
their own money in thatfund as well, usually.
Yeah.
And they have say I assume,oh, they, they decide
where, how that capital gets

Aaron (01:15:56):
deployed.
Yeah.
They

Alex (01:15:56):
choose the investments so that, yeah.
'cause

Aaron (01:15:58):
it, as I've been learning about that stuff,
it's always different.
'cause you have your angelinvestor, which is usually,
it's their money, right?
Right.
And then, right.
And then you have your venture,which is a pool of money from
many wealthy areas that comein and, and feed into it.
And then that money getsdistributed and then that money
goes back and distributed again.

(01:16:20):
And then the other oneis publisher, right?
So like you have EA whohas a ton of money and
then they decide who togive it to to make game's.
Does that, is that about It's,and then the fourth one is
mom pays for everything andyou live in the basement.

Alex (01:16:35):
That's the best, that's the best one.
it is.
That is, that is good.
Although the publisher's thing,you know, that's like a contract
where it's like, I give youthe money to pay for that thing
and then I'm gonna keep mostof the profit, but they don't
own your company, you know?
Whereas the other ones,you know, they buy
equity in the company.
So that's like, that's whythe team is a project is.

(01:16:56):
Really makes a lot of sensefor, you know, what Kelly's
doing because they're investingin the equity of the studio,
which is, which is thatteam is, you know, hopefully
it's not just that one game.
You Yeah.
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
and it's a veryinteresting career.
Did you play any ofthe battlefield open
beta this weekend?

Aaron (01:17:14):
No.
I played though Magic,the gathering digital.
I'm slowing down, man.
Like, I'm, it's like it's atwitchy lifestyle, you know?
We work in twitchy games.
You can only, you gottatake a little break, break.
So much candy.
Yeah.
Some vegetables, youknow what I mean?
Okay.
Yeah.
And know, wannaplay battlefield.
Yeah.
But it's

Alex (01:17:34):
like, they had a good weekend.
So congrats.
we still know plenty of peopleover there, really, rooting
for that game and the success.
So congrats to those guys.

Aaron (01:17:46):
Yeah.
I will play it on PSfive when it's done.
I will buy it and play it.
'cause those games are very fun.
They're very well made.

Alex (01:17:54):
Alright, well, thank you everybody for hanging
out with us, for anotherweek with the fourth curtain.
Hope you enjoyed ourconversation with Kelly.
We sure did.
Always good times hanging out.
and we shall see you next time.

Aaron (01:18:07):
See you later everybody.
Thank you for listening tothe Fourth Curtain Podcast.
Visit us at thefourthcurtain.comto find our monthly
newsletter and supportthe show via Patreon.
The Fourth Curtainpodcast is a production
of Fourth Curtain Media.
Lovingly edited by Brian Hensleyof Noise Floor Sound Solutions.
Video production bySarkis Grigorian.

(01:18:27):
Production support by KimyaTaheri, with Community
Management by Doug Zartman andArt Production by Paul Russel.
Thanks again for listening.

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