Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Jonathan Ng Sposato on Building the First Asian American TV Channel, JoySauce

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Jonathan Ng Sposato on Building the First Asian American TV Channel, JoySauce · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
0:16
and today's guest is Jonathan Sposato, a serial entrepreneur
0:20
with a mission to create meaningful media platforms.
0:24
As the founder of Geek Wire, he established A pivotal gathering
0:27
point for the Seattle tech community, and now he's
0:30
pioneering Joy Sauce, a ground breaking TV channel on Amazon
0:34
Prime Video dedicated to Asian American content.
0:39
Through his media ventures, Jonathan consistently seeks to
0:42
change conversations and encourage solution oriented
0:45
thinking. His latest project aims to
0:48
increase visibility for the Asian American community,
0:51
showcasing stories that are vibrant, joyful, and move beyond
0:56
historical narratives of trauma. A versatile entrepreneur,
1:00
Jonathan has owned restaurants, invested in commercial real
1:03
estate, and published Seattle Magazine and Seattle Business
1:06
Magazine. His work is driven by a belief
1:09
that media can be a powerful tool for community building and
1:13
social change. Now before we get into all that
1:16
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AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
1:59
today, the founder of Joy Sauce Seattle Mag Geek Wire, Jonathan
2:04
Sposato. Thanks for making the time to
2:05
Share your story today. Hey, thanks for having me here
2:08
Anthony. I I already having a lot of fun
2:11
here so. Let's do it.
2:13
So, Jonathan, maybe start with telling us a little bit about
2:17
your family background and how that has shaped your
2:20
entrepreneurial journey. Yeah, I appreciate you asking
2:23
that. So I'm half Chinese, half
2:26
Korean, and I'm going to bookmark the fact that I didn't
2:28
realize I was Korean, half Korean until much later in life.
2:32
I thought I was full Chinese. I do have an Italian American
2:35
last name because my mother married an A lovely Italian
2:41
American man when I was about nine years old.
2:43
So I was actually born originally to a single mother.
2:47
My mother was not married because precisely because my
2:51
Korean American father and her being Chinese American, they
2:54
were not allowed to get married in the late 60s.
2:57
So this was in 1966. I was born in 67.
3:01
She had me out of wedlock and, and then at some point she
3:05
really couldn't afford to keep me or to raise me.
3:09
And so she sent me to Hong Kong. I was born in London.
3:13
We were in Brooklyn, NY and then she sent me to Hong Kong to live
3:17
with my maternal grandparents. And so they raised me until I
3:20
was about nine years old, until such time I came back to the
3:24
United States. And so I sort of grew up all
3:27
over. And it was a bunch of different
3:28
cultural influences, I guess you could say.
3:31
And so as you look back at that time, what are memories like?
3:36
Are they stressed? Are they strained?
3:38
Are they longing for your mother?
3:40
What, what, What do you kind of remember about that time?
3:43
Yeah, that's a good question. I've actually never been asked
3:45
that. I would honestly say that I, I
3:47
was not stressed. They were not, I don't have
3:49
negative memories. I I really do think that
3:52
children are very resilient and you don't know any better as a
3:55
child. And so I have actually very fond
3:58
memories that I remember. I don't remember London, but I
4:01
remember Brooklyn. I remember this studio walk up
4:06
that we had, I remember warm emotions around my mother and
4:12
how she was very tender and loving towards me.
4:16
I remember actually guys coming over with a bouquet of flowers
4:21
in her hand and in a suit at the front door, you know, picking my
4:25
mom up for a date. And, and I remember, I actually
4:28
remember slamming the door on someone and, and saying at a
4:33
young age, I think I was like 3, three and a half, get the hell
4:36
out of here, you know. So my mother at that point
4:41
discovered that I was picking up all kinds of language that I
4:44
wasn't supposed to be using from this chain smoking babysitter
4:50
down the street. And so that was maybe a cue that
4:53
she needed to start to consider other childcare options.
4:56
But, but I have mostly warm memories.
4:59
And then Hong Kong, my memories were frankly wonderful and my
5:02
grandparents were amazing. And I love the city.
5:07
And I think that infused me with a lot of different cultural
5:09
influences. As you know, Hong Kong's very
5:11
cosmopolitan, lots of expats, lots of different people of
5:16
different ethnicities and very vibrant of a city.
5:20
Everybody's hustling. And so I really appreciated that
5:23
and have very fond memories of my childhood.
5:26
And I've frankly tried to examine that.
5:29
I'm like, why? You know, when people talk about
5:31
childhood trauma, I'm like, do I have, do I, do I have some and
5:36
somehow I buried them? Or do I really not have any?
5:40
And and I don't. I think it's the latter case.
5:44
What was it like to be reunited with your mother after all those
5:47
years when you came? Back, Yeah.
5:49
So. So it was, it was odd in a sense
5:52
that I did. We didn't really know each other
5:54
and she was sort of foreign to me.
5:56
And I do remember my first few days back in the United States,
6:01
we came to Seattle, there was a suburb, a wonderful suburb
6:04
called Edmonds. And I remember that she showed
6:07
me my room and it was the biggest room.
6:12
You know, I'm like, wow, I get this entire room.
6:14
I don't have to share it with anybody.
6:15
I'm not on a cot. I have a real bed.
6:18
And I remember that there was a Snoopy stuffed animal on the
6:21
bed. And I recognize that Snoopy
6:23
right away because I had it in Brooklyn.
6:25
And so that was comforting. But my mother herself was sort
6:30
of a foreigner to me. And in retrospect, I think there
6:36
were some things endemic to her personality that that maybe made
6:41
that made me feel that way. And so we had to sort of learn
6:48
to be reacquainted with each other over time.
6:51
And how does it feel today? Well, I, I would be honest to
6:57
say that my mother and I have a, as I'm sure most people do, a
7:02
complicated relationship. She, she currently has dementia
7:06
and very moderate memory loss. But the silver lining is that
7:12
that that can sometimes 'cause people to be angry, they can be
7:16
kind of angry, they can be have dementia and be angry, or they
7:19
can sort of be happy. And she's more the happy
7:24
version. And I, and it makes me wonder if
7:28
anger, resentment, frustrations, being somewhat of a malcontent,
7:34
that that's somewhat of a function of hanging on to past
7:39
wrongs or past frustrations. And if you don't remember them,
7:43
if, if, if they're non existent in your mind, you're happier.
7:47
So I'm happy to report that she's in fact in a really good
7:52
place. Other than a memory loss, She
7:53
was actually very happy, cheerful.
7:57
I've never seen her smile so much.
8:00
Whereas I think that in throughout most of her adult
8:03
life that that, that we've known her, that my family and I've
8:07
known her. She's she's, she hasn't been
8:09
like that and so interesting. OK.
8:12
All right, let's get on to the entrepreneurial tract here.
8:15
What was your first entrepreneurial venture?
8:18
Yeah, well, I have to go back to when I was about 1314 years old
8:22
and I wrote my first computer game on the Apple 2.
8:25
So that dates me. Anthony, do you even remember
8:29
what an Apple 2 was? OK, so there's an Apple 2, Apple
8:32
2 Plus, Apple 2 Plus had 48 K, another memory card and you had
8:38
64 K and that was like then, then you're in the big time.
8:41
So I wrote my first Apple or first computer game and sold it
8:47
professionally through a users group.
8:50
That that that that that just was back at a time when computer
8:54
games were, it was not obviously the big industry that it is now.
8:59
It was very nascent. It was literally maybe the same
9:03
weird grown-ups playing Dungeons and Dragons in the backroom of a
9:09
hobby store were the same guys that you might meet at a users
9:12
group or like a meet up also in a similar backroom somewhere.
9:17
And, and then but, but the beauty of it was that it was so
9:20
small that you would get to know some of the chief players.
9:23
And so I got to know Bob Clardy, who was the founder and CEO of
9:29
Synergistic Software, and that was a big, big publisher.
9:33
They were doing 10s of millions of dollars in revenue every year
9:36
at a time when the industry was still fairly small.
9:40
And they were located in Renton, which is a suburb of Seattle.
9:43
And I got to know them and that was really sort of working for
9:48
them, even though it was not my company that I founded.
9:52
It was small and very entrepreneurial.
9:54
I would, I would characterize that experience as opening my
9:57
eyes to the fact that you can take an unconventional path.
10:01
You can do something different that isn't necessarily going to
10:05
Med school or law school or being an engineer.
10:07
Nothing wrong with those professions, but but it was just
10:10
so unusual and different that it normalized me to doing unusual
10:16
things as a career. How did you get connected with
10:18
them? How did that door open?
10:20
Oh, that was through, like I said, through the meet ups and
10:23
users groups. That's how you found them.
10:26
Yeah, yeah. It was a very small community,
10:28
as I recall. I had a friend whom I ended up
10:30
doing a bunch of projects with who was already pretty well
10:36
steeped with them. And then I got introduced.
10:39
And then like I said, there were not, there were not a lot of
10:43
people wanting to get into the industry.
10:46
There were not a lot of people in the industry.
10:48
It was not like the cool thing that, you know, like my son,
10:51
who's 16 right now, he and his friends, they all talk about,
10:55
oh, we want to be video game designers.
10:57
We want to get into doing graphics for, for computer
11:00
games. Back then, it was not like that.
11:02
It was more like this hidden thing.
11:05
It was like, it was like being, I don't know, like, like, like
11:08
working for some sort of indie independent, weird fringe comic
11:13
book publisher like that you like, it wasn't something that
11:15
you were very proud of so. I wonder if you could look into
11:20
your crystal ball now. Do you think there is an example
11:23
industry now that sort of fits that mold that tomorrow, you
11:27
know, down the road might be? That's a much bigger.
11:37
That's a great question. Yeah.
11:44
Yeah, Well, the only examples I can think of are not not quite
11:48
as benign or nice as because at the end of the game, the people
11:52
in the games industry were nice people who were just weird and
11:56
quirky. Now kind of the more shadowy
12:01
fringe industries seem to be more associated with with sort
12:05
of sordid things. So.
12:06
So I'm going to have to think about that one.
12:08
Fair enough. We've got lots of other things
12:10
to talk about here, including and I want to get to to Joy
12:14
Sauce and more of what you're doing today, but I want to lay a
12:16
little bit of a foundation for people.
12:18
You sold two different companies to Google.
12:21
You sold one to Shutterstock. Sorry.
12:23
I'm so sorry. I can't think of something.
12:25
I, I think that there are, you know what, what feels culturally
12:29
aligned is when you're at a coffee shop, there's an open mic
12:35
and there are these young people and they're, and they're doing
12:37
their own independent music thing, right?
12:40
That feels kind of the same as you don't know you're going to
12:45
make it or you don't know if these people are going to make
12:47
it. The people doing it, they don't
12:49
know exactly what the, what their headroom is, but they're
12:51
going to do it because they're passionate about creating
12:54
something unusual and different. So I think that's one thing.
12:57
I think another one you, although this is has become a
13:01
cool thing that people want to do, a lot of people want to do
13:04
is, you know, being, being, being a, a, a like a creator on
13:09
TikTok or Instagram where you're just, but but where you're
13:12
making things that nobody else is doing and your parents may be
13:16
doubting you. Like, is this really a, can you
13:18
really make a living doing it? And some people end up doing it
13:21
and some people never quite make it.
13:22
So perhaps I'd compare it to those two.
13:25
Interesting. Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt.
13:27
No, no, it's good cuz you know, there's, as you listen to
13:31
different speakers, different gurus, different thought leaders
13:34
out there, there's different schools of thought and some
13:37
people say pursue the thing that you love.
13:39
And some people say, well, the thing that you love may just be
13:41
a hobby. What you really need to do is
13:43
put food on the table. And so you need to get a job and
13:46
make money. Where do you sort of fall into
13:48
that spectrum of the? Conversation, I know exactly and
13:52
and sometimes I'll switch sides. I have to say there, there are,
13:59
there are three, really three. There's a third answer.
14:03
If you can find the intersection of what you love and something
14:09
commercially viable, that's the way to do it.
14:14
And I, and this is, I swear to you, this is not revisionist
14:17
history, but I felt that that was what I did when I, when my
14:26
parents got divorced right before I graduated from senior
14:32
year of college. And I was supposed to go to law
14:35
school where I went to law, where I went to undergrad, had a
14:38
really wonderful 3/3 program that I was tracking to and you
14:44
could do 4/3 as well. There was just a great
14:46
relationship between the undergrad with it and it was
14:49
with Columbia law school. And so at the time, you know,
14:52
one of the top law schools in the country, I think still is.
14:55
So it was this plum chance to you knew that you could see your
14:59
future. You knew that you would, you
15:00
know, make a lot of money as an associate, you know, and then
15:03
and then go on and, and go work at a prestigious firm, perhaps.
15:07
And I walked away from all of that precisely on the bet that I
15:15
did. I, I knew that I may not love
15:17
being a lawyer. It wasn't for me.
15:19
So the intersection of something that I would love doing, but
15:23
where there was a lot of potential commercial viability
15:28
was in gaming. And so that's, that was my first
15:31
start up was I, I, I basically started a, a games company.
15:37
We developed games for the Nintendo, the Sega Genesis, even
15:41
an NEC turbo graphics. And yeah, I think they sold
15:46
eleven of those console units. But but that was I, I had a
15:51
hunch that that was going to be pretty big.
15:53
And this would have been back in 8990.
15:56
OK. And did you wind that business
15:59
down? Did you sell it?
16:00
Did you how did? It yeah, it was actually sold to
16:02
Electronic Arts. So for years when you when you
16:06
heard of a company or game development company called EA
16:11
Seattle, that was that was the my old company.
16:14
And so that was pre Internet, very pre Internet.
16:17
And so valuations were not as you, you didn't get the kind of
16:22
multiples that that people were getting later so.
16:25
You went out to work, went on to work at Microsoft for a number
16:27
of years, then Google for a little bit.
16:30
And then how did the idea to start your first?
16:33
Well, not first, but I think Fat Bets was a company that you
16:36
eventually sold to Google. Yeah, yeah.
16:38
So I, I, I'm a big believer in the fact that it, wherever you
16:41
are, learn as much as you can. And so I learned a lot at
16:47
Microsoft. Sometimes you were not conscious
16:50
of it and it was just kind of this fire hose coming at you.
16:53
And then you, you have to like a couple of years later, take a
16:55
step back when you launch that product and say, wow, what did I
16:59
learn? And you kind of try to enumerate
17:01
the things. But sometimes I, I found that
17:04
towards the end of my 12 year run at Microsoft, which
17:08
included, you know, working in Microsoft Research and you know,
17:11
the consumer division, the first Xbox and Halo and what what was
17:19
then called MSN and Windows Live.
17:27
Towards the end, I did get a little bit bored with, and no
17:32
disrespect to whomever, I love the people I was working with,
17:35
but the projects themselves were a little, just slightly less
17:38
interesting, which gave me a little bit more cognitive
17:40
headroom to proactively ask myself how much do I want to
17:45
learn as I'm sort of maybe winding down here.
17:48
I had some belief that, you know, I don't know if I'm here
17:51
for another year, 2 years, whatever.
17:54
And so fat bits really came out of that time where I was paying
18:00
a lot of attention to where the world might be going, where
18:05
technology might be going. There was a sense that with with
18:09
the, you know, the Internet, the famous Bill Gates Internet memo
18:12
came about in 97 where he wrote an e-mail to everybody saying we
18:16
need to embrace the Internet. We may already be a little late,
18:20
and so think about how the Internet can be a part of your
18:24
product strategy, whatever product you're working on,
18:27
whether you're in games or in Windows or Office and all of
18:31
that stuff. So that was a an important memo
18:34
that we all paid attention to. There was a belief on
18:40
Microsoft's part that they still wanted to keep people on the
18:45
desktop and to keep them from spending too much of their time
18:50
out in the cloud. Google, on the other hand, I was
18:55
noticing this, and this would have been in the early 2000s
18:59
when I was kind of thinking about this stuff and what I was
19:01
going to do after Microsoft. Google, on the other hand, was
19:06
trying to do the opposite. They were trying to have people
19:08
spend as little time on desktop applications within the Windows
19:14
shell and as much time as possible out in the cloud using
19:17
their apps, obviously, right. So the thought occurred to me
19:22
that during that transition time, as people are moving from
19:26
the desktop to the cloud, that there needed to be bridging
19:31
functions, bridging applications that could sort of married to.
19:35
And so Fabbits was born out of that thinking like, what can we
19:38
create that could exists on the desktop, but be connected to the
19:43
cloud always and constantly. And that was also the, the
19:47
dimension of time from AUIUX perspective was always something
19:51
that I thought about. It's like sometimes it's not
19:53
enough to on occasion be connected to the cloud.
19:57
It can be more useful if you're constantly connected to the
20:00
cloud, which, you know, back in, you know, 2002 was, was, was not
20:05
always a a common thing. And so so fat pits was which was
20:10
a. An XML platform for the very,
20:14
very quick creation of these XML applications or widgets or
20:19
gadgets that could live on your desktop but be always connected
20:23
to the cloud to pull in information and and create
20:27
various services for you on the desktop.
20:29
That was a newish concept, and so that's what that was.
20:34
And I know I want to spend too much time on some of the other
20:37
ventures because I really want to spend the bulk on what you're
20:40
doing now. But I I think it's worth people
20:42
understanding that you founded a picnic picnic.com hugely popular
20:50
photo editor online, sold it to Google, and then turned right
20:54
around and built another photo editor, hugely successful
20:58
Picmonkey, and sold that one to Shutterstock.
21:01
Yeah. My big question there is how did
21:04
you get around and non compete in between the two of those?
21:06
Oh yeah, good question. Well, so first of all, the
21:13
products are sufficiently different The that's so it's all
21:18
about verbs. Is something more about photo
21:21
editing or is it more about collaging and storage and
21:27
graphic design, for example? So, so, so there's that.
21:32
And then second of all, I think from again, time factors in and
21:40
I, you know, without maybe getting into the detail of how I
21:44
negotiated by deal with Google when I sold Picnic, of course,
21:50
this is now what that was in like 2010, 2012, I think it was.
21:59
You know, it's been long enough that I don't remember to detail,
22:01
but I, I would say my, my, I, I'm, I'm within 90% confidence
22:08
that there was also that what, that, that I operated within
22:12
the, the bounds of my agreement. I'm.
22:15
Sure that you did Yeah, I just impressive that you did sort of
22:18
two in the same relative space back-to-back and had, you know,
22:22
very nice exits from them. So the last one I'm gonna talk
22:26
about before we get to Joy Sauce is Geek Wire.
22:29
Lots of people know this platform when you first cooked
22:32
up the idea, but where was it coming from?
22:34
What was the problem you were trying to?
22:35
Solve. Yeah, yeah, I can.
22:36
I tell the story all the time and and I'm, you know, want to
22:39
be clear that I'm one of the with respect to my two other
22:43
business partners, there are two other Co founders, but the idea
22:48
came from a dinner that I was having with Mike Arrington.
22:51
So he came up to Seattle. In fact, Mike, this is Mike
22:54
Arrington of TechCrunch, who started a very popular tech news
22:59
site in the Bay Area. And he was oddly because he
23:02
loved the Pacific Northwest. He bought a house up here near
23:05
Seattle and he's kind of retired here.
23:08
But during that transition time, he was having dinner up here
23:11
with just a handful of CE OS. And I think it was the CEO at
23:15
the time of of Expedia, my friend Rich Barton, I think
23:20
Glenn Kalman of Redfin was there.
23:24
There was just like four or five of us and having a nice time.
23:28
And John Cook, who was a reporter for TechCrunch, which
23:33
is part of the Puget Sound Business Journal, he was at the
23:36
dinner as well. He was the only reporter and,
23:39
and Mike Arrington started giving John a really hard time
23:42
saying John, you know, how can you call yourself a, a, a Co
23:47
founder of Tech Flash when you're just a salary man, You're
23:51
just an employee at the Puget Sound Business Journal.
23:55
And plus, you know, plus it's not any good and you guys don't
23:58
write enough. And you know, he was just really
24:00
giving John a hard time. And, and I felt so bad.
24:03
And there was just a small dinner.
24:05
There was really only like 6 or seven of us that I literally
24:08
turned to John between the main course and dessert.
24:11
And I said, John, let's you and I start something.
24:14
Let's start a platform, focus on the Pacific Northwest.
24:18
And you're one of the you're my Co founder and we can do this
24:23
week, we can create. I think that what we need in
24:27
this community is to fill that gap.
24:30
And I was personally a little unhappy with the way in which
24:34
Mike Arrington was doing his coverage.
24:35
I mean, as a CEOI remember sitting in the office as a
24:38
picnic. I'd get a call from him and, you
24:43
know, can you call me? And I'm like, you know, I'm in a
24:46
meeting. So 15 minutes later, I call him
24:48
back and somebody in the office says, Jonathan, it took looks
24:51
like it's already too late. He already, you know, propped a
24:54
story about us and and and half the facts were wrong.
24:58
And so I'd have to try to get him back and say like, OK, Mike,
25:00
you know, here's the here's here were the answers that you were
25:03
seeking. And so I took issue with the way
25:05
that I think Mike was conducting business and I thought that
25:10
there was a better way, a more. So like, he was really
25:14
antagonistic, it sounds. Like, yeah, and that's his
25:17
thing. I hope I don't call it if Mike's
25:18
listening to this. I hope I don't 'cause him any
25:20
offense. I think that he's just, I think
25:22
he would be very proud of the kind of the bombastic sort of
25:26
style that he had. And, and people were.
25:29
And I think that was part of that Bay Area tech bro culture
25:33
at the time, or contributed to a culture where, you know, you got
25:37
to be a tough guy to put up with this stuff, you know, And so,
25:41
and I, you know, sort of being nice Catholic schoolboy that I
25:44
was wanted to, to do, do, do, do, do it differently.
25:50
And, and so that's how Geek Wire was born.
25:53
And, and John at first was reluctant.
25:55
He was like, Oh, well, I don't know.
25:58
And, and, and that's the thing that I want to say about
25:59
entrepreneurship. Not everyone is naturally an
26:03
entrepreneur. They can learn to become
26:06
entrepreneurs or, or sometimes if you completely de risk things
26:11
for people, it it makes it easier for them.
26:14
And So what I did was I they, you know, John and Todd had
26:18
salaries from day one. I said to yeah, in fact, So what
26:22
John did was he called me like a couple of months later goes, are
26:25
you serious about this? Because I think maybe there's
26:28
something there. But Jonathan, you and I can't do
26:32
it because you're not a reporter.
26:33
And I need a second person who is a reporter.
26:36
And that person I think is Todd Bishop and that way I can cover
26:39
startups and Todd can cover to big companies like Microsoft and
26:43
etcetera. So I go, that's great.
26:45
And so from day one, and then I had to go meet with everyone's
26:49
wives. We all had kids that about the
26:51
same time, coincidentally, we're all the same age and all of our
26:55
wives were literally everyone was pregnant at the same time.
26:59
And so I'm, I was more cavalier, I think as a an entrepreneur
27:04
that had normalized to taking risk and not knowing where the
27:07
next paycheck was coming from. They were not quite there.
27:10
And so I had to take people out to dinner and assure everyone
27:14
that we can figure out health insurance, we've got this and I
27:19
can allocate enough money to keep us going for three years.
27:25
And in fact, I think I gave them raises from what they were
27:28
making at the Puget Sound Business Journal.
27:30
So, so it was a situation where it was fairly de risked.
27:34
And, and then I'm proud of what they've done since then.
27:39
They, they are absolutely bona fide entrepreneurs now, But but
27:44
it, it took some convincing and sometimes when you start
27:46
ventures, that's not uncommon. And so the idea was you wanted
27:50
something that was still in the the tech space, whether it's
27:53
startups or the big firms like Microsoft and Google, but that
27:57
had a little bit of a different energy to it.
28:00
Yeah, yeah. And, and and I think there were
28:03
maybe two or three things. One was I didn't like the tech
28:07
events that I was going to. They were kind of stuffy events.
28:11
A lot of people in suits, you know, forget now that I'm older,
28:16
forgive me, but but but they, they seem like they were old,
28:19
old, kind of an older crowd. And the tech entrepreneurial
28:24
crowd that I was, that I knew and loved were were, you know,
28:31
younger and, and they were had a lot of new ideas, fresh
28:35
thinking. And so I wanted to create that
28:39
community and I felt that we did do that in the first seven or
28:44
eight years of Geek Wire. But then everybody gets a
28:46
little, you know, we age up and A and A and A and A and a
28:49
industry gets bigger and the average age kind of goes up for
28:53
various reasons. And so that so that was one
28:58
problem we were trying to solve. And I think the second one was
29:02
that I did feel like that the kinds of tech companies being
29:06
founded being started in the Northwest were a little bit
29:11
different from the kinds of companies that were in the Bay
29:13
Area at the time. I felt that the companies that
29:16
were in the Northwest were a little bit more honestly
29:20
substantive. You would lead first.
29:23
Maybe your first slide to pitch to AVC was here's the business
29:27
model, here's how we're going to make money.
29:29
Whereas in the Bay Area, I think it was just so frothy and there
29:33
was, you know, volume wise, dollar value wise, everything
29:37
was higher. And so entrepreneurs could get
29:40
away with just raising $30 million on, on vision only,
29:46
right? And we'll figure out how to make
29:47
money later. You know, I, I don't think
29:49
that's news to anybody. But there was a pretty big
29:52
cultural contrast in terms of how we pitched, how we
29:55
communicated with each other. And so I wanted to honor that
29:58
honor the way that we did it here, which is also more my
30:02
style, so. Jonathan, what inspired you to
30:05
start Joy Sauce and why specifically now?
30:09
Yeah, yeah. So it, it was something that I
30:11
was thinking about for a long time.
30:13
And I also credit my wife. So my wife is non Asian.
30:17
And and so this this anecdote is at the at the intersection of
30:21
several key things that that that I felt very strongly about.
30:27
So I feel that that that my Asian American sisters have had
30:35
a much easier time sort of being a more welcomed part of the
30:43
American cultural fabric than my Asian American brothers.
30:50
And that's, that's a thing. Asian American men are often
30:57
sort of emasculated in, in society.
31:00
There's, there's many, many examples.
31:02
And this is like, you know, the Asian American men are the least
31:07
promoted in upper management, even less so than than white
31:14
women and Asian American women. There are some groups that are
31:19
below them, but but for men, it's their last group.
31:24
The Asian American men are the are the least, or at least they
31:27
were as of a few years ago. The least swiped is a swiped
31:32
right. Like on Tinder, if you like
31:34
someone, you swipe right, right. If you don't like someone, you
31:37
swipe left. I, you know, I've never used
31:38
those, but but Asian American men are the least swiped right
31:45
precisely because of this unconscious bias that's been
31:49
kind of steeped in society that historically has come from a lot
31:53
of different sources that has marginalized Asian American men.
31:59
Now, this isn't just about the stature of Asian American men.
32:03
It is also about, so my wife is white and when we were young, we
32:14
never saw other couples that looked like us.
32:17
You would see an Asian American woman with a white man, which is
32:22
great, just like my, my own mother and my Italian American
32:25
father. But you never saw the reverse.
32:30
And so when we were in our when we were first dating anytime out
32:36
in the wild at a restaurant, if we saw just rare occasion, like
32:39
maybe once a year, you would see another couple that's like, oh,
32:42
the dude is Asian and, and the woman is white.
32:45
We'd be like, oh, what are they ordering?
32:47
Oh, look what they're. Wearing OK then OK now they're
32:50
leaving what Oh, let's see what Carter which car do you drive
32:53
You know I mean we would have followed them home if we could
32:56
so because we were so curious about like this is such a rarity
33:00
and so joy sauce to answer your question comes out of what I
33:05
felt oh that that there was not an honest conversation about
33:10
those things right. I felt that there needed to be a
33:15
platform where we leaned in really hard and spoke honestly
33:20
about issues like that and also a lot of other related things,
33:25
right? And in doing so, I think the
33:30
conversation can broaden to include family members and
33:34
allies and friends and neighbors, right?
33:37
So, so Joy Sauce, not unlike Geek Wire, where it was meant to
33:42
do it a little bit differently than other antecedents.
33:46
Joy sauce is not meant to be this insular.
33:49
Hey, this is for Asian Americans only, or this is for Koreans
33:52
only or Japanese only or Chinese only.
33:56
This is for, let's include the entirety of the, the, the, the
33:59
Asian American diaspora because that's how we related to each
34:03
other. When I was in school, if I saw
34:06
another Asian kid, it didn't matter that that person was
34:10
Filipino instead of what I was. It's like, oh, hey, I want to,
34:15
I'm curious about you, what's your background?
34:17
Right. And so that energy I think is
34:19
still there on the part of a lot of people.
34:21
And so I wanted to also then broaden out to family members,
34:26
allies, acknowledging that they exist in our experience as well
34:31
and vice versa. And so, and again, just like
34:36
Picnic and Picmonkey and Geek Wire, I think that if you can
34:41
forge an emotional connection with the viewer or the user,
34:45
this is classic Don Norman emotional design.
34:48
If you can reach them through wow, love and delight, you can
34:55
make a stronger connection and engender a greater brand
34:57
loyalty. And so Joy sauce is meant to
35:00
invoke those same feelings, right?
35:02
It's like soy sauce, which is a ingredient common to a lot of
35:06
Asian cuisines. But happy Geek Wire is the same
35:09
like let's celebrate being a geek.
35:12
You know, that was something that was kind of doubted at
35:14
first was like, wait a minute, I can't imagine calling Steve
35:17
Ballmer and hey, I'm Jonathan Sposato from Geek Wire or
35:20
whatever. And but but it's a no, no, no,
35:22
that can be very cool. That can be.
35:25
Let's let's flip it on its head and make being a geek very cool
35:30
pick monkey. Same thing, you know, do we do
35:32
our users identify the monkeys? Well, actually, monkeys are
35:36
usually in every culture revered for their intelligence.
35:40
And so let's let's lean into that aspect.
35:43
So couple things I want to dig into.
35:47
You know, you mentioned you'd be someplace and at school or
35:50
something, you see another Asian kid, you're like, oh, like I, I
35:53
want a better even. Like they're Filipino.
35:54
They're from a different background.
35:56
How what what's a good way for us to be curious about each
36:01
other's backgrounds without making people feel like they're
36:05
outsiders? You know, there's sort of this
36:07
conversation that's often had. I, I'm sure you've been on the
36:10
receiving end of it. Well, Jonathan, where, where are
36:12
you from? That's right.
36:14
Yeah. And how would you answer that
36:15
question? Jonathan, where are you from?
36:17
I would say, hey, I'm from Seattle.
36:19
Yeah, but I mean, where are you from?
36:21
From. Like, where are you really from?
36:23
You know it. It, it, it, I, I was originally
36:26
born in London, lived in New York and then at some point just
36:29
to kind of I've learned to short circuit the awkwardness and be
36:34
like, but it but, but with what you mean is you know where,
36:36
where my family is from originally or what my ethnicity
36:39
is. Then I'm half Korean, half
36:41
Chinese. Like I'll say it that way.
36:44
And so and so, what's the better way to sort of pose that
36:47
question? Appreciate that, Anthony.
36:48
Yeah, you're right that for most for most Asian Americans in
36:54
particular, getting that question is a little bit
36:57
uncomfortable because it does other them.
36:59
It does have this feeling that while I was born and raised
37:03
here, I mean, where, what do you mean?
37:04
Where am I from? And, and so you're always
37:06
perpetually feeling that you're, you're made to feel UN American.
37:11
And that has to do with the history of, of, of, you know,
37:14
whether we, you know, fought against Japan in World War 2 and
37:17
then Japanese Americans were Americans born and raised, were
37:20
interns, things like that. So, so there's that history.
37:24
I think to answer your question, the best way to be curious about
37:29
someone's background or their ethnicity without sort of these
37:32
triggering things is to just to get to know them first.
37:36
I would recommend, Hey, I'm curious about you.
37:39
Just kind of leave it at that. Let's have coffee or you know
37:42
what? What do you do for a living?
37:44
Yeah. Where do you live?
37:46
And kind of just start there. And then as you get to know the
37:49
person, it will inevitably be naturally revealed what that
37:53
person is. Oh, I was just having a
37:54
conversation with my Korean father.
37:56
You know, he was so annoyed at me for blah, blah, blah.
37:59
So. So where can people find Joy
38:02
Sauce in the content? So we are Live Joy Sauce as a TV
38:08
channel on Amazon Prime Video. So the easiest way it's pretty
38:11
easy is to go to your Amazon Prime Video and up at the very
38:15
top it says movies, TV shows, sports.
38:18
I think it's the third one. And then at the 4th one on the
38:21
upper right is live TV. Go to live TV and depending on
38:27
your preferences or how the algorithms, what they think of
38:31
you as a viewer, Joy Sauce will be in the top half of the
38:38
electronic program guide. Once you go to live TV, then you
38:42
see all the different channels like CNN and ESPN and you know,
38:48
a murder mystery channel, things like that.
38:50
And you should be able to find Joy Sauce.
38:52
If it's not in the top, if you're, if you're scrolling a
38:55
lot and you don't see it, then another easy way to find it is
39:01
after you click on live TV, then go to the entertainment option,
39:06
entertainment category. And usually joy sauce is near
39:10
the top of that list and you just click on it and watch it
39:15
and it's a live what's called a fast channel.
39:18
Fast stands for free advertising supported TV, which is the way
39:22
that most people, greater than 50% of the country who have cut
39:28
their ties with a lot of subscription fees and who are no
39:31
longer using watching conventional cable like the way
39:34
that we grew up, Anthony, that's how they're watching TV now is
39:37
they're watching a fast digital stream that's a linear and
39:41
always on and they just kind of leave it on all day.
39:45
Talk to me about the potential target audience here.
39:49
Is there enough folks to eventually support this kind of
39:53
a channel? Absolutely.
39:55
So I'll start with the smaller group and then go large.
39:59
So there's a group that whom we call the Slaysians.
40:03
The Slaysians are young, 18 to 35, Asian Americans, born and
40:09
raised here. They speak English.
40:11
They don't really speak the other language that languages of
40:14
their culture. And they are very aesthetically
40:17
driven. They're very style conscious.
40:20
They are. Into all kinds of, you know, the
40:24
newest music and in the traditional, there's a, there's
40:27
a, there's a company that studied how trends start called
40:32
the Cheskin Company. They were based in New York.
40:35
I'm not sure if they exist anymore, but this is maybe 20
40:38
years ago. They created a trend adoption
40:40
model on their trend adoption model.
40:43
I think that people can look this up.
40:45
The Slaysians would be those early adopters that are
40:51
explorers, I think the term was. They're explorers.
40:54
They try a lot of different things and it becomes a part of
40:57
that. Their identity, their fringy
41:00
style or the indie music that they're listening to is part of
41:03
who they are. So that's the Slaysians, a
41:05
younger cohort. What?
41:07
Why Slaysians? What's What's this?
41:10
That's a fun way for us to say that because they slay, you
41:13
know, because they're, they're. Saying OK.
41:15
So, so get this. The next group is an older group
41:20
who are 35 to 55. They maybe include myself and
41:26
they are the Rising Suns and the Rising Suns are much more
41:31
socially conscious and sort of mission driven.
41:35
Like they care very much to raise the visibility of Asian
41:38
Americans in this country. They are rightfully angry about,
41:45
you know, anti Asian hate that happens or, you know, the
41:47
rhetoric of of of certain groups that are that are disparaging of
41:52
Asians. And so they're motivated by
41:56
wanting to create change and they have the economic power to
42:00
make an impact. And so we call them the Rising
42:03
Suns. The third group that we're going
42:05
after that Joy Sauce appeals to is general market.
42:10
So I probably don't have to tell you that there are a lot of
42:13
people who are non Asian who are into K dramas.
42:18
K Huge, right? Chinese action movies starring
42:23
Chow Yun Fat or you know, Tony Liang and you know, old, you
42:28
know, kind of stored a fantasy epics with Takeshi Kaneshiro or
42:36
another category is the Japanese tokusatsu genre.
42:43
And tokusatsu is, you know, Ultraman and you know, any of
42:49
the Kaiju stuff, you know, that's the stuff that that I
42:52
loved watching in on reruns here in the States when I was growing
42:57
up, agnostic with the fact that I was Asian American, but he was
43:00
just like, Oh my God, that's so cool.
43:02
And, and, and so anime is another big category.
43:06
And so there's a lot of general market appeal to Asian content
43:11
that we're, we're very cognizant of and, and want to make it as
43:15
part of our mission is to appeal the general market.
43:18
So a great example is I was not particularly a music aficionado
43:25
or music lover per SE. I, I, I wasn't into Bruce
43:30
Springsteen or Michael Jackson or Sammy, but, but, but watching
43:36
MTV, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm getting all of it and I loved
43:39
it. Same with BET, you know, I'm not
43:42
African American, but I love watching BET because it'd be
43:46
like a really great show with, you know, at the time with Will
43:50
Smith or Queen Latifah. OK.
43:54
So are you guys licensing a lot of content?
43:56
Are you creating your own original stuff?
43:59
Both, yeah. So we created a lot of our own
44:01
content, which is what differentiates us and that
44:04
allows us to sort of set the stage for how this is not your
44:07
grandfather's Asian American TV. So they include things like
44:12
that, really push into the issues that I discussed.
44:15
So there's a show called Mixed Six that my wife and I Co
44:19
produce, which is all about couples who are mixed, where one
44:23
person's Asian and the other person is not.
44:25
The other person could be white, the other person could be black,
44:28
or they could be two different kinds of Asians.
44:31
Or it could be like a gay or a lesbian couple where again,
44:35
there's something, you know, not monolithic about the couple.
44:39
And so so we've created that. We've created a also another
44:44
unscripted reality series about a 26 year old Chinese American
44:51
professional race car driver who drives for BMW and she's racing
44:54
against Mario Andretti's grandson.
44:57
And she's probably one of the few, she is one of the few few,
45:02
like 1 out of 3000 race car drivers is, is a woman and she's
45:07
probably the only Asian American female pro race car driver at
45:11
that level. And so the A story is about how
45:14
she's winning races, but the B story is about how, you know,
45:18
her mother is doubtful of her career choice and still just
45:21
really wants her to go to Med school, right.
45:23
So, so that's something that a lot of Asian Americans can
45:26
relate to. We have our own Joy sauce late
45:30
night talk show, which I'm the host of.
45:33
I threw myself in there because I couldn't, I was too cheap to
45:36
pay somebody else at the time and leveraging my experience on
45:40
stage with with the geek wire events.
45:42
But but we have all manner of guests come on and we're the
45:45
cold open comedy sketches, the musical act, the Co host, the
45:50
guests, everybody is Asian American and that's that's kind
45:53
of neat to see. We've created this parallel
45:55
universe. So then of course we also have a
45:58
lot of content that is licensed or second windowed.
46:02
And the magic here is that we've curated thoughtfully what those
46:06
should be. So we're not obviously taking in
46:08
everything, but we are picking indie Film Festival, you know,
46:16
festival winners or things that have like an amazing cult
46:21
following, but you know, that they may not get more airtime on
46:25
a major network or films and TV shows produced by, you know,
46:31
some really successful big time directors and writers.
46:36
But maybe their first or second film just as good just didn't
46:41
get that big open that their latest film got so.
46:46
So let me see if I let me see if I've got my numbers right here.
46:50
Asian Americans and it's a place like Seattle, about 18% of the
46:54
population, right? That's right.
46:56
But only represent less than 3% of speaking roles in TV and
47:02
movies. That's right.
47:03
It occurs to me that part of what you're trying to do is not
47:08
only increase that ratio so that there's more speaking parts on
47:13
TV shows, movies, etcetera, all kinds of media for Asian
47:16
Americans, but also help all Asian Americans sort of feel
47:21
better about and celebrate themselves and their culture.
47:26
That's right, that's right. I'm actually just #1 trying to
47:28
make up a gap, make up for the gap that exists between those
47:32
numbers that you saw between your number of Asian Americans
47:35
that are actually in this country and our contributions
47:40
to, to the culture and our, the society.
47:42
But we seldom see ourselves represented like, like lately
47:46
it's been getting better. But there's, there's a belief
47:48
that it's kind of peaked a little bit and it's kind of
47:50
dipped back down because precisely because of that stat,
47:53
that it's still less than 3% of the speaking roles, despite
47:57
being proportionally much higher a percentage of the population.
48:01
So making up that gap is the first step.
48:03
The second one is, though, to sort of from more from an
48:07
emotional standpoint to, to, to make it so that I think a lot of
48:10
Asian Americans are less apologetic and that we stand
48:14
with more stature and walk with more swagger and to dance with
48:18
more joy, I like to say. And, and, and because for so
48:22
long, I think some people, some of us feel that we've been a
48:27
little beat up. You know, we're literally still,
48:29
you know, old grandmas are still getting pushed in subways, still
48:36
getting attacked. There are still restaurants in
48:40
even progressive places like Los Angeles that are, you know,
48:47
either not seating or seating Asian Americans in back corner
48:52
of the restaurant. There are still, there's still a
48:54
lot going on that is wrong. And so I think pushing back on
48:59
that and, and ultimately normalizing Asian Americans as
49:05
being just as American as whites, Latinos, blacks,
49:11
etcetera. That's the goal.
49:14
You know, and it, it strikes me that because I've seen, I've
49:19
seen sort of sexist and racist patterns before, as I'm sure
49:22
that you have. And I think sometimes what
49:26
happens when a minority group tries to raise up and, and
49:31
celebrate themselves and their culture, other people get to
49:34
feel threatened by that. And I think what can be helpful,
49:39
people are listening and they're like, well, I'm not Asian, why
49:41
do I care about this Joy Sauce channel?
49:43
You know, you know what, where's my channel kind of a thing?
49:47
And I think what can help but, and I've seen this actually play
49:50
out in some conversations, is people understanding that
49:54
celebrating one group does not mean denigrating another.
50:00
So I can be here as a white American, Italian American, if
50:05
you want to get more specific and not feel threatened by an
50:09
Asian American channel, media channel that it is, you know,
50:15
supporting and, and celebrating the Asian community because hey,
50:20
yeah, good for you. So celebrate the the elements
50:23
that make you a little bit different than me.
50:25
Why not, right? That's exactly right.
50:27
I really appreciate that, Anthony.
50:28
You've put it beautifully. I, I, I have a very strong
50:31
belief that it, it is not 0 sum. It is not a pie that is stagnant
50:37
and somehow more for one group is less for another group.
50:40
I, I really do not believe that. I, I believe that the, the, IT
50:46
is sort of infinitely sized and that it's about everyone feeling
50:51
like they're on an equal footing, that they deserve to be
50:53
on an equal footing, that they deserve to be treated the same
50:56
way and fairly. And where there's a deficit, I,
51:01
you know, let's, let's do something about that.
51:03
And I also would argue that if you're not Asian American, to
51:08
care about something like Joy sauce is to ultimately care
51:12
about this country and what makes us incredibly special,
51:17
which is that I, I, I do believe that we still live in one of the
51:20
best countries in the world. There are things happening right
51:23
now that are, that are maybe tarnishing that a little bit.
51:26
But but, but, but, but to keep it special, to keep it vibrant,
51:32
I think we need to have that diversity of opinion.
51:37
We need to have different influences.
51:40
That's why we are so entrepreneurial, right?
51:42
We are one of the most entrepreneurial countries.
51:45
People who are entrepreneurs, when they move to the EU or the
51:48
UK or to Japan, they will talk about how, oh boy, it's, it's
51:54
harder to do things there, right?
51:56
And so we, in order to preserve that spirit of innovation, we
52:00
have to have multiple inputs and multiple influences.
52:04
So keeping or or making stronger one community does not come at
52:10
the expense of other communities, but in fact makes
52:12
us all stronger. Jonathan, you've got a history
52:17
of building ideas that become enormously popular right there.
52:24
We've talked about Picnic, We've talked about Picmonkey, We've
52:27
talked about Geek Wire in very crowded spaces.
52:33
Excuse me? You found a way to to rise above
52:35
the noise. It seems like it's even noisier
52:39
now in terms of the amount of content and media that there is
52:43
to consume. How do you hope to promote Joy
52:48
Sauce? How do you hope to get a lot of
52:51
extra traction with this idea? Yeah, I think that's a very
52:54
astute question. There is in fact a lot of noise
52:56
and that is the biggest challenge that we have is to cut
53:00
through. But I have a belief that in fact
53:03
we are currently the only Asian American channel in existence.
53:08
You know, so African Americans have a very respectable, I think
53:12
1 1/2 trillion in annual spending power and there are 20
53:17
somewhat digital or cable channels focused on on that
53:23
community with Spanish speaking Americans.
53:25
It's something like over 40 of those channels also like a very
53:30
respectable, I think 1.6 or 1.7 trillion in spending power with
53:35
Asian Americans, there's like a 2.2 trillion in annual spending
53:38
power and up until Joy Saw's zero.
53:41
So I think that that in itself there's a little bit of AI
53:46
wouldn't say first mover advantage per say.
53:48
I don't actually believe there's such a thing as first mover
53:50
advantage, but there's sort of scarcity advantage there.
53:55
So I think that helps us. The second way, like I said, is
53:59
to win with by connecting with people emotionally.
54:04
I think if we were to call ourselves and to brand ourselves
54:08
and have the art direction and the programming be sort of safe
54:13
and the well, here's kind of like the bell curve in the
54:17
middle of what everybody might want to see in our community, I
54:21
think that that wouldn't necessarily win.
54:24
I think that we have to have a very strong POV, even sometimes
54:29
a controversial POV, sometimes maybe things that people don't
54:32
like, maybe they they might turn it on.
54:36
It's like, well, that's, that's a, that's an element of the
54:39
Asian American community. I hadn't thought about, you
54:41
know, that that I think is what will sort of move the needle in
54:46
terms of cutting above the noise.
54:49
As you look forward to the future, do you see Joy Sauce
54:52
ever becoming like a traditional cable channel or distributing
54:56
its content on YouTube or other platforms?
54:59
Yeah, absolutely. So I I hadn't talked about that.
55:02
So, so we're launching first on fast free advertising Sport TV.
55:07
The next step is video on demand.
55:09
And so that's that's also happening and that's also.
55:12
So that's a thing going sort of horizontally.
55:16
We're going across multiple carriers.
55:18
And so right now it's Amazon Prime Video, which is one of the
55:21
largest tier ones and we'll soon be launching on other Tier 1 and
55:25
Tier 2 carriers. And we're excited about that.
55:28
Eventually. We are, we would consider a
55:32
traditional cable down the line if, if the terms are right, the
55:38
business model will work wonderfully even without a.
55:41
So that's kind of like an extra, not unlike when we were doing
55:46
games, often times you would go with two or like one lead
55:52
platform. You're going to do it first on
55:54
the Nintendo, then do your Sega Genesis port and then do your
55:58
other platforms. So similar strategy.
56:03
You know, Jonathan, I'm guessing as a lot of people from the
56:06
outside look at you, they're like, wow, look at all he's
56:08
accomplished. Life just comes easy for that
56:11
guy, right? Like.
56:12
Yeah. Yeah, like, man, you sold all
56:15
those companies to, you know, you know, giant, you know,
56:18
Fortune 50 companies, you know, Geek Wire, like everything you,
56:24
you touch turns to gold. Life is is is easy.
56:27
Hardly. Hardly.
56:29
We we all have challenges, we all have struggles and I'd like
56:32
to hear about a big serious challenge that you've overcome
56:35
in your life. Yeah, I, I, I, there's been many
56:38
and I don't want to. There are people, you know, I
56:42
don't want to overplay how much I've suffered because because in
56:46
general, we're all very lucky being, you know, living here in
56:50
this country and getting to do what we do.
56:52
But there have been a lot of challenges.
56:54
I would actually characterize that with every single one of
56:57
these startups, every single one, there's a near death
57:01
experience or multiple near death experiences.
57:03
Joy Sauce has been a four year plus journey where there has
57:11
been multiple challenges, whether it's it's it's in the
57:13
way that we're capitalized and I put a lot of my own funds into
57:18
it, whether it's in deals that got consummated, you know,
57:24
contracts that were signed, agreements that were made and
57:27
then they somehow blew apart because of some reason that we
57:33
could not control. You know, maybe somebody on the
57:35
other side that company got bought and they're going in a
57:38
different direction or, you know, that that's decision
57:41
maker, the senior vice president got laid off and there's a new
57:44
person in charge and they're so so there been a lot of setbacks.
57:48
But I would generally say that probably one of the biggest
57:52
setbacks that I could remember was my very first start up.
58:00
And that I remember when my parents, when my mother told me
58:04
that I could not come home when I graduated, She wasn't going to
58:11
come up for graduation. Dad wasn't going to come up
58:13
because he already moved out. And the reason was because they
58:16
were getting divorced. And so, you know, don't bother
58:18
coming home after you pack up your stuff, find a storage unit.
58:23
I got to sell the house. So so when you hear that when
58:28
you're 21, just turned 22, it kick starts you into a a
58:33
different place. And for me, that began a
58:37
probably like a four year journey where, you know, on the
58:41
one hand, I had nothing to lose. So instead of going to law
58:44
school, I started this games company.
58:47
But on the other hand, this was my trial by fire of learning.
58:52
OK, how do I make payroll? Oh, our client, you know,
58:56
Nintendo, they or or Electronic Arts they they pay and your net
59:00
60 days from submitting a milestone to getting sending you
59:03
that check. And so I'm going to not be able
59:06
to make payroll. So what I do, I'm not taking a
59:09
home a paycheck, do I? So getting a line of credit,
59:13
having an employee or two on occasion just out of a
59:16
population that was 40 plus employees, having someone who
59:21
had a substance abuse problem. OK, what, how do you deal with
59:24
that? Do we do we fire the guy or do
59:26
we help the guy? Is there like an outpatient
59:28
program? Is it better to be, you know,
59:30
just learning all of that at the age of 22/23/24 was pretty
59:36
incredible for me. And, and at the same time I was,
59:40
I think already starting to support my parents financially.
59:44
They're kind of independent of each other.
59:46
I think that my parents needed some help, and I remember giving
59:51
them what I could each. And so that was something that
59:58
was very difficult in retrospect.
1:00:00
I would never wish it on my own child someday when he's in his
1:00:05
20s. But at the same time, I think it
1:00:11
it I needed that kind of hardship because up until that
1:00:14
point I don't think I had very much of it.
1:00:17
And so knowing that you can survive that beans, that you can
1:00:21
survive anything. I mean, there were days when I,
1:00:24
I literally like here, I was the owner of like a, you know, a
1:00:28
successful game development company and we had contracts
1:00:31
with Nintendo and Sega and Electronic Arts and NEC, big,
1:00:35
big Fortune 500 companies. And I there were days when I had
1:00:40
$26 in my bank account and that was it.
1:00:43
And I was doing a cliche thing, eating Top Ramen or like a
1:00:46
peanut butter and Jelly sandwich, you know, and asking
1:00:48
my landlord if I could be late on a rent like that.
1:00:51
It's going to, you know, maybe in a week, right?
1:00:53
So, so, you know, that's not uncommon, I don't think, with
1:01:00
early entrepreneurs. And so the point there to answer
1:01:03
your question is that there are each one of those has its share
1:01:08
of those things. And I think the older you get,
1:01:11
the more quote UN quote successful you get.
1:01:13
And again, I've been more lucky than good.
1:01:17
I'll be the first to acknowledge that I'm always the dumbest guy
1:01:19
in a room. I don't, I'm not always the best
1:01:21
UIUX designer. I'm not this, I'm not a great
1:01:25
engineer or coder. It's, it's, it's usually the
1:01:30
synthesis of great teamwork that has led me to do the things that
1:01:34
I've done. Almost always the synthesis of
1:01:37
great teamwork. But the point is that it doesn't
1:01:42
matter how experienced you are, how old you are, your problems
1:01:49
and your challenges have, if you're doing it right, your
1:01:51
challenges have a way of scaling to where you are.
1:01:56
So each time things feel just as bad, right?
1:02:02
A more recent example was Joy Sauce.
1:02:05
A few years ago, the team insisted on creating an About Us
1:02:10
page. And I'm one of those where I'm
1:02:12
superstitious. Like, if you haven't launched a
1:02:14
product, if you're not close to launching, don't start making a
1:02:19
cool T-shirt for the team. Don't you know, come up with a
1:02:22
clever code name you know to to delight yourself?
1:02:26
Just hunker down, get your product shipped, then then order
1:02:30
the cool T-shirts, right? So I was reluctant to create an
1:02:34
about Us page, but some of the young folks on the team were
1:02:36
very eager to do that. And so they made one.
1:02:39
And this was at a time, I would say a few years ago, when I
1:02:42
think different communities were figuring out what does it really
1:02:46
mean to lean into your identity and, and, and, and, and to, to,
1:02:52
to, to, to make progress as a community.
1:02:55
And so people took issue with the fact that not 100% of the
1:03:00
team was Asian American, right. My wife was a part of it.
1:03:05
And there she is, you know, blonde and, you know, and, and,
1:03:08
and there was another fellow Ben, who was a super agent at
1:03:12
CAA. And of course, I needed him to,
1:03:14
to help us with, you know, lining up the, the various
1:03:17
celebrities. He was not Asian, white man.
1:03:20
And so, so people focus on that and really beat us up for it.
1:03:24
And then thread just kept being pulled like they beat us up for
1:03:30
the fact that we used the color yellow on the page.
1:03:33
Wow, don't you know that the color yellow is racist?
1:03:36
You're, you're, you're, you know, what kind of Asian
1:03:37
American are you? You know, and I'm, and here I am
1:03:40
the founder, you know, I'm very responsible and like, Oh my God,
1:03:44
did I do? And then, but then you realize,
1:03:46
no, you know my earliest influences.
1:03:50
Bruce Lee, right? Game of death.
1:03:52
He's in that yellow jumpsuit, right?
1:03:55
Or in 1969, the, the very first time that the term Asian
1:04:00
American was coined was by a UCLA student movement and they
1:04:07
called themselves yellow power, right?
1:04:09
Kind of as a, as a reference to, to what African American
1:04:12
students were doing with black power.
1:04:13
So, so there's just a lot of noise out there on the Internet.
1:04:18
But that kind of push back from my own community was deeply
1:04:27
challenging for me. I think it changed me forever as
1:04:29
a person. I think it it it's it's changed
1:04:32
me in ways both good and bad. Probably so.
1:04:35
I mean, it's going to be frustrating.
1:04:36
You know you're putting all this effort in to advance cause and
1:04:41
then the very people that you're trying to help are now attacking
1:04:44
you. Yeah, yeah, trolls.
1:04:47
That's exactly right. Trolls.
1:04:48
I think there's a lot of trollish behavior on on on
1:04:51
social media or people just wanting to up their follower
1:04:54
count by by inciting anger. I now openly and thanks to, you
1:05:00
know, allies like you, whenever I have speaking engagements and
1:05:04
get asked a question like this, I now openly use it as an
1:05:08
opportunity to say to ourselves, let's let's reflect on things
1:05:11
like that. Let's be kinder to each other as
1:05:14
a community. Not everybody's going to do it
1:05:18
or say it in exactly the way that you want it said and done,
1:05:22
right? We all have our truths.
1:05:25
I have my Asian American identity and vision for where we
1:05:30
could be. And that includes being more
1:05:35
provocative and more unapologetic and to stand with
1:05:38
more stature and walk with more swagger.
1:05:41
And so if you're not OK with that, you know you can, you can,
1:05:45
you can. You don't have to go to
1:05:46
joysauce.com. You don't have to go to the RTV
1:05:49
channel, right? Jonathan, I've just got one more
1:05:53
question for you today, but before I ask it, I want to do a
1:05:56
few things. First of all, to get in touch
1:05:58
with our guest. Best place is Instagram at
1:06:02
Jonathan Sposato, and we'll include a link to that in the
1:06:07
show notes. Sorry, Jonathan.
1:06:08
Was there another place you wanted them to?
1:06:11
Go. No, I I interrupted you
1:06:12
actually, Anthony, my apologies. No, that that's the best.
1:06:14
And Instagram's probably the best.
1:06:16
Great. And again, we'll have a link to
1:06:18
that in the show now. It's also as a reminder, if you
1:06:20
want to get more employees access to benefits that won't
1:06:23
hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for
1:06:25
the company, reach out to add back benefits.com.
1:06:28
Finally, if you take just a moment to leave us a comment or
1:06:31
a review on your favorite podcast app, we will be forever
1:06:34
grateful. So last question for you,
1:06:37
Jonathan, what is your superpower?
1:06:42
I don't know that I have any, Anthony.
1:06:46
OK, let me rephrase it. Setting aside all modesty, what
1:06:50
is your superpower? No, I'm, I'm serious.
1:06:54
I don't know that I can think of 1.
1:06:57
I, I think something is happening.
1:07:00
I think it's, it's, I guess the marketplace is, is saying I'm a
1:07:05
decent entrepreneur. So I think maybe I would say
1:07:08
this, I would say that I think a strength is that often time,
1:07:16
whether it's it was something in gaming or in consumer software
1:07:20
or in Internet SAS or in media is distilling something
1:07:25
complicated and chaotic down to its bare essence and
1:07:30
communicating that, right? Geek Wire.
1:07:35
Let's celebrate those of us who are super, super geeky and
1:07:40
broadcast and shouted out to the world.
1:07:43
Right? A picnic.
1:07:46
Taking something complicated like Photoshop and making it
1:07:51
fun. Like it's a picnic joy sauce,
1:07:55
right? Taking Asian American culture
1:07:57
and making it joyous. It's not about intergenerational
1:08:02
trauma and pain and strife and, you know, issues with our
1:08:07
mother. It.
1:08:07
It's about fun. Yeah.
1:08:09
What's the fun part of being Asian American?
1:08:13
Well. Jonathan's posado from Joy
1:08:15
Sauce. I want to be the first to thank
1:08:17
you for sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:08:19
I really appreciate it. Anthony, thank you so much.
1:08:22
You are great podcast interviewer.
1:08:25
It was lovely to be here with you.
1:08:27
I had a lot of fun. So hopefully this this we
1:08:29
delivered some value to your listeners.
1:08:31
I know that we did, folks. That's a wrap on another episode
1:08:34
of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:08:36
today.