Latest / Founder Mode / How Not to Run a Startup with Bobby Evans

Transcript

How Not to Run a Startup with Bobby Evans · Founder Mode

0:00
Allowing yourself the time to think and actually make yourself
0:04
better is more important than having a busy calendar.
0:08
You know, people probably look at the day and we want to act
0:11
about cause with like 6 different people.
0:12
And then you're talking to this guy from the UFC and this guy
0:15
from a sports agent and you know, what event can we do
0:18
realistically? You know, you definitely need to
0:21
have time to think is about it because ultimately the business
0:24
wouldn't be there without you. Welcome back to Founder Mode.
0:41
The show where we talk to people building in the wild and share
0:44
the lessons you only learn the hard way.
0:46
Today's episode a little different.
0:47
We're not talking about what to do, we're going monger style and
0:50
learning through inversion. What breaks startup?
0:52
What kills momentum? What decisions seem smart but
0:55
aren't? That's what we're unpacking
0:56
today. What are your some of your
0:58
favorite mistakes as a founder, Kevin?
1:00
Yeah, I think a bunch. I think, I think just forgetting
1:03
to do stuff. And I think like in the early
1:06
days, you know, you forget to register something, you know, I
1:08
think contract or some sort of registration and then you're
1:11
like, oh, I should have registered the handle or the
1:13
brand or the name. Yeah.
1:15
I've also just, you know, in the early days, we were signing
1:17
contracts. We didn't have end dates on them
1:19
and just a lot of things that at the time, it just seemed
1:21
harmless. But the expense of like having
1:24
these little sort of lintings of mistakes add up.
1:26
I think there was nothing more catalyzing than going through
1:29
that sort of the acquisitions, right?
1:30
You also you also have a ton of ton of history with our guest
1:33
today Bobby. Any crypto hard, hard won, hard
1:36
earned lessons in your in your days as as Kevin Degaans.
1:39
Yeah, I think in the crypto world, I think the lessons are
1:42
crazier. I think partly because
1:44
everything say or and sometimes even think is financialized.
1:49
And I think it's the idea of like in crypto, you sort of
1:52
you're sort of IT owing with every little tweet, every little
1:55
thought. And so that sort of, you know,
1:58
learning that lesson and sort of seeing people create tokens and,
2:01
you know, bet on you or, you know, bet on the things you may
2:04
do right into the product features you're going to add or
2:06
the customers you're going to sign or whether you're going to
2:08
raise money or not. And like that became like a
2:10
pretty and still today, I think harms a lot of crypto founders
2:14
early on where they they struggle with this idea that you
2:17
do want to have a personality and a brand and sort of talk
2:20
publicly about everything you're doing.
2:22
Because that's great to get attention and momentum.
2:25
But it comes at a cost of like understanding that people are
2:28
going to financialize that and over financialize.
2:30
They're literally betting on you.
2:31
And for as many people are betting on you to be successful,
2:34
there's a bunch of people that are betting on you, those people
2:36
to be wrong because they're going to make money on the
2:38
opposite side of the bet. And so yeah, is.
2:40
Crypto betting and like sports betting, one of the real use
2:44
cases like because there's always the fight over like
2:46
what's the real crypto blockchain use case.
2:48
Yeah, I think there's a bunch, right?
2:49
I think I mean the betting ones, one where it's like, and crypto
2:53
betting's allowed people to make bets just outside of
2:57
jurisdictions where it's legal. And so like there's all that and
3:00
crypto was similar, right, in this very Gray area for the
3:02
last, you know, 5 to 10 years. And more recently, this year,
3:05
it's become a lot more sort of like mainstream, you know, banks
3:09
are doing. It you just sent an e-mail
3:10
explaining stable coins to people, you know it's you know
3:12
it's mainstream. Yeah, it's, it's coming.
3:14
And so I think crypto allowed sort of gambling and a lot of
3:18
people that I've met that were early in Bitcoin and Etherium
3:20
and these sort of coins were like they discovered it through
3:23
crypto. And and even I like saw it early
3:25
in poker, like we were playing online poker and then that
3:28
became illegal to play online poker.
3:30
And crypto was the only way to move money in and out of these
3:33
sort of online casinos, right, in the early days.
3:35
And so that sort of has been a use case.
3:37
I think famously there's like Silk Road and sort of the like
3:40
underground eBay, there's a lot of those like that.
3:42
But I think the real use cases, you know, at the end of the day,
3:44
it's like what we do everyday. I buy stuff on my phone.
3:47
I, I, I purchase things like today, I pay anywhere from 2 to
3:50
3% credit card fees, depending on the merchant and the fees.
3:54
And you as a business, when you take a payment like that is the
3:57
real opportunity, which is like all of commerce is riding on
4:00
this two or three percent sort of float or fee.
4:04
And that's just not going to sustain in a market where the
4:07
cost of that goes to like fractions, you know, of a penny
4:11
or 0, right? It ends up being negative in.
4:13
Many cases because there happened 47365 instead of during
4:17
banking. Never closes, yeah, never
4:18
closes, always settles. So that is the, I think the real
4:21
use case. It just it's going to take time
4:23
for. You know, big entrenched players
4:25
in this, Yeah. But I mean, you know, Visa,
4:28
MasterCard and Amex would make good money on my phone, you
4:30
know, paying 3% for everything I tap, right?
4:33
And then, you know, all of the fees that are layered
4:34
underneath. So I think you know, that that
4:36
that's the ultimate sort of use case is just kind of all of
4:38
commerce. I think one other thing was
4:40
funny. Elon famously said to me once
4:42
the the idea that like crypto is like running Oracle on your
4:47
laptop. So like the idea that crypto can
4:49
handle that level of volume of transactions.
4:51
Like if you think of like what the credit card networks around
4:53
the world do and then what is, you know, what can a crypto
4:57
blockchain do at scale? And there's many of them now and
4:59
they're starting to scale, but like still the number of
5:02
transactions that happen in a lot of cases isn't there.
5:04
And I think, you know, some of the seven, Bobby, our guest
5:06
who's built on Solana is one of the faster blockchains.
5:09
And it's got a bunch of like kind of proof points of being
5:11
able to be the kind of the NASDAQ of crypto.
5:13
But I don't know enough about me.
5:14
Jason, what about you? What did?
5:16
What did you screw up? I've got one thing, I think the
5:18
number one thing that I'll tell people that is an easy mistake
5:21
to make as a first time or early stage founder is choosing your
5:24
Co founders. That's where I, I didn't do
5:27
enough research. I didn't really know what I was
5:29
getting into starting my first startup and and Co founding at
5:32
the company that I that I started down here in Socal.
5:36
And, you know, we, I think we'll probably talk to Bobby about the
5:38
right place to start up or to start up.
5:41
Yeah, I think if, if you can do one thing, it's kind of like
5:44
choosing a partner for life, like somebody that you want to
5:48
get married, like definitely do some dating, get engaged, have a
5:51
long engagement, like really get to know your Co founders.
5:53
I think I love it when you talk about your, your relationship
5:56
with your partner, JJ and how you guys have known each other
5:58
like 25 plus years. Like at a certain point you're
6:01
finishing each other sandwiches. You're you're kind of doing
6:03
everything, you know, what the other person's going to think
6:05
and say before they say it. So you can like skip a lot of
6:07
that stuff. And there's no, there's no
6:09
substitute for that. But in the, in the, you know,
6:11
like see of all the people you could start a business with,
6:14
there's good actors, there's bad actors.
6:16
We'll talk to Bobby about like the bad actors in the crypto
6:18
betting world, I'm sure. And I think if you're going to
6:20
start a start up, not in crypto, making sure at least that you
6:23
start somebody that has high integrity, that does what they
6:26
say they're going to do, tells the truth, not, not 100% where I
6:29
landed and, and learn some hard, hard lessons that way.
6:32
And I'll, I'll leave it. I'll leave it there.
6:35
I love it. Yeah.
6:36
I mean, Jason, every founder has a list of mistakes they'd never
6:39
repeat. And, you know, I think the real
6:41
pros, they, they show that list early and often and, you know,
6:44
kind of learn from it and scale. Yeah, today's guest is going to
6:46
do exactly that. He's seen the hype, he's scaled
6:49
through it, and he knows how to build without blowing it all.
6:51
Up yeah, Bobby's came through sports science, kind of broke
6:54
into crypto Co founded one of the most interesting sort of
6:57
wagering platforms in web. He worked with elite athletes,
7:00
he launched fast growth platforms and figured out how to
7:03
stay grounded while the space moved faster than ever.
7:05
Kevin, should we bring him on? Let's do it all right?
7:18
Bobby, welcome to founder mode. You don't one of the, you know,
7:21
in the one of the fastest moving spaces, I mean, super volatile,
7:24
right, crypto, sports, sports betting, blockchain.
7:26
And now you've, you know, kind of kept your head scaled fast
7:29
and and really kind of at the same time stayed grounded.
7:31
I mean, you know, looking back in some of our earlier
7:33
conversations, it's always incredible, like how much energy
7:35
stuff is going on in your space and then, you know, kind of the
7:37
way you guys pull through it. Yeah.
7:39
Welcome, Bobby. We're excited to have you here.
7:41
How's it going? Thanks.
7:42
Yeah, Thanks for having me here, guys.
7:44
Yeah, all good, all good. Like Kevin said then, this is a
7:48
fast moving space. You know, you've only got to
7:49
look at the stuff that's going on with prediction markets now
7:52
and it's looking like the sports button casino business might be
7:55
going out the window. So we've always got to evolve.
7:58
Yeah, you got to. You got to keep moving.
7:59
Well, let's let's start broad. What's the fastest way to ruin a
8:04
startup before it even gets going?
8:06
I've been thinking about this a lot over the probably the past,
8:09
the past the past two weeks, I'd say.
8:11
And I think the fastest way is to overhide it.
8:15
Definitely. I think it's, you know, I think
8:17
it's the easiest thing to do. And at the at the time it seems
8:20
like the right thing to do. But ultimately, you know, when
8:22
you look back, it's just an absolute disaster over hiring.
8:26
Yeah. And then when you guys have done
8:27
that in the past or you've seen that happen, like what sort of
8:30
the approach you take to sort of rein that in and fix it?
8:32
Like, you know, any advice to founders out there that is sort
8:35
of like looking at that state, maybe too many butts in the
8:38
seats and you know, do you do it quickly?
8:40
Do you know, how do you kind of rationalize like what to do
8:43
next? No, yeah.
8:44
I mean, I think, I think the hardest thing to do once you
8:46
hire, hire a bunch of people is obviously fire them.
8:49
You know, you know, the same, you know, quick to hire, long to
8:52
fire, or should we say long to hire, quick to fire.
8:55
It should be really fun. So, yeah, you know, it's, it's,
8:58
it's, you know, once you get these people in, you know, it's
9:01
actually a nightmare to hire people on, you know, salaries as
9:04
well. I think, you know, I think as a
9:06
young startup, what you really want is, you know, maybe
9:09
contractors where you know, you're not having to pay, you
9:12
know, like taxes and pensions and holidays and HR and the
9:16
headache and buying equipment for people.
9:18
It's just, it's just an absolute.
9:21
Yeah. So you're deep into crypto
9:24
betting. What is a rookie move there that
9:27
that kills most people that are entering that space?
9:29
Well, I think, I think from traditional betting, say you
9:33
have a FanDuel account, so you'll put $100 on NFL game, you
9:36
know, probably lose and you know, you you're you're not kind
9:39
of blown up support saying, you know, give me give me 2030 30
9:42
bucks back in the crypto space. It's very much bonus driven,
9:45
which I think is kind of the wrong approach for to the
9:49
industry. It's not really good for
9:50
anybody. Players hop from casino to
9:52
casino bonus hunting. They're not sticky, they're not
9:55
loyal. But then you get kind of caught
9:58
up in that yourself and you kind of forget your own path and
10:01
forget why you probably started the business and you then end
10:04
up, you know, we were doing 50% cash back last month, which like
10:09
we didn't you plan on ever doing that.
10:11
But you get caught up in a kind of a vicious cycle with all
10:14
these other casinos. And ultimately you can't compete
10:17
as well. State have got unlimited money,
10:19
Rubec have got unlimited money. We haven't.
10:21
So like, you know, we work hard all month and then we give 50%
10:24
back to players and then you've got to pay supplier fees and
10:27
wages. You know, it's, it's, it's like
10:29
a race to the bottom. What's, I mean, it's incredible
10:32
when you think about that and sort of deciding on what your
10:35
road map is and picking sort of what you want to go build, you
10:38
know, but what's maybe a product feature that you, you know, once
10:41
thought was brilliant but then turned out to be a complete
10:43
waste of time or or worse, it sounds like bonuses is one of
10:46
them. Is there other things you guys
10:47
have run into that you're just like, wow, we we never should
10:49
have done that? Yeah.
10:50
Well. Well, there's two there's, you
10:52
know, we're quite a social project.
10:54
So we, we thought having a chat or decided the at the casino
10:58
would be good, but that's, that's been a disaster.
11:00
You know, you've got people saying all sorts of swear words,
11:04
racist comments, stuff about, you know, politics, but like,
11:07
not, not in a good way. And then you've also got people
11:10
saying, you know, where the my withdrawal?
11:11
You know, it's just it's like a it's like when you stream a
11:15
stream a fight or a game and you've got like this, you know,
11:17
the chat on the side and it's just popping off, but not not a
11:20
good way. So that that is not, you know,
11:23
some people like it. It's not so good for us.
11:25
But then another bad feature, which Kevin, I'll give you guys
11:29
credit to D gods, your user profiles was thick and pretty
11:33
slick. Whereas our user profiles, it's
11:35
up like 6 months to build by the time we shipped it.
11:37
Nobody cared creating like a I'd say a pro like a user profile in
11:42
crypto. Fast-paced.
11:43
Not really. Not really the one.
11:45
This is good. These are good tips, good
11:47
advice, notes out there, those that are listening.
11:49
So you scaled pretty fast. Bobby, what's a growth tactic
11:53
that looks, you know, smart maybe on paper, but backfires in
11:57
the real world? So you talked about bonuses, but
11:58
is there, is there something else that you guys have done or
12:00
seen You're like, don't do that? Yeah, I think you know, you
12:04
know, when you want to bring, you know, calls in keep, you
12:07
know, key opinion leaders, you know, not having them
12:10
incentivized with the platform. You know, if you're just giving
12:12
them, you know, 51020K to, you know to do XYZ, it just it never
12:18
works out. You know, you need a land
12:19
sensors with with with the with these guys and you see it in
12:23
casinos that you know, let big calls in on the seed round or in
12:28
on the equity round. And they are obviously just, you
12:30
know, pumping the bags from the start.
12:32
But you know, it's in their best interest.
12:34
The post naturally, the post in their own words.
12:37
It's not scripted. It feels real.
12:39
Whereas, you know, if you're paying 10 grand for the
12:41
influencer with OK, he might post a few or few bets or a few
12:46
thoughts on the project, but then the like mercenaries
12:49
aren't, you know, there with another casino next month.
12:53
So, yeah, so it you know, I think, you know, pay and not
12:56
having a land incentives with, you know, any, any cause is a is
12:59
a bad idea. I like it.
13:01
And then what's something that you guys probably spent too much
13:05
time on or over optimized too early and what should you have
13:08
done instead? Well, I think, you know, and you
13:10
said this a lot in, you know, 'cause we've had Private Kevin's
13:13
kind of life, you know, just like kind of ship it and, you
13:16
know, trying to fix it later. And I think timing is obviously
13:21
everything for, you know, for a product like look at, you know,
13:25
Fake Shuffle, Rubert and Robust. They launched at the perfect
13:28
time and they've just got a absolutely gigantic audience now
13:32
because of the time they launched.
13:34
Whereas, you know, if Robot would have maybe delayed it six
13:38
months, you know, because the front end didn't look nice.
13:40
And you know, you know, this product wasn't built at the
13:43
time, but it's kind of just like, you know, I think, I think
13:46
if you've got an idea, I think you should just, you know, get
13:48
it to its MVP, get a house, take the feedback.
13:51
It's a race. And you know, these are all
13:53
obvious things, but they're very hard to do because, you know, as
13:56
a founder, you know, you, you want the first impression of
13:59
your product to be the right impression.
14:01
But, and then, and then you think if it's bad, they're not
14:03
going to come back. But you know, they probably,
14:05
they probably will. So.
14:07
Yeah, if someone's trying to grow Bobby with crypto,
14:10
airdrops, partnerships, influencers, what's maybe the
14:13
wrong way to do it? I think I think you know, like
14:17
like vanity metrics in this face and you know, a real example we
14:22
had was we had the freezer play game called block picks, which
14:25
was it came from the UK. So Sky better the biggest sports
14:29
but and casino in the UK, they're like the version of ESPN
14:32
in the States. So ESPN bets, so it's Sky and
14:35
Sky bets. So basically on a Saturday, they
14:37
have like the preview shows of all the football games and they
14:40
have a panel of X players and they all go through their picks
14:44
and then basically it's a freezer player and they put up
14:47
six games and you've got to guess the correct score, so 2111
14:51
etcetera. And at the end of the six picks,
14:54
you they've got a 60 just says add to bet slip and then they
14:57
take it over to Sky Bet and then you put the bet on this is also
15:01
free to enter. So that so every every week this
15:03
is £250,000 that that that you can win and it's base.
15:08
And then they do it based on points over a certain amount of
15:12
like game times and you can win prizes and all that.
15:15
So we basically made the crypto version of that.
15:17
And we, we ran it last year when we launched for the EUR and we
15:22
had 12,000 players every week, which from the outside looking
15:27
in was great. But they were all farmers from
15:30
Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, India.
15:33
And we thought it was, you know, you know, we were like, oh, my
15:36
players yesterday, 12,000 But in reality, how many came over to
15:39
the casino? Literally non Yeah, I'd say like
15:42
less less reliable. I like it.
15:45
And then just backing back into some kind of fundamentals 15
15:48
gears a little bit to kind of of the team and leading.
15:51
What's like something that startup leaders kind of get in
15:54
their own way once things start working Like we're, hey, you've
15:56
seen stuff working. And then you maybe, you know,
15:58
couldn't get rid of that founder sort of like creativity and
16:01
wanted to sort of meddle with something and really should have
16:03
stepped back and let your team run with it.
16:05
Yeah. I'd say, you know, founders have
16:10
a hard time delegating Dumpty. It's like, you know, at the
16:13
start, obviously I mentioned, you know, we over hired, but
16:15
then you still kind of want to get involved in every bit of the
16:18
business. But I think I think allowing
16:22
yourself the time to think and actually make yourself better is
16:27
more important than having a busy calendar.
16:30
You know, people probably look at the day and we want to
16:32
back-to-back course with like 6 different people.
16:34
And then you're talking to this guy from the UFC and this guy
16:37
from a sports agent and you know, you're talking to a, you
16:40
know, what event can we do? And like you're just being a
16:43
you're just being a busy fool. You know, realistically, you
16:46
know all those books everyone buys and you never read some
16:48
coming better taking takes, taking a bit of time to read one
16:51
of them and you never know what might come into your head.
16:53
So I think like keeping yourself busy enough so you're not
16:56
itching to get another course. But you know, you definitely
17:00
need to have time to think us about it because ultimately the
17:02
business wouldn't be there without you.
17:04
I love that Bobby, we talk about that a lot on the show.
17:07
I just want everybody to actually hear what he just said,
17:10
Like, don't fill your calendar just because like do stuff that
17:13
actually matters. And I think that's a it's, it's,
17:16
it's rather sage advice that I hope, I hope some folks
17:18
listening will take. So you've built through a lot of
17:20
volatility. You're, you're in this
17:22
inherently volatile space. What's the worst way to handle
17:26
both internal pressure, external panic?
17:28
How do you, how do you ride the storm well?
17:30
And what? What do you do not do?
17:32
To be honest to a false, I'm probably I'm probably too calm,
17:36
but you know, when we started the business, you know, started
17:39
with my brother Paul and then a friend, Ryan and another friend
17:44
called Christian Paul. I don't even read the like the
17:47
the Bitcoin billionaires book about the Winklevoss wins.
17:50
And like they kind of say the perfect because they've got each
17:53
side of the brain like 1's, like analysts are calling them one's
17:55
kind of like creative. So like me and Paul are kind of
17:58
like that. You know, Paul's kind of like
18:00
the Paul's kind of like, you know, better on numbers and
18:05
probably like more of a leader with people, whereas I'm kind of
18:08
more observed and I'm like, right, Paul, take a chill pill.
18:12
You know, it's all good. So it's, it's, it's we've, you
18:15
know, we've been through many crises, you know, we've, we've
18:18
held Solana from $250 to $8. Then how to sell it because we
18:21
needed money for wages. You know, we, we've been through
18:24
it all. Another thing is kind of what
18:27
you've got to remember. And like, it's kind of treading
18:29
on the edge of like nihilism, but like, you know, we're all
18:32
going to die. Everything's going to be fine.
18:33
It's not that deep. You know, I think if you're
18:35
going to take a step back and just appreciate and like stop,
18:39
stop probably thinking that what you're doing so important,
18:41
right? And just kind of chill off.
18:43
I love it dude. Let's talk.
18:44
Let's talk red flags. So what's a red flag in crypto
18:47
or betting that people maybe ignore or don't pay attention to
18:49
but end up regretting later? Yeah.
18:51
I mean, I think a big one is that, you know, there's like
18:54
1001 casinos out there, but probably one of the biggest is
18:58
that people kind of don't go on the socials beforehand or the
19:01
Instagram and you don't check out whether, you know, so many
19:04
times people come to us after depositing an amount, winning
19:07
and they're not getting paid out.
19:08
So, you know, he's massive in the space.
19:11
So I think and you know, it's hard for like, you know,
19:14
customers because, you know, you might see a sponsored post or
19:17
they might see a call who's been paid 20 grand, whose engagement
19:21
is fate and they think this casino looks legit.
19:25
And then the end up, you know, regretting it down the line
19:27
because, you know, they've had a big win and they can't get the
19:29
funds out. So think credibility is a big
19:31
one in the space. And what's I think customers are
19:35
it's, you know, to go do some into who they're playing with.
19:38
I think one of the, you know, things that attracted me in the
19:41
early days to sort of crypto and blockchain and Bitcoin and all
19:44
the sort of early was just the technology of like the idea of
19:47
this sort of like, right. Once, you know, read many times,
19:49
it was like this, you know, kind of permanence of the blockchain
19:53
as you guys look at, you know, that there's obviously benefits
19:55
to being there, but like what's 1 of the worst reasons?
19:58
You know, you see people, I'm sure like you've seen so many
20:00
people come after you guys have been around for a while, right,
20:03
in terms of the space and you see new people jumping into it.
20:06
What's 1 of the worst reasons people come to the blockchain
20:09
right? Are one of the worst reasons
20:10
that they sort of, you know, launch a product on the
20:12
blockchain today. I mean, it's probably the, you
20:15
know, the the reason you guys are thinking now is that, you
20:17
know, people just think that this space is just quick money
20:20
and easy money. And then they launch a product
20:23
and they don't realize how that actually is and how quick the
20:27
money doesn't come. So, you know, they launch
20:29
something for, you know, there's no free lunch, right?
20:32
So, yeah, I think that's the number one reason is, you know,
20:35
they might not have the most passion for what they're
20:37
launching anyway, because they're launching it for the
20:39
wrong reasons. And then when you launch for the
20:41
money reason and. It doesn't come.
20:42
You've talked a lot about math and probability and we look at
20:45
like prediction markets. I saw a chart today, you know,
20:48
that one of these prediction markets like had more sort of
20:51
like volume and sort of like energy, you know, around it than
20:55
even the election, right? Which is crazy to think that
20:58
like NFL Week 1 can see that sort of spike.
21:00
Like, you know, what's the wrong way to sort of apply that
21:04
lesson? Like in a start up to say, look,
21:06
you know, you really don't know what the real sort of global top
21:09
is on some of this stuff. And like prediction markets
21:11
arguably were like illegal and nobody said that that was
21:14
another thing. And crypto has, you know, had it
21:16
sort of political on and off, especially here in the US.
21:19
Like, I'm curious how you guys kind of evolve what you're doing
21:23
around seeing the, you know, the markets just move like this.
21:26
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I think it'd be interesting to to
21:28
get your guys take under prediction market as well
21:30
because obviously news are based in the US.
21:33
But you know, when I was listening to Pao Somani on
21:35
Empire last night and obviously he's invested into Kaushi.
21:38
So he's kind of pushing that for, you know, I I feel like as
21:42
like a sports pure issue. Do we say, yeah, actually, this
21:46
is quite ridiculous. The fact that, you know, I own a
21:48
spot in casino, but when I'm going to a sport, an event or,
21:51
you know, watching on the telly, I actually kind of hate nothing
21:53
more than seeing odds like push towards me.
21:57
Like, you know, I think I think House Imani say last night he
22:00
was like, you know, you've been a group chat with the boys and
22:03
you know you'll have a best, you know, Will Dryson, will Bryson
22:06
drive this screen and you know, it'll be coming up on your
22:08
screen. And I was thinking I'm watching
22:10
the masters on a Sunday. You know, Aragos that I don't
22:13
want to be seeing a best about Bryson the Shambo.
22:16
I want to just enjoy the sport as it is and both culturally, I
22:20
don't know if you guys are different towards English, but
22:22
like, you know, I know back at home, all my friends that love
22:25
football and go the match the lot, like if they're watching
22:27
the football, they're like engrossed in the football.
22:29
They're not I'm not betting on if, you know, Muhammad Sal is
22:32
going to score next. They're like, you know, I wanted
22:35
to score because I wanted to score.
22:36
I don't want to win money from it.
22:37
So it's like it's also a cultural thing.
22:40
It's like the UK is like the most sophisticated gambler
22:43
markets in the world. the US is obviously probably going to be
22:45
the largest very soon. But you guys, it's a nuts.
22:48
And it's like, so yeah, I'm interested to see what you guys
22:51
think about like prediction markets.
22:53
Would you want to be, you know, watching Bloomberg and having a
22:55
bet on if Jerome Powell is going to do 50 bits tonight?
22:58
Like, I don't know, would you? It's interesting.
23:00
It is interesting, right, because I think like at some
23:02
level it's the most purest form of humanity.
23:04
Like you, everybody, you make decisions in life and you're
23:07
predicting, you know, should I cross the street?
23:10
Is the car doing 80 miles an hour or 20 miles an hour?
23:12
You're like, I don't know, like my daughter's 15 1/2.
23:15
She's learning to drive and like, like she, you know, we're
23:18
like, should we make the left turn?
23:19
And I'm like, I don't know, it's at night.
23:21
The lights are getting big fast but like.
23:23
What would I'm? Going to do, I'm going to let
23:25
them go. No, but I mean, we got to learn
23:26
before FSD. You actually kind of.
23:28
You see, legally I learned you can use FSD to do all of your
23:32
driving practice. You just can't use it in the
23:34
test. Yeah, which is wild.
23:36
Which is wild. So it's like you can study for
23:38
the SAT and have it answer all your test questions but you
23:40
can't use chat DVT. In the real test.
23:42
So you're like, you better learn without it.
23:44
So my, my thing on this prediction thing's interesting
23:46
because I do think that like there's situations where you're
23:50
in games, you're you're with buddies and you're hanging out
23:52
and you're like, Hey, who do you think's going to do this?
23:53
Or who do you think's going to win or you're curing for a team
23:56
and there's this like, would you want to bet on it off 5 bucks?
23:58
You can't do this or, you know, $7.00, you can't drive the golf
24:01
cart around this trash can. Like all these dumb things that
24:04
sort of happened and prediction markets kind of like, you know,
24:07
provides a way to sort of like now, you know, make a bet on
24:10
anything. But I also think to your point,
24:12
like it is crazy. Like you can't load a show on
24:15
the weekends or any sporting event without seeing a banner of
24:18
like DraftKings or some kind of like betting odds sort of like
24:21
spiral running through it. And so I think that part of it
24:24
is is a little bit nauseating at times to take away from the
24:27
pureness of it. Yeah, I, I agree.
24:29
And I also think that to your question about culturally, like
24:32
what's going on here in the states, Bobby, everyone I know
24:35
that does fantasy football, they're watching individual
24:37
players, you know, playing and trying to think about how that's
24:40
affecting the stats of their, their fantasy team.
24:42
So I think there's a similar obsession here culturally.
24:45
And I, I'm not sure, like, I'm not sure that there's the like
24:48
purity or purists anymore than anything.
24:51
Like, I think everybody's just like, you know, just trying to
24:53
to make a buck. And you made a comment earlier
24:55
about get rich quick, like, you know, there's no such thing,
24:58
right. And so I think, you know, does
25:01
it, does it suck the enjoyment maybe, or maybe I think there's
25:04
a large contingent of people now that that is their source of
25:06
enjoyment is just the, the, the kind of riskiness and, you know,
25:11
the edge of their seat. Am I going to win the bat this
25:13
week? So, so talking about kind of the
25:15
first couple of years building any, any kind of thoughts on
25:18
what you would not do again, you know, taking yourself back to
25:21
when you first started. I think one of the key things is
25:24
kind of where where you're based on where the startups based.
25:29
You know, we kind of we're from Liverpool and England, which is
25:32
kind of like in the Northwest and it's mainly a, it's like a
25:36
working class city. I think part of the Titanic was
25:39
built there. I should actually know that
25:40
crypto couldn't be more, more or less Liverpool probably.
25:44
You know, I think I think founders early on should kind of
25:47
prioritize where, where the building and, and, and, and, you
25:51
know, I think if they say it's about the product, I think the
25:53
best thing we can do honestly is just obviously just move out to
25:56
the West Coast or, you know, maybe Miami now or, you know,
25:59
around that area. But you know, since since we've
26:02
been to like Singapore for conferences or, you know, Dubai,
26:05
for example, it's just night and day, the people that you meet
26:08
and you know, you know, on the journey, how much they're going
26:11
to help you as well. I just think staying in your
26:13
city or in a country that you know, isn't like a vibrant,
26:18
vibrant for the tech scene. I think that's like, that's like
26:20
the number one thing that people would, you know?
26:22
Yeah, I think it makes sense. It's funny because you think of
26:24
all these, you know, being in San Francisco for 25 years,
26:27
right? I think every single you got to
26:28
come to San Francisco to do startups or, you know, you got
26:30
to come to here to do tech. And I think we've all, you know,
26:32
kind of had these like, you know, or LA of the Silicon
26:34
Beach, right? Like they start like naming
26:36
these little corridors of like, you know, or you Flatiron in New
26:39
York, you know, where you get these pockets of sort of
26:41
innovation. And I think it is interesting
26:43
because I've thought about this a lot, like now that I've been
26:46
doing this for a couple decades, like I kind of have my like, you
26:49
know, I'm for better, better or worse, like trained on how I'm
26:51
going to go do something. And the location matters
26:54
potentially less because I've, you know, how to network and
26:56
build folks. But I do think there's this this
26:58
idea that in the early days, it's important to sort of
27:01
understand, you know, are you around, you know, like minded
27:04
people that are thinking and doing and acting the same way.
27:07
And so I think that's interesting.
27:09
I think cool, man. Well, I want to ask one more
27:11
question. I think what's like one worse
27:14
piece of startup advice that you've ever followed, Like
27:16
something somebody's like, hey man, this is the way you do
27:18
startup. Or you read something and you're
27:19
like, we're going to try that. And you're like, wow, that was a
27:21
disaster. Well, I mean, it kind of comes
27:23
back to the the point about being like a perfectionist.
27:27
So like when we started the business, I was reading them
27:29
Steve Jobs as a biography by Walter Isaacson and like he's
27:33
Steve Jobs. And I'm like, I'm not Steve
27:35
Jobs, but like you read that after you read it, you really
27:38
believe that you are. So like, I think kind of not
27:41
listening to customers is obviously not a good thing.
27:43
But at the time I was like, I remember there's a quote in it
27:45
and it was basically like. Customer has no idea what they
27:48
want. Exactly, exactly.
27:51
But like, you know, so it's not the start.
27:53
I was like, they don't, they're all idiots.
27:54
They don't know what they're talking about.
27:56
What, you know, if it wasn't for us, there wouldn't be this
27:57
product and all this. So that then you look back and
27:59
you think, no, maybe maybe they were right about a lot of
28:02
things. So yeah, that's kind.
28:03
Of one of them, Bobby isn't awesome.
28:05
Where can people follow what you're building?
28:07
Read You know what you're up to and just quite thankfully follow
28:10
more on your journey. Yeah, just just just like one
28:13
more point for any, you know, young founders out there.
28:15
You know, I think, you know, when we kind of started the
28:18
business and, you know, I I just had a little girl and then I
28:20
kind of had another little girl and I really wasn't interested
28:23
in making myself like a personality, like a, you know,
28:27
like a Frankie Gods, for example.
28:28
You know, I've been in this space for four years, but it
28:31
didn't interest me. But you know, looking back,
28:33
probably one of the biggest regrets is not product
28:35
productizing myself. You know, realistically I should
28:37
probably have, you know, 50K followers on Twitter and you
28:40
know, you know, if you look at every big business, the founder
28:44
basically is the business, right.
28:46
So I think that that impacts the sports book because and casino
28:50
now because there isn't like a base of the business, should we
28:54
say So yeah, if if you start an house, you know, advertise
28:57
yourself or go on podcasts, just, you know, do tick tocks,
29:00
you know, record your journey. So that's just one little bit of
29:03
ice. But yeah, you can find me on X
29:04
Bob the Wizard 23 and on X block bet DG and then on Instagram
29:10
block bet GG as well. So yeah, anyone interested in a
29:12
bet, just drop me Adm and I can, you know, I can set a group chat
29:16
up with me and a couple couple of the boys and we can give you
29:19
a great service. So yeah, just drop me a DM.
29:21
We'll look after you. Yeah, we'll drop that in the
29:23
show notes. Please DM Bobby if you want to,
29:24
if you want to check out what he's building and, and and get
29:27
in there. This was exactly what we had
29:28
hoped it would be, Bobby Raw, real packed with hard earned
29:32
lessons. And we just appreciate you being
29:34
here, man. Thanks for that guys, Appreciate
29:35
it. See ya.
29:36
That was a bloom spent in reverse.
29:37
I mean, Bobby gave us a checklist of what not to do.
29:40
You know every founder should just print this out.
29:42
Yeah, agreed. What I loved was his honesty.
29:45
No chest beating, just clarity on what breaks when you don't
29:48
stay focused. Kevin, what were your top five?
29:50
Yeah, I think, you know, so over hiring bring backfires, you
29:53
know, keep the team lean, you know, higher slowly, I think,
29:56
you know, use contractors before you shift into like a big W2 or
29:59
sort of permanent team. Bonus wars can create churn.
30:02
So you know, this kind of incentives could be a race to
30:04
the bottom. Ship an MVP pass and iterate.
30:06
You know, you want to get something out there that works
30:08
and then Polish it once it's going.
30:10
Ignore those vanity metrics, focus on conversion and like
30:13
what's the real ROI of the value?
30:15
Delegate and protect thinking time.
30:17
You, you know, can have a packed calendar, but you need to have
30:20
time to think and relax and really understand strategy.
30:23
Nailed it. If this episode made you rethink
30:26
your road map or your mindset, send it to someone who's deep in
30:29
the build right now. That's a wrap, because sometimes
30:31
the best way to build is knowing exactly what not to do.