#103 Patrick Lee— Rotten Tomatoes founder: the secrets to building an enduring business.Building Rotten Tomatoes, Managing Fame, and Staying True to Your Mission

But generally, the more focused you are in anything in your life, the better you'll be. So much time and money and whatever in the day, you can put it against a lot of things or you can put it against like one thing. And if the one, the people who I think it was like Bruce Lee, they said, like, he doesn't fear the man that can do like, what, 10,000 different kicks, he fears the person who can do one kick that he's practiced 10 times, right? And I think that. So focus is really important. And network, same thing in your entire life. Like, whatever you do, network is important. Focus your career for your company or personally. Knowing a lot of people, I think it just makes life more meaningful, right, to have all those things. So focus what you do. Do one thing, network. Know lots of people and know them well, like they're opposite in that way. But I feel like that combination is a winning combination for anyone anywhere at any time in their life.

Welcome back.

This is from Sharp to grown up. My name is Alyssa Cohn, and today I'm thrilled to welcome Patrick Lee to the podcast. Patrick is the founder and former CEO of Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review site that became a cultural staple and is still going strong more than 25 years later.

Patrick and I talked about the wild.

Early days of Rotten Tomatoes and how a side project gathering reviews for Jackie Chan's Rush Hour turned into a full fledged business that attracted the attention of Pixar and Roger Ebert. He shared what it was like to navigate the dot com crash, cutting his team from 25 down to 7 while living out of his office just to keep the company alive and ultimately what it was like making the tough decision to sell. We also dig into the lessons he carried forward into the six other companies he founded, including why Focus and Network are the two things he wishes he had known earlier and what he's learned the hard way about knowing when to push forward and when to let go. Patrick was incredibly candid about the highs and lows of the founder journey, the toll of running a company in zombie mode, and the importance of figuring out whether you truly have the DNA to be a founder. This is such an honest and insightful conversation, so please enjoy my discussion with Patrick Lee, founder of Rotten Tomatoes.

Patrick, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm so excited and I know that we have so many things to cover and we're just chatting, you know, backstage as we say, about a few of these things, but I Want to start with what you're most known for, which is being the founder and the former CEO of Rotten Tomatoes. What was the founding story and, and kind of what was the deal with Rotten Tomatoes?

Right. So we actually had a web design firm doing a lot of work for the entertainment industry. We're doing online flash games, websites, et cetera, for Disney Channel Online, ABC, Artisan, MTV, VH1. We did the online flash game for who Wants to Be a Millionaire. And basically we had this creative director, San Duong. He was a huge movie buff and a huge Jackie Chan fan. And Jackie had this movie Rush Hour coming out. That was Jackie's first big, really big Hollywood film. And Sen wanted to know what everyone was saying about the movie. So he went to the library, he looked up magazines and newspapers because back then most reviews were not online. And he would write out and list out all these reviews that he found. And then when he gathered it, he was like, you know what? I'm going to go home and put it online so other people can kind of see this research that I've done. And he put it out. And I think from idea to start, it was like two weeks we were hosting it for him. And almost immediately it started getting noticed because it was immediately useful. Like the scores for these wide release movies coming out that week, that's the stuff that people really cared about. So he didn't need to go back and, you know, do thousands or ten thousands of movies in the past. He just focused on the movies coming out that week. And it got, you know, written up in like USA Today, highlighted by like Netscape and Yahoo, which were like the big, you know, search engine browsers and stuff back then. Roger Ebert wrote an article pointing out his favorite movie websites. Rotten Tomatoes is one of them. I remember when Pixar released A Bugs Life, we saw a spike in traffic. And this is super early on. And it turned out that that traffic, when we looked up the ip, was coming from Pixar itself. And so after about a year of hosting and Sam was just working like nights and weekends on this stuff because he was still working at the company at the time full time, we were like, maybe we can turn this into a business. And so I went out, talked to some of the investors and people that we worked with that were our clients to see if any of them would be interested in investing and supporting what we were doing. Ended up raising a million in funding. And then we essentially passed our design firm off to another group to take over. That took a little while to transition. Then Myself, our cto, Steven from our design firm, and then Sen. The three of us basically became the founders of Rotten Tomatoes. And we transitioned most of our design team over to focus on it.

That's incredible. And that was in 1998, is that right?

Yep. And we started running it as a business in January of 2000.

Okay. So it took that long to sort of go from hobby, hobby and idea with a lot of traffic to then like into a business. That's really incredible. I do want to do a little translation for the kids. Right, right. So when you had movies in wide release. You mean to the movie theaters, which is where people saw movies in those days. Right. You. The reason you were went to the library to look up or the reason your co founder went to the library is because as you said, many things were not online. What was the state of the Internet back? Just place us in the state of the Internet from 1998.

1998, I think was around like Yahoo was really big. There's a bunch of search engines that got big. A bunch of them went public. A number of. Most of them went under, actually. Economics weren't there. They were doing portals back then. So a lot of search engines became portals where they try to get all the news and every other thing out onto one place so that you could. It would be your first page whenever you open up a browser would be to go to a portal and you could do everything there. You could check your stocks, you could see your news, you could see the sports, et cetera. I think Yahoo's one of the only ones that kind of survived that. And even now, I think no one really does that anymore. There are battles around browsers back then. Microsoft had their browser. There was Netscape. Netscape ended up dying.

Right. But that was the first browser that everyone got all freaked out about.

Yeah. And then later on you would have things. Gosh, I can't even remember the Microsoft browser name. Do you remember now?

No, I don't remember actually either.

Yeah. And then later on Mozilla had Firefox, and then. And then later on Google had Chrome, which I think is the dominant one now. But for a while there was. I guess Apple had Safari, but that never really picked up. So there's like browser wars, there was search engine wars, there's portal wars, and just a lot of really early E commerce companies, tons and tons of E commerce. And eventually Amazon just dominated everything and basically expanded to every. Amazon back then was just books. They gradually did DVDs and CDs, which are very close to Books and then eventually everything and gobbled up the entire market pretty much. So it was an interesting time back then. Back then, any idea you had, you could try it out and you could actually be the first. Whereas nowadays I feel like it's harder and harder to have like a actual unique idea. I mean, new technologies, like AI and stuff. But back then it was like wild, wild west, right?

And also right to your point, I mean, you could put anything online and sort of try it out online. And I think that was like a fresh, A different, a fresh time. And certainly everybody was freaking out about just being online. And I guess I'm just curious when you guys started realizing, first of all, getting traffic from Pixar, like, that's amazing. And also, what's Roger Ebert? So again, for the youngins, right, Roger Ebert, Siskel and Everett were these movie reviewers and they would give their two thumbs up or two thumbs down or one, one thumb up and one thumb down reviews. And it was kind of like iconic for the time. And so to get the attention of him, that must have. What did that feel like when you had Roger Ebert?

No, I mean, it was crazy. Like, for us, when we were joining our design firm, we were just hidden. I mean, even when all this stuff was happening, it was the site, not us as founders. But to actually see it being in newspaper, featured on these big browse portals, in magazines, seeing Pixar and Roger Ebert and all these groups using it for us, that was like, there's something here. When you talk about traction, when you talk about product market fit, that was clear product market fit to us, we're like, this is something that people need and want and if we didn't exist, they would still be trying to do it, but just by themselves. Right? Like, if you're a studio and you had a movie come out, what are you going to do? You're going to go out and read every review you can find, but you're going to have to go out to the library or go out and buy a bunch of magazines and newspapers to figure that out. We did it in one place and standardized it. And it's just something that just people have needed. And the site is over 25 years old now, and it's something that just people need.

Yeah, definitely. It has stood the test of time, obviously, for sure. And was there, as you were kind of evolving, this idea was there for you, a moment of truth? And I guess, were you the CEO of the web, of the web design firm? Like, was there a moment of truth where you and the Team just decided, okay, we're not doing that anymore. We're gonna figure something else. We're gonna go all in on Rotten Tomatoes. Like, what was that moment like? And how did you decide?

Yeah, so we were kind of just focused on the design firm. It was constantly growing. We went from Disney Channel getting in to do one project with them to eventually becoming the lead developer for them. I mean, we had like a million dollar contract, A contract where it's like within a year we were making 50 games for them. And so we got really big. But the thing is, we were doing all this work. There was not really any recognition on there. Web design work is very hard. Like, especially with the entertainment industry, everything is like, hurry up and get it to us like by yesterday, you know what I mean? Like a lot of waiting and then suddenly like everything is last minute because everything has to get approvals. And we also had a lot of friends who were doing startups that had raised a lot of money or had exits and whatever. And we're just like when we were looking at services versus like something that actually has the ability to scale, we thought the doing something that was kind of like our own was much more appealing. So we internally, we discussed it among everyone and everyone's like, yeah, you know, we'd rather do something that is our own and not us building for other people and just getting paid for that. And so there was that. Then there was a discussion where I had to go and talk to Sen to be like, hey, you know what, maybe let's actually work together and make this the company. Because he, you know, he had built a really interesting product. But with our team, with our design firm, we had a full team. We had the engineers, he was an engineer. We had the relationship with the studios. Know we have people who go and sell websites, but they could potentially sell ads. So we're just like, we basically have every other piece that you would need to make it work. And so he was like, yeah, that, that makes sense. And then we approached our own clients that have worked, we were working with, and they were the ones who actually invested in us and gave us our first million. So it was just a good fit where the pieces we had, because we came from a design firm just perfectly matched with this site that he made as a hobby project that was finding product market fit. And so that's how we managed to pull everything together and have basically a fully formed team within that year. And again, we could see the traffic growing. We were hosting it, we could see the traffic, we could see the news and the press happening. And he could see what we were doing on the design firm side and that we were constantly, at that point in time, the things were more simple. Our team could make anything you needed on the Internet at that point. Like we were making flash games, shockwave stuff, which was at that point was like almost the most complex things you would be seeing on the Internet. Right. As well as websites, all that stuff. So it was just a very good fit, very good timing for everything together.

Yep, I love that and the timing. So it sounds like you sort of turned it into a business in 2000, but which was also a wild time in the world of the Internet. So kind of play, what did you think was going to happen and then what did act, what actually happened?

Things were getting very frothy. Lots and lots of companies ipoing that didn't have like really good economics behind them. What was happening at the time was people are raising a ton of money. They were using that money to buy eyeballs, basically buying traffic from other websites to then show like, look at all this traffic we're having to then raise more money and just repeating that process to buy more eyeballs and eventually trying to ipo. Right. And so everyone was doing that, but then basically it was kind of a little bit of a house of cards and everything toppled over. This was around March 2000, the Internet stock bubble burst. And the problem there was companies couldn't ipo. There was no more funding market. So all the funding dried up. But even worse was the revenue that these companies had was coming from each other. They were just buying eyeballs from each other. Right. And so when your revenue dries up and your funding dries up, you have no money. And just tons and tons of these Internet companies died. Like it felt like 98%. I don't know what the actual math was, but that's what it felt like. The ones that survived were either super crazy lean like we were. We actually had to be lean. We, we had 25 people we had to cut to seven. Two of us went to zero salary. The other five people took a 30% pay cut. So our seven was like three and a half kind of in terms of salary wise just to keep the lights on. So either you're super crazy lean or you're already big. And ideally you were making revenue that wasn't advertising based. So like Amazon made it through really well. Ebay, you know, made it through because they're making money from users. Netflix, right. Those companies tended like, tended to get really, really gigantic during that time and take advantage. Because anyone who's relying on advertising, they went through a very painful period. Eventually you had ones like Facebook and Google that are kind of advertising based, but it's much more targeted and smart advertising versus just like, let's put up a banner ad. Like no one made it through. That was just like pure banner ads. I feel like that made it through and did really well during that time. Yeah.

Right, right. So what happened with Rotten Tomatoes and what did again, what did you think was going to happen? And then what actually, how did you. How did it go from there?

Right, so we, we raised money and we're like, okay, now we can fully focus on this. Let's transition. Let's kind of pass our design from off to another group in a transition. You can't just pass it on. We actually had to have a good chunk of our team still working on the project as we integrated new the people over to like start taking over, meeting the clients, all that kind of stuff. Otherwise, if you just pass it off, you probably end up losing like most of your clients.

Right. Wait, when you said that, you mean the design firm? You're passing off the design firm? And were you still gonna be a part owner in the design firm?

Yeah, we kept a 40% stake in that company.

I see, so you had a vested interest in making sure it didn't just all fall apart.

Yeah, so we had a good chunk of those people doing that. But then meanwhile, Rotten Tomatoes, initially we had. We went from, you know, send gathering reviews himself. He brought in some friends. We transitioned a bunch of people over to help with gathering the views because back then everything was manual. So we had like 10 people gathering reviews at the same time. We started putting our engineering group on that. And so they started building stuff like parsers to, you know, spiders to go out and just grab links to all the reviews, bring it back. Built a content management system. You know, Steven was in charge of that content management system to make it very easy to be like, show the. Show the review, show the link. Then our editor could go in and just be like, it's fresh or rotten. Pull out a quote that made sense, you know, that kind of stuff. And it would show like the rating that they have and all that stuff. To just make it very fast for an editor to say like, oh, this is a fresh review or rotten review, and build the pages automatically. Put everything into a database. So you did a lot of that stuff, like on the engineering side. And then gradually, unfortunately, because the market turns so fast, we had to Cut. We went from 25 to 21 to 17 to 14 to 11 to 7 in like a year. And we told people when the market crashed, everyone saw what happened and we were like, look, we have to slim down or we're going to die. Because we were burning 100,000amonth. We had raised a million. We're like, we're not going to make it through the year if we don't make changes. And so we basically told. A lot of people were like, people out of school, like, from. We were all at Berkeley. Most of them were just students at a school that we had hired. A lot of us were. We were all friends at that point. And we said, look, start looking, try and find something else, and we'll keep you employed until then. And so we had people who were looking, people who were still working on the design firm during the transition, so they still had work that way. So that's how we kept a lot of them employed. And then some people that we were paying to focus on Rotten Tomatoes. And so the vast majority of people, they were able to find other things because we had a good team. And they would go to, like, Pixar and ILM and Fox Sports and Blizzard and other, you know, really good companies. Um, but then that way we were able to kind of slim down, but not just be like, hey, everyone, just you're fired. But, like, try to do it in a nice way.

I see that must have made you feel better, considering.

Better.

But it was challenging things to do.

Tough to go from this, like, full office to, you know, less than a third of those people still around in the office at that point.

I can imagine. I mean, it's like sort of ghosts, like, running. What was that? What was that like for you and the people who were left?

It was tough. I mean, one way I went, I went to zero salary. I was able to do that because we couldn't get out of our lease. We were in a class A building, office space, five year lease. I think it was like maybe two years in. So we still had a few years left. They obviously wouldn't let us out because everyone's trying to get out. That's like, you know, imagine like Covid. Same thing happened, right? I basically got rid of my apartment because we had so few people. I took three cubes that were like in a L shape, right? And I just made that my home. And I put all my clothes into the drawers and stuff. And so if you came in during the day, you couldn't tell, like, with all the drawers closed. And everything. You can't tell that someone was living there. I had a fold out, like mattress kind of thing. So in the evening I could just fold it out and just sleep under my, like literally under my desk. Eventually we had another friend. They had gone from hundred something employees, huge space raised. At that time, I think it was like 20 million or something. But they also had to let go almost everyone. And so they sublet our space. They got rid of their space because it was way too big. And then they subleased space from us. So that kind of helped fill that out. And so there was two companies there. Yeah. But I think at that time, because everything was so hard, it kind of pulled everyone closer together because you're just like, we just got to make it through this, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I can relate to that. That was before you had a wife and kid who were not in the office with you. So you probably had more flexibility from that point of view. So then what happened? So you sold the company in 2001, right?

2004.

2004. Sorry. Okay, so how did that all kind of play out?

So when we got ourselves down to seven, the site continued, you know, quarter by quarter to grow traffic. We continued to find more ways of bringing revenue. You know, it was advertising and licensing and affiliate programs. We got to a point where we were break even. You know, I can't remember exactly when, but maybe around 2002 or so, companies were starting to sniff around about possibly trying to acquire us. Originally it was like really bad offers, like 10 cents on the dollar, 25 cents on the dollar. And eventually. And we were like, no, you know, we're, we're basically break even. There's no reason to sell and, and have our investors lose money. So we said, we're not going to seriously entertain anything unless our investors can at least get their money back. Which is, looking back was like a very low bar. But again, given that that time period, almost every company wiped out. So for investors to even get their money back was. Is actually a pretty big accomplishment. And then we finally got an offer that was, you know, where investors actually make a little bit of money. We did have one of our investors was like, we think you should hold on. Looking back, like, they were probably right. But we negotiated, got a little bit more on the offer. And so we did make our investors some money. And again back then, like no one else was really doing that almost. But once we had that offer, we had been doing the company for five years. And at that point, I think started Ron Tomaho started when I was 25, started running as a real business around 26 or so sold 30. And for me, I was like, I wanted to try different things. I didn't want to just do this one thing my whole life. And so, yeah, we decided to sell. After we sold, I ended up going to check out Asia and trying to do some stuff out there. I was born in the States, grew up in the States. So I just was like, I just want to see more of the world and experience more of the world.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that makes sense. But that's interesting. Like looking back, do you, I mean, it sounds like your investor, one of that one investor was saying, you know, you really have something here, like, keep going. But it sounds like in addition to probably being exhausted from that experience. Right? Which sounds. It was just that, that time. I mean, I was also in the dot com world in that time. It was a challenging experience. Everyone was, you know, exhausted, in a lot of pain. It was just hard. It was just hard. Also, to your point, it just felt like every company was going out of business. So, like, your company was doing one thing and everyone around you was like falling apart. So it was just a very challenging time. Do you feel like you were maybe tired out from that or do you feel like, hey, no matter what I was, I was going to be like five years. I would be maybe six. What? But I was done. Like, what was your experience of deciding this was enough?

One thing I would say is because of the environment and we had just. It was our first time raising money to do our own thing. And literally two months in Internet stockpile burst, right? So you're in survival mode. You're cutting like crazy. And if you remember, a year and a half after the stock bubble burst was 9, 11.

Right.

Which was also crazy time. I mean, I literally remember we had a big ad campaign coming from Spider man for the movie and they had to pause it because they had to go back into the movie and like literally erase the twin towers from the scenes.

Oh yeah, I forgot that.

Right. Cause it was set in New York and, and like most marketing campaigns just in general were paused, stopped, canceled, or paused for everything because who wants to watch a bunch of ads during that time, right? And so it was such a crazy time where everyone was like, stock bulb, stock market's gonna crash again. Stock market's gonna crash again. There's gonna be another terrorist attack. We had a war, right. And so you, you know, back then everything was like orange level threat or whatever it was. And so we got to this point where we. I feel like a lot of this external stuff made us not think as big as, you know, if you were pre 2000s or if you're post Google going public where you're like, oh, sky's the limit. We are just like, don't die, don't die, don't die. And I think. But the problem with. And it was good. It made us like a cockroach that just survived. But it was bad in terms of we didn't think big the way you would have seen entrepreneurs thinking big. Again, pre 2000 post Google went public and I remember we actually had a discussion when we had an offer and we're like, this isn't best offer, but what if the stock market crashes again? What if there's another terrorist attack? If that happens, the window will close and it might not open for another few years. So maybe we should just take it now while there is an offer on the table and our investors can make money. And the other thing we were thinking about, which was very conservative, is like, if you've ever gone to Vegas or a place to gamble. I'm not a gambler, big gambler or anything, but maybe you're like, I'm going to play with a hundred bucks, right? And you're playing with 100 bucks. And let's say you, you're up to 200 bucks. One thing you do is you're like, okay, well let me take that first 100. Back off. So at least no matter what, I wouldn't have lost money. That was kind of that thinking where we're like, okay, we can just take this money off the table. Our investors can make some money, we make some money, and we can always raise for a new thing. And we did. I've raised for a bunch of other things. What I didn't appreciate is how hard, especially in consumer it is to make something like a Rotten Tomatoes. I mean, that is almost like a once in a lifetime kind of thing. And you've seen there's tons of consumer focused founders that can never do a second one and have tried many, many times. Like if you, if you took Zuckerberg away from Facebook and said, go make another consumer thing, I think you could give him a thousand tries. I don't think he's getting another Facebook. Like, how hard is it to get a Facebook? Right? And so I think that's one thing that I severely underestimated. I think at the time we were just really lucky. I think part of it, because the Internet was growing so rapidly, we did a Design firm. It, you know, was throwing off millions a year and it just getting these great clients. And then we said, okay, let's try Rotten Tomatoes. And it just seemed that like everything just kind of worked. Even though we did go through hard times, you did something. And because I think the market was growing so rapidly around this new technology that you, as long as you did it and you didn't screw up too badly, like you could make something interesting, I think we underestimated how hard it was, especially once things were more entrenched and a lot more competition was coming in. All the easy ideas had been taken, you know what I mean? So, yeah, I think that's kind of how things were at that point in time. Yeah.

Yeah, that totally makes sense. I mean, we're so much a product of our environment. And it's so fascinating to me that for you it's like, well, this is easy. You know, you started the web business, the design business. That worked out. Rotten Tomatoes. That worked out. And so, you know, with its ups and downs, it sounds like you were like, well, we'll just go off and do something different and it'll be just as easy. That's really interesting. I'm going to ask you, because I know that you founded seven companies. So we want to talk about that and kind of the entrepreneurship gene there. But before I get to that, I am just curious. Do you have advice for other founders on the topic of how they should think about the kind of decision that you were making at the time?

The biggest thing around making that decision that I would say was my biggest learning from that is network. When I did Rotten Tomatoes, you know, my co founders and I, we were quite introverted. We just happily work on a product, working with our friends, but we barely, you know, especially then it was like seven people just in an office in Emeryville, which is East Bay of the Bay Area. We really didn't interact with like anyone, especially during that time. There weren't the. There weren't accelerators. There was no, no accelerators. Pre Y Combinator. There weren't really tech mixers and all that. And we didn't have that personality to be like, hey, let's go to some mixer. Let's go network with VCs and all that. We were a dot com, like an Internet company, but we weren't in Silicon Valley, we weren't in San Francisco. We were focused on movies and we weren't in la, in Hollywood. Right. So we were just by ourselves and we had very, very little network. And we did have some Advice and stuff, but we didn't really use them very much, a little bit. And so I think the main thing is when we had this opportunity. Entrepreneurs, I think, in general, tend to learn through mistakes. They're like, let's try this out. It doesn't work. Okay, let's try it this way. Doesn't work. Problem is, selling a company is not something you get multiple chances of. It's this thing that when you, when you're going to do it, you need to do it right the first time. And I think had I had a better network, I could have gotten a lot more advice about how to do it right. You know, should we sell? Is this the right time to sell? How to sell, do we need, do we use a bank, how to get competitive offers, et cetera. We didn't know anything. And we just, I mean, our investors kind of gave us a little bit of feedback and stuff, but we are basically figuring it out on just like winging it. And the group that bought us, ign, they had gone public, they had gone private. After that, they bought a bunch of companies. They. They, like, knew they were running circles around us. Like, you know, we were just total noobs on that. And one very clear example, I had a friend who was another founder who had a really good exit much later when we were meeting up, and he was like, if you just had more offers at that same time, you could have gotten at least double just at that time. And one example of another friend, they had a company that their VC was forcing them to sell, and they had an offer that if they took that offer, the VCs would have gotten back some of their money and the founders would have gotten zero. But again, a couple of these other tech founder friends were like, that's a terrible offer. Let's make some intros. They made some intros. And then another group came in, offered 80 million, and basically the founders could retire after that. They retired.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And it was like it went from they would have made zero to they retired. And that is like a super clear example of like, how a network can really change everything. And when people are like, it's like not what you know, it's who you know. I mean, it is both. We did the execution really well. We did nothing on the network side. And then ever since then, I tried to make it much, much more of a point to get out to meet people. I used to be terrified of public speaking. I went out and took acting classes to learn how to deal with that fear so that I could get in front of people to speak. I've spoken a bunch of stuff. I mentored a ton of stuff, and really turned my weakness of my network into a strength. I would actually say now my best thing out there is my network. And obviously, hopefully, if I ever encounter something like a Rotten Tomatoes again, I won't make that same mistake of not having a network to kind of optimize on that. Because I think it went from. Yeah, it was a. At the time, an exit that was not bad for a bunch of kids at 30 to. Had we done a better job, like, you know, we could have done. I think we could have done a much better job for our investors, for our employees, for everyone. Yeah, yeah.

And for yourself.

Or maybe not have sold even and just kept.

Yeah, right, right. It's just as a result of getting some different advice. Well, I didn't know that. That's really fascinating. And I. I feel like it puts into context some of the activities you're doing these days, which we're definitely going to get to, but before we get to those, you know. So, like, you founded seven companies. I think is seven the right number? So it's like, you know, more or less. And. And this was really your third company, Rotten Tomatoes. And so I guess I would just ask you, is there, like, an entrepreneur gene? You know what. What happened to you that made you so entrepreneurial?

I think one thing I've always liked doing, even though I wasn't a networker, I always like to gather people. Like, maybe it's because I'm OCD or whatever. When I was in high school, I helped to start the Chinese club at our high school. You know, when I was in my Chinese school, on the weekends, I would try to get people together to do things at Berkeley, I was really involved with the club before doing Rotten Tomatoes. And actually, a lot of people we recruited for our design firm came from that club. And so I think of the companies that I've done generally as an extension of me just, like, getting some people together, be like, hey, let's. Let's get to. Let's do something. And so six out of the seven companies had at least one founder, if not multiple founders, that I were friends with from freshman year of college. Oh, wow. Yeah. And all seven are, like, doing something that seemed like it would be interesting to do at the time. And so for me, it was really about, like, I want to work with friends and I want to do something that I like because I felt like with corporate, you might not have either of those things. Right. And so for me, it wasn't really about money. It was more just like, life is super crazy short. And I feel that even more strongly today. But I've always felt that. And it's like, if life is so short, why not work with friends? Why not do things that you want to do?

Yeah, for sure. How did you know at age 25 or 30 that life is so short? That's usually some insect that we get later in life.

I felt it. I remember distinctly feeling it around 16. And I'm like, if I could just pause right now, I can drive a car. And I feel like I really kind of know what's going on in the world. If I could just freeze myself at 16, I would love to just do that and be like that forever. Like, why do people have to get old? And, you know, you see grandparents passing away, and, you know, now it's kind of the next, like the aunts, uncles, that kind of stuff. And you see that, and you see people, you know, like, work really hard at high school to get into a good college, work really hard in college to get a good job, to then save a bunch of money to buy a house and get married and have kids and get your two vacations a year or whatever it is. And it just seemed like, why do you want to just be on that same path as everyone else? That seems so crazy boring. Yeah. And even seeing people who are working so late in their life on the same job, and you're like, why don't you spend more time with family? It's like, oh, I gotta keep working, or, why don't you go see your dad? That's sick. And they're like, I'm too busy. And it's like, that's just all those things always seemed off to me, that people are not realizing what's really important a little bit. And so, yeah, I've always wanted to take a different path. Even now, married with a kid, you know, 95% of the time I'm traveling, I'm bringing them both along with me. Almost every time I speak. I didn't a couple days ago, but almost every time I speak, my. My kid is there watching me.

Oh, that's interesting.

And I. I just think that's. That's really, really important. And you see it so often where people think they have a certain amount of time and they don't. Yeah.

Yeah. So true. So it sounds like for you, you really wanted to build the autonomy of being able to be in control of your life and a part of control of your Life was to do the things you enjoy doing with people you enjoy doing them with because you just never know when the end's going to be. So it's like spend your time doing those things which are meaningful, basically. That's what it sounds like. That's what entrepreneurship is to you?

Yeah. And I also felt like it's. It is creative. It, I mean, it is a business, but you're making something. You're, you know, you're creating something that hopefully people use. And so I've actually found a lot more like in common as a founder with creative people like writers and directors and actors and whatever, singers, songwriters, etc. Because they're all making things, they're all creating something, putting out in the world versus just like someone who's just doing a job for money and they're not making anything, they're just working for someone.

Yeah, yeah, I can totally understand that. So what were the different businesses you did after Rotten Tomatoes? And I guess I'm curious also about the insight, like, oh, it was so easy. Web design. It was so easy. Rotten Tomatoes, that was so easy. Like, was there one that was not so easy and didn't work out so well?

Yeah, I mean, well, the first one was actually selling computer systems. Computer systems and components from our dorm or no, from our apartment that didn't work so well. It was a bad time because the prices, CPU memory prices were dropping so fast because things were improving so rapidly that you held any inventory and it would be worth far, far less even within a month. That one didn't really work, but we did save enough money from that, that kind of pay for rent and stuff. Second was the design firm. Third was Rotten Tomatoes. Fourth was a friend that I did. My first company with was from China. I went to visit him and he convinced me to join his thing. And I actually even brought my old CTO Steven along too. And it was trying to do something like a Yelp a little bit, but more complicated. A lot more complicated, but something like a Yelp for China. It didn't really work. A lot of it was also like, I couldn't add that much value because I'm not from China. I didn't grow up there. My reading, my speaking was like elementary school level. My reading writing was like kindergartener level. So it just, it was tough. After that, I went to Hong Kong, tried to do something like a MySpace. Working with celebrities and artists to connect to each other and their fans. Co founded with this actor, Daniel Wu. That's very. He's very big in Asia. We did the official Jet Li site. Jackie Chan, Kelly Hu, Karen Mok. Like a lot of these pretty big actors, especially back then, it was much closer to their prime. But unfortunately, we ran into all the social networks and social media coming out of China, as well as all the ones in the US Because Hong Kong kind of is this in between. Between China and the US Kind of. So we ran a. All these competitors. We were not funded at the same level. We had, like, two engineers competing against companies with 10,000 engineers, and all this stuff. We were also trying to do way too much. Came back to the States, did another company again with a friend, a different friend that I did my first company with, and we tried to make a mobile game. We've always loved playing games. We're like, let's make a game. It was his idea over a dinner with a bunch of friends. And he was kind of. We had a lot of drinks, and he was like. He just stood up and he's like, let's make a game. And like, literally the next day I'm like, were you serious about that? And he's like, yeah, let's do it. And so we. We went out, raised some money. We decided to make a mobile game because that's. We felt like that was more doable than trying to make a console game or PC, which is, like a lot more resources. But, you know, we didn't know we were doing. Again, made a ton of mistakes, but it was. It was fun, but it was a lot of time. It was like five years working on that thing.

Five years?

Yeah. Most, on average, my companies were like about five years each. And then that one, I was a bit burned out, but finally working on this new company and it's, you know, trying to build a community around geek fandom. So, again, yeah. And this one is not Friends I knew from freshman year of college, but it's Friends I knew from for like a decade. Yeah, two out of three of them were also Berkeley, but just. We weren't. We didn't overlap at the same time. And. And it's still something I love doing. So that theme is still pretty much held true. But I would say the biggest thing I learned from all these companies were the ones where we were super focused on the product, on what it is and what we're doing worked, and all the other ones didn't. So Rotten Tomatoes is movie reviews. And our design firm was just like, web design for the entertainment industry. And those ones were crazy focused. And also that's when the Internet was getting big. But all these other ones we're doing were just doing way too much, way too complicated, whatever. And that's like a recipe for death.

Yeah, for sure. With the game, for example, was that also in the time when mobile games were still kind of new? Like what year was that? And what other insights do you have from trying to make a mobile game?

2013 to like 2013, 17, 18, something in that range. It was no Zynga. All the big ones were out. It was actually competitive at the time. So we were making a multiplayer synchronous role playing game. So like almost like a fighting game that's in real time, so you're actually fighting against someone else at the same time. And at the time we were trying to do it, there were very few games that were synchronous online, like Fortnite and stuff were not available on mobile yet. I think it was really just Hearthstone from Blizzard and Clash Royale by Supercell were like the only big synchronous multiplayer games. But it was already very developed. If it was very early mobile people were making really simple Facebook games and eventually made really simple mobile games. That would have been an easier time. That's when the big growth was happening. When we came in, it was already very developed, very competitive and we ultimately made our game. We did have people who got really into it. I mean we had 10 folks who were super hardcore that spent over like a thousand dollars each on it. The top spender spent $2,000, which is, you know, but still compared to like what a whale would spend, let's say on a big mole game. I mean some games, the top spender spend like $2 million, which is a bit crazy. Yeah, we were much less aggressive as far as trying to monetize. We did a lot of stuff where we're like, no, we don't want to do it this way, we want to do it this way. And we'll try to be much more friendly. But end of the day, if the economics don't work, if you can't make enough money from the payers to help cover the cost of acquiring users, like you're done. If the unit economics don't work, you're dead in the water. And we couldn't make enough relatives relative to what it costs to acquire a user.

Yeah. So when you had these different. So you had these successes and then you had kind of, you know, some like not so successes, like maybe failures or however we want to frame that. Did you have any like self doubt or any concern or you thought, oh, we'll just move on. It's fine.

I mean, it's not great if, like, you spent, let's say, five years on a company, which I've done multiple times, and you raise this money, you convince all these people to join you and work with you for all that time, and then ultimately it doesn't go anywhere. Sure, you may have learned some mistakes, you might have learned a little bit about the industry and what to do, but that time, that money you can't get back and especially the time, is what hurts the most. Five years is a lot of time in someone's life, and it feels bad where you failed your employees, your investors, your users. And a lot of these times, unfortunately, when it's five years, usually it's like three years in, you're low on funding, and you kind of go into a. Almost like a zombie mode. You're like, let's cut back on costs. Let's cut our salary to zero for the founders. Sometimes put your own money in to try to make it work. But looking back, a lot of times, if it's not working like Rotten Tomatoes, it was working. So cutting was just to allow it to keep working and keep growing. But a lot of these other ones, it wasn't working, and you're just dragging it out and actually you should have just let it die, you know, three years in and just be like, okay, we're done. Return what money's left back to the investors and let everyone move to their next thing. You know, I think that would have been actually the better and more correct thing to have done. It was not easy. Tons of doubt. Going into zombie mode for a company is like the worst thing. It's soul killing because you have to constantly keep trying to figure out how to make it work or keep figuring out how to believe and making other people believe. And if you're the CEO, you're the battery that everyone has to charge from, right? But when it's not going well, it's really hard for yourself to stay charged and see the bright side of things and convince other people of the bright side of things. And it's really, really, really tiring and draining to be in that state. You know, it's easy when things are going up, right at Rotten Tomatoes, when we're letting go of people, sure, that sucked. But at the same time, everyone who's there that was left could look and they could see traffic constantly going up, revenue constantly going up, it being written up, whatever, and that will keep you going. And the last thing I would say about that is One thing you see a lot of times when you get these really toxic cultures in Silicon Valley, I think it's because things are growing so fast that it kind of hides all the bad stuff because everyone will almost ignore it or not really worry about it because they can see everything's growing so fast. But once things slow down, then all those things become much more noticeable. And about culture, the most important thing, culture wise in some ways is having a company that grows versus a company that's flat or dying. Right? Because you can have all the ping pong tables and parties in the world, but if your company is flat or dying, people are going to leave 100%.

And I think what you're also saying is like, you know, what you need is a good vibe and people who want to work together and a big way to get a good vibe is winning, right? And if like you're not winning, then it's like, unfortunately you can have all, like you said, the ping pong, even like career development and motivational free lunches, purpose, right, whatever, all the things that make culture. But ultimately actually you're not going anywhere. And that just must have been really hard for you. I mean, when you walked away from each of these different, you know, companies that, that were not working or zombie companies or what did you feel? A sense of relief?

Usually by then I was pretty burned out, needed some time to just recharge. And then usually once I'm recharged, I'm like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess let's go do it again, you know, let's go do another one. But for me, the vast majority, outside of the design firm, everything else has been consumer and consumer is hit. So it's just, it's really hard to get a hit. Yeah, and you're going to fail much, much more often than you succeed, you know, but when you do have one, it's great, you know, And I would say very likely I'll never have another Rotten Tomatoes again in my life. I mean, realistically, but at the same time, how many people in their lives can even have even one like that, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And to make something that has affected so many people's lives over such a long time period and hopefully will, you know, last a hundred years or a thousand years.

Totally, totally. So long lasting and so impactful, for sure. And then you're working on something which seems to me not to be consumer these days. So tell us about Fanverse.

Yeah, so I'm basically building this like super curated community around geek fandom, right?

So geek fandom and define, define, yeah, define geek fandom.

Comic books, video games, anime, manga, sci fi, fantasy. And when I'm saying super curated community, I'm looking for the best builders, creators and talent. So it's not about the fans who just love it, it's more about the people making it. And our idea is to get them all together. I mean, one, I love that space and I love community and I love making things. So I'm trying to get a whole bunch of people who are, who are those things, people making things in the space that I really love, getting them together with the idea that they can build that network, that they can collaborate, support each other. And we've already seen that, like folks working out on projects that they met, having these great friendships, having these connections that can help benefit their career or their company, investing into each other. And all that's already been happening with our group. And our idea is just, yeah, like really get this amazing group of people together that can become your network, your collaborators, everything, you know, hopefully for the rest of your life.

Right. Totally makes sense. And how do you distinguish what you've already been doing? So I was fortunate enough to go to one of your Stone Soup gatherings where you bring people together and tell us about that. But then how do you distinguish kind of just your gatherings that you do from the company you're building?

Right, so the gatherings I did was almost by accident when one thing when I was trying to build a network after realizing, like, I did such a bad job of doing that from Rotten Tomatoes, was I created a group for notable tech founders. And it would have folks like, you know, Max Levchum from PayPal and Steve Chan from YouTube and all the founders of Twitch and Guitar Hero and all these different great companies. And so we would meet once every two, three months, 20 people out of what, 150 do a dinner and have one person speak, share their founder story. And it was, you know, people really liked it. We ended up doing one in LA for one of our founders who was there, couldn't get enough people to, who were willing to fly down. I think seven of us were going to fly down. And so I was like, let me invite other people who are interesting, who are already in la, which tended to be entertainment. And the second I invited entertainment people, both sides wanted to come. It blew up to 40 people, easily gone to 100. But she was like, I can only host 40 comfortably in my house. And then from there, one of the attendees came up to me, this person, Janet Yang, who's now the president of the Motion Picture Academy. And she was like, I love what you're doing. If you do another one, I want to co host it with you. So I'm like, sure, let's try that. Did another dinner, 40 people. And she brought two Olympic medalists, one of the writers of Crazy Rich Asians, which just had come out around that time. And like Steve from YouTube and a co founder of Guitar Hero. A bunch of them, they got a plane and literally came. Flew down just for the dinner, just came to dinner and then left and went back up to the Bay Area. And so I was like, oh, there's some again.

I want to flex.

There's something there. And so we ended up doing more and everyone was constantly doing one. And everyone's like, when's the next one? When's the next one? So we're like, oh, I guess we'll do another one. I guess we'll do another one. The one you went to was number 11. I mean, we did five in 2019, 2020, you know, basically one per quarter. Covid stopped everything and eventually we brought it back last year, did four last year. We've done two so far this year. And for that it's really kind of intersection tech and entertainment, I would say, especially because of what we're doing now. Most of the ones we've done since 2023 have focused around geek fandom and pop culture. So we had ones with. The last one was Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari and Chuck E. Cheese. We did Neal Stephenson, the sci fi author. We've done one with Karen Gillan from Guardians of the Galaxy. And we're bringing together a really curious group of people around this intersection of tech, venture, entertainment with leaning towards pop culture and geek fandom. The company itself is separate. We're still figuring out how exactly it's going to work, but we're looking at models like ypo, you know, chief, like these membership driven stuff companies, things like Soho House, you know, curated events like a TED or Upfront Summit or these other ones. You know, we've been looking at the really curated kind of smaller dinners. I went to one with like it was dialogue. I went to the Influencer dinner recently. And so we're trying to see all these things to think about. How do you make this really great community? You know, we know we want it to be very curated, we know we want it to be around geek fandom, but how do you make this community really bond and connect with each other in a. In a strong and powerful way that they can really actively support Each other. Not just like, oh, they're just on there like a LinkedIn, but they're really, really there connecting and supporting each other. That's the thing that we're trying to solve again, to trying to find this like product market fit. Because we're like, if we can get these great people on, they're really engaged, they're referring other people in like that to us would be product market fit. And we know something is really working and I think we have a feeling of it, but we're still trying to really crystallize it.

I see, so you're trying to create like a YPO or like a Chief or like, what's the new one that Sampar is doing? Like the Hampton group.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah, yeah. And I see now I understand that better. And it's so interesting that you just were talking about the genesis of Stone Soup. Like, the genesis of Stone Soup is so organic. It's like the genesis to your point about Rotten Tomatoes, like the feeling of like, oh, people seem to want this. Actually. People are flying in for chartering planes and flying in for this. And so you have the signals from the marketplace saying, this really has legs, this has something there.

Yep, yep. And I think the ones like that where it's like people are pulling it from you. They're like, we want this, we want this. And yeah, like you said, like, we'd have people flying from Asia, from the east coast, you know, every time we do it, we'll have 30 to 50 people flying from Bay Area down, you know, all on their own dime to us. They're like, oh, there is something interesting about this. We're just trying to like, really figure out exactly how to optimize that and really make it stronger.

Totally. And that's why you're studying these sort of well known communities, like Ted, you said in dialogue, and our mutual friend John Levy, who does the Influencers dinner, which is definitely a wonderful experience for bonding and whatnot, what have you personally so far? I know you're early in your journey, but what have you learned so far about how to build community and that kind of bonding?

One thing I would say is curation always helps. When it's like, you know, a typical thing, like a concert or you go to Comic Con. It's like, anyone buy a ticket and it's not curated. That's fine from like a fan perspective, but I think if you really want to create a good community, it's incredibly important, a close, tight knit community to curate it properly. And if it's like the difference of, hey, I'm throwing an event, please buy a ticket, please buy a ticket. And like, no one wants to come, versus like, hey, I'm doing this very curated thing and only these people are invited. And you have. People are like, how, how can I get in? How do I get in? Like, it's like the whole mentality of the attendee changes when you do that. The other thing that we're thinking that I feel like I've learned, I guess around community is I see a lot of communities that are very broad. I feel like TED feels quite broad, even YPO chief a lot of these ones. And when it's so broad, the way I like to think about it is everyone's seen a TED Talk, probably everyone on the planet almost. But when you look, if you show them every TED Talk out there, maybe an average person would care about less than 10% of all the TED talks. What I want to do is where it's much more narrow so that the people that are in it and the content and the people you meet, 90% of those people would be interesting to anyone else. Right. And it'd be almost like rare that someone in that group is not interesting to someone else in that group. Right. At the same time, I don't want it to be so focused and tight where they can't really collaborate. Well, I like to say 100 pure actors can't make a movie. Right. They need a director, they need a writer, they need all that kind of stuff. And so if you want to make a movie, you need a lot of people in different positions if you want to make a game, same kind of thing. Because we're trying to cross over and we bring in the tech people, but we also bring across industries of like gaming and whatever. You see a lot of this geek fandom crossover, a Walking Dead was a comic book that became a TV show that also is a very popular game. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if there's like an anime or manga attached to it or you know what I mean? Like, and so you see all this stuff and it's already kind of in this sci fi kind of setting. So they tend to cross over naturally. And our idea is that way it's wide enough that people are across industries, they can work together, they can collaborate, but it's not so broad that the vast majority of people like you have no interest in meeting or connecting with.

Right, right. So you're trying to find that sweet spot of curation.

Yes.

And that it Sounds like that's what you see is going to be your sort of your special sauce for this community.

Yeah, I think that's a special sauce in terms of, like, the makeup of the community. But I think we have a lot to learn. We've already learned a lot just from doing the events ourselves. But we're actively, I think, for the first time ever, really very actively trying to go and check out other communities and learn from them and potentially even support each other. If they have any cool people in their community that touch geek fandom, please bring them over. And vice versa, Stuff like that.

Yeah, totally. Besides the fact that it has to be tightly curated and become kind of like a little bit of something that's creating buzz, what else have you learned? You said you've learned a lot so far. What else have you learned?

Generally, the more notable the people, the busier they are. So it's actually generally very hard to engage them. One thing that we did as a hack, I guess, to help get around that is if they speak or we don't do it. But, like, if they're honored, right. If you throw a gala and they're the ones winning the wars, they're going to show up. Most of the time. We don't do galas or awards or anything like that. But if you have them be the speaker, you're guaranteed pretty much that they're going to be there. And then once they're there, the speakers that you have will help define the attendees. The bigger the speaker, the more notable the attendees. Right. And it all kind of builds on itself. So a lot of times it's about how to set it up properly to get the best speaker or the most relevant speaker you can, and then build around that and properly curate around that.

Those are great insights. I think those are such important insights. And you were also, when we were. When I saw you in California just last week, something else you said that really struck me. When you were younger and you were building your first companies, you did it with your buddies from school and the people you were friends with, and that kind of continued for a long time. And you had one experience of founding with them, and now, you know, you're founding Fanverse. You're. You're much more established yourself. You're building it with much more established people. Can you kind of compare and contrast your experiences building companies with these two different groups?

Yeah, I mean, I would say, like, right now, everyone I'm working with are very successful founders, co founders of Kabam, Twitch and crunchyroll, which are all basically like billion dollar companies. I mean, when they sold, like, let's just say what their actual value is right now. Right. And if anything, they're all more successful than me from an outcome standpoint and in many other ways of measuring. I think the difference is, I mean, we are all friends, we've known each other, we're doing something we're quite passionate about. But when we did companies right out of school, we didn't know what we were doing. I think personality wise, whatever, naturally I think folks were more lined up. Whereas where it's like, okay, I'm the CEO that people for the most part like, yeah, let's go. And we're kind of all moving in the same direction. I think what's a little bit tougher when you have a bunch of folks who are all very successful, you know, one other person had been CEO before of their other company, that you end up with this like too many cooks in the kitchen. A problem, a bit where everyone has a strong opinion and we may be, because of our experiences, may not be as seeing the exact same direction as with my previous companies. And everyone is more firm about the direction they want to go. So that's been something that's, that didn't exist so much before where people. Yeah, that is a, that's a challenge. I mean, there's a plus of having such great founders behind you. The network, the experience, the brand, everything. But I think the negative is very strong voices. It makes it harder to move quickly in any direction. There's a lot more like talking to get to a point that everyone kind of agrees on versus a situation where you're just like, let's go that way. And people are like, yeah, that sounds good, right?

Totally. So what, how are you navigating that? Like what tools are you using or techniques are you using?

A lot more communication, a lot more time around that. And you know, I think with what we're doing now, like we've been going for a year, I think we have again, we're interesting spot, but spending a lot more time trying to get on the same page about exactly what we're trying to do and stuff. And with the hope that hopefully we can get to the point where we're like really, really super aligned and can then move forward much more quickly. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think if we can get a line, we can move very, very fast because we have a lot of ability, network resources, experience. It's just a matter of if they point the same direction, if they're pointing not the same direction, then you don't make any progress. And we're not like, not aligned at all. But it's just, I think it's a little bit different than when you have folks who are much. Back then we were much more junior, much less experience, but we could move more cohesively as a unit.

Right. Much less opinionated. Probably use a left experience and less opinionated.

I think you're going to have that problem with any kind of successful folks working together on something in any industry. A bunch of really successful actors trying to work together may be challenging unless they have a really strong director or producer kind of pushing the same thing. Or I don't know, look at a Sam Altman and Elon Musk fighting about Elon OpenAI or something.

Right, right, Totally.

You're going to run into that problem anywhere you go. If you try and put like three or four really great chefs together and be like, go cook something, see what happens, you know.

That's so true. That is so true. I'm just curious, are you guys openly discussing this, this topic?

Not, not so much. I mean, in public, I guess this is a little bit. But like, but we all know it, we all acknowledge it, and we're all trying to figure out how the best to do it. I mean, having great people work together like this, there's advantages and disadvantages and I think it's going to be true. Any people you work together. Right. Like, of these types in any industry.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Just a few more questions. Patrick. Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome or severe self doubt?

I want to say I think everybody has it. Honestly, like, everybody, like you would think, oh, you could be the richest person in the world. I'm pretty sure he has it. Or, you know, actually most of those folks. Right. Like, how many of them are divorced now? How many of them go on their social media and watch them fight each other out? I mean, they're kind of still normal people. You could be very powerful world leaders. I think if you look, I'm pretty sure they all have it. And I know for a fact our tech founder group, these are all really successful people. The vast majority, if not all of them, have it. I think everybody. I know for a fact a lot of actors, you see them on TV or whatever. I mean, partly because you have all these like tabloids and things constantly saying negative things about them. But they're very insecure. Right. And you see all these unfortunately, like, really successful people who like take their lives. Oh, I know Weekin park and all these, like, was It. Anthony Bourdain and whatever, they all are human. They all deal with depression and loneliness and everything same as anyone else. They bleed like everyone else, right? And I think they all have imposter syndrome. I 100%. All the time. All the time. You know, like, I'll say very frankly, like, sometimes it's sad to be, like, have to keep talking about the thing I did 25 years ago in a way, right? I mean, I'm very proud of it too. But I know for a fact, tech folks, entertainment people, whatever, they all have it. Um, and I can see it, like, just look at people's Twitters and whatever of these extremely. I'm not naming names. Extremely. Rich and powerful business leaders, politicians, et cetera. They all have it.

Totally. I totally agree with you. What advice do you have for founders in dealing with imposter syndrome?

Um, I think, again, it's staying charged is one thing. You know, one of the simplest things is make sure you get a good night's sleep, right? Like, if you're feeling really depressed or stressed out, like, get like a good 9 hours, 10 hours, and you'll probably already feel a lot better. Get out, go for a walk, you know, a little exercise, a little diet. I'm not great on those things, but they all help. Be around friends and family, especially positive ones. If someone's really negative, someone's always talking, talking down to you or making you feel bad, cut them out of your life. I mean, if they're family, spend less time with them versus other folks. Be around people who are positive and supportive. Makes a giant difference. Try and make improvements in your life. If you're like, whatever it is, I'm not in shape or I'm too skinny or I'm too fat or whatever. Take, you know, it's like the power habit, or one of most things is, like, start a new habit and, like, make a little bit, like, go walk 10 steps today or go walk whatever, and make a little bit of improvement in something, but keep doing it. And over time, it becomes huge, right? And, you know, it's just like, in the old days, I'd be stressed about, like, oh, I have a research paper due, or I have a test. The best way to be less stressed about your test is to open the book and start studying. And, like, 20 minutes of studying, you'll feel a million times better than that. 20 minutes of not doing anything and just being stressed that you have that test coming, right? And so just the act of doing makes a big difference. All of these things. I think can help a lot, but you have to actually want to do it. And it's very easy for people to get stuck in, trapped in their depression or their sadness or their imposter syndrome or whatever. And not being able to do that, not getting the sleep, not eating well, not exercising, not making any steps to improve anything, not being around friends and family, they hide away and it just gets worse and worse and worse. And you have to break that cycle.

Totally. So wise. And you're also teaching yourself self efficacy when you do those things. Yeah. Patrick, what do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?

I brought them up before Focus Network. I think for any focus, actually both of those are good for anything you do in your life. Right. Focus doesn't just have to be for a company. It can be for a person in their career. You look at most influencers, let's say, who've gotten popular, they're usually doing something around a really weird specific topic like, oh, I'm the, the dad that repairs things or whatever. Like really. Or I'm the, I'm the lawyer person that can give you advice on how to save money on airplane trips that are delayed. Like really, really specific things. But generally the most more focused you are in anything in your life, the better you'll be. You only have so much time and money and whatever in the day. You can put it against a lot of things or you can put it against like one thing. And if the one the people who I think it was like Bruce Lee, they said like he doesn't fear the man that can do like what, 10,000 different kicks, he fears the person who can do one kick that he's practiced 10,000 times. Right. And I think that so focus is really important. And network same thing in your entire life. Like whatever you do, network is important for your career, for your company or personally knowing a lot of people, I think it's just makes life more meaningful, right. To have all those things. So focus what you do. Do one thing Network. Know lots of people and know them well. Like they're opposite in that way. But I feel like that combination is a winning combination for anyone anywhere at any time in their life.

I love it. It's so good. You may. This is my last question, but you may have already answered it. But you tell me what advice do you have for other founders as they embark on their journey to grow into leaders?

And I would say those two things. Focus Network. I would also say for founders to really know if they're founders or not, because not everyone is people like the idea of doing a company, but are they willing to grid it out, like to go in and take all these no's? Like, I like to say founders, the successful ones, need to have irrational confidence. This belief in themselves based on nothing, right? Rotten Tomatoes. We weren't movie people. Airbnb. Airbnb were not hotel people, Uber, they weren't taxi people. But the way they go in and they disrupt things is they don't. They can think outside the box because they never had the box, right? But to do that, you have to have this, like, irrational confidence in yourself and what you're doing to be able to push forward. Because everyone's like, you don't know what you're doing. You don't know what you're doing. But actually, that's a strength. But you have to realize that that's a strength. I would say a bad entrepreneur, they get all these no's, and, you know, 98% of anyone you talk to about anything, employee, potential employee, investor, a client is going to give you a no. They get the no's and they're like, yeah, you're right. And they give up. A good one will push through. A great one may convert some nos to yeses, right? That's like a Steve Jobs, like the reality distortion field, right? And I would say when I meet a lot of, you know, I would speak and help mentor at, like, at Berkeley and other colleges, and you'll have these students and they'll come up to you and they're like, I want to start a company. I'm thinking about starting a company, but I think I want to go and work for a couple years first, get that experience and then start a company. And I'm like, honestly, you're not an entrepreneur. You're not a founder. Like, you're telling me right now you're too conservative to go out and just take that risk where you don't have the experience to go out and do it. Like, look at, I mean, we left school early to kind of do Rotten Tomatoes. And these companies and Mark Zuckerberg or the Yahoo people, the Google people, whatever, how many of them started right out of school? Like, they basically stopped whatever undergrad or PhD program and when to go do it, they can't wait. But the people who are like, once they get into a normal job, I mean, they're going to have bonuses, they're going to have promotions, and they're going to get stuck there. I mean, they're designed to try to keep them in there and be very. It's very, very hard to leave once you get in there. And they, they're saying, I want this comfort, the safety of, of being in a corporate job, of having these benefits and all these things that I won't have from a startup. So I would say that's my advice. Besides, focus and network is really ask yourself, are you someone who has a DNA of being a founder? And I think you've interviewed so many founders and talked to so many of them. I think you probably. I haven't seen all those, but I'm pretty sure you would see that common thread of this like confidence in themselves and this belief in themselves that I think you have to do if you're going to go on any kind of these creative paths, including founders.

Totally. I so agree with you, Patrick. So much wisdom. Thank you so much. This is such a great conversation. I really, really enjoyed it and I know that people will get a lot out of it.

Yeah, no, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I know it was so great meeting you last week and I would love to stay in touch and continue more conversations in the future.

Absolutely. Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grown Up.

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