169. Web3 Gaming is Broken & How to Fix It, Life as a CEO & The Evolution of Esports with JMR Luna

I used to take a lot of coaching as the CEO to learn how to speak better, to learn how to be more precise, to learn how to be more acceptance of some things. But there is one thing that I always found out that is like yes, as much as I am improving, I am limited by my own ability to improve. So I actually have to hire people that can vibe with me and go the same way that I want to go. Otherwise it shows my weaknesses instead of just helping my weaknesses.

Welcome back to another episode of the Bennebergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift. Alongside me is Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of us scaling a fully remote subscription research business in Australia. And if you like the podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe. If you're on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube, it's how we grow the podcast each and every week. Now today we have an epic guest on the show, JMR Luna. He's the former CEO of OG Esports. If you're an esports fan, you would have heard of that. If you're not an esports fan, they are the leading esports organization known for its success in games like Dota 2. Under his leadership he pioneered the integration of blockchain technology and esports, launching innovative NFTs and fan tokens. And then he spent one year with Wintermute, one of the leading or industry leading crypto market makers in the space. And Jay and I met in Korea a couple of weeks ago at an event and then we ended up going out and getting cram barbecue together and had a great time. And he's finally back available in Bangkok and I thought it'd be an epic guest man. So thanks so much for finding the time.

Thank you for having me. I was courted during that dinner to show up here. They they he paid for dinner in exchange for me for showing up. So let's see if I can repay the favor.

Is always like to pay for dinner when you get someone as you know, special as Jay to go out and you showed us around Korea and well a little bit of the, the, the nice part of you know where to eat and where to go out and I had never been there so it was awesome to to do that and then he's just got such an awesome story like he's just such a fascinating Background. But really what caught my attention was, you know, I did a crypto talk with Jay on, in Korea at, at the event. And then he also did another panel session on Gaming and Web3 Gaming specifically, and had some really great insights coming from a, a gaming background. You know, Jay has that wealth of knowledge, you know, outside of, you know, the web3 space that really, I felt, you know, cut through the noise in terms of investing in, in the Web3 gaming space, which we're going to talk about today. But mate, going right back, you started making out movies and you've worked for the likes of Netflix. Man, tell us what that was like. What were you doing? You know, any movies that we'd know what's alive.

If you keep gassing me up, you know, I, I, the only way I can go is down for the rest of the podcast. So look, I, I am, I'm from Spain. I went to uni in Europe and then I moved to the States. I did my master's there. And I make movies all my life. My, my life was always telling stories.

The format that I first wanted to tell stories was through making movies. I made movies for Netflix, I made movies for mgm. And I did an array of things from bringing coffee to really cool people, to start making my own movies as a cinematographer and then producer. I wrote and I directed and what I was, I always liked just the collaborative art and just telling stories. And at one point in my life, even though movies were actually going well for me.

My second life was always video games. I was always a hardcore Dota player. And I got a chance to do a documentary about esports. Think about it. Like Drive to Survive for Formula One, but the same thing for Dota. It was called Life of a Genius. And then I got to live with the players and I got to nerd out with them, and I was okay, this is pretty awesome. During this time, there was going to be a joint venture team that I was being open with Lionsgate, the studio and the Lakers and the Milliken foundation and Meg Wigman, the ex CEO of HP and Quibi. And they wanted somebody to help a young CEO that they had with the team. And I thought it was a really cool opportunity. And I was there for one year and it was like a very formatted. They were coming with a franchise format for some of the video games like Overwatch League and all that. But after doing that for a year, I was like, hey, if I'm gonna do this, I'd rather just be the guy that owns the team and runs the team and does it like that because the board was like, imagine. Everybody wanted something different. And that's when I became the. Well, I did a movie there in the middle, which ended up being the most successful movie in Romania. So what was the movie? I'm famous in Romania. It's called Miami Beachy. Yeah, I just partnered with very talented people from there and the movie was being filmed in Miami, so I produced the film with them. So anyhow, I went to OG and when I joined og, OG was like a super famous team and super famous brand. But as a business, it was. It was very, very little. You know, there was like four people working only one, one team. And there was a lot of things to do. And yeah, I was with them for three years and a little bit. Awesome, awesome journey. Yeah.

What was it like, man, going into? Because esports has blown up, right, like, you know, over the last few years. Were you joining OG Esports when esports was just really coming up into the mainstream, or was this beforehand, like you mentioned before the show that you started with about when you join about four employees and at the time that you left it was 50. Like that's pretty wild growth. How. How was that?

Okay, so in the macroeconomic aspect, there's a few things to, to always follow when you're trying to figure out, is this a business that will be thriving. Number one is, is there a public interest for this business? There's people. Is there attention? The answer, yes, there was the second one. Is there VC money coming in and pushing this forward? And the answer is, yeah, there was a lot of. Lot, a lot of money coming in during those years, especially 1819. 1819 was where people were having incredibly high valuations. They were like 20x on revenues. So they were considering this was an appreciating business, like a traditional sport team. So they were like, hey, it's not really about your profit and loss. It's more about, sorry, like your revenues and cost is more like, hey, how much money can you make? How much market segment can you take? You know, so there was a lot of appetite for investors. And OG was, was a team that never actually fundraised and they never did all the way through. And when I joined the market conditions were not there because it was Covid was starting. So there was a lot of people very worried. Everybody's in house, in your house. And we had to face a few things. Number one was, well, the economy. Suddenly people didn't know where to spend. They didn't want to spend money because everybody was scared but everybody was at home, which means that consumption of content went through the roof because nobody could make content. So NFL is locked. You know, NBA wasn't playing, La Liga, Premier League was not playing. There was no real new movies coming out. So esports provided an alternative to live content and daily content. Because we started doing podcasts and we started doing these things online, Boom, it went through the roof. So that was really good. And we got a lot of speed there during the first year, even though it was a little bit rough. But by the time things are starting to open up, boom, that's when the escape velocity came. Because then we had the audience, we 4x or 5x the consumption average of content of esports content, and then we have nowhere else to put the money, which means esports. So now the advertisers, the sponsors that we had for the team, they're like 2 or 3x the amounts that they were giving before.

Now it sounds like crypto. How just like you get, you know, the VCs, you get the audience, and then you get that mass, like consumption of content and everything sort of, you know, explodes. Like, give us a. Like, I'm not a gamer, personally. Like, what, what's like, talk us through, like the site. Like, what are we talking? Like, how big? You said you were running a podcast, you know, back in OJ Esports with, you know, a couple hundred thousand downloads. Like, that's, that's nuts. Like, how big is the audience that someone tunes in for a game or like just even following OG sports.

So I'll give you like the cool sound bites, you know, that everybody wants to hear. The gaming industry is bigger than the movie industry, book industry, music industry together. So the gaming industry is a massive, massive industry. Now, esports is a small part of it, but gaming itself is a huge part of it. So how big is a Dota tournament? Well, on a League of Legends tournament, there are some of the biggest events of the year that includes like NBA Finals and World cup finals and all that esports. Some of the esports tournaments are rivaling in viewership with those, with those things. In Dota, we have a tournament called the International that Valve runs for the game. And 75% of the money is crowdfunded. Sorry, I think most of the money is crowdfunded from something that you buy inside the game. And they only devote 25% of that money to the International. I think something like that. And do the tournament prices are like $30 million. Wow. Yeah, so I think it was like $25 million and $27 million and we won it twice.

So putting that, to put that in context, the wsop, the largest poker tournament in the world. The, the prize pool for first was 10 million, so that's three times.

So 30 is for the total prize pool. So if you win, you win half. So we won 15.

That's nuts.

Then we have to divide into different players and all that. But yeah, yeah, it was extremely lucrative. So at this point, think about it. We're playing in Shanghai in the O2 Stadium, like on the, sorry, Mercedes Benz Arena, I think it's called. But anyway, like big stadiums around the world. We played in, in Europe around football stadiums and in China, the League of Legends world was a huge Olympic stadium. So there's a lot of huge stadiums, huge people that watch it online on tweets. You have like a million views for the CS Go major. So yeah, there is a huge thriving community.

I'm so happy to hear this. Like, I remember playing Starcraft with my mates on dial up in the 90s and then I think 2001 I got broadband and started downloading these like videos of starcraft tournaments off like Limewire or something like that. And then eventually like in the years they streamed them like pre YouTube and seeing these Korean guys, the level that they played at and that they were actually paid to do this. And then just from then 20 years on, how crazy it is now and you can be paid so much money, like you're actually a top athlete. It's absolutely incredible.

Much, yeah, I would say much, much more than a top athlete in most sports. Like I made the joke that if, like, yeah, if you're not, maybe on.

Basketball, baseball and football in America, you play, you make more money as an esport player.

And what are the ages of the players? Jake is my, one of my good mates is a, is a gamer and he just says like, you know, he's mid-20s and he's like, he's, he's like old now. He reckons in gaming, like, is that right? Like, what are the ages of these gamers?

So at the beginning there was this theory, which is obviously a very good theory that is like the reaction time slowers down as you, as you grow old. But we have seen.

Trend where there are players right now that are able to overcome maybe that loss of reaction time through experience and through mechanics. So one 10 years ago, like, yeah, 24 you were old. Now you have players sometimes playing until 30. So 31, 32, 33, depends on the game and mechanically how you need to perform. But look Your audience you think is mostly Australian because we have the most famous Australian guy. Anna was a guy that was in our team and he started playing when he was 16. He won the biggest tournament by 17, and so he's been playing all his life. And by the time he was like 21, 22, 23, it was like, I think it's time to retire.

That's nuts.

So you have people retiring at 23 from professional gaming bergs.

We're in, we're in Korea. And I sent Harry a message because Harry's a massive gaming sports gamer, right? And I was like, I was with Jay, you know, the ex CEO of OG Sports. And I was like, oh my God, can you get me a meeting with Anna? I want to, I want to meet, you know, want to meet this person. It's like, he's my hero. And I'm like, wow.

Like, yeah, Harry plays doo, doesn't he? Yeah, he's on that level. Yeah. So just speaking about these, most of.

My messages still to this day, even though Anna retired three years ago, is like, hey, where is Anna? Where is Anna? I get that like maybe four or five times a week, hey, where is Anna? He's Anna coming back.

Wow, that's so cool. Just speaking about the ages of people you're saying that, you know, you kind of, you had your podcast, you got to live with these gamers. What were their lives like? Were they like athletes and training? What did they do like back then and has it evolved since then?

I am going to tell you a story and then answer your question because it's very interesting knowing what they do. But what's the first time that you get a call from somebody saying, hey, do you want to be a professional player? Because some of these kids that we get are 15, 16, so they're just playing the game at home and just playing on their own time and on their own computer and all that. And suddenly they get a message from me saying, hey, would you like to join og? First it's like, well, they have to figure out if I'm real or not. But then I have to go to talk to their parents and to explain to them that this is real, that there's real money coming in and that we have a real organization. Obviously they don't believe me. They think I'm going to steal their sands or whatever.

They think I'm not some creeper on the Internet.

Yeah. So I have a story. I will not say names, but that year, my famous roster, the most of the guys retired after Covid Because Covid was a very long season. We didn't have events, so most of them decided to retire. And I have to build a new roster. And there was two players that were 16, 15, 16 in that year. One of them was VCM and the other one was Amar. Obviously I had to talk to their parents for the first time and they just couldn't believe it. So I have the kid, the brother that understands a little bit more about the world. So it's like one of them understands 10%, another one understands 20%. And now I'm trying to talk to the parents and the parents are like, no way. I'm like, no, no, dude, we really make money. This is. You can see publicly we've made $30 million playing video games. Yes, this is a real opportunity for your son. And I think that they don't really get it until they get the first few checks and they're like, oh, shit, now he makes more money than all the family together.

So now it's like, it's exactly the same that professional athletes, which is now their families around them, trying to help them most of the times. Look, in countries like Sweden is very normal and you can hear stories all the time about professional players and all that. But in countries like Jordan, like old Bulgaria or things like that, it's like, okay, well, this is not that common. So I had to bring their brother, the brother was living with us to get them used to this thing. So, yeah, it's fascinating. But to answer your question, your question is, how do they live? Well, they play a lot. We have times where they play together as a team and we screams against other players, against other teams, and we prepare specific things and strategies that we want to, let's say, to research. Then they have time that they play alone. We encourage them to play sports. We have normally facilities or places where we can all live. We have a house in Lisbon where we have the gym outside the pool, we have a volleyball court, we have a chef that makes food for them. When I'm there, it's a little bit more strict. The moment that I leave, they go back to maybe eating more chicken that I would like them to eat. And yeah, they have a psychologist. We do a lot of psychological work. And the whole idea of the psychology is that it's more like team dynamics, but also like your own sessions. So the professionalism of esport has become much, much more important because we're playing for more and more money and we have more and more competition. So look, if I have. If I think that I Have an edge to make $15 million then how much I'm willing to invest, you know, well, maybe 14.9, you know, and the rest, I claim it as a lot, but no, yeah, it's become very, very professional.

This is amazing. Everything you've said translates not only to other athletes but to people that are growing businesses as well. Like even Ben when he goes to barley, he's got everything set up, you know, he's got his pool, his gym, his chef, everything's there and he can just execute on his business. And then you speak about team dynamics and you have your own psychologist for your performance. But then you know the team dynamics. In creating a high performing team and with a bunch of seemingly young people, is it quite difficult to get them to perform together as a team? Because a lot of these are team games.

So we came up with our own magic sauce, which is sometimes it's better to get players when they're very, very young because we can already indoctrinate them into the way that OG Esports wants to play and wants to communicate. While if you've been in many different teams, you might not get the same level of buy in. So we wanna, we've been more successful every time we get younger players now with older players there's a little bit of everything. You know, people are willing to learn some others were like, well, I've achieved some level of success on my own on other teams playing differently. And then they want to push into some of those narratives. Some of them are good, but some of them are like, yeah, this doesn't work for us. We want something different. It's actually. But again the same thing in business, I always say. So I used to take a lot of coaching as the CEO to learn how to speak better, to learn how to be more precise, to learn how to be more acceptance of some things. But there is one thing that I always found out that is like, yes, as much as I am improving, I am limited my by my own ability to improve. So I actually have to hire people that can vibe with me and go the same way that I want to go. Otherwise it shows my weaknesses instead of just helping my weaknesses. So I have to find people that are like minded, at least 90%. Like, are we on the same bite?

This is the exact same thing. Ben said to me about a year ago that he discovered where it's, you know, you are limited by, you know, how much you can improve. But if you can improve your team, like spending an hour with your team and coaching them will be the equivalent of like 20 hours or whatever of performance. So finding those people that align with you and execute for you is just super important. It's something that you focus on quite a bit. Ben.

Yeah, 100. Especially like as you're scaling and you have. In a people oriented business like yours, Jay, like, you need the best performance, otherwise, you know, you're not gonna make the money. You need those coaches and the advisors and the performance and every. Everything counts. Right. That hour that someone's got to spend time figuring out grocery shopping and cooking for themselves is an hour they could be spending working on their craft, what they're good at.

Absolutely. And when you were. So when you were a CEO and you had all of those coaches kind of looking back and all the training that you had, which are the ones that you look back on and be like, that training was amazing and I really leveled up or that specific type of coaching that really helped you out.

So there was a. If you guys know Tom Brady, somebody was the quarterback, legendary quarterback. He always. It was a very interesting conversation because he will have a session with one person. I was like, oh my God. Like I level up. And the, the person that was behind him is like, dude, it's just 1%. But it's just this. It feels like a lot because now you find something, a word that maybe you never said before, but it's only like a small, small increments. I think that for me there was say different aspects that I needed to improve. Number one was communication. Because I realized that every employee that I had was really trying their best to do exactly what I were exactly. When they understood that I told them.

So. They were not really just not trying to do what I told them. So when they were failing is because my instructions were not specific enough or my setting objectives was not specific enough because I'm actually very open about how they go about things. I just want them to hit these objectives. But for me, the key became that I couldn't really like rule with a reign of fear because people were so scared of fucking up that they were. Were not able to deliver the best version of themselves. So I actually spent a lot of time going the other way around. Hey, how can I help you? We have already decided the objectives together. Everybody knows what they have to do. So I will spend my day pinging people. It's like, hey, how can I help you? What's blocking you? How can I just blow through the blockage by myself? Because normally when I get there, all these clients are picking up a phone. Okay, give me A minute. Here you go. Get on the fucking phone. You know, so. So I spent most of my time just being in people to figure out what is the main objective and what is stopping them. So that was communication and then enabling them. The other part was my secret. Again, another few secrets is that you have to be very level minded when you are the CEO and we're not perfect people. So the moment that you feel that you're getting triggered, find a way to completely either change the topic or like, oh shit, this is the time I actually have to go to another meeting. Fuck. Sorry guys, let's pick it up this later tomorrow. Like when you see that the whole wave is against you and the whole tide is moving against you and you feel that everybody's going to start arguing with each other, just find a way out. And it doesn't mean that you have to run every single time you have conflicts, but it's okay sometimes just to take a little bit, you know, and then come back 20 minutes later, a day later. And the next thing was actually from the team itself, from the competitive team. I got a lot of the.

I would say the buying into the culture and buying into the way of doing things. And I became a little bit more colorful because at first part I was like, maybe like, hey, look, I need to look the part, I need to be the part. And then I became a little bit more colorful because I wanted them to feel that I was always pushing energy and always happy to be here. And whatever your CEO is, the company becomes. If your CEO is a bitter old guy, then your company is going to be bitter. If your CEO is energetic and friendly, then everybody's friendlier with each other and they really are like constantly being inspired by the CEO and the leadership. And I didn't realize this until probably a few months into it because some of these guys are the first jobs. They love OG so much that they just want to be part of this, you know. So I needed to help them understand how they could help og.

So much wisdom just there in those few sentences that you said about, you know, leadership. And you're right, it's to, you know, set the tone and direction and enable your people, communicate effectively with them and motivate them as well. Align them with the goals and you'll have an amazing, high performing team. That was amazing. Just off the top of your head, man. I'm going to go back and watch that. That was great.

And I'll give you the last secret. The last secret is use notions. Because there were so many pools or silos of information. And I wanted everybody to share the information so everybody could have it. Because I am a big believer that most smart people that understand the objectives will make the same decisions. We're giving the same information. So if people are making wrong decisions because they have wrong information or they don't understand the objectives, so how can you get information? Well, if everybody's sharing precise and concise information, there a higher chance that everybody will make right decisions on their own without me having to police anything.

That's lead. Lead and scale 101.

And. I agree. I think that leadership by example is like something that I think that we, we try in our business as well, is like, you know, rather than just telling people what to do and how to act, just act that and do what you want others to do and they'll follow, you know, and. And build that culture. It's like even, like at a. At a very minor level, you go into a restaurant, right, and, you know, and. And something, you walk away and go, fuck. That was really good customer experience. I really, I really enjoyed that. Most likely the boss, you know, a really great person. They're inspiring the rest of employees to, to. To, you know, present that that same way versus a place where you just go, that. That was just like, everyone's up, you know, everyone's shitty, everyone's sad. No one wants to be there. It's probably because the boss is a. Is a dick.

Ben, we know. We know a guy that owns an IT business, and that's actually what he does. So a lot of their IT business is service. And if you see something he doesn't like, you know, he'll train them, he'll talk to them. He's like, okay, you're coming out to lunch with me. And he'll take them to a specific cafe and he'll make them watch how they actually do service and how they greet people. How you feel. And as you're right, that modeling is just so, so important in a business. Man.

I like letting people be themselves as well. Because in a way, I mean, I read a lot of, like, leadership books, even from my Creative Inc. The one about Pixar, about how to build these, like, thriving creative communities. But I want people to be themselves. So, for example, the players. I have a story. I don't know how public it is. I think we told the story before. So then I'm okay. It's like days of the Finals. We're playing for $15 million and all that, and. And one of the players doesn't Want to warm up. And in that moment, I just want to. Like, you just want to pick him from the neck and say, joe, sit on the player, sit on the desk and warm up. But you have to really understand that not everybody's brain works the same way. And there is something that he didn't want to experience by warming up that he was not able to explain in that moment. Eloquently, he did explain us later, but he was like, look, if I do this right now and I have a bad matchup and then I get tilted in the game, I'm going into the finals tilted. It's like, dude, I know how to play the game. I need maybe a second of just relaxing and not thinking about the game and then go there and do that. So it's like, you have to understand that everybody has different temples and different ways to think about this. So hear them out. What do you need to be successful? They will tell you, every day, I have to wake up early. Okay, well, we'll try to vibe with you early or every day. I actually like walking my dog at noon, and it's important for me. It's like, give me the day. Okay, fine. We'll make the. Like, you can make a lot of, let's say, concessions for. For people to perform really well now. We have to have a core idea. It's okay, but from 12 to 4, everybody's here doing their best. And I always had a culture where I don't need people to stay here in the computer all day pretending to work. To the moment that you do your work, then go away because you're. Otherwise, you're distracting everybody, you know, to stop pinning. No, no, no. This is not the chit chat. I really want you to go home and go away because there will be days that I need you to maybe put extra hours. It's not going to happen very often, but it could happen. So I don't want people to work at 100% capacity. That is a big mistake.

Yes.

I want people to work at 75% capacity. There will be moments of burst, and then we can work at 100, and there will be moments of chill. But if you're constantly at 100%, it's like, well, first you don't. I don't have more output. I don't. Something new comes, a new idea comes, a new initiative comes. Something happens, and we cannot face it because we don't have more output anymore.

Absolutely. I love that. First of all, it's performance over presenteeism. I love that. And then Also always working at Burst. So Ben is a guy that always wants to work at Burst, and I'm the reasonable guy that has to tell him, what have you got on your plate? Right, Throw all of that in the bin. This is the number one thing you need to achieve. Just focus on that thing. Because if you're going into that thing and you're feeling exhausted, you're going to deliver that content or whatever you're doing in an exhausted way, you're not going to be at your best. And that's the thing that earns us the most money. And just getting to know your employees and your team on an individual level, their likes and dislikes and how you can modify, you know, their days and make concessions for them instead of having overall conformity is very important. It's a very advanced technique that a lot of managers and leaders don't actually get to.

If you work with Burst, the problem then is that a lot of people end up. There's specific things that you need in your life. You know, you need a circle of support, that is, your friends, your family, your girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever it is, you know, you need that. You need, like, social validation. You need things like that. So if you're only working, then that means that you need to get all these things from work. But work is not really designed to be those things for you. Work is just, I'm giving you money for your time. You're trading your money for your time. But the moment that you need work to be something else, it becomes very complicated because people are like, dude, I'm giving you my life. How can you not give me that? I don't have to. And this is not designed to do that. So I need you to have your own life to do whatever you want to do, where you find all those things. And then it's your job to be the best version of you when you show up to work, then if you are the best version of you, then I will.

Use this version of you, and I hopefully give you the validation and the fulfillment that you need on this side of life. But not everything that's so right.

It's just one aspect of life. They need to go away, find those other things. Like, employers aren't responsible for, you know, someone's happiness or their social hierarchy or how they feel in a lot of areas, like the individual is responsible for those things. And, you know, at the end of the day, you're right. It is a workplace. You come here, you work. It's, you know, there's. It's a Transactional relationship. But it can be a nice environment. We're all aligned. We are a team.

Absolutely.

And yeah, I. And this is the thing, like a lot of people say, oh, we're a family here. It's like, no, you're not a family, you're a workplace. That means something. Because you spend a lot of time here doesn't mean work needs to fulfill all those other areas that you mentioned. It's such a, such a key thing for me.

I would say we're not a family. We're a team. We're teammates, we're in the team together and we have a common goal. But also it's like, if you're always working, how do you enjoy what money buys you and what life buys you and what success buys you? Like, you gotta go out and understand this is what I'm working for. I'm working because I can take my mom to Japan for a week. Like I just did. Like these are like real tangible things. If I'm always working. It's funny, like the most intense moments of my life or maybe I made the most money is being times of complete isolation and not having any fun or not doing anything. And now I was like, hey, well I'm gonna do this, but I'm also taking my mom every year for a week somewhere. You need to really crystallize in your mind. This is what my success is relating to or correlating to.

Exactly.

Like this is the thing. Like the individual needs to take responsibility for that. What do you want in your life? And you're so right when you work too much. I used to work in organization that had the culture of just always working 24 7. It was crazy. And then you'd see all these blow ups at work, people getting really upset or they were passed over for a promotion. It went to someone else. Like I gave my life to this business. And that's just the symptom of a business that isn't healthy and isn't actually doing the right things for their employees.

I actually have another interesting way of thinking, but if you guys want to talk about crypto, you can cut me off at any point. There's these ideas that you have businesses and when you do for your employees that you provide services on top of the business, like, hey, we're going to do a movie night or we are going to go on these things together or we're just going to do that. And I always very hesitant to do this because I have to be also conscious with do people have families? People have other things. That they want to do outside. And if I am asking them not to spend more time at work, then they have less time with their significant others and I want them to spend more time with the significant others. And unfortunately, if everybody goes to the event and you don't go, you're left out. Most of the times that you're promoted, most of the.

Bonds or like friendship that you build, you have to build them. And if you're not there, you're always the one that is not there. So you kind of have to go. Every single time we say it's optional, it's not really optional. You got a cuff to go. So I would rather not do many of those things. And if I do, then I'm not part of it. I don't go. Yeah, because the moment that the boss go, then.

It'S not optional. Everybody has to be there. So I will not go on purpose. I'll be like, hey, I'm not going. Even things that I really want to go, I don't go.

And some things like people don't consider is actually, it may be an employee's worst nightmare to actually go and hang out with their team in a social situation outside of work.

Right.

Whereas like some people are just like, they don't like that kind of social interaction or that pressure or that situation they're in or the place that they're actually, you know, going to. And you're right, like being a boss, that changes the whole dynamic as well of that team being out.

There's no different, there's no winnings.

Yeah, yeah.

Invite people to my house and I want to build, I want to cook for them. There's no winning because if I come to a house and my house is shit, they're going to be like to this guy with all the money he has and look at how he lives. He's so greedy. If they come into a very luxurious house. Yeah, look at that. I knew he was loaded, you know, so no matter what I do is like, I am not winning.

You choose a restaurant, you go, I'll pay for it. Have fun. You know, that's it, mate.

This is cracking. So far I've loved all that about like your wisdom about being a CEO and a leader. Like that stuff is so important and you only really learn that through talking to someone with experience.

Yeah, I'm happy to talk about it. I actually, I actually pull back in one moment because, yeah, the.

Wintermute does a lot of these things. They have like pimp on tables, they organize role playing games and they they organize like an offside that they're going to go together on holidays and I. It's a very, very nice thing to do and for the company and they really bond together. But in winter, mute. If you work in wintermude, you don't have a life.

Yeah, right.

You're, you're. Because it's. There's so much to do every day and it's that a little bit of the trader mentality. And if you think about trader private equity and all that, they really romanticize their rah rah of every day. And even like football coaches in the NFL, their whole idea is like to review what time you show up. I Show up at 4am like for what? So they all want to be there and they're all like that. You have to be there. And it's like you're in the trenches the whole time. And many of them will sleep sometimes in the office. In one of the teams that I was, I was working so many hours that I slept in the office many times I brought a futon so I could sleep in the office. I feel like a clown now thinking about those times. It's like, yeah, just go home. What are you doing?

Yeah, exactly. Right. And like once you've kind of, you know, seen the other side or. And usually what that leads to, especially for, for me and a lot of other people, is just burnout because you're constantly at work, you're constantly doing work activities, you've got home pressures and you get sick and you, and you burn out and you're just setting a terrible example for everyone else. So when I spoke about the other business, I used to work in large tertiary hospital here and sat with all the, all the surgeons and everyone else and they were just nuts. And I was the guy that was helping them build all the technology and it was just always go, go, go do research, do more surgery, more care, more people. And it was just emails. 1:00am, 2:00am, 5:00am it's like hell. And if you're not responding, you're the person that doesn't respond. And it was just, it was nuts. Everyone just goes through that burnout cycle. Work is their life. They get cranky at work, they want all the social stuff from work and little normal work things that mean nothing would blow up because they're not doing those things in their normal lives. They're bringing that to work. And it was, yeah, terrible, terrible environment.

This can go back what I think is in a way, like life as a CEO, in many ways it's like a Resource game, like a video game. This is my Segway, Ben. I'm helping you, okay? It's like you have a specific amount of resources and you have to achieve a specific amount of objectives. One of the resources is me, my capacity to learn, my capacity to guide, and my capacity to read the market until I onboard people who are better than me on things. Right now I'm trying to do is enhance my ability. So I'm going to hire people who have the ability to enhance what I do or to take those things that are maybe very time consuming for me, but they don't really mean that much to the business. So, for example, finance is one of the things that immediately I always push to the side because it's super important, but it doesn't really generate business. The moment that I start hiring other high performers who have specific abilities, then my job becomes more about managing and then trying to figure out how to put them in the best places for situations for them to win. But.

I really don't want to be working 15 hours a day because I actually need a lot of time to think and to make decisions. And for decisions I need to be able to just think. So during nog, there was many days that I would be like, I need four hours to go to the beach and just think. I am thinking about work. I'm not thinking about the Kardashians, I'm clearly thinking about work. But I'm going to have to make decisions that are important for the company and I need to think about it in a three dimensional way. And if I guide or if I make the wrong call, I'm going to take the company into an rabbit hole that it's gonna maybe take me three months to pivot out. It's okay. I'm gonna make them many times. But if I cannot, if I make better decisions and bad decisions, then the company will be better. Your employees get very frustrated when they have to pivot, when they work really hard in one direction and they have to backpedal and then go somewhere else. They understand it. When you can explain, hey, this is my read. And I normally have something called the red team. I tell them, hey, this is my read, break it. And then for like 20 minutes they all try to break my read and say why I'm stupid. And then after that I said, okay, let me think about it. And then I think about it, all the arguments that they have. And then I come back and I said, okay, I still want to do it. I've contemplated the arguments that you have. This is my solution in case this happens. But we're still going to go with it. Or, hey, I have modified the plan based on what you guys told me, and I think that this should be the revised plan. But, yeah, like, I need that time. So as a CEO, there's many people that live in the trenches. I don't want to live in the trenches. I need time alone. A lot of time.

That's very important. Because think about it. If you're always in the trenches, you're always reactive, you're working 15 hours a day. How are you going to feel and what kind of decisions are you going to make? Whereas if you go somewhere else, you're by yourself, you go to a hotel, you go to the beach, you. You relax, you let everything kind of ideate, you think of the bigger picture and you bring that back. The decision making you're going to make is going to be so much better than that. Tight, reactive. Oh, just go and do this. And as a CEO and as a leader, you're driving the bus. So you need to know where you're going at which speed and in which seat every person is in. And I encourage every leader. Trav tells us this all the time, Ben. To literally take time out from the business, get during your day, however many hours, and just focus on the big picture.

Yeah, super, super important. And yeah, especially as a CEO, because who else is going to make the decisions if you don't? And then what are the repercussions of that? Now I want to talk about web3 crypto.

Let's go.

Let's talk about crypto. So the rise of esports and, you know, the content and the entertainment value, Jay, like, just even streaming and Twitch and, you know, Kick and all these, like, you know, streaming platforms, a lot more gamers. You know, it's obviously a huge industry. Right? And there's a lot more stuff coming out then, you know, we had the rise of Web3, Web3 Gaming, and, you know, back in the summer, crypto, summer of 2021, 2020, we had a huge amount of VC capital pouring into web3 games, right? We had, you know, massive things, you know, you know, focusing on Avalanche, you know, Alium.

You know, imx, we just had so much mut. We had so much capital flowing into that space and there's still a lot of games being created. Where do you think this space is going? Do you think it is just a. A money grab? Do you think there is actually product market fit with Web3 games? You know, and, and I know answers already. Because I heard you speak about this. But it's. I, I loved your take and it's so credible considering your background. I want you to share your insights on that whole space.

Okay. This is the real reason why he invited me because I have a few radical views. All right, first I'm going to tell you the problem and after we talk about the problem, I'll tell you my proposed solutions. Okay.

So the problem that I see is that.

There are not such a thing as Web3 gamers. They're gamers. And gamers is mostly a relationship where, hey, I have free time and I want to spend my free time enjoying my free time. And then you think about it just as a, I can do anything. I can just watch NBA, I can watch Netflix, I can go to the park and go surf, I can do anything that I want with my time or the possibilities available to you. Or I can game. Okay, so most people want to play games because they want to evade reality. They want to just to disconnect for a little bit. They want to feel some kind of adrenaline, dopamine or things like that. And they want to build communities or make friends that are like minded like them and they share these specific points of passion. There's another level there, it's a little bit more on the side, but there is something very attractive about creating level of progress inside a game that you don't have in your life because life doesn't, you don't level up every three hours. So there is something really cool about finding progression in a game. Okay, so mostly the relationship that you have is that I have money that I'm willing to give you in exchange of hours of entertainment. Okay, so we started doing the math. Well, I can go to the cinema for $20, that is like two hours or I can buy this game and I want to put 100 hours. Actually it really comes down to a dollar per hour. So pretty good. I think everybody has done this math when we play a game like that. So in that model you need the game to be the best game you can because that's your arbitrage. I give you money, you give me the game. Then there's a secondary kind of model that came out later which is called free to play, which is I give you a free game, but I'm gonna give you options that are so interesting that you will hopefully opt into these and give me money. And this has been very lucrative. But in a way you're getting delivered an incredibly good game most of the times.

And that's why I give you my time and then further promise of money or iou. Okay, but.

I have to be very honest. The games in web3 gaming are not fun to play to the level that they can compete with the normal games. So then the whole thing just changes because people are here for potential financial incentives. That's it, that's why they're here. Nobody's here because this game kick ass and it's really fun. Okay, so I understand there is a financial incentive to play this game. I'm going to play this game to earn. That's great. But that's not gaming, that's working. And that's why I have separated categories in my mind. One of them is I spend hours in exchange for money, which is why I have a job. And the other one is I give you my money in exchange of entertainment. So with that distinction.

There are a lot of people on the normal traditional gaming that big companies that are not able to make games that stick. Just like movies, you know, movies and games. There are very, very few that get the whole audience and everybody else just tanks and loses a lot of money. And these companies have the best developers, the best stories, the best IPs and still no one cares. So they are trying to solve just for that and this other group of people are not even trying to solve for that. So the chances of figuring out are zero on the current paradigm. So if you consider that gamers are just gamers and you consider that they're just going to go where the best game is, then well, crypto right now is not equipped to compete against that because they will require a massive, massive investment. It requires three, four, five, six year cycles in order to get a game going. And most of the crypto vcs they have vehicles that are much shorter in time because nobody is really investing on equity. Mostly it's like liquid token vehicles. So a normal VC in traditional web two businesses could be 10 years, 20 years, but here they're like three years vehicle, three plus ones. So we're never going to get there. So that's the pessimistic part. There's an optimistic part. But Ben, do you have any questions on this?

No, I tend to agree and I think the Web3 games are probably more focusing on the economics of how to make money. And the people playing those games are those that are looking to make money. Right? They're not attracting necessarily, you know, gamers. You know, my, one of my best mates is a gamer and he's not playing Alluvium, you know, for example, like that's just not a thing. So I, I, I, I agree. And but what's so interesting is that the amount of money that vcs have backed into this because they're supposedly the ones that should know what they're doing right? But to your point, in a way the VCs are probably just investing in this space. They know retail investors are probably going to get interested by this idea and there's just a way for them to rotate and get returns on their VC capital, not actually build too much sustaining long term games.

So I'm a big believer in operating in reality. And reality we have this beautiful thing that is called language in which I use words that represent specific realities.

Then rebrand it. Don't call it games, call it something else. And I'll be totally on board with it. Just call it use the app to earn, you know, instead of play to earn. It's not playing, you're not playing, you know, because if you rebrand it then there is nothing in my head that immediately responds to you against it. I know what an apple is. You give me an apple and I bite it and it's a delicious peach. Well that's not an apple, it's a peach. So I'm sure this peach is amazing. But call it a peach and then we will have no problem doing this. Web3 Gaming right now is not a place for people to play these fun games that can compete with traditional gaming. It's a places where people come to foreign financial incentives, which is token airdrops and all that, which is why the liquidity keeps moving around and all that.

That's exactly right. And just what you said about previously about traditional gaming. So I play a lot of Apex Legends and even when.

Because all these like first person shooter titles kind of compete and if someone releases an update or if Apex Legends does every three months, you just see the user base drop off by half like you see in the charts or people get upset with certain things. That's just competition at a top level in gaming and they're losing, you know, half of their users. And then you try and do something in crypto and then you try and smash those two together. Gaming's really hard. Crypto's really hard. And you want to put those two together and have a successful experience. We're not there yet and you're playing on a very difficult, difficult level. Like I completely agree that it's not comparative with gaming. It's something else. Then you're right at the moment it's like do stuff to earn, like Farming.

Correct. So the key of gaming the way I see it requires very talented game makers.

A lot of money and a lot of time. Crypto gaming doesn't have either of these three things right now. So for me the chances of them to figure out are nearly zero.

Now there is an optimistic part. Okay, I said that there was an optimistic part of it. The optimistic part of it is that most of the best games in the world have come from derivatives of a game that was there before. So Dota was Warcraft 3. Okay. Then CS go, you know, was Half Life. So there is this user generated content that people can do by themselves, which could be very lucrative in a decentralized way. So what I think that the Web3 gaming should be doing is infrastructure and these places where people can build games on top because they will come up with a solution. We are in a way democraticizing the game making because, for example, I have a specific example. I used to run raids on World of Warcraft. My job was to organize the raid. We got paid to do it, we were sponsored. And I contribute very highly on creating content for the game. And when Blizzard sold to Activision, I never got a check, even though I provided hundreds of people hundreds of thousands of hours and Blizzard a lot of money. So if we have now a way to decentralize all this way of making the games and we create the infrastructure and the engines for people to build games and then for people to contribute to the success of the games, then web3 is much better equipped the traditional one. Huh. So now we're actually using the technology that we have to solve a problem that is real, instead of using the technology that we have to solve a problem that nobody asks anybody to solve.

Which is crypto in a nutshell, right? Just a bunch of solutions for not many problems.

Well, that's it. And if you got like, you know, the.

I guess the, the platforms actually use again like Apex Legends came from the source engine. I love that kind of thing where you could build something like that. And if you have the right tooling. I think the kind of decentralized, open aspect of crypto where people can actually build on that is a perfect kind of idea. And you know, have you, have you seen that? Well, we've seen reports of a lot of investment in Web3 by quite large gaming companies. Would you have any idea of how that's kind of going for them? Are they still investing and trying in those areas?

So.

This one, I will be careful, I'm going to answer it, but I will be careful. So Most of the times that I see companies coming into Web3 they come with this idea which is hey, there are users on web 3. I am going to create proposition for them to join me because these users have money and I want to target these users. For me this is a very, very, very flattered way of thinking because people that are in Web three that are gamers are already playing games and people that in Web3 that are not gamers, they don't want to care about your game. And even if they did care, which is the perfect Venn diagram, people that care and people that you want to target, there's hundreds or very low thousands. So it's not really a rich environment of possible targets.

So there's just not a fit.

So what they need to try to do is.

Bridge their web to users into a Web3 environment that provides less friction or better solutions for them without them kind of knowing it. Yeah, but nobody wants to mix those businesses. So a lot of the Web two studios that I have spoken to during the last year are not trying to bridge the users. They're actually creating a whole new studio with new investors that they will launch token and all that. They're both keeping those businesses separated because this crypto thing is more like well we know that it's money there, let's figure out how can we extract it instead of like hey I really think that my users will actually enjoy better a way to on ramp and off ramp or create a decentralized where next time they build their own game is already there on chain and everybody can play it and the revenue of shares easily distributed and the main, main, main players in the industry are not, are not coming. They're really blocking most of these things. So Valve is one of the main players. But Valve has their own Steam ecosystem and they have like one way on ramping. You can put money inside of Steam but you cannot get money out of a Steam. So even if you make money inside then you cannot get it out. So yeah, it's a little bit rough right now.

Yeah, yeah. And I think like the, the future of this is if traditional studios are going to do this, it needs to be completely abstracted. I hate you know, setting up a new wallet, doing crypto transactions. Users experience is absolutely terrible. And even when I game, if I've got my PlayStation and let's say I buy a physical disc and I put it in and then I got like a 60 gig update, I'm like this, I just want to get to the game as soon as possible. I want it to be frictionless. And I don't want to have to think. I want to spend my time and energy in that game rather than setting everything up.

Well, I will never be able to solve for the technical implications of just having to remotely update all that. But think about it. Where you join a game, imagine like World of Warcraft and the game is what it is and you can just opt in to do, hey, would you like to connect a wallet? Well, why? Well, because there is a specific way that you can secure your character that is better secure than just being in our server. For there is a lot of people that get breaking into their accounts and steal their shit and things like that. Well, we put it on chain, then we have a way to know who has it, who took it away from you. Because it's, in a way, it's a centralized market, you know, it's a centralized exchange at that point, not a decentralized exchange. And I can see where everything goes so I can revert back. Okay, now it's like you have specific items that you want to put in an auction house. Well, the auction house is better secure through blockchain technology than for what it is right now. Okay, would you like to move things from one server to server? Well, blockchain technology offers better solutions for that. Well, would you like to make sure that it's you and not somebody else? Well, right now, crypto allows a better level of security than just your password of 8 characters that you have for your normal World of Warcraft account where you put thousands of hours. So they're actually real.

Things that we could do right now in the background and nobody will know. That will just secure the game better.

And bringing this right back to an investment point of view. Because I want to get into Jay, I know your investment strategy, mate, and how. I don't know how much you want to share, but I'd love, I'd love for you to share what you can from an investment perspective. I think going back to, like, if you still want to, you know, exposure to gaming. My thoughts on this is that focus on the infrastructure level. Like, rather than trying to back the individual game, which, you know, as Jay's pointed out, has a high likelihood, you know, of, of not succeeding. Back the blockchain go after, you know, blockchains that, you know, games may be built on. We'll get the, you know, we'll get the, the, the excitement of community whether or not they pull it off. I think, you know, backing that infrastructure level will allow you get to. Will allow you to get exposure to various games, not one individual game. You know, whether that be Solana, whether that be Avalanche, Ronin is a favorite of mine, which I own. You know, there's different blockchains that, you know, have a lot of games built on top that will eventually get the exposure, you know, as the market goes up, regardless of the success of the of the game. Jay, what are your, what's your ex crypto strategy mate? Generally, how do you look at the space? What are you most bullish on? Where do you think?

So I would say that, look, the key here is first is not financial advice. Then I'm just going to give you some food for thought about to think one thing. Look, the ability to create hype and to create pump and to get something to go really fast is always going to be games, okay? Because it's much easier narrative to be like, hey, this game is pumping. I call them my single points of failure. So yes, as much as this game will be the easiest way to storyteller and to go up, you are one single point of failure. If this game fails, then you have nothing. If you build on or believed on the ecosystem and infrastructure and the chain, you have to believe more in the long term. You got to believe not in three month cycles or six month cycles. You have to believe in three year cycles, five year cycles. The problem is that in crypto a lot of things can happen in loan cycles. So.

My strategy would be, well, you have to diversify some of these things and understand that the liquidity will really circulate and rotate through some of these things and you got to be able to catch it when you can and if not, maybe don't participate on this. If you are a more traditional investor and you have more conservative views on the ecosystem, then buy Bitcoin and then just chill and eventually bitcoin will go up to x3x4x5x. But if you are not willing to rotate liquidity, if you're not willing to be there all the time, understanding what is the new narrative, what is people talking about? When is the airdrop launching? When are you farming this airdrop, when in this team going to launch or be listed in another exchange and all that, then you're not as sophisticated as you think you are and you maybe should not do it. You know, take more traditional views on the industry, which is, hey, I believe in crypto. Hey, I believe that this is a world that I want to be part of and that this is good for the world, that this should go up and then take you Know, the classic big ones and just. That's it. Enjoy the ride, you know?

Absolutely. And while we're on the topic of investing, we always ask our guests, like, how they kind of think about investing and how they're kind of allocated. We don't talk numbers or anything like that. But, you know, you talk a lot about crypto. Have you invested in crypto? Do you own, you know, real estate? Are you a stock guy? How does that kind of look like in your life? And how do you think about, you know, investing for your future?

I don't own any real estate. Yeah, I believe that the biggest ROI that can have is investing on things that will give me more money. And I am trying to grow the bug every day and not try to pull away from the bug. I do. One financial freedom. Financial freedom doesn't have to be a huge bag, but it means that part of it has to be liquid or easily accessible. And for me, real estate is not one of those things because it's not liquid you can move. In the last years, I lived in many different countries, so real estate would not even make sense for me. But how do I think about this? Let me think about it. I have a segue that probably answers this. I like crypto because I believe that as a society we just work, save money, and spend money. Those are the triangulations. So if I want to buy something better, I just have to either make more money or work more hours and save more money or just get into debt to do it. And 100% of our time invested on work is invested on working, on physically working a job. I would like to come to a world where we spend 90% working and 10% of just trying to optimize financially how we do things, from tax setups to is my money making me money and investing and all that. And then hopefully get to a point where you actually spend 30% of your time not really physically working your job, but you spend 10% of optimizing finances and 20% investing and becoming. Well, I have this expertise. How do I apply it? And then hopefully move to a world where we only work 50% of the time, then we spend 20% of our time advising or consulting companies that are going to be doing things that I have already done. So why don't we just make the learning curve differently instead of just having all to go to a vertical learning curve and where we can all make money without having to just break our backs working all day. But it's very hard when you come from a normal environment. And this is what they teach you? This is what they teach me when they were a kid. So crypto for the first time gives me this ability to constantly talk about something more than football and the Kardashians and where are we going this weekend? For the first time, my friends and I are constantly talking about, dude, have you seen this? Have you heard about this? Hey, have you seen this? Our chats are about that, not about other things. So we should not be ashamed of wanting to make money. And you know, even when I tell my mom, it's like, dude, I'm really doing this and this and this. My mom is like, well, it's not really about money. But that is such a blank statement. It was not really about money. But money is a huge part of everything that we do daily. So it kind of is about money. It doesn't mean that I have to just optimize my life just to have as much money as possible. But yeah, it is about money because most of my life I spend working. So yeah, it's about money. So to answer you is I like the game of making money. I have high tolerance for risk, for some risk because I believe on my ability to make more money if everything goes down. Because I'm not a trader, I am a builder. I, I know how to run companies. So if tomorrow my net worth went to zero, I believe that I will come back from it.

Excellent. And I like that transition as well. Where you start, where, man, it was. It has been so painful to unlearn the bullshit that's been drummed into my head by school, even by uni, by my parents, by all my peer groups about, you go to work, you make money, you spend it. That's it pretty much to then go to an investment mindset, to take that risk, to even lose money and to have that capital at risk. And just what you said, about 90% working, 10% focus on your investments. And over the years and decades that will. Then that percentage changes, right? Because your investments will grow. So you spend more time there, you'll get more income from it. But then having that extra money actually equates to more time. And when you were talking about consulting, like you work less, consult a bit more, and then have more free time. So that's. I, I think that should be the goal for everyone to figure out what they actually want to do and use that framework and system to allow them to have more time to be able to do the things that they want Instead of working 40 hours a week until they're 65 it's, it's amazing.

Look, obviously.

We have to figure out a way for this to apply to most part of the population, you know, because if it only applies to 10%, then it doesn't really work for everybody. But I do think that there are principles of passive income investment and things like that that you can apply even with, with $100. When I was a kid, I couldn't really buy anything or buy anything because I never had money. So I was not really participating in any of these investments or accruing anything. But now I have my cousins that are like 23 years old and they're like, oh, I'm buying this thing with, with my mates. And then I'm also investing on like coal mines in like and like, yeah, I put together like we syndicated like $3,000 with my friends and with $3,000 we can actually join these little fund. So now we're a part of this even though we're syndicating this. And I was like, dude, these kids are like 30 years ahead of me, you know, how is this happening to them? So I love that. And crypto has allowed anybody to participate with any kind of fractional ownership that they want. Because before that was you couldn't own half a car, you couldn't own half apartment, you couldn't own those things. I'm a big believer in rwas real world assets. We just haven't figured out fully how to do it in crypto. But the moment that that happens, then that's going to be amazing.

I love it.

Those are some really wise thoughts. I think we resonate something similar. Collective shift. Have a simple strategy. Invest in assets that you have conviction in, hold for a long period of time. You look at the monthly chart of, the yearly chart of crypto, it's nine times out of ten, it's, it's, it's up and you know, it's three steps forward, one steps back and you know, you have a long term time horizon usually plays out pretty well. So Jay, that's been amazing.

Yeah, I do have, I do have finally the solution. I told you I was gonna give you the magic sauce of what to fix. Oh, let's go, let's go right now. Web3 Gaming for you. Okay, number one, rename it. Stop fucking calling Web3 Gaming. Okay, if it's gaming, just call it gaming. And if it's not gaming, figure out and call it something else. But if it's gaming, it's just gaming. Not web3 gaming, just gaming. Second, all the implementations that you want to have that include blockchain technology and all that. Do it in the background. This is just technology. Why do we have to, oh, now we discover like Oracle database. So we're just going to call it Oracle Gaming. No, shut up. It's gaming. However you want to solve in the background is just for your problem. You know, that's a tech solution, not a front solution. We just want to put it on the front, let's be honest, because we believe that we can raise at a higher valuation and we can tokenize it. That's it. It's not solving for any needs. So rename it and then do anything you want to do on the background. Third, invest in communities and invest on user generated content. That means from people that build games, from people that make content about the games because they're passionate about it. All those contributors that you have, you already have that fan loyals. The loyal fans enhance that, help them, nurture them because they are the ones that are going to keep your game alive and the ones that are going to continue making new games and new games and new games and then be patient, be patient. This is going to happen, but this is going to take a while. If you just call it gaming. Do the tech pack in the background and use your money to enhance those communities and those user generated content and those contributors and you have enough money to wait it out. It's going to happen. It's going to happen because the people who are going to build your games are going to come to your chain.

Amazing.

I love it.

Get rid of Web3 gaming. I like it.

This was as a person doing a podcast on Web3 Gaming.

Jay dropped that on the panel in there.

Web3 Just Gaming, you know. Welcome to gaming.

I love it, man. Jay, thank you so much for all those insights, man. I love the first half. I think we went a lot deeper in the CEO and building a company and there was just some amazing insights. You're very wise with your words and yeah, I love listening to you, man.

That was, it was very, it was lovely conversation.

No man, appreciate it. Where can people, you know, find your stuff, follow you online? Anything that you want to send our audience to.

I don't really do much social media talking but it's at, @jmrluna in Twitter. And yeah, the reason actually where I don't say many things online sometimes because I believe that I have proprietary knowledge. I'm not sure I want to give it for free. So I end up just putting memes or just liking photos of cats and, and football. Like dude, Spain just won, you know, let's go. But yeah, that's. That. Normally I don't really do much more.

That's. That's awesome, man. Jay did have a brief.

Brief appearance on my latest YouTube videos. If you ever check out my YouTube channel, the video.

Welcome to the channel. Yes.

We're gonna. Life in Korea. Go check that out. Jay's there and we eat some Korean barbecue together. Uh, what was that. What was that place called, Jay? That was like, uh, the pork.

The pork. It was like pork party or something. What was it part?

Party often and eat or live life and party and eat.

Pork.

Pork. I know. Something like that.

It poured party hard. I think it was something like that.

Yeah, we got behind that. That was good, mate. Thank you so much again. JMR Luna, everyone. If you love this episode and you. You think there's someone else in your. In your network that would find this valuable, we'd love for you to share it with them. It's how we grow the podcast and we'll keep bringing on awesome guests like Jay, hopefully. So thank you so much again, mate, and we'll see you, everyone, on the next episode.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks, Jay. Thanks, champions.