Ben Kaplan - The Creation of FuckJerry, What Do You Meme, and Dude With Sign

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What is going on, everyone? KC Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Ben Kaplan here with us. Ben Kaplan is the creator of what do youo Meme and a partner at fuckjerry. I've known Ben for about a year now, and we sat down today to talk about how he's involved with FuckJerry, his past entrepreneurial endeavors, how he came up with dude with Sign, what do youo Meme, and much, much more. So with that being said, please share this episode with a friend and enjoy today's episode with Ben Kaplan. What is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have my man Ben Kaplan here with us. Thanks so much for coming on the show, man.

Thanks for having me.

So we've been in contact for quite some time on Instagram, in the DMs, and your story and what you've built is incredible. Your partner at Fuck Jerry, the creator of what the Meme, and you say, head of security of at dude with Sign. Yeah, that's a lot there. But for everyone that's watching this, they definitely know what Fuck Jerry is. Where did this start? And what was your involvement from the beginning? Sure.

How's it going guys? I can't take credit for any of the early days of Fuck Jerry. My business partner, Elliot to Belly was sitting on Tumblr actually before Instagram even came out and started posting kind of things that he thought were interesting. So anything from like sneakers to basketball to cars and comedy. And what he noticed pretty quickly and especially when he started posting on Instagram too when it first came out, was people engage a lot more with the comedy. And so he kind of took that and ran with it, but he never had. I Think in the early days, the vision to make it like his full fledged business, it was more of like a passion project, hobby, but. And then about four and a half years ago, his best friend from growing up, a guy named Ellie Ballis, joined him to help on like, the business side of things. And then I joined as the third guy. And my initial kind of responsibility was helping them with monetization. So I was focused on working with brands, working with agencies to find ways to make money for having an Instagram account.

Yeah.

Contrary to popular belief, a lot of people that don't know, like, you don't just get paid by Instagram for having followers. You have to figure out different scrappy ways to make money.

100%. And where did the name Jerry originally come from?

Yeah, it's. It's as simple as he was watching Seinfeld. He's actually a big Seinfeld.

Okay.

And he just thought it'd be an eye catching, funny thing. And, you know, looking back, would he have named it that knowing it'd be a real business? I don't know. But yeah, it definitely is memorable. And I think that helps in the long run.

100%. Yeah. So when did what the meme come into the picture?

Yeah. So about six months into me working with them on Fuck Jerry, I was around memes all day long.

Yep.

And I was actually playing cards against humanity in Lake Tahoe. And I was just like kind of thinking memes, you know, how does this look as a meme? I was like helping with branded memes for ads. For ads for, you know, clients and stuff. So my mind was kind of already thinking in memes, cars and some Mandy kind of like playing it. And that weekend kind of like reminded me that there's party games. And then coincidentally, the three of us went to a meeting at Kickstarter.

Yep.

Nothing to do with. What do you mean? It was. It was purely like a business crowdfunding website. They were in Brooklyn, actually. It's a quick, funny story. Kanye west, like, four years ago, tweeted that he was $53 million in debt. I don't know if you remember this.

Yeah. Isn't it like Kim Kardashian, like, bailed him out. Is that the whole story?

Yeah, something so. So the three of us thought it'd be funny to make a Kickstarter, like a crowdfunding for Kanye. The target goal of $53 million.

Okay.

And we ended up submitting the campaign and we spent like two hours putting it together. It was obviously cheeky and funny and they Actually replied to us, like, the head of their strategy and said, hey, Kickstarter, Kickstarter. Unfortunately, we can't accept this because you're not able to, like, raise money for a person, probably for, like, human trafficking reasons. Um, but we know you're in Manhattan, we're in Brooklyn. You know, we're big fans. Why don't you guys come in and let's see what we can do together? So we were at that meeting and kind of just like, wanting to learn more about Kickstarter, we asked what sort of projects are, like, the most popular on Kickstarter. And card games and party games kept coming up. So we kind of left that meeting thinking, okay, it would be cool if Fuck Jerry launched a card game, right?

Yep.

And then the Lake Tahoe weekend happened where I was playing cards against me, and I kind of had a light bulb moment where I was like, there could be a similar game where players compete to make a meme, basically.

Yep.

And that's how it happened.

It was born. It was born when you had them that thought, like, what was the time frame from thinking about that to it actually being a product on the market.

Selling for sure all in. It was probably six months.

Okay.

The first step, which I encourage everyone to do, is, like, just make something. You don't have to, like, know a factory in China to produce a car game. What I did was went to a printer and printed out 30 memes from the Internet. And what I wanted to test was if, like, caption A would work on photo B. So I literally cut. Printed them out, cut the caption off, and I was, like, playing around on my table. I didn't know where it was going, but I wanted to see if, like, this caption worked with this meme or it actually was funnier. And what I found was that sometimes the off combinations were better. And what I knew about working with fuckjerry was like, everyone loves memes. Everyone loves consuming memes, but there's a very few percentage of people on the Internet who actually make them. But everyone loves them. So what do you mean allowed people to do was actually make memes. Which my theory was everyone would love. And, you know, fortunately, it did. It did do what we hoped it would. In terms of popularity.

You guys crushed that one. I mean, you guys are, what, in Target and all over the retail world as well, correct?

Yeah, yeah. I would say there's. We're pretty much everywhere games are sold. And what you mean was, was kind of our Trojan horse to get into Target, get into Walmart, get You know, get on Amazon. But now we sell, you know, up to upwards of 70 different games. So it's. It's a fully fledged game business.

Wow. So is that the center of. Like you said, the business is the games. I don't know if there's 70 different games. Really.

Skus. Yeah.

So, wow. I saw the TikTok one just came out.

Right? TikTok one was big. We. I would say we spend like 95% of our time on card games.

Wow.

Yeah. And it's a separate company. We split it off into its own business. That business has about 45 employees that focus every day on just card games. So everything from the production aspect to the sales, operations, marketing, everything, it's all focused on card games.

What would you say makes a card game successful? Because I have a good friend, Drama, and his girlfriend at the time, Karine, is called. We're not really strangers. And it's this card game that we love. Jacqueline and I have played it before, and it's like seeing that card game take off, I'm like, this is cool. And it reminded me of you guys when I first saw it. What do you think makes a card game succeed versus not?

Good question. There's. There is kind of like a recipe. Right. So I think from a marketing perspective, if you can have some sort of like, pull in. So kind of like a shock factor or some card that when people are scrolling through Instagram and they see this card, they're like, wait, what is this?

Right. Yeah.

And I think it has to be different enough. Like, there's been so many cards against too many competitors which are like the same thing. Totally blank.

Yeah.

By adding memes to it, it was different. We have a. You know, we kind of have a lot of different games in different subcategories of adult party game, but everyone kind of does its own thing as opposed to just like fill in the blank Cars Against Humanity style.

Sure.

But all the credit in the world to Cars Against Man. I mean, they made it. They were really the ones to make it acceptable for people our age on a Friday night to play a card game. Yeah, it was like, yeah, maybe Monopoly, but yeah, it wasn't.

It wasn't what we saw the same.

No. So they, they. They really kind of made it exciting, acceptable. And then us and a few other people kind of came in and. And started creating more games.

Love that, man. I didn't know that was. It was that extensive in terms of 70 different SKUs.

Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. We have A whole team now that's focused like on making new games. We also work with the inventor community so people will pitch us games and we'll do a licensing deal with them. So there's no shortage of new ip.

Very cool. How many memes would you say the brand overall creates on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? Because like you said, everyone consumes memes. But if you think about it from a hierarchy, like you guys create and spread and you know, create that ecosystem, especially on Instagram and all over social. But what would you say that is? What number is that when it comes to the amount of content you guys are producing and putting out there?

I have to say, you know, on like the side of business, we kind of went in like a different direction than like a barstool who focus on building out like a media company. Yeah, we, we think of it as kind of using Folk Jerry and a few of the other accounts we own, Beige Cardigan and several others as a marketing asset for our products businesses. So for example, Elliot started a tequila company with his brother.

Sold. Correct.

Haha has not sold.

Okay.

Still a private company.

Got it.

And so, you know, you'll see every once in a while a Fuck Jerry post about Haha Tequila.

Yep.

That's. That's much more efficient and we get end up getting much more ROI from that post. And like doing a one off post for say Burger King. It's not to say we don't do those anymore, but it's very, very rare.

Totally. I saw it too. Isn't it where it's like the tequila comes with the card game.

Yeah, that was a cool collab.

I saw that.

Yeah, yeah, very cool. So we were able to get the tequila into Walgreens and they wanted something special and something that would differentiate Haha on the shelf because they already carry so much tequila. So we were able to kind of all the teams work together to create this party in a box where you can get a. Get a little. What do you mean? And keep it all in the. In the ecosystem.

Very cool. I want to talk about dude with Sign.

Sure.

Where did that come into the picture? And you say you are the head of security. What does that mean in your eyes?

Yeah, that's actually just a silly joke. So Seth, who is dude with Sign, has been my best friend for like.

Six or seven years. Really?

Yeah, we met actually through my first company. We were doing some marketing on a college campus. I went down there to check it out in Texas. He and I just like truly hit it off.

Okay.

He ended up Moving to New York about a year and a half ago to work for what do youo Meme? So as we went from like, one writer of our card games to building a writer's room with, you know, five or six marketing writers, we were in recruiting mode, and I was. Seth was always kind of one of my funniest friends. Like, we would always just riff all day long about various stuff. So I said, hey, man, I know, you know, you're from Texas, but would you ever want to come to New York and try out, you know, being a comedy writer for what you mean? And he ended up coming out for a couple weeks. The team loved him. He loved the team. He ended up getting an apartment out there. And then about, I think, probably four or five months into being in our office working on what do you mean? He and Elliot went off to create dude with Sign, which has truly just been the coolest thing to witness as a friend. And also as part it kind of coming from our office, it's like the guy can't even, like, walk down the street.

I mean, it's like, yeah, he's so recognizable.

So recognizable. And what's a funny sound bite is, like, most celebrities, like, put on sunglasses to hide their face.

Yeah.

When they're in public. But Seth actually gets recognized more when he has the sunglasses on because it's part of his image. So, in fact, if he doesn't want to get recognized, takes them off. Take him off. Which I think is the only celebrity with dealing with that specific problem. But he's the kind of guy that he's, you know, he's from a small town in Texas. His. His, you know, kindness is contagious. Everyone loves to be around him. And despite, like, Rihanna and all these celebrities DMing him and all these cool collabs he's done with Justin Bieber, he hasn't changed one bit. He's still the nice kid that everyone loves.

So that's cool, man.

Cool.

It's good to hear.

Yeah, it's great.

Was it his idea or, like, how did just the idea of holding a sign up and saying something funny or relatable come to fruition?

Yeah, he and Elliot had just collabed on it. And Elliot has, over the course of Fuck Jerry, like, made different posts where he'll hold up himself like a sign. Something funny.

Got it. And he just became the figurehead for that.

Yeah, it was just like, he would be a good fit for one sign. And then they were like, oh, maybe we could make this a separate account. Yep. And so yeah, they collab on it and work really well together. And so it's been. It's been a really cool thing to see, both on, like, the personal side, but also just as a business. It's.

It's.

It's a. It's one of the hottest accounts in the world. So. Yeah.

How often is it that you guys are going out and taking these pictures with the signs? Is it daily or what's the strategy there?

You know, you don't want to be posting every single day because I think you could, like, annoy people.

Yeah.

So I think the average cadence is two or three signs per week. It's also been interesting because right when it really started to pop off, it was like, February, March. So Covid happened. Yeah. Oh, wow. And then there was, you know, a lot going on with, like, the political landscape. So to be, like, an account like that, you don't necessarily want to comment too much on stuff like that, so. Whereas, like, the first couple months, it was. You could say whatever was happening in pop culture, it got more serious for a second. So we actually, like, worked on a collaboration with Instagram to help, like, promote really social distancing and masks and stuff like that. Also voting. But it's been a weird year to be, like, a account like that blowing up. But typically, like, two to three signs per week.

Got it.

Has been the cadence, sometimes one per week, depending on what's happening in the world.

What's been, like, the coolest collaboration that you've been a part of that you'd want to talk about with that sign, you know, dubious sign in particular.

Oh, man. I mean, within the first, like, two months, Seth went on, Ellen went on, Jimmy Fallon did a collaboration with Justin Bieber, like, all within the same week. Got flown to Paris for Fashion Week. Really, like, I think Gucci.

What was the moment that that took place for that to happen?

Yeah, the account first. When he, like, started, it was just our friends, like, we would always repost it on our stories. And, yep, we thought it was really funny, and we kind of knew it was gonna be something. But, like, when we had a party for him, when he hit a million followers, we, like, rented out a venue, and it was like this big ordeal. And then, like, two weeks later, he hit 2 million. We were just like, we can't keep parties because this is gonna hand. So I would say when he hit a million followers, people were, like, starting to really think, this is. This is crazy.

Sure.

Also keep in mind where someone, like. And, you know, I've actually met him Cute little kid, the yodeling Walmart boy. That was more of like a moment in time that once the news cycle pass, I mean he's done a good job making music and stuff. Mason Ramsey. But what's beautiful about the dude with sign account is that it's more of a platform, just like a meme where whatever happens in the world tomorrow, in the news tomorrow, you can make a sign about it. So it's less fad, it's more platform, it's more of like a form of media.

Yeah.

I think really interesting and obviously was novel and that's why the simplicity of cardboard and Sharpie allows it to just be so popular, I think.

Love that.

Yeah.

How can brands become more of a media outlet and you know, like crush it on social versus just being a platform that promotes their product? Because you guys do that so well. Like what's your advice to companies that are coming already on social media but how can they improve for marketing sales or what's like the high level overview that you guys either tell companies or suggest from a marketing perspective because you guys are at the top of the game. There's.

I think what's nice about our card game business is the content within the cards within the box is so funny and shocking that it kind of is a marketing asset in of itself. So someone might see one of our cards and say buzzed or what do you meme? Or for the girls. And that's like a joke in and of itself. It's much harder to have someone stop when they're scrolling through and scam for a bottle of tequila or you know, something that isn't funny. So what we try to do with that business is just be like light hearted and fun and incorporate humor into the brand. But if you look at companies like Wendy's and stuff who are really funny on social media and they're willing to take those risks and kind of be snarky, I think those companies are doing a good job. And then it's like investing in the platforms where your target demographic is. So I remember to this day about 13 months ago, every morning, first thing I do after I drink my coffee is check the sales from the day before. So I check Amazon, I check Target, I check Walmart, I check our other or other sales for our games business. And every day, let's say for the girls was selling say at target, 200 units on the average day.

Yep.

I woke up, checked our sales and we sold 900 units of. For the girls. I thought this is really interesting. Maybe there's A glitch in our system or something. So we looked into it, couldn't really figure out any errors. Woke up the next morning. We sold like 3,000 units that day for the girls. Wow. So we launched an investigation of, like, what the hell is going on with this game? And. And sure enough, there was a trend on TikTok where these young girls were going into target buying our game with this one song that was trending really hard and making a video about the game, and everyone wanted the game in order to make the video for TikTok. And fast forward 13 months later. We were primarily doing all of our social on Instagram and Facebook. That was working for us. It was Great. Fast forward 13 months later. I think now 40% of our marketing budget is on TikTok.

Really?

We have an ambassador network of 500 kids on TikTok. I say kids, it's, you know.

Yeah, young people that are killing it.

Exactly. And so it's, it's being able to say, okay, this was working yesterday, but TikTok right now, it's at like, you need to double down and learn it. And like, you know, if, if you're not comfortable with it, hire people that are. The first step we did was have, like, consultants come in and just tell us everything they knew about TikTok. Kids that have been on the platform for a year, you know, it's only two years old.

Yeah. What's your vision on TikTok in the next two to five years? Is it a platform that you guys are, like you said, Joeing all in on, or how can brands best adapt to this new TikTok trend?

Yeah, I think, I don't think TikTok is going anywhere. I think it's, it's. It's a super powerful platform. I think it allows kids to be really kids and people to be really creative. And yeah, I would, I would just advise everyone to, to, if they're not already marketing on TikTok, to figure it out. Love that. Yeah.

Outside of business, like, where do you spend your time outside of the office and working? I know this year, like you said, has been a different time for you guys. You know, not being in Manhattan and you can travel a little bit more. Like, what are some of your passions outside of business or where do you spend your time? Elsewhere, for sure.

Definitely love to travel, whether it's domestically or internationally. This year has been hard for that, but sure. My friends and I have made do with, you know, coming out here a bunch. We're in LA right now. I usually live in New York, big sports and like, you know, workout guys. So love the Miami Dolphins. We finally have a quarterback, we finally have a coach. We find the defense. It's exciting time for any fan. Yeah. Exercising, running, working out, stuff like that. And then definitely like a social, social guy. I get a lot of happiness from bringing friends together, connecting different friend groups, having those fun dinners that last four hours. You know, that that's what brings me a lot of joy.

What's your favorite restaurant in L. A?

Oh, man, we just went to the Oliveta for the first time. We went on Saturday. Just. It was, it was very good. I'm going to go with that.

Okay. What about New York?

Oh, man.

Top three if you have to.

It's been nice because during COVID since a lot of like nightlife is shut down, restaurants with outdoor dining in the summer has kind of been one of the main social attractions. And because of that, some friends and I have gotten like pretty close with various restaurant owners.

That's dope.

So I'm gonna give them a little plug right now. There's a place called Balzem, owned by Mehdi. That's really, really good. 19 Cleveland. Those guys have done a great job in New York. Down in Soho, Nolito and then one of my favorite restaurants actually just closed down. It was called Uncle Boone is High Place.

Okay. You know, there's so much huge recommendations. I have to go check it out next time I'm in New York. So with, with the future of social media, like where do you, what would your advice be to someone coming on social media today? Is it saturated? How can you build an audience if you have, you know, if you're just starting today and you weren't a pioneer in the industry like you and your team were.

Yeah, I mean, like, if you look at the meme side of things, like no new meme accounts are getting popular. Yeah.

Like, that's permanent.

100%.

Okay.

Yeah, I think like, fuck, Jerry really was the first one. So we just had like a huge leg up on the competition in terms of time and like building that early audience. I give Elliot so much credit. For 10 years, almost every single day he's been finding, you know, content to post and growing that account. It's, it's like a non stop full time job. I think that in terms of breaking in now, it's, it. TikTok's algorithm makes it pretty easy to like grow really quickly, which is cool. But in terms of like just social media in general, Instagram, Facebook, everything, the advice would be just do something different. Like the Nelk boys with their pranks. No one really done pranks since Jackass.

Yep.

And it's, like a proven model, but they're just doing it new and better. We talked about, dude, with Sign, like, completely novel concept. Right. But because it was so different and so simple, people really, you know. You know, mess with it and look at someone like Jason Derulo who's, like, reinventing, like, 100%, like, investing in, like, what's working and trying to add a twist. But, yeah, I'd say that's what.

What's your. Go ahead.

I mean. Yeah, this is just what I'm saying.

I. Yeah.

Yeah.

For sure.

Myself, I'm more on the business side, but totally.

What's your thoughts on a moment like the world record egg, which blew up and happened for a moment in time? Like, what's your thoughts on viral. Making something go viral? And how do you. How do you win during those times? Because I'm sure people watching today, they've had a moment where they get some virality, but then it drops. Right. And like you said, dude, with Sign, it's like, it can always grow because it's. It's a media outlet more than a moment. So how can you create those moments based on what you guys have experienced? And what would you say the strategy is for that?

I think, again, it's like doing something super novel. Like, the egg thing was so random and weird that. Yeah.

People.

And, like, it was so random, weird, and simple that people. People could just understand it with. Within two seconds and, you know, and.

Be a part of it.

Yeah. Funny story. We were actually trying to. We got very close. I believe Elliot had a term sheet from the owner. We were going to buy the account right before the Super bowl.

Okay.

For, like, 2 million bucks. And then sell it. Sell it. Basically to do, like, the egg hatches at the halftime of Super Bowl.

Okay.

Sell it for, like, hopefully five or ten million bucks to a brand.

And it would be, like, the biggest thing.

Yeah. Something moment. I forget what happened. I think the kid who owned it was younger and didn't work out. But, yeah, I would say something different and simple. It's so hard. I mean, like, the kid, the guy drinking ocean spray on the skateboard.

Yeah. Like, a moment like that, you can.

Analyze that as much as you can, and, like, people will say had every little element. But at the end of the day, like, the Internet's a weird place. It's really hard to predict.

Yeah.

What people are gonna. Like and what people aren't Gonna like, you know, for sure. Some of our funniest stuff that I think it's funny gets, like, half the engagement is some stuff that I think is pretty silly.

Yeah. So love that.

Yeah.

What's your. Because, like you said, you're not an influencer yourself. Have you ever thought about trying to go all in on building your brand or. What's your thoughts on that?

I'm. And for those who are watching, like, I. Casey's asked me to be on this podcast a bunch, so I finally.

Finally, finally did it.

And, you know, he's 20 years old. I really appreciate and respect his.

His.

His grind and his hustle. I was not this entrepreneurial when I was 20, so. But appreciate that. Yeah. For sure. My brand and my press. I'm fortunate. I have a great life. I have great friends, and I. I don't need, like, any sort of, you know, anything like that. So I'm. I'm not. This is.

Well, no, I love that.

This is, like, really one of the only interviews I'll do and have done. And at least in the short term, we like to. All three of us like to stay. Me, Elliot, Ellie, and my two partners, we like to kind of stay under the radar as much as we can and love that. You know, just. Just. Just build our business, make our employees proud, and make people laugh with our products and our. And our content.

That's such a good mission to be part of. Make the world laugh.

Like the games business is. It's always been great. You know, we're doubling every year, and it's been really awesome to be a part of. But a year like this, right. Where people are trapped inside and they need entertainment, especially parents who. They don't want their kids on their iPad for eight hours a day. It felt good to know that games were, like, helping folks at least smile or laugh with their families and friends.

Bring people together.

Bring people together. Yeah. It was one of the few industries also that had a positive reaction to quarantine. Right.

Which I'm gonna say, was that a huge, like, upward trend. Yeah. This past year, when it comes to.

Games, like a celebration for us because, like, it felt like America was crashing.

Yeah.

The world was coming to an end, but the industry itself, I think, saw, like, a 250% increase.

Wow. Just games. Like card games.

Card games, board games. Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, it was. It. It felt good, obviously, to see the numbers go up, but it felt better to know that, you know, we were helping families, like, pass the time.

Yeah. For sure.

Yeah.

What were you Doing back when you were 20?

Yeah. So for a while I thought I was going to be a professional hockey player. I went to boarding school, I did juniors, which most people don't know is like in between high school and college league. So I got to College as a 20 year old freshman for ice hockey. Played Division 1 in a school outside of Boston.

And that's dope.

I ended up like falling in love with entrepreneurship very early on at college, I think being kind of so focused on getting to Division one, my whole like adolescence, I didn't really think through business and stuff. I kind of just thought I'd get to it later, I'd figure out a career after hockey. But the truth is I was always like growing up in a small town in Vermont and then like going to prep school in New Hampshire. I was always one of the better hockey players. And so when I got to college, my first game, I actually, a kid older than me, got injured. I started my first game and. Oh God, the first game, I remember the opening Face Off. I was staying there and we were playing against bu, which I think won the national championship two years before, and the puck dropped and like, it was just happening so fast. Everyone was moving so fast. I remember in that moment being like, okay, the guys who are the best at this level are like so much better than me. Even though I thought I was the best growing up.

Yeah.

And once I had that first game, I kind of realized, like, hockey is probably not my future. Like, I should figure out other shit. So.

First game.

First game. Yeah.

Wow.

Don't worry, I. I played for two years. I had a great time, made some good friends, but I kind of started thinking about what was next. And actually my journey got started my freshman year. I started an iPhone app, really? And ended up getting fortunate enough to raise some money and actually leaving school my sophomore year. So I never, never finished college.

What was the app?

The app was called We Go, which stood for who is going out? W. I go, okay. And it kind of aimed to answer that age old question of like, you're on a campus, like, what's going on, who's going where? Social network type thing.

But you go, yeah.

But through that experience, we were around for like two years, ended up, you know, failing. But I would say the lessons I learned through that have helped me so much in my, in my next career, which is what I'm doing now.

What would you say the biggest lesson was in that, in that two year window?

For sure. So I was 21 years old. I had this company we ended up raising $2 million from a bunch of big VC firms. You know, it was the time when social was still like, yeah, what year is this?

You're still in college? You're graduating college?

I was in 15.

Okay.

I was a sophomore. I just dropped out.

Okay, got it.

And I had, I think at the time, seven employees. And, you know, people were also leaving school to come work for. It was like, this moment, and I was. I didn't have partners. I was just me at the beginning. So I. When something bad would happen in the business. So, for example, we would spend five grand and we would throw a party, and we would get Penn State to, like, all download the app, right? We'd hire ambassadors. We'd do an event. Two weeks later, Penn State would stop using the app. Like, and that spoke to, like, the retention of the app. And, yeah, not being the right fit, but instead of me as, like, the CEO, pausing and saying, hey, guys, like, what happened at Penn State? I would just look to the next school and get people and get my employees and my investors excited about the next growth because I was too embarrassed as a young founder, and I felt so much pressure that, like, they invested in me. Oh, my God. That's a lot of money.

Yeah.

Employees, like, just quit their other job. That dude's 40. Counting on me. Yeah, it's not working. So I felt like this cheerleader that constantly had to get people's excitement onto the next thing. And it was kind of this game of Whack a Mole where I would. We would get excited, get excited, get excited for the next thing, but never pause and stop and look back and say, guys, something bad is happening with this school or with this service of this product. And I would say that's my biggest advice when I talk to young founders, is like, if something. If the numbers start to look bad in some aspect of your business, chances are if you don't address them head on, those numbers are going to either stay the same or get worse. Very rarely does a stroke of luck or genius come. So my biggest advice is, like, you're doing your business and your sales start to go down or some engagement goes down or something. Stop call a team meeting and be humble and say, hey, guys, even if it's your company, if you're an employee, say, hey, this is bad, and this will get worse if we don't actually figure out what's going on. And what you find is when you bring people together, like someone on your team or someone's gonna have an idea that can change It. But if you're, like, too embarrassed to make that meeting, call that meeting, then oftentimes it'll just get worse. And so that's. That's my biggest advice.

That's. That's crazy. So what was. I want to take a step back. Going from. Raised 2 million 7 employees. Was that, like, the first entrepreneurial venture that you started?

Yeah, my dad will say that I was like, selling beer. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what's your thoughts on raising money if, like, would you recommend it? What's your experience there, and what's your thoughts that.

So I have pretty, like, polarizing experience in my two startups, really. My first startup, we raised a bunch of, like, it was kind of like, as soon as the first check came in, other people in the industry were, you know, throwing money at this thing, because who wouldn't want to put a hundred grand into potentially something that could get bought by Facebook, right?

Yep.

And so that was always. I kind of look back at that as, like, kind of bullshit, because the app never had. Never made money. It was a free app. We ended up getting like, three or 400,000 users across two years. Wasn't, like, insignificant.

That's sick.

But the app never made money. Like, people forget about apps, like, or any service is like, they have to be a business. A business sells something, whether it's a service, a product, or something. Our app was free. The idea that everyone, all investors saying was like, get it. Get a million users, and then you'll start to have value. Get 10 million users, then, you know, someone will pay for that audience. Or you'll figure out a way to monetize that audience. Right. Like, maybe if they're deciding between three bars, bars could bid, like, on Yelp to be at. But at the end of the day, my company was around for two years, never made a dollar. Like, we never actually, like, sold any service or product. Right. And what I'm doing now in making card games is like, it costs us, you know, X amount of dollars to make the game. In China, we sell it for Y amount of dollars. Here in the US the difference, you have your expenses, you have overhead, you have rent, you have, you know, sales expenses, stuff like that. But the difference is your profit. It's very simple business. And so, like, coming from this, like, freemium thing, that was like, you know, people potentially thinking, one day it'll be worth something versus now. It's like numbers game. We have this much money, we can make this many games. If we sell, we can make. It's so much More simple and refreshing. And it feels to me like a real business. And so when I talk to other, you know, folks that have an audience or that have, you know, the ability to, to reach a large audience, I think products is like the greatest thing. And I think the trend from like Kylie Jenner doing, you know, her thing, you know, what we're doing, look at, you know, across the board influencers launching products. And it's. I try to away from just like, you know, a clothing line, like, don't.

Just make beauty products. I think like Addison, right, What she's doing with like item beauty and like that whole thing like direct consumer capitalizing, actually building brands. Like you see a lot of the biggest influencers doing that now.

For sure, for sure. And it should be like on brand, like if you're an influencer, there's. You have a niche in some way. If it's beauty, great. For us it was memes like, great. And obviously you can parlay that into other stuff. But yeah, it's like the world opens when you start selling products to target Walmart. That's all I'll say.

Yeah, for sure. Well, last question. We wrap up. Ben, what are you most excited about looking into the future of Fuck Jerry due to a sign and everything that you're a part of, especially the game side of things. Like, what are you most excited about?

It's a great question. I'd say for, for me, since I focus like pretty much all my time on the games business. We are at a juncture now where like we have become the number one manufacturer of adult party games. So within games, there's family games, there's adult party games, there's kids toys, like, lol, Surprise. But in becoming number one, we've realized that for us to continue to grow as a overall business, we need to get into other subsectors of the entertainment game category. So we have two of the most successful family games out right now. We have three games launching next summer that are like outdoor, like if you think of spike ball and like, okay, oh, that's dope. Those kind of games. Like so like, sure, it all started with. What do you mean? But there's all this like gray space where we can use our clout within card games to more easily break into, say, outdoor lawn games or kids games or drinking games, stuff like that. So love that. I would say like as our company diversifies, that's, that's what I stay up at night thinking about it.

That's so cool, man. Very cool. Well, for everyone watching, where's the best place for them to stay in touch with you and everything you have going on.

Yeah, Instagram's good. Kaplan. Just Kaplan.

Yeah, I'll make sure to link down below.

Well, awesome.

Ben, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I really appreciate it. You demand.

Thanks.

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