Konrad Hagemes - 16k mrr - Founder ga.gg

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom pod. We have Konrad Hajimis with us today, uh, aka GA Stunner. Uh, he's the founder of GA.GG, an entrepreneur, uh, digital marketing specialist, raised about a million for that venture, uh, that is GA.GG, and currently around, uh, $15-20K in our ROI estimates. So interesting business, Konrad. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you're up to.

Hi, Charles. Thanks for having me at first. Yeah, like you said, I'm from the online marketing agency side myself. Started in 2010 with working for agencies. Worked then for also the Taiwanese gaming hardware company MSI. Spent a bit of time in Taipei. And made the decision that I wanted to start my own business in the gaming industry. And at that time, I was playing quite a lot of esports games myself and was playing League of Legends for Eintracht Frankfurt, the sports unit here nearby Aschaffenburg. And there were no cool possibilities for me to, to learn quickly and cheap how to play League of Legends the right way or to get better in it. So this is where the idea came from to start Gaming Academy.

Oh, was League of Legends like your, your first love? Because like, how old are you, like 32 or something, right?

I look much younger than I look. I look younger than I am. I'm 40 now. I actually started with StarCraft. No, no. Brute War. StarCraft.

Well, Sega Nintendo 64, right?

PlayStation. Yeah, that was even before. I mean, I started with Game Boy and Super Mario and Gargoyles and stuff like that. But StarCraft was my first esport game.

Okay, okay. What was your first, like, online experience? Mine, I think, was like Diablo 2, and then World of Warcraft was like gigantic eye-opener for me. I think it was one of the, the best players. What were your, your first, uh, online gameplays?

In fact, it was Diablo 2. I was grinding with my friend to get the unique sets.

And how did that open your eyes? You know, because me as a kid, like, it, it taught me English, it taught me commerce, World of Warcraft, right? Uh, it taught me team play, it taught me grind, right? Because to get like full epic gear and then to be the, the best PvP, uh, Beast Mastery Hunter, it had to— I had to like stay focused and be an addict, right? Like That was the less nice side of things, right? Like me sitting down on this computer, but it also taught me hard work, which later transitioned my founder life. So did you get some of these benefits yourself?

I would totally agree to everything you said about that, because usually the stereotype about gamers is those are the lazy guys sitting in the basement and playing computer games, wasting their time. And stuff like that. But for me, it was exactly the same. I was getting to 6th grade into school, and I was already able to speak and read English just because of copied computer games, which were only available in English language, also in Germany. So that's the reason I started with English language very early. But also, especially League of Legends as a team game teaches you so much about soft skills that you need in real life and businesses, communication skills to, to be resilient against stress and stuff like that. Uh, to communicate, uh, communicate precisely in stressful simu— situations. Um, it gives you a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

I love it. Um, it's crazy, right? Because a, a bunch of our, our parents were like, well, thanks to my parents, they let me play, but obviously they were worried, right? Because they don't have like the information. And there's also like an addictive side of things which you need to be careful about because most video games are so much more fun than real life. How do you deal with that?

Um, I mean, my parents were pretty based, right? My father is a factory worker, has worked now for 35 consecutive years in the same factory. And he, yeah, I would say forced me to learn a real job and study economics and all that basic shit. I did that, but I came back to my love of gaming as an entrepreneur. And I think it's much easier now for the next generations because I raise my kids already in the manner that I teach them awareness about okay, don't spend money on mobile gacha games, don't spend too much time in front of the screen, go outside, play football and stuff like that. But it's not that, that I think it's not like that, that our generation is still stigmatizing this whole gaming thing for our kids and they learn a much healthier way to game.

I think, right? Nowadays there's like worst thing, my opinion, there's like TikTok, right? And porn, which like, uh, it's probably like even worse. But where are video games going generally speaking? I think, um, from a business model, World of Warcraft was like the first behemoth of an enterprise, was like so impressive, right? Um, and then League of Legends came sort of unexpectedly with like, I believe, skins, right? Because everyone started at the same level. I've never played League of Legends myself. My brother plays it a lot. But how did— and was that Riot? It was Riot, right? Or Epic Games?

Yes, League of Legends is Riot, which is owned by Tencent.

Yeah, that was a recent acquisition, right? Like, but what do you have to say on the business model side of things? Because it seems they took Blizzard and World of Warcraft by surprise and by storm?

I mean, the, the big change with League of Legends was that free-to-play was business-wise extremely successful. Blizzard and World of Warcraft is still pay-to-play with the— I don't know how much is it priced in US. In Europe, it's—

it's monthly. Like, League of Legends is not monthly, right? It's like buying skins, no?

Yes, yes, uh, it's completely free if you just want to play it, um, and the skins are just cosmetics, so they give you absolutely zero advantages. Um, when you compare to World of Warcraft, there are some advantages you can have, like mounts which walk faster and fly faster and stuff like that. That's not possible in League of Legends. You pay only for the visuals.

And what does that say about our human nature, right? Like, gaming is about identity, is like a skin you put on yourself, right? It's like if you start in one place in life and can't really be a stunner in real life, you can be online, right?

Yeah, yeah. I've got something of a philosophical approach about that, and it was also a main reason we landed our business angels. Gaming as a whole is kind of a parallel world where you can dive into, especially when the real world for you offers not enough, or you're in a bad situation where you can't express yourself in the real world because you are stuck in an area where nothing going and you can't get away from it. But with gaming, you can dive into a a whole other world and connect with people around the globe. And, um, yeah, depending on where you're living, uh, um, make a good living out of coaching or playing professionally.

Yeah, when I find myself stressed, um, with like all these businesses— I recently had the daughter as well— I just love, uh, grabbing a P90 at Call of Duty 4 and spraying everyone in the, in the head with it and finishing the game with a 8.0 ratio.

Okay, and the question about it?

There's no question, this is the comment, uh, or, or Slay Demons in Diablo, uh, 2 or 3 remaster. I'm not sure if you play that one, but no, it's just like, it's to your point, it's an outlet to your stress, right? It's just Okay, today I had too much. I may, I maybe need a break before like I, I invest my energy in snapping and like creating conflicts, right? Sometimes you need to, to let that energy go somewhere. Diablo, World of Warcraft, they all had like guides, right? Like guides that you could fetch online or you could even pay someone to level you up. Like, where does that bring GA.GG, your gaming academy? How are you making things different?

Um, the biggest difference between us and every other platform in that area is that we try to replace the human coach. Or let me say it in another way, we try to deliver the performance of getting better, uh, purely with a digital AI, uh, assisted tool. Um, because usually you go to guide websites, read the stuff there, watch YouTube videos, and if you really, uh, are motivated, you also hire human coaches, uh, for one-on-one coaching sessions, right? And the coach analyzes your mistakes, your patterns, and tells you what to train or what to play differently so that you can become better. And we do everything of that combined on one platform. Um, and the trick is we get all the data from the players directly from the Riot API. We have a big API volume license. And we analyze this data, um, in very detailed way. And, um, we differentiate between 37 key skills which are also separated into sub-skills. And we can tell you, uh, in about, I think, 1.5 seconds after you registered what your weakness is, because we pulled all of your past games and analyze them through our algorithm plus AI recommendation engine. And it tells us exactly, this is your weak point. And if you improve this in that way, here are the videos how you can do it. Then your chance to get better and win more games rises the fastest. It's like having a, a private coach that watches all your games of the past and tells you exactly what you were doing wrong and how you can correct it. So in this regard, we are the only learning platform that does exactly this.

What if AI can beat pretty much anyone at LoL? Um, why bother keep on playing?

Um, I mean, uh, last week I was asked a similar question. Why do people don't watch Robot A play against Robot B in chess? Because chess robots, uh, are better than humans, right? Uh, humans are interested in humans, and also the competition is only interesting when it's human against human. And, um, I think this will always be the passion and, and the, the special sauce, uh, why it gets so much attention and fills the stadiums and stuff.

Yeah, or there could be like a a Twitch streaming with like an AI playing, but like a human AI avatar displaying emotions and swearing and like doing all kinds of human stuff. And, and I think people would, would watch it as well. I think it's just not there yet. Um, but yeah, to your point, I think like humans, generally speaking— have you watched a chess, uh, chess documentary on Netflix of chess.com, the guy that cheated?

Uh, no, I'm not, not much of a chess guy myself.

Yeah, just watch it. It's still like in the same world, right? Like gaming. And it explored that question that I just asked you, but, uh, just reminded me like streamers nowadays, they're like people that are just like have their own problems, right? And like make them— but like I'm, I'm watching, um, on YouTube, Peyo. You know, Peio, like the World of Warcraft player? And it's— is that what works nowadays? It's like swearing and being funny and making faces while playing. Is that what people watch nowadays?

I think when it comes to streaming or influencers, it's always good when it goes above the normal. So everything that is extraordinary in any regard entertains more and is more interesting, which is, I think, the general direction media is going since 5 or 6 years, especially with TikTok and X. Everything that goes to the extreme and also with streamers and influencers, the more extreme you are within the boundaries that you don't get banned, the better for your reach. At the moment is my opinion, from which creators I see that are successful.

And who are your clients specifically? Are they like professional gamers? Are they casual gamers?

I would say those are the ambitious casual gamers. League of Legends has far above 100 million monthly active players worldwide. And only when you count Europe and USA, you have roughly about 10 million players that play on a hobby basis League of Legends. And let's say 20% or 30% of those are more into it, are more invested. And this is our potential customer base, especially until the best 1%. We don't target the best 1% because those are only a few thousand people. But we target everyone from beginner up to, okay, now I could think about training more to get maybe to a semi-professional level, and there it stops for us.

Where will this evolve in the next years with AIs? Will it be humans playing against AIs, humans against humans? What, uh, what is evolving in your space?

For the esports segment, I think it will strictly stay human against human. I could imagine that in the future RNG plays a bigger role in those games, and there will be some additions by AI, but I don't see them yet coming because every time the companies, or especially in League of Legends, something becomes too random, it kind of steals away the skill expression of the players, right? And that's the reason the people until now don't want it. And I can imagine with the similarity to real sports like soccer or football, you don't want random luck to decide a real sports game, right? You want to make the player skill to be the deciding factor.

Your business, how do you get your clients? Is it ads? Is it organics? Is it referral?

Also, but mainly through influencer marketing. We have a brand ambassador, Autofill. He has a very good reach in the Germany, Switzerland, and Austria region. And through him, we get most of our subscribers and our reach. And this is also our plan to— for the expansion internationally because it works very well. We get CPLs down to €6, €7 for a subscriber when we have good running campaigns with the right influencers. But of course, for those campaigns, you have to pay them in advance. And if you want to book the bigger ones, they cost partly from €80K upwards for just one campaign. And if you want to do a year-long deal with a bigger international English-speaking influencer, it can fast cost you more than half a million.

So what's next for you? Is it still growth? Are you raising more capital? Tell me about your main objectives for this year.

Both, both. We reached our break-even point on a very small level, so we can survive and grow organically indefinitely, which is already very cool for us. But we are also looking for scaling capital to do the internationalization faster. And I mean, I don't think that anyone will copy us because the effort to build a a product like ours is now, I would say, too much to get into the niche because we are already there and have a working finalized product. Because we estimate the global market for a product like ours about 25 or 30 million a year in revenue. And to invest that money to replace us, I would say, is not a good way for investors. We try to claim that niche for us.

Interesting. Well, thanks for being on, Konrad. Where can people find out more about you?

They can visit me on LinkedIn, of course, if they want to know something about me personally, or of course ga.gg. Our portal. There they can see all the infos about that.

It's Conrad and Charles for another