Scrappy Cold Outreach Strategy and Failure as an Inevitable Step to Success, with Connor Ellison

Connor, welcome to the show, man.

Hey, how are you? Happy to be here.

Yeah, man. There's lots to talk about always with any company. We talked a little bit about poker before. But for people who aren't familiar, explain this to the world. What is poker?

Awesome. Yeah. And we like to call it pogger. But there's a lot of, a lot of opinion.

Yeah.

And it's our approach to pretty much the statistical foundation for the future of gaming. And while I know that's big, we can break it down to like our thesis. exists where there's only a few companies, big video game studios that have developer portals other companies can build on top of, and they're not really communicating with each other. So our vision is a lot of the game data, and this is coming from multiple game developers on the smaller side, is just being unused. So we built an SDK, it kind of rivals a micro developer portal, and we'll go along and integrate it into all these games that aren't utilizing data adding it to the pool of big data and taking this and then building on top of that. And you'll see things like player profiles that follow a player's journey, even discovery tools, ways to analyze an esports org or manage a roster. But the main point is really building that pipeline of data to our database and then organizing it and allowing it to be used in a better way.

So you have quite the story with getting to this point. I want to take a step back here. Why, first of all, like, why even start Pogger in the first place? Like, why, why for you start this company in particular?

It goes back to me always being a gamer. It was my safe space. But in particularly after college, I had just left the music world. I was doing A&R at Atlantic. I was, I was interning, I was debating on if I wanted to move to New York, do the like full-time position. Um, and ultimately I realized that I didn't like music as much as I thought I did. And Fortnite had just started blowing up. It was like the first season, and I had always been a good gamer, and I'd been following this genre because Fortnite was the, the, the tip of the iceberg. There was H1Z1, there was PUBG, there was, uh, even, uh, I'm trying to think, in DayZ standalone, there was, there was Arm— all these little mods, um, building up to this game. And I'd been following the journey. I was like, Let's spend some time on Fortnite. And I did. And there was these really early sites, and they essentially were like, if you're good enough, you can bet money against other people. And I was great. Like, I was really, really good. And this is kind of where I started to think of kind of this competitive profile for players, because I was like, for better or for worse, like, once I would have a high rating on this, there wasn't really a way to like validate I was me. So I could create new accounts and let's say make a little extra money.

Yeah.

college student. And I was like, if I can find this loophole, other people are. Like, there needs to be— and it got me, my brain thinking. And then the interesting thing that really validated this was, uh, Epic Games created an open API. Like, pretty much every other game was locked in. Epic Games continues to push boundaries, and this API access allowed for people to not only build on the ecosystem from like an actual like, like internal way, but like they could build businesses around it using the data. Obviously they had very strict TOS and they had fixed out, but that was my introduction because I was able to like kind of play around. I had a first kind of company, it did all right, but the whole thing was using that Fortnite API to like track results of you as a Fortnite player. And then it just got my brain working. I worked at FaZe for a little bit under Yousef. And started working in esports agency and doing the brand side. So I got a really strong understanding of the kind of issues in the gaming space as it was growing. And it really had to do with just no, like, kind of centralized thing. Everything was kind of blowing up at its own level and there wasn't someplace to gather it together. There wasn't a central hub like traditional places have.

Seeing that and having that insight that there wasn't this central hub. I mean, you're looking around, okay, it's all vertical, whatever. Not like, not that one place. And you're like, okay, here's the thing I think about with that. People have ideas all the time. They see opportunities all the time. They don't build companies with it. Some people build companies with it. They see this opportunity like, yeah, I'm gonna build a company with that. You obviously chose that route. Just take me through your thinking. It was like, you just love to build things. You like want to build things. Like, what, why the motivation behind you starting a company behind this insight? Because that doesn't always happen with people.

Yeah. So I got the itch early on. I had started my first company, normal t-shirt company, you know, merchandise, when I was 16. Had multiple other ones on top of that one, kind of like those early dropshipping, then like management of artists. You know, I went through this kind of like tree of— and I realized I liked it. Obviously, most of them were just money and time waste, but, you know, learning nonetheless. So after I had kind of tested the waters with this previous esports company and it didn't do that great, and I started working, like, sure, I was saving money. I was like getting to like really see it, the game, like the gaming industry I loved in full swing. It wasn't like music where I stopped liking gaming. I still loved gaming because it was about community, you know, better for worse. And I, I I guess it was more of like, I met the right people when I was really starting to consider it. All the other previous times, I kind of jumped into it eagerly because I wanted to test the waters, but I learned that that wasn't the way to do it. And I saw the opportunity sitting there. It's like I had this right place, right time. I had the 2 technical co-founders, Randolph and Juno, and one was great at backend, the other one was great at frontend and could manage the product, you know, and I knew I could handle the rest, you know. So it was like this kind of perfect system. And the esports scene was rising. And I had enough money saved because I was like waiting for an opportunity like this. And at least to like give a couple months of swimming room, like, or like little, little way to float myself.

Yeah.

And, and yeah, we just kind of, we decided to go for it, you know. And I'm glad we did. It was definitely one of those calls. And I do remember this because I was like, you know, I'm 25. Like, I was on the cusp of 24, like just turned 25. I was like, a lot of my friends have 6-figure jobs, you know, are crushing it. Like, I'm like, do I want to start over as entrepreneur? And entrepreneur kind of is a synonym to unemployed until it kind of works well, you know? So, uh, I, uh, I was like, I honestly was like, fuck it. Like, you know, like, like, this will be the— this will be the one I, I have faith in. The last year and a half have been great.

I'm so glad it worked out because it doesn't always work out, obviously. It's funny because I was just talking to Dan Kimerling, I mentioned before this, at Decians, and we were just saying that same thing at the end. It's like, yeah, most people shouldn't be founders. Like, I don't think people realize that. We see this like kind of sexy thing of like, yeah, it's in TechCrunch or whatever, and like people making millions and billions of dollars, but like it's a small percentage of people who actually make it, and these people work really fucking hard to get to that point. Like, I think that's kind of glossed over sometimes. But to that point, you make the jump, you're like, I got some money I can save up, let's take a swing at this at least. And you go for it. You have co-founders already. So you have the team in place to build this thing. Take me through the funding side, because I know this took like a fucking ton of emails. Just take me through funding this company, Connor.

Yeah. And this kind of— this period kind of goes hand in hand with why everyone shouldn't be a founder, because I dictated it as suffering, you know, and not even in the sense of like, like, this is hard work, you know, there's obviously other suffering, but it's a draining experience where like, you'll meet so many people who just don't believe in you and will tell you they don't believe in you. And, and ghost you. And it's like the worst side of dating, but it's not, you know, it's, it's, it's a constant, you're selling your dream. And they're like closing the door on you. So thankfully for us, it happened. And I guess not thankfully, like it was, it was tough, but we were able to not have to go and knock on doors. We could just send emails because in the new kind of landscape, we started this in late 2021. So like emails were accepted by investors and that previously wasn't always the case. You know, it was who you knew, like setting up meetings, etc. So we were able to kind of build a strategy about identifying investors because none of us really had anyone in this space. So we just really pounded out what we wanted in a deck. I had worked with kind of one of my earlier mentors, a guy named John Emmons. He taught me like how to just reach out and do cold emails. And I kind of took it and ran. And when I was like essentially just building these cold emails and reaching and identifying people specifically for accelerator pre-seed, like The earliest ideas of inception, because I was like, we have an idea, our product's not going to be there. Like, I think we have a good team in like 3 months, 4 months. Can we get someone to like get us an accelerator? You know, I knew that was the like earlier way in. The VC gets good terms, you know, you kind of sculpt an early team. And after about, like, I would say like 1,000 emails for the first one, we got our first $100K. And that was from Form Ventures. That was for a kind of accelerator program for 10 weeks, which was a great experience. I highly recommend it for anyone who's not sold a company or worked a long time in a startup, accelerator programs.

Yeah.

Really, really great, especially for you if all your founders are on board. But the real journey, and this is where I kind of joked with you, it's like I sent upwards of 10,000 emails for my seed round to get that $2.25 million. I'm I was, I was taking what I had thought and had what had worked earlier and really went harder. But we were different. We were pre-revenue. We did not have a product besides one client. Like, we were working and building our kind of SDK, the flow of the pipeline, validating everything we were doing to make it efficient with our discovery client. So it was working.

Yeah.

They had opened up their backend, but when it came to revenue and like being able to onboard additional clients, like we were still a few months out. So it was one of those, we, and I think it circles back to what you're talking about where a couple VC firms lead investments, high conviction, lots of thesis. This newer fund Venture Rock just had a sports tech and they're like, the one thing that works with all sports tech is data, you know, like that needs to go with like everything in the space. So they saw the big picture. Um, and were willing to work with us. They've been in the last— we closed the end of July after a long negotiation, um, just because the market crashed. Um, but they've been extremely active helping us, introductions. So it's exactly like you're saying, they were one of the few companies on their portfolio, and like they're making sure that, um, we get all the like attention and I would say connections that, that come into their, their world.

So, okay, Connor, we gotta go back. So the emails you mentioned, though, for other founders wondering, and like you say, that many emails is like kind of insane. But like, what was that? How are you building these lists? Like, what were you doing all day? Like, you block out 8 hours, just like crank out emails? Like, just take me through more of that. Like, what are the real story of like this fundraise?

From start to finish, it started with the Clubhouse, like, era. Like, that's where I first discovered like people sending out lists. And I believe Saba was one of the first ones who had lists available to everyone. And he kind of showed it. It was like, I think like around maybe once you added all the lists together, like 1,000 investors, you know, when you like went down to like all the verticals that worked for us, it was maybe 330, you know. But it kind of showed that in this space, like, if you looked on LinkedIn, or you kind of went on Twitter, or you were aware, like you can train algorithms for anything that you do. So if you kind of slowly train these algorithms to feed you kind of people who are interested in your space, have the same keywords, everything's SEO, like you could slowly build them. And mine was like, sure, there'd be moments I'd go and research them. And this would be found from like, let's say, my friend allowing me to go through PitchBook with him, you know, because he has an account, I can't afford it. So we're there.

So expensive.

Yeah, so expensive. Working together, like going and doing hard and then going, transferring that over to a Word document, writing it down, researching on the go, finding the websites. You know, there's a lot of tools out there that have them. You just have to be scrappy about it. I started in Excel, converted to Airtable so that I could really start using and taking advantage of the different like filtering options for the different, like, let's say, check sizes, lead or not lead, like what vertical, like, are they interested in? So like as we were like curating what letter, I would do a bunch of research at once and I would organize them and then I'd be like, all right, Today, all of these people are analytics-focused. These other ones are infrastructure-focused. These are gaming and esports. So I could tailor the article. I'd do some final looks at their portfolio or Crunchbase, see if there's any investments I can reference and just try and— I know obviously I didn't personalize everything down to a T. I had the skeleton that worked really well over a lot of A/B tests And then it was mainly like filling in the blanks. So it's like who they were, if they had done something like a big win from their fund, like something I realized from seeing their LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram. Like I try to go on everything and make it personalized, see on the website, read a bio. And the hours I allocated, I didn't sleep a lot during this time. I like the nighttime. So I would say around like 11 PM to like 2 AM was like my kind of sweet spot for like, no one was hitting me up. I would sometimes chat with Randolph, my CTO, because he was like a night owl as well. That's when he liked to code in silence. And like, we would just work. Like, we were just— you could get in a good flow. You could get like 500 to like 800 done researched in like a 4-hour period, you know, if you really like get into it. And then you just scheduled it. Google only allows you to schedule like 100 a day and you need to play with like, so you don't get sent into You want to make sure you have a good open rate. So like, I worked my way into an email that had a pretty solid open rate and click rate because then I knew I wasn't going to be put into spam and then I could increase it more and more. And but I wouldn't— one thing I never did is I never did like the drip or the automatic. I only scheduled it in there because I was like, one mistake and I blasted out to 100 people with the wrong name and I'm burned, you know?

Yeah.

But also like, I, I, if they Click it and open it. I use Mailtrack. If they opened it and weren't into it, like maybe I'd send a follow-up if I really thought they were a good fit, like a couple weeks later. If they opened it, I was like, hey, any notes? And sometimes I'd get a response. But ultimately, like if it if you put a deal on an investor's plate and they don't want it, you know, like they don't want it. If they want it, they'll pounce and you'll know it. You know, like I realized that really early. So it's just about putting it in a like an awareness in a spot where people might not look at and then until one. aligns, you know? And that's— yeah, so that's like kind of broken down.

Okay, one more thing on that while we're here. What was that like rough format or email? Tell us more about that that you would send. They got you— you obviously tested a lot of different things, right?

Yeah, so my opening line, and I still remember this, was it was like, there's billions of matches, like gaming matches played every day. What is happening with that data? Like, that was it. Like, that was like the first thing. And I was like, it's a question. And like, you don't know what's happening. And it's a big question. Like, you know, like, you don't know what's happening with all of that. So I started with that. I introduced like, hi, like, this is who I am. This is why I'm reaching out to you. Like, because they're like, after the question, they're like, all right, who, why are you reaching out to me?

Yeah.

And then I answer that. And then I just go into kind of, this is what we do. This is kind of what we've done recently, like action call, you know, like, like this net, like next week, let's get on a call if you're interested in it. I'd hyperlink the deck for DocSend. I'd be able to see it. You know, I linked my Figma once we had like our branding and a click-through demo. 'Cause like it worked better than like having them watch a Loom video. You know, they can just click, click, click. And yeah, I would just track links and be obsessive about it in a way that's like unhealthy. You know, I was just like on. Like, I was like, I was like, we have 4 months before the company doesn't work. And we're going into savings. And like, for the last month and a half, 2 months of this seed round, we had run out of burn. Like, so me and my founders, like, we were extending our bank accounts, like our savings, like we're just now, this is like a month about, this is 2 months into our next round. And like, we're just now kind of getting back to even, you know, like getting things back to square one. We didn't want to just like flush everything back and be good. Like we knew that like we have a good budget, we have a lot of buffer, we're mapping it out for 27 months this month, you know?

Yes.

Like we're in no rush to spend this money where this is our lifeline. And obviously we're working very, very hard around the clock. We're all just super inspired. So it's—

You mentioned, I think on a, this was like a YouTube video or something I saw that like You also, I think you told me this in person actually, but you got a good valuation for this company even though like, yeah, I guess you'd started other things, but first venture-backed company, I think. So like, take me through that. And that you said there's a big negotiation period, just how you even approached that as a founder, like in trying to get the terms you wanted.

So firstly, it was a pleasure talking. It wasn't, I wouldn't use the term negotiation as in just like a clarity inspection. You know, we were just going through And just making sure we were sure of everything that was going down. Because this was the first— we're the first portfolio company of their new fund. It started in the US. Previously, they were in Singapore and Amsterdam with their fintech fund. So it was just more or less talking about how it's being structured, kind of specific deal points. And the reason why it just took a long time is we started negotiation when the markets were great, but After March and like April, it like really dropped. And like a lot of people were pulling term sheets and this, that, and they didn't. They said that it was a promise. It was just a different conversation. So while we were finalizing the first one, the kind of lens changed. We had to do a little bit more due diligence, um, as— and we respected it. It was a great process. And at no point did we feel like we were being taken for a ride. I feel like that's something you have to be almost like uncomfortably aware of. We felt good. Um, it was just a different timeline, a different process because we were in a different environment. Now, like, looking back, like, there shouldn't have been no worries, obviously. Like, I'm downplaying how much I was stressed out at times. Um, like, and that wasn't because I was like, is this coming? It was more like, I have a team that like in 4 weeks, like, how am I gonna pay them? You know?

Yeah.

Like, how is that gonna happen? Like, And it's a diverse team, you know, like one of the, one of the guys who lives in, in Sweden, Anders, he's our designer. He has a kid, you know, and it's like, he obviously has a different job. He's working on this on the side, but you know, it's like, there's just extenuating factors for like every person. So making sure that like, I'm not a stress point in their lives is just, that becomes the stress on you. Um, but it worked out, you know, so.

I'm glad it did. Everyone can just breathe now, which is great.

Yeah, the air is a little bit more fresh, you know? Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit more about the company though. So in terms of like the business model, take me through that because you have multiple different like stakeholders in this in terms of like customers. So take me through that.

So I'll just focus on where we're at right now and what we're focusing on through our next raise. And that's just the, I would say, the acquisition and partnering with different game studios. So we already have access to the kind of OpenAPI, larger, um, like esport companies like Riot, Epic Games, their ecosystem, their data. Our main goal right now is to meet and talk with different mobile Unity, Unreal Engine games, like all these indie games, let's say around 10,000 monthly users. They're making maybe half a million to a million dollars in revenue in a year, and they just want to kind of start using that data, you know, like start understanding it, taking their community and really— and it's for very cheap. Like, it's not like we're like raking up and trying to be a SaaS company. Like, we have a very cheap model to the point where we're almost not making a profit. Like, because the goal is to kind of build this pool, which our investors are aware of, we're very on the same page so that we can provide benefits in different, like, I would say, SaaS features down the line. Like right now, while the SDK does rival SaaS. It isn't meant to be a huge revenue income stream. And to get more clarity on that, we are kind of in the same line as what Google hosting fees are. We have even made some of them more efficient because it's specific to this type of game and system. We're able to crack it. It's not a one-size-fits-all. So it's getting that data, meeting with all these different developers, And like kind of getting a little bit of cash flow going. I can give you a little peek around the corner for the, the bigger kind of money drivers. So we've been talking to a series of game studios on the tier 1 level, and this is where we're looking at like a 360 kind of data agreement where it's— we're taking all the data from all the players, like whether they're content creators or on their esports teams. And we're providing insights of value. So for the esports teams, we're getting their individual stats, how their game stats are, and then we're also collecting the enemy's game stats. So we can really start to build a picture of how they're not only like landing in their kind of environment, but potentially different ways to view the problems they're facing. You know, we're not going to have the data to like provide solutions, but we're at least pointing out the problems right away. For the content creators and just the organization as a whole, like listening tools to gather data about them so they're really getting a more clear picture. So kind of using this data ingestion engine as a form of kind of providing more valuable insights to not only developers in the early stage, gamers always, but these kind of bigger third parties and brands who who are interested in kind of monetizing those.

So how do you look at growth? I know you mentioned kind of looking at different studios or people are going after— is that always in the beginning what you kind of thought the growth was going to be? And like, how are you going after that? Because obviously, you have this whole like experience around outreach, and you can do that. But also, like, how you have limited time in any company you're building, limited time, limited resources, you're always thinking about like, how do you grow? How do you look at that?

So we're being super clear, like we've, we realized very early on, we want to accomplish so much. But when you really break it down into what's the realistic format, obviously our goal is to have the player profile where all the stats are being fed and we're building on the consumer side. There's billions or there are hundreds of millions of gamers. I'm not exactly sure on the exact number, and they're all playing. That's a huge target market versus, let's say, 10 million game studios.

Sure.

So we understood that we need data to make this more valuable for the players, or it's just kind of something that everyone else has access to. So we realized we couldn't have the chicken before the egg, you know. So we went back, we're really building this pipeline to us, making sure it's a really valuable kind of system for these players to be onboarded. So once we kind of get past that 100 studio, 100 to 1,000 mark, we'll be really opening it up to players because there will be enough games to make it valuable for them. And then we're going into the growth of players. And then that's kind of the cycle. And once it gets going, it's like, all right, the gamers are getting a more clear picture of their data, like how they can improve, where they stand in the world, like what opportunities are now open to them. The games are like, wow, this isn't Timmy X34, this is Connor and these are his stats. You have this statistical fingerprint on the players. So it's a more clear picture. They know how to make the system better. And then these brands aren't barking down the wrong branch. these esports teams are able to identify talent they couldn't previously identify. So you really kind of get this cog going, building it, making it smooth and efficient, and then from there you, you're able to really disrupt this industry in a positive way. Me, this is all coming as a— from a gamer. Juno is a gamer. Randy's a gamer. He became— Randy's also a game developer. He's made a lot of games, so it's like he's felt these pain points on both sides. So we really came together as a team to kind of build this solution.

I want to double-click on that real quick. You just mentioned co-founders and like the team. How did you meet them? How did you decide that like, we are going to work together? And how do you even manage that relationship with them? Obviously, all over the world, this is something that everyone kind of was thrown into with COVID and working remotely, etc. But how do you then also build relationships and run it?

I would categorize it and summarize it in one sentence where it's jumping off the cliff and learning to grow wings on the way down. And you'll understand why. So I followed that a lot in my way where it's just like kind of jump and figure it out on the way down. Because if you're thinking about jumping, like you're always going to have thought about what if and like better to try it.

Yeah.

So I was, I was starting and thinking about Pogger. It wasn't called Pogger then. It was just this idea, this player profile system. system, APIs, like data, like to update it automatically, you know, this kind of central leaderboard. That was kind of running through my mind. And I had been obviously telling some of the people, I had been deciding if I want to continue my contract at the company, or if I wanted to pursue this, like I had like a couple, like 2 weeks really before I had to like renew it. I was going out. And one of these nights, I very much, I met this guy named Rafael. He ended up being one of my first angel checks. after a long conversation at a house party in Venice, actually, I was inspired to really go home and really at least write everything out. I had it all up here, but I was like, all right, this isn't my first rodeo. It's like, what am I accomplishing? How am I going to make money on it? How am I going to get users? Who do I know? And after I put it all down there, I was like, damn, this is pretty good. And I had been like, other people— and this is kind of where the universe, if you say the direction you want to go, then it's good wind or bad wind. I was having good wind. And I kind of just had both of my co-founders drop into my lap on Discord. One, they were through mutual people in my previous businesses. One was a CTO at my older company named Ahmed. He connected me to my friend Randolph, and it was, he said, Randolph needs help on this one thing. Once we got started talking, he really liked my idea and we saw how there was synergy. With Juno, my one of my friends Zach, who did business at one of the other companies I was at, he was like, "Hey, I know this guy. He just got off a really cool project. He's interested in your idea. You guys should talk." And like within the span of like three or four days, I like was talking to both my co-founders and they were liking the idea. So I would say like after I after that first conversation in Venice, like we had a LLC, or actually I think we went straight to C corp. I think we were just ready to just take on the world.

Right on.

And yeah, we had a C corp 2 weeks later, you know, and that was in July of 2023, I mean 2021. And yeah, no, it's crazy because like we got our funding, our $2.25 million at $20 million at July of 2022. So it was that kind of 1-year mark. We had gone through a lot, but it shows that it just can move fast. You know, like it was one decision and the snowball grew. It got bigger and bigger and we're moving at fast momentum. We're breaking, like we're, we're, we're, we were very safe to like figure out how our timeline was to make sure that we were QAing properly. And we're beating past our deadlines and we're super excited. It's just the right place, right time, right team. So. I would say it's— I'm lucky for that. Like, it doesn't always work this way. Every previous failure was a prime example of how everything could be good except one thing, and it doesn't work. But when everything's in full motion, it's kind of scary.

It's interesting hearing that, because like, what I always think about is a quote, and I'm trying to think of— I don't remember who exactly says it, but it's basically thinking about Like, companies fail, startups fail, but founders don't fail. Like founders, if you keep trying a different company, like you don't fail. So there's that dynamic as well, you know, and thinking about that. And I think about that all the time, of that. It's like, okay, well, the founder doesn't fail over time, as long as they're willing to continue to eat shit for a while. I mean, that's the biggest thing, right?

You learn, like, you know, it's not even failing sometimes. It's really just like, it's learning how to be better the next time. But let's say if you do stop, Like you're like, like you are done, you know, like that's like, it resonates, but you know, no one for— no one remembers the like 20 at-bats. They remember the home run, you know? So.

Yeah. And I've talked to so many entrepreneurs and like, that's the thing. No one's talking about those, like whatever amount of failures they could have, like 20 different failures, 30 different, like who cares? As long as the ones that work. I know there's a classic, uh, bootcamp entrepreneur, but, uh, Peter Levels, I don't know if you heard of him from Nomad List and whatever. He basically created like, uh, a bunch of different companies, but his most successful ones, I think he makes like $3 million a year bootstrapped and just like is nomad crushing it, like just chill kind of whatever. And like, you know, he talks about his different projects and he's had like 20, 30, whatever, might've been more than that. Might've been like way more than actually that failed. And he's like, yeah, but no one cares about those projects though. They're just done. They just didn't work out. And now Nomad List and Remote OK are his 2 biggest ones. And like, they are crushing it. He makes multi-millions per year as like a solo founder. He's just like, it's a chill. I was like, that's It's kind of crazy.

So like, no, it's really inspiring. You know?

Yeah, exactly. And with what you're doing with Pogger, there's like, so obviously, a grand vision with this as well. You have some funding, you have some great co-founders. One thing I'm curious about with you, you mentioned in another interview or something around like being like a voracious reader, like you love to read. And if people have watched the video version, you can see books behind you. There's a big A bunch of those. Take me through like that. Have you always been like a big reader? Like, are you talking business books? You're talking every type? Like, what are you reading? I'm curious about all that.

Yeah, I love books. Um, if I'm being completely honest, I was reading a lot more until the last like 2 years, and now I'm deep on podcasts like How I Built This, My First Million, um, all of these, like kind of The 4-Hour Workweek with Tim Ferriss, you know, all these different kind of ones where you get the sneak peek into the founders. And then audiobooks, so I want my I fell in love with reading in high school after this elite business camp. I just finished speaking there. But one of the kind of successful entrepreneurs who was speaking challenged all the kids. He's like, I have these 5 books that I love. If you write kind of your own synopsis, not like a book report, whatever, your own learnings from the books and send them to me, I'll take a meeting for any one of your businesses. ideas. Like, I sent them all in. The business idea never ended up happening, but I was like, I still won. I loved reading, you know? Like, at this point, like, it didn't stop there. And it got to a point in high school where I was like reading in class and getting in trouble because like I was— I would say I was pretty smart, so, but like my grades by no means proved that. Um, so I would do the bare minimum at school, but like I was always like on my laptop looking up what I wanted to look, reading in class, a different book. And like, I was reading like a book a week for like a year and a half in like my sophomore to like middle of like senior year. And it was, it was dope. Um, like I have a couple favorites I've read, reread a few, like Richest Man in Babylon I've read like multiple times. Uh, A Man's Search for Meaning is probably my favorite book of all time. Viktor Frankl just does it, um, so beautifully.

Very good.

But then there's tons of other books, you know, like Robert Greene is a great author, Malcolm Gladwell. Like, I'm really focused into Walter Isaacson with just kind of the sneak peek into like biographies. That's kind of my lane. Like, I'll get into a little bit of kind of storytelling, but I really love biographies or just kind of case studies into things that work because that's what kind of interests me. That's why I was into it. Like everyone, it wasn't like a story I was trying to figure out. It was like, things I could apply to my own life because I was always doing stuff. And it's like I'd read like 48 Laws of Power and I'd apply a couple of them to my life, you know? It's like, or I'm rereading The Alchemist for the 5th time before a decision and I'm like, oh my God, I didn't even think of it this way. So yeah, yeah, I am a big fan of those. I'm actually reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius right now. And actually I've never read it before, so it's my first time going through it. So I'm loving it.

So other, okay. Okay. Any other suggestions on books? Any favorite biographies? Curious.

I mean, the Steve Jobs one by Walter Isaacson is my best, like my favorite. It's 800 pages, but like you get like sneak peeks into the mind of a genius, you know, like that man for better or for worse, for like all the controversy among him, he was just like the people who like built with him in like podcasts, like say like they did their best work with him, you know. So like there has to be something behind that. Sometimes it's not the, the route to like how you did it, but like, like how like you got there, you know. You can take different pieces of it. So he was just a great operator. Um, so, and I, I kind of relate to him in the sense that like he really disrupted the world, but he didn't really understand a deep level of coding, you know. He understand He understood it and how it works with the world and how to build with it, but the actual activity of doing it was not one of his expertises. So just kind of having that similarity in today's age, I feel like most of the really successful tech billionaires or just like people who've started great companies, they came from a development background. So it's kind of hard to draw a lot of truisms from that directly to my life.

Yeah, you're like, I don't have that same exact skill set. So you're like, uh, cool, but, uh, I can't really build the same that they could, which is interesting. I'm also a massive fan of biographies. I think there's— I'm trying to think which ones I even had read recently, but like Thomas Edison was an interesting one because I think him in terms of like being like the most prolific person creating things I've probably ever heard of, like at one point in time is like he's doing a patent every few days. It seems like it's like Yeah. What? You're like, that output's ridiculous. And like, obviously it just took a maniacal focus on creating and building things. And to your point, like, there's the negative sides of all that too. We can't like glorify without the negatives of like, what about family life? What about all that stuff? But like, it's super inspiring seeing those things. Same like a David Goggins book as well.

Like, I love David Goggins. Yeah.

Yeah. You're just, you see that like, wow, like I need to push myself a little farther. I can do way more. Like I can definitely Handle this little, oh, building a company. Okay. He's talking about Navy SEAL stuff and like all this craziness. We're like, all right, well maybe I can send some more emails. Yeah.

And that's why I love podcasts. That's why I love how I built this. 'Cause like every single person is like, you can hear the pain in the voice where it's like they go back to it. It's not a foreign feeling. Like they struggled and it was, it was like they could have, it could have gone either way. The reason why they're on the podcast is because it went the good way, you know? So it's like kind of hearing that makes it a little bit easier, makes the road a little bit smoother. Um, and yeah, I'm super thankful. Like, books were great because it's like you get kind of this like timeless piece of content. But like podcasts, like I just listened, like it was like I got it early, but it's like the CEO of Roblox, like that's the most hot thing right now in the world. Like he couldn't write a book and get it out to me. Like I gotta hear an hour of him talk from all his failures, his startups. He was a quantum engineer, you know, like that, like went, took the leap, you know. So it's like, I love that, like, real one-to-one. It's like, if you're doing something crazy in the space, like, someone can tap in and listen. And like, I love it. Like, I'm a big fan of that.

Yeah. And I think that you mentioned My First Million, which is a great podcast for anyone who hasn't heard it already. And like, they just talked about like their whole, just like a basketball camp, like a camp My First Million or whatever. They're talking about, you know, if you're in this environment for Like they were like a physical environment, two two two days or something surrounded by people who are very ambitious and driven and doing crazy things. You can't help but be like sit come home at night. You're like wow like what should I be doing? You're influenced by that. But if you're always reading books and listening to podcasts and stuff, you like brainwash yourself into thinking hey maybe I could do whatever. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I do something bigger. Like oh and you're always surrounded by it. I just have always found the value in that even from just like a it's just always. in your head of thinking about those types of things, then you can't think small anymore. Yeah.

And we have so many resources now, like, and like, you can really do anything if you just sit down and get to it. Because like YouTube is the funnel into like anything you need to figure out. You want to write a contract, there's a way to do it. If you want to set up something, build something, fix something, it's there. And Reddit is the next freaking search engine. You know, it's like there's so much like user kind of feedback on every problem someone's faced and like ways to solve it. So I really feel like you're right. Like you say, brainwashing yourself so that you can think that you could do anything and then really like using the tools that are available because the internet's getting— it's a smaller and smaller world. Everyone knows someone. Like there's always ways to really do something. And I know I talked about Steve Jobs a lot, but it's like what, like his quote, once you realize that you can influence the world, like Like, you're gonna want to do it, you know. You, you can, you can really change it, um, and affect it. And that, that was contagious.

Where I want to just end this is with Pogger. And if, if all goes right, trajectory continues, where does this get to? What's it going to look like in 5, 10 years, whatever, when Pogger has done what you want to do? And obviously you can say it's never finished, you're always going IPO and beyond, you're just building this company. But where do you want to get this to? What does it look like when Pogger is where you want to be?

I'd love a world where, um, the gaming space is transparent in the fact where I mentioned kind of a statistical fingerprint. I really do mean that, but in a broader sense to where, um, all these games are built on the same plane, you know. The version of what we're calling a metaverse is a place that we can all interact and interchange without having to jump from world to world, you know, and losing what you've gained. It's like if you walked to work and you didn't have anything of your previous life, everything's split. So kind of having this Pogger authorization OAuth where we understand you as a player and we're making every game experience more personalized for you as a gamer to provide an opportunity pipeline, provide kind of take down all pre-existing gatekeepers and make it an open plane. You know, anyone can do anything because the information's right there. You know, it's not like you're just going in blind and having to make your own gut decisions. You can validate things. So a hyper-connected world online where the opportunities are, are yours to take. You know, right now, like sometimes the opportunities just aren't there. So kind of me as a gamer, like young, young gamer, I wish that I could do whatever I wanted. So that's what I hope. Like, I hope that if you have a controller, a keyboard and mouse, and a dream, you can do anything. You can build a world and we'll help. You can like try and create a career and we'll help. And then like you, you can really just, I don't know, be and connect with a different wave of people online. Um, it's, yeah, just a connected world.

That is exciting. And you'll just come on the podcast for round 2 when we've done that and, uh, talk about how, yeah, I called my shot. I called my shot. There we were. I told you. Connor, where can people learn more about Poggr? And also if they want to reach out to you and connect with you, where should they go for that too?

Awesome. Yeah, the best place is on Instagram, um, @pogr. Uh, we got that username. We're really excited. Our website is pogr.gg. So that's where you can get some information, sign up for our waitlist. And then I'm @ConnorEllison, C-O-N-N-O-R-E-L-L-I-S-O-N, everywhere. So that's, yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and happy to chat. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on the podcast, Justin.