00:00:56 · S2, S3
Ad[00:00:56] S2: This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:01:25] S3: We are live from the Sam's Club holiday club parade. Oh, wait. Wait. Are those guys? Just snoozing. It's the food coma club. They might lose count of their helpings of turkey, but never their spending. Oh, did you hear that? It's the cool ants club in their natural habitat of giving the trendiest gifts. It's the deal hunters club. No sudden movements. They smell value a mile away. Whatever holiday club you're in, Sam's Club helps you make the most of your holidays. Come join us. Sam's Club.
00:01:56 · Paul Bragiel
[00:01:56] S4: What I'm saying when I say ideas don't matter is that everybody has the same ideas. Right? It's like you think of an idea and then like two weeks later, you hear somebody's building it. Right? So the world is kind of coming together on the same ideas. Like, hey, have a really cool idea. Flying cars. Right? Yeah. That's a great idea. Doesn't fucking matter. Right? How are you going build a fucking flying car? Does it matter? It's not like, oh, yeah. Oh, it's a really cool idea to send a rocket. Yeah. Great. Building a fucking rocket's really hard. Right? So ideas don't matter. It's execution behind the idea that really matters. Hey, everybody. My name is Paul Bragiel. I guess you say engineer turned founder turned venture capitalist. But, yeah, in general, I just like to work with and get involved with cool companies around the world and especially with really interesting entrepreneurs. We've invested in companies like Zappos and Unity. What I'm really well known for probably here in Silicon Valley is that I was an early investor and advising board member to Uber. I joined a company when there was less than 10 people working there. The valuation was puny. So it was an amazing, you know, exit and seeing that company rise as, you know, one of the highlights of my career. In terms of multiples, it's over 2 thousand x. So things have gone pretty good there. Right? It was a small check, but still life changing. 2,000 x is pretty ridiculous. I built three companies, two of which were in Silicon Valley, and then I sold two of those companies. And, yeah, for the last thirteen years, I have now been investing into young startups. In general, my whole thesis is that I can invest in companies started by really interesting and amazing entrepreneurs. So I graduated school in 1999. So, yeah, twenty four years ago, I graduated. I got, like, really seriously... I mean, I was playing games before I was quite young, but I got really into programming and and tech in 1994. So, like, that's when I kinda first started doing my early kinda programming stuff. So when I started my first company, yeah, there was no word for startup. There was no word entrepreneur... Entrepreneurship? That word didn't exist yet. Right? That's just how old I am, sadly. But people knew what I was doing because it's pretty simple. Like, I was able to explain to them, hey.
00:03:54 · Paul Bragiel
I'm I'm pursuing a dream. Like, I I played games. I'm an engineer. I had a couple other friends like artists and other programmers, and we wanna make a game. Right? And... Yeah. So people at first thought this is dumb and insane. My parents... I remember my mom was like really disappointed. She's like, Paul, you graduated one of the top two universities in America for engineering. Why are you not getting a job? Right? And I was like, well, I can make more money. Right? Yeah. People were a bit confused or surprised that I didn't get a really high paying job. But then about like nine months later, I remember we signed our first contract. I I signed a really big deal with a Japanese company called Capcom. You might know Capcom, they made a game called Street Fighter two. And they decided to publish one of my games. I was 21 years old, and I made more money than my parents made in two years. People very quickly changed their tune. They're like, oh, okay. He might know what he's doing. Right? But yeah, initially people were sad or confused because yeah, entrepreneurship and startups was not a thing. That has obviously changed in the last twenty five years. Now it's a really hot thing, but it was a crazy idea when I started doing stuff. I'm not the most eloquent person. I like to get to the point. First and foremost, don't overthink things. I mean, like I told you all my adventures also was like, if you overthink things, you'll usually talk yourself out. Right? But once you take that first step, then the second and third step are much easier. Right? There's always hard steps with big hills and mountains along the way. But once you start going, the hardest part a lot then is just just start it. So it's really simple. But it's it's the hardest thing to do a lot of times. I don't know why. For me, it's not that hard. But like I know a lot of people have that issue. Right? I think it's a combination of things. So it's really hard to get started because one, you're comfortable in life. I have a nice job. Right? Or like two, parents or family is like, don't do that. Right? Like... Or it's really hard to start because it seems scary. Right? Like, yeah, all these things are out there. But the reality is that's all bullshit. Right? It doesn't really matter what other people think and how hard it is. It's what makes you excited. Right?
00:05:52 · Paul Bragiel
So, yeah, starting should not be so hard. It's just all these outside factors and society and culture and family that change our minds. Right? I think that's the biggest thing that holds most talented people back is they have other people telling them what... Giving them bad advice, I would say. So my advice is don't listen to them. Just get started. If you want to do something, you're dreaming about something, do that. Because otherwise, if you don't, you'll regret it. You look at ten, twenty, thirty years and be like, oh I wish I tried. Yeah. Just try. Worse comes to worst, you fail. At least you tried. You'll never regret that you didn't try. If you're younger, take the time where you're at your parents house and it's really cheap to live, you don't have much cost. Build stuff, right? Just start tinkering, start creating things, get your friends together, right? Because you're able to test a lot of things. You're also able to test working with people. Low risk environment, right? When you get 30 or 40, you might have a girlfriend, wife, kids, mortgages, whatever. It becomes harder. Right? I'm not saying it's impossible, but when you're young, you're 17, 18, 22, what happens? What is the worst thing? You fail? You go move back home with your parents. Right? So it's like, just take the risk. You have almost nothing to lose when you're young. Yeah. So my first company, I was kind of on top of the world and I'd sold and I made money and I was super young. Right? And a second company, it was a little bit different. Right? So we were trying to build something way bigger. So like the game stuff was big and we sold hundreds of thousands of copies. We had some really big projects, but still like we had other people like publishers and stuff around us. This product, we were trying to build one of
00:07:23 · S5, Paul Bragiel
[00:07:23] S5: the first [00:07:24] S4: social networks. Right? The idea of games kind of existed even though the games we made were original, but like the game industry was there. But like with our second company, we tried to build a brand new industry. Like the idea of 2004, what is a social network? This does not exist. Like Facebook did not exist. We all started within a couple months of each other. Right? The the company failed for a couple reasons. Like one, it was a brand new industry. Was very hard. Two, I mean, if I look back about myself, you know, honestly, maybe I was a bit cocky. I had done so well with my first company. So maybe I thought everything I touch is gold. Maybe that. Right? And then the third
00:07:57 · S5
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