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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00:09:21 · Paul Bragiel
[00:09:21] S4: I mean, like, you know, we just missed time certain things. Like, it was a very competitive game. Right? Like... And only one winner would happen. It wasn't like, you know, there'd be 10 winners in that space. Either one person won, a k Facebook, and everyone else died. Right? So... Yeah. While we did well, we had millions of users. We raised money, we had awesome engineers. Like, the team was great. It's just that we didn't win. And I learned a lot from that. I kinda got punched in the face a bit. But it was a good learning lesson, and I was able to take all those things and apply them to my third company. Yeah. I mean, failing sucked, right, after my first company doing so well. The reason it sucked, obviously, one, it sucked because I wanted to win. I'm a very competitive person. But then two, it sucked because, like, I had a whole team of people relying on me, right, to raise more money or whatever it is, right, to lead the company. And when I had to let go of people or when we didn't get money, like I remember there was days where I cried in the pillow. I'm like, fuck. I have to fail. I have to fire a bunch of people today or like, oh my god, how am going to pay the rent and the bills for the team next month. Right? So there was a lot of stressful times. But yeah, I mean, you get through it. Right? Like I said, what was really amazing is that while we did fail, like we had people that stuck away all the way till the end. Right? And we had actually a bunch of people that stayed there even after I ran out of money. For many months, they stayed there. Right? And so I love those people. Those people are part of my family nowadays. But, yeah, it was rough. It's admitting defeat in anything sucks, especially when you're very competitive person. But, you know, you you kind of sit down and you kind of let it breathe a bit and you kind of take back what you learned and you move forward. Right? You don't give up. You keep on pushing. This is important. When you're a founder, there's ways of losing your credibility. Right? And failing is not one way. Like failing happens. Right? We all fail. Right? The key thing is, one, how did you fail? Did you fail with honor? Did you fail with transparency? Right? Did you fail because you, you know, tried a million things and didn't work out. Right? Versus some people, they fail because like, they give up.
00:11:15 · Paul Bragiel
Or they fail and they kind of go quiet and disappear. Right? That's not honorable. Right? Like... But if you go out and say, I tried this, this, this, this, this, this. And okay, I didn't do this. Or like for us, like I know from my team, I said, we didn't pay ourselves salary for like almost six months. We did everything we could to save the company. All of our investors knew this. Right? And I was sending update every month. This is how much money is left. This is worth trying. This is... Like, please. Right? And like people know that, hey, these kids, they did everything they could. It didn't work out. Right? So we didn't get blamed for that. They're like, hey, these people are good people. And if they try something again, we want to back them. Right? And so for me, now that I'm an investor, I look at the same thing too. I know some of my companies are failing. Right now, there's companies failing. Right? And some, they disappear. You know what? Those guys will never get my money again. But some people are telling me, what's going on? They're trying to... Hey. Respect. I will potentially invest invest in your next company. Right? So... Yeah. It's really important to fail with honor, I guess you could say. Right? So... Yeah. Honestly, a lot of the companies we invested to, they're great founders, but they were not known founders. Right? A lot of times, you know, people start out from very humble beginnings. Right? So, yeah, let's say companies like Unity and Uber. Right? These are cases where I know the founders already. Right? So the founder of Uber, Travis, he was a friend of mine. And funny enough, when my second company was failing, his second company was failing. And he lived maybe like three or four blocks away from here in San Francisco. So every week or two, we get together, have a beer and say, fuck. This sucks. Right? And so we just became friends. Right? And then when he started his next company, which was Uber, he's like, hey, Paul. I need some help hiring engineers. And so at first, I joined as an advisor. Right? Because I didn't even sold my company yet. Right? So I came as an advisor and then later put some money in. But a lot of the best deals I got into is because I just knew the people. Right? I was friendly with them. Or a friend of a friend. Somebody's like, hey, you got to talk to Paul. He's an amazing investor.