00:01:17 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:01:17] S0: But you were how old [00:01:18] S1: when this happened? I was around 16 years old. [00:01:21] S0: Okay. But why drop out of high school? Why did you... Like, how did you... A lot a lot of people dropped out of college, but like you dropped out of high school. [00:01:26] S1: Why did So so take a step back. I started working online around 14 years old doing performance media buying. And what I saw during that period was really eye opening. I saw at the time I was working for my brother, these guys were making 20,030 thousand dollars a day in profit advertising different products. My teacher would make $25,000 a year. So it was a no brainer to me really quickly that school, the upside was nowhere as high as compared to if I were to put all my efforts into performance marketing. [00:01:56] S0: And so your older brother was kind of teaching you the trade? [00:02:00] S1: Yeah. [00:02:00] S0: Is that how it
00:02:00 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:02:00] S0: Is that how it [00:02:00] S1: worked? Yeah. So, you know, kind of backstory. I come from a family. It's four brothers, two stepbrothers, all boys, but my parents got divorced very early. I was not growing up with my oldest brother, but I was always online, always on the computer. I was building websites, did game servers business for a little bit. And at one point, my brother came to go visit my dad and he was telling my dad that he was doing performance marketing. And my dad had this brilliant idea that I would go and intern for him. I go and intern for him for a summer, which initially I was against because it was like, I'm making a thousand dollars a month, you know, selling stuff online and doing game servers. You know, as... At that time, you know, 14 year old kid, that's a lot of money, you know, in in in middle school. So, you know, what ends up happening is he convinced me to go and join him. I start working there and I started doing like... I would say, like, I'm below the water boy. I'm like, you know, I'm... Like, the boring terms of service and privacy policy, like I'm the guy adding that onto the site. Whatever work that those guys didn't want to do, you know, was pretty much foisted on to me. But through that, I got to learn a lot about the industry. So learn about, what types of products people are interested in, what types of ads get people's attention, how money is made online just in general. And so that was kind of my big foray into it.
00:03:20 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:03:20] S0: And at the time, you were essentially... You became obsessed with online advertising, which is a funny like, obsession for, like, a teenage... A young teenager to have. But your other obsession was video games. Right? [00:03:29] S1: Yes. [00:03:30] S0: Was there, like, parallels that you that you drew between the two activities? [00:03:34] S1: I was never really good at sports. I played soccer and and baseball as a kid, but I wasn't good at any of them. The thing that I loved about video games for me was that it was all about based on merit. If you're competing in a multiplayer game or a single player game, ultimately, it's just to outcompete the people that you're competing against effectively. And that was something that I loved. So taking into business for me, I always had this analogy in my head of when they sent the warriors out, you know, back in the days to go get food for the tribe, the only thing that they... That people would care about back to the tribe was who brought back the food? Who killed the animal? In business for me is I always just focus on being the most valuable person in the room, doing what I could to drive the most value for everybody. [00:04:16] S0: Say more about this.
00:04:16 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:04:16] S0: Say more about this. [00:04:17] S1: I think titles and seniority, I think it's all bullshit. I think in business, similar to sports and similar to video games, it's just about delivering the most value possible. And that was something that I realized early on is that if you go down the same route as everybody else where it's like, okay, I'm going go start at a company, I'm going be an analyst for a few years, then I'm going to go and try to get to the next level of a manager and then a senior manager and so on. It's this linear and very boring path where actually you limit your ability to grow personally and then also the ability to deliver value to a company versus if you take this other approach of what is the most important thing to the business? And in my skill set, what can I do to deliver as much value as possible? If you take that mindset very quickly, it may not be a linear route, but very quickly, you will be exposed to opportunities that you wouldn't be otherwise. And so that is kind of the approach I've always taken. [00:05:11] S0: But this is one of the most fascinating things about you when I tell other people about you and Adam Foroughi is you had that trait when you were like a kid. You've been working with Adam since you were 17... 17 or 19, something like that?
00:05:22 · Rafael Vivas
[00:05:22] S1: My brother and Adam had worked together. So I'd known of Adam since, you know, I was 14. I met him at 15. And when I told you I was the water boy, he came to the office. My brother was like, go get Adam in water. But I knew who he was before because there was kind of this leaderboard in my brother's performance marketing company, and, you know, Adam was at the top of the leaderboard at the time, and and I was the guy behind Initially, started building websites, started building ads and then building campaigns. And so I already knew who he was. So that's how I got connected with Adam. And then from there, we didn't really communicate that much in the beginning. Would say when I was around 17, 18 is when we got closer. And that was because you know, my my road was very... Was not was not linear at all. I didn't wait to be given opportunities. Right? For example, like, when I started building websites, that was one thing. But I was curious about, okay, like, how are ads made? So I just... I was starting getting on Photoshop and making ads. And then at the time somebody showed me how to put up a... It was like a Myspace campaign and I did that. And then from there, it was like, okay, I want more traffic. And I just started reaching out to brands on my own, right? And nobody gave me the permission to do it. I just started doing it. Fast forward, I was like, hey, we started our own ad platform, right? Why are we buying from all these other ad platforms when we can just go and reach out to the publishers ourselves and we have demand?
00:06:41 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:06:41] S0: Wait, wait. So when you have this idea, we're going start our own ad platform, you're how old? [00:06:45] S1: That time I was about 17 years old. [00:06:47] S0: Okay. That's a very unusual idea for a 17 year old. [00:06:49] S1: Yeah. It was... The reason we started the ad platform was at the time, this advertising platform that we were working with, they had their own advertisements, their own offers, and they banned us off of it because we were competitive. And I got so angry that night that I was like... I remember I went home, like, pretty much cried, and I was like, we're gonna bury these guys. And I went to my brother, I was like, hey. I'm gonna leave your company to go stroll my own app platform. I wanna go head to head with this company. And he started laughing so hard, and he was like, you're not going anywhere. I'll give you a few engineers. Go build what you want. And that was the idea at the time of AppLovin. AppLovin was a mobile ad platform. Around this time, Adam had already left my brother's company and he was actually done with ads and wanted to start building consumer products. And so the beginning of AppLovin actually was... At first, it was a dating app, and then there was a fashion app, and then there was all these other products that they kind of built. Adam was buying traffic from me. [00:07:51] S0: Adam was buying traffic from your ad network for his apps that he was developing? Exactly. Okay.