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.
00:07:51 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:07:51] S0: Adam was buying traffic from your ad network for his apps that he was developing? Exactly. Okay. [00:07:55] S1: Exactly. So at... During this time, you know, Adam and I would talk a lot over AIM because I was effectively his account manager, but I would screw with him a lot. You know? I'd be like, hey. I'll teach you a lot about making money online. You know? I'll teach you how to run real business. [00:08:10] S0: Which is also another crazy thing because he's like ten or twelve years older than you. [00:08:13] S1: Twelve years older than me. Way smarter than me. The guy's a walking calculator. But ignorance is bliss. And I just had this ship on my shoulder, right, that I feel like I I could take on the world. And as we spend more time, you know, talking, what ended up happening very intelligently, Adam was like, okay. This kid who works around the clock but isn't that intelligent has built this ad platform in kind of this this wide open blue space that's seeing success. I'm gonna go build a mobile ad platform.
00:08:41 · David Senra
[00:08:41] S0: So he's going to compete with you? Yes. This is where he, like, pulls you in the room. He's like, don't get... He came on the show. Let me let me back up before we get to this because some people are listening. They haven't seen an episode. And the Adam Foroughi episode, when people are like, I I think that is one of the episodes I'm most proud of because I think I titled it, like, the best entrepreneur you've never heard of. And, you know, it's the fact that, like, at the time, it was like, whatever, AppLovin was a $150,000,000,000 market cap company. They're gonna print 6,000,000,000 in cash this this year, and they're doing it with, like, 400 employees. And the reason I'm proud of that episode is because it goes out and all of the, like, almost like, I think the next, like, five or six guests that we had on the show that came on, this happened over and over again. We we did the show... This episode, they'll be out in December with MrBeast. Right? And I've known MrBeast for a while. He listens to my other podcast founders. Like, he'll send me his Spotify rap every year, it's like founders to the top. As soon as we stop recording, he leaned forward. He goes, hey, can you just meet Adam? Mickey Malko. Over and over again, who is this guy? And can you introduce me to him? He was like such an unusual, like unfiltered, like hardcore person. So this is the person that we're talking about. This is the person you've been working with for like half your life. Yeah. So now this guy is like, this fucking kid is making all this money with this ad network. Don't... I think he told a story. He's like, you in room. He's like, don't be mad, but I'm gonna compete with you.