00:37:32 · Rafael Vivas, David Senra
[00:37:32] S1: Yeah. I mean, I would... It's funny. The girl... I dated it all the time, and and I told her I'm going complete black mamba. And when I would work, I would listen to, like, these motivational... I was a psychopath. I listened to these, like, motivational videos all day while working. [00:37:45] S0: I did this every morning. When I was struggling, like... Because I... You know, because, like, you're a fan of Founders. That's how we met. And five... First five and half years, I was just like, I don't get it. Like, this is a better podcast than... Like, I'm obsessed with podcasts. Know what a good podcast is. This is better. No one's listening to it. And I'd have to wake up every day and brainwash myself with this stuff. Right. Just thinking you don't works. [00:38:03] S1: Yeah. Yeah. And, like, it... Especially because, like, it was such an intense environment internally. Right? Adam is, like, pressing really hard on me. I understand, like, the future of the company is on my back because at this point, like, all guns are pointed at us. We... We've burned the ships. Right? Like, we are there to, like, win. There is no other option. So I would wake up, you know, at, like, 4AM, and I would stay up until, like, midnight. And you're in your early twenties? I was... Yeah. I was Okay. At that time, let's say, like, 26 to 28. Okay. So, you know, I was doing No kids. [00:38:34] S0: No long term relationship. Basically, just work.
00:38:34 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:38:34] S0: No long term relationship. Basically, just work. [00:38:37] S1: Yeah. Just work. Nothing else mattered to me besides work. It was the most important thing. So I did that for two years. And I kind of... At at two years end, I kind of pulled the lineman up again. Like, from the fray, I realized like, oh, shit. This business does, like, not need me anymore, actually. [00:38:52] S0: This is the game studio or
00:38:52 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:38:52] S0: This is the game studio or [00:38:53] S1: is that The game studio. It was a game publishing business. So the way that I would compare it to Universal Music Group. Had the distribution, we'd go find talented game developers and bring their games to the masses. By the way, drove over 20 games to number one, over 3,000,000,000 downloads. This was an incredible and we were one of the biggest at the time. I'd gotten to the business to a point where I was no longer mission critical. And at that same time, I started reflecting on myself and I was like, okay. So the business no longer needs you to succeed. And we'd also done other acquisitions that helped lead up of other game studios. So what do I really want to focus on? For me, making a family was really important to me. I was 28 when I took a step away from the business and I was like, I need to start thinking about having children. This was something that was always really important to me. Always knew I wanted to be a father. And so I took some time off from the business. It was funny, you say a year, but I wasn't really good at taking time off because three months in, I started going crazy to start building products for fun. But yeah, moved to Miami at the time because San Francisco was so depressing. COVID, everything was shut down. I went to Miami. It was supposed to be just like a a vacation for like a weekend. And I was like, oh my god. COVID doesn't exist here. Like, everything's open. And then, you know, I ended up planning my roots there and meeting the love of my life and having a family.
00:40:07 · David Senra
[00:40:07] S0: Yeah, I was there during that time too. I remember because one of my favorite pizza spots is Lucali in Sunset Harbor. And at the time, used to go up... First of all, there would be like never wait. And then they're serving away during COVID and you would put your phone number. And I kept seeing all these, like, four fifteen and two twelve area cuts because everybody from San Francisco and New York came to Miami at that point. So wait, you take a sabbatical... Like, how did you frame this with Adam? Was it a sabbatical? Like, what did say? I'm fucking done forever?
00:40:34 · Rafael Vivas
[00:40:34] S1: Yeah. So this was really good at breaking the news to him. Right? This is like, you know, Adam is like a bigger bride... A big brother to me, and so I waited for my birthday. You know? I... I'd actually been, like, diarying it for a while of kind of, like, what... Indirectly, I was actually just kind of... I kind of knew I wanted to take time off. I'd say about a year before, I was I was just writing about, like, what are the things that the business... Like, where am I to bottleneck? And where does the business need to be in a place where, like, I don't exist but here for it? So I I kind of just started marking things off the list. And before I knew it, like, everything had been accomplished and, like, you know, I I could not be around and new games were being released and revenue was growing. And so I called Adam, and I was like, hey. Like, you know, it's my birthday. It was a happy birthday, of course. I was like, yeah. I wanna take some time off in the business. And Adam is not a very emotional guy. He was just like, are you sure? I was like, yeah. He was like, well, I respect whatever you wanna do. And then we kind of, like, ended the conversation. And then what happened after that was, like, a lot of people calling me being like, what the hell are you thinking? What are you doing? My brother, this guy Harold Chud, these guys are trying to convince me to stay. They're trying to offer all me all these different packages. I was like, has nothing to do about the money. It's like the business is an immediate succeed and there's other things in my life I want to go and accomplish. I took a step away from the business. Would say from that conversation, probably it was supposed to be a six month transition, within but three months, I was I was kind of out.
00:42:00 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:42:00] S0: At the time though, did you think I'm out of AppLovin' for good? [00:42:03] S1: Oh, yeah. I thought I was gonna go off to the sunset and enjoy my life and chill on a beach and never work again. But you realize very quickly that it's a very fucking depressing life. Like, there's no purpose. [00:42:14] S0: We shouldn't have a fucking ad in every one of our episodes about this. It's like, go... These post exit founders that had never found something else to work on is like the most miserable souls to be around. [00:42:25] S1: Yeah. And to double click on it, you know, so I like... Yeah. You know, love playing video games, which you realize that like on a Wednesday afternoon, you have no one to play games with. None of your friends are around. They're all fucking productive. They're doing things, right? So you have no one to hang out with. It gets lonely. But then I started, you know, I started working on these businesses. And actually this double clicking is like what drives me. What I realized is like, I found this great tech team and we were working together and working on these products. Didn't... One, didn't care about the products we were building with. I had no connection with them. For me it was just like [00:42:54] S0: You're talking about the ones you're doing in your sabbatical? [00:42:56] S1: My my sabbatical was like, oh, I just, opportunistically, hey. I think this vertical's right. The KPIs look good. Let's let's go and build into it. So that was, like, one thing. One funny thing is I ran a dating show for a little bit. Don't recommend that that