00:57:28 · Rafael Vivas, David Senra
[00:57:28] S1: Well, he wanted me to be a doctor. And, you know, it's funny. So my dad, you know, doesn't doesn't own the stock of AppLovin. Right? So, like, you have a man... By the way, thought the Internet was a scam. That's right. Like, thought the Internet was a scam, and he was like, he's... Didn't take the time to, like, care about our business. And I don't hold it against him, but, like, yeah, like, I have it in in me. Like, I hook in me to, like, prove everybody wrong. Right? And and the beauty is, like, we've done a good job over fifteen years, but we still have so much more room to go. Right? Like, I think my journey will be over when, like, I walk... Like, if I walk down the street and everybody's, oh, I know that AppLovin brand. Right? But today, you walk down the street and 99 out of a 100 people or 99.9 out of a 100 people would be like, AppLovin? Right? Like, we we obviously... Even though we make a big impact in these businesses live, like, we're very [00:58:19] S0: early in our journey. What's your relationship with your dad like today?
00:58:19 · David Senra, Rafael Vivas
[00:58:19] S0: early in our journey. What's your relationship with your dad like today? [00:58:22] S1: It's good. You know, I never hold it against him because I always think about, like, how was he raised? You know, my father, his dad died when he was 15 years old. He had four other siblings that he had to go and take care of and a mom that couldn't speak English. Right? So they came from Colombia. My dad's from Iwagay, came from Colombia to West Palm Beach in The United States. And his dad was a lawyer. He grew up in a house where, like, didn't have anything to fall back on. Dad was a hard ass. And, like, he became a doctor not because he wanted to, because he needed to. It was the only way to make a lot of money to help support the family. And so now when I think about that, I'm like, Oh, of course it makes sense of who he is. That's why he was so hard on me. One of the things that we talked about before this podcast is, like, you know, I grew up in a nice neighborhood. I went to a nice school, but, like, I was the poorest kid amongst all the rich kids. Like, I had five pants, five shirts for the whole entire school year, And that was it. And when I would come home and complain about like, oh, my friend's got Nike's or he's got this nice shirt on head, it's like, I don't give a shit. You want stuff? Go out there and go work for it. Like, go out there and hustle. And that's like what pushed me to become a better version of myself.
00:59:33 · David Senra
[00:59:33] S0: I know like you have this chip on your shoulder. Would I say you have, like, a boulder on your shoulder is the way to put it. I don't think it's a chip. It's a giant rock. I know Adam pushed you in your professional career. Did your dad push you at all? And I know he's, like, skeptical of the Internet and everything else, but, like, is there something about your relationship where it's, you can draw back that, like, some of your drive comes from him?
00:59:52 · Rafael Vivas, David Senra
[00:59:52] S1: Leading up to the point that I got... That I left his house was was kind of when that impact ended. Right? He kind of, like, set me off to go free. And the the most indirect was, like, when I say this couldn't fail, there was no way I could ever move back to my parents' house. Right? Like, Richard Branson says, like, the only thing worse than being poor is, like, becoming rich and going poor again. Like, I moved out of my parents' house. I was living in San Francisco. I was working for my brother, and then I was doing the startup. I was like, there's no fucking way that I'm gonna go move back with my parents. Right? Remember, I I dropped out of high school. So, like, you know, it's not like I could have, you know, gone into any good college. I'm pretty much unhirable by the way, like, on paper. Right? Like, who's gonna hire this, like, high school dropout? And the idea of going to work back for my brother as well would have also been equal failure to me. Like, I love my brother. He gave me the tools I needed to succeed and ultimately, I chipped my own stone and paved my own way. So, like, those things all combined, you know, helped me become the best version of myself and and really pushed me forward. [01:00:53] S0: Where do you get this, like, attention to detail that you have from? Did, like... Is that innate? Did somebody in... Like, mentor you inside of AppLovin? [01:01:01] S1: Yeah. So there's this guy called Mark Rosner, and he's my mentor. And before we had a lawyer, he was our in house counsel. [01:01:08] S0: What was his position in AppLovin?
01:01:10 · Rafael Vivas
[01:01:10] S1: So he was our CRO. And how we got ahold of Mark was he ran... He was the CEO of this company called Zedge, which did ringtones and wallpapers. And he broke off on his own and he had this blog called Applied Revenue. It was just talking about ways to make more revenue on apps and just within the mobile app ecosystem. And I told Adam, hey. Like, we wanna work with Zedge, and, like, this guy seems pretty intelligent. Like, you should reach out to him. What turned into, like, potentially was gonna be a consultant, we decided he would come in as a CRO. What was hilarious that when Mark first met Adam and they were doing, like, the sit down, Adam put an NDA in front of him. And, you know, most people just signed the NDA. And Mark says, hey. Can I get, like, fifteen minutes? Adam steps out of the room. And, like, Adam comes back from the room, and Adam calls me in with him. And, like, the whole thing is, like, marked up. And he's like, can't agree to this. I can't agree to that. I can't agree here. And immediately, I was like, you know, pull Adam to the side. Right? What's... Can't trust this guy. Like, there's no way we can work with this guy. Like, what type of fucking human being is gonna, like, redline an NDA? Like, for a company they're interviewing for, like, are they gonna do? Share trade secrets? Adam had a different perspective. He goes, this guy, if he was this diligent to take the time to redline the agreement and go over detail, this is somebody that we wanna work with. Mark came on board. We ended up hiring him. And, initially, we did not get along well at all, actually. So he was managing the the supply side. I was focused on the demand side. I brought in a ton of demand. He was working on publishers. And what ended up happening was over time, I ended up working on his team. I'd say team because there's only one person. So I ended up working under him. And initially, you know, what was in a great relationship turned into a great mentorship because what Mark saw was this raw kid who had a ton of energy, who had a ton of skill, but it wasn't honed in. He always pushed me to, like, really dig into the details. Like, when we do contracts, make sure that we're very specific about what we do. And going back to, like, I told you, like, we didn't have an in house counsel.
01:03:16 · Rafael Vivas
Like, Mark probably did over 200 agreements himself, and we only got screwed on one of them. Like, his his hit record is incredible. When we hired our first lawyer and he started redlining agreements, he would redline our lawyer's agreement. Like, also, the best Mark Rosner story... And by the he's gonna hate that I'm bringing him up. Mark doesn't hate anybody besides the one guy that he lent $20 to when he was in fifth grade. He still sees the temple today. So, like, you're talking about a guy that, like, every detail matters to him. And, actually, to kind of, like, go, like, further into the story, so at one point, my grandmother, she had breast cancer. I had to go to the hospital. And there was this deal that we were working on that took months. It was with a company actually out of... A little outside of LA. And we're so happy we got the deal done and like, you know, I was working on the agreement while in the hospital and I sent it out and they signed it and I signed it. And Mark calls me and, you know, I was I was expecting to be like, oh, how's your grandmother doing? He's like, Rafael, you screwed up big time on this deal. There's like this, you know, one one point that you're off effectively as well, for, like, 1% or 2%. And I was like, Mark, like, are you kidding me? We spent months. I can't go back to the client. I can't have this conversation with them. And he was just like, do you wanna be Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods? And just hung up the phone. And we're following up with me, following up with the client, renegotiating the deal. As you can imagine, the client's very irate. And, you know, we got the deal done, and then he called me back. And he was like, good job. You know? Like, he... Like, that was the type of guy who mentored me. And so that's why I cared so much about every single detail because for him, it it wasn't good enough unless it was perfect.