My guests today, Ryan Horrigan and Armando Kirwin, bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative, which led to the creation of their current company, Artie. We talk about pivots and micro pivots and staying sane through the million tiny conversations Cofounders need to navigate.
Ryan, the CEO, and Armando, President and co-founder of Artie have a pretty radical vision for the future of social media— namely, to make TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and other social media apps the gaming consoles of the future.
Before co-founding Artie, Ryan served as Chief Content Officer of the Comcast-backed VR & AR startup Felix & Paul Studios. He oversaw the development and production of feature films, including Academy Award Best Picture Winner “12 Years A Slave.” at Fox/New Regency, and is a two-time Emmy Award winner for immersive entertainment projects he produced with President Barack Obama and NASA, as well as a Peabody Award winner.
Armando has been in the VFX world for over fifteen years, working with numerous award-winning directors, including two-time Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker, Sundance Grand Jury prize nominee Sandy Smolan on The Click Effect, which was nominated for an Emmy; and Imraan Ismail on The Displaced, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. He also produced Take Flight, starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron. His most recent VR film, Nothing is Safe (2022), was an official selection of the Cannes Marché du Film.
While movies are a wonderful industry, they both saw the power and potential of gaming as a storytelling platform - and a financial juggernaut. If you didn’t know: According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. Let’s put that into perspective: the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, and the movie industry at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is more than three times the size of the music industry and almost four times the size of the movie industry.
TikTok used to be where people just watched videos (as of this writing, TikTok and Netflix are nearly tied for eyeball-hours). Now, hundreds of thousands of people are playing games on TikTok thanks to Artie and the technology breakthroughs that make streaming app-quality games from within social media apps possible.
But how did they get here? Through a million micro conversations about data, signals, stakeholders and what it all means. Artie is where are are today not because of one big pivot, but many, many micro-pivots over the course of years.
Pivots impact the team - who you needed on staff when you were focused on one path isn’t always who you need when you’ve decided to shift directions. Communication between departments and involving the team more is important - which means being intentional about regular check-ins and interdepartmental communication, but eventually, it comes down to the co-founder conversation - owning the choices that need to be made and moving forward, all while making sure you stay healthy and sane.
Pivots vs Shaping Clay
I loved this metaphor from Ryan, where he suggested that, from the outside, to investors, bloggers and customers, a company may have pivoted once, or a few times. From the inside, there are daily conversations, where the product is being shaped like clay, remade, refocused, almost constantly.
“Listen to your body, Have a Coach and a Therapist”
This was one of my favorite insights from this conversation. It’s not often that men talk openly about mental health and needing support. Ryan and Armando both have a coach (although they meet with that coach separately) and Armando advocated for having a therapist, while Ryan discussed how they got much much more intentional about listening to their bodies and taking down time. Armando suggests that therapy focuses on self-awareness, learning about yourself and your patterns, while his coaching focuses on future outcomes and goals.
“You have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time, you can't care about what they think of you”
Ryan quotes what he describes as a harsh-sounding notion from Dick Costello when he was at Twitter: In Ryan’s experience, when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings (even though you DO care about them as people and teammates). You have to make the decision that you, as the leader, believe needs to be made.
As a founder, you have to make and own tough decisions.
Ryan points out that, at the end of the day, you can't ignore tough decisions. You can’t have someone else do it for you. He suggests that while these moments are hard, it’s helpful to focus on the people who are still with you and the ultimate goals you’re trying to achieve.
Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources
Minute 13
Daniel Stillman:
Armando, I'm wondering how you as a co-founding team approach the dialogue, the deliberation, the discussion, the decision around, let's do more of this, let's do less of this, and to make the decision to be all in. How does that get navigated. Because it's complex?
Armando Kirwin:
I wish it was a decision. Because honestly, it's not. It's more a year of throwing yourself against a wall and then eventually being like, okay, well we tried really hard and that's just not working. So like Ryan said, when we were attempting to combine AI and game engines and do all of that instantly on social media, we tried really, really, really hard. We made demos with huge IP that we can't talk about. We hired all the right people, which we had to poach from other bigger companies. And it's a lot. And then you're hearing, "Oh wait, this investor's saying that, or the feedback we're getting from this person who is trying this game out is this."
So it's not just one decision, but eventually, if you're honest... I think it's really hard, I think people get stuck when the decision that they made, they should have made 12 months ago and they're still not confronting it. That's when you're in trouble. But it's okay to take a little bit of time to make sure. And for us, that's what we did. We sunset a lot of our AI efforts in our second year, and then we just doubled down on... Everyone will tell you, you'll be like, "Oh, this AI stuff is not quite working. But I love the idea of playing a game on Instagram and TikTok." That's so crazy to me. So you'll be hearing it and then you just have to come to terms with bit.
Minute 22
Daniel Stillman:
What do you think are the conversational skills that founders should be thinking about that enable them to have those dialogues on a regular basis? Because it's not one big conversation, it's many, many smaller conversations. What are the skills that you feel you're bringing into those dialogues with each other that make it possible to have those?
Armando Kirwin:
...that's a hard one. But I think part of it is, I think you have to be okay. You have to be able to function in this really messy, noisy situation without wanting to kill each other. So that's a big part of it. Because you are, it's just so asymmetrical. I might hear one thing from one person, Ryan might hear another thing from someone else, or we might learn something a week apart or what... We have to constantly be sharing, but also with the team. So you're really signing up for a... It's pretty frothy environment. So I think part of the skillset is to somehow be okay with that. I think a lot of people can... It can be hard to take, and you can maybe end up just doubling down on your vision and not listening and then you're screwed. So I think that probably one of the skills is just somehow trying to stay calm, knowing that it's just really... It is a pretty sloppy process, to be honest.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah, I agree. I think you have to be willing to kill your ideas, basically. You have to be willing to have these moments where you think you have brilliance, but then on the other hand, be ready to kill them at a moment's notice and be okay with it. So you have to constantly find some source of energy to keep coming at it with new angles and ideas. And you need to know when there's a big thing when you're like, "Hey, we're going to let go of all this AI stuff and put it on the shelf and just focus on this other thing." You have to be willing to do that.
Minute 25
Armando Kirwin:
So we're always trying to figure out what, what's actually working here? What do people want? What are people interested in? How can we reach a lot of people? Stuff that. And that helps get you through the more emotional side of like, wow, we just spent a year on this crazy thing and we're going to not use it.
Daniel Stillman:
So it sounds like keeping the north star in mind is something that's helpful. I saw Ryan, yes you, sir, in the back. You're raising your hand.
Ryan Horrigan:
Well, there's one other thing, which I don't know if this is part of another conversation you want to have, but also when you make a pivot, as Armando alluded to earlier, you may then find yourself with some mismatch or imbalance on the team, where now suddenly you have the wrong people on the team. So that then requires, in many situations, either recalibrating those team members into different roles or different functions or parting ways with people, which as you know, anyone can imagine is very difficult. And then feels as a founder, you have to A, own that, and B, you have to acknowledge that your decision-making process along the way bears responsibility in that, right?
So if you've decided to pivot the company, and now there's three people who you're going to have to part ways with, that's on you. And you have to own that. And I think the wrong decision would be to bury your head in the sand and try to keep them if they really shouldn't be there, because you're also stifling their careers too.
Minute 32
Ryan Horrigan:
Can I say one thing that was a quote from, I think it's from a few years ago, at a TechCrunch Disrupt. I just saw it on YouTube.
I think it was Dick Costello when he was at Twitter. And he was talking about team building culture and making tough decisions and dealing with tough things like these things. And he said something that really resonated with me. It sounds cold, but if you think about it makes sense from a founder point of view. He said, "As a founder, you have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time you can't care about what they think of you." And I thought that was really interesting. And his point there, what I think he was trying to say was, you actually do have to operate authentically in a way that shows empathy and caring. It has to be real because these are your people and this is your company. But when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings. You have to make the decision that you as the leader believe needs to be made. And you can't get weighed down by what someone might think about that. You have to move forward. And that is the hard part, right?
AI Summary
Ryan and Armando bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative, which led to the creation of their current company, Artie.
Pivoting may require recalibrating team members or parting ways with people, which can be difficult and requires owning the decision-making process. Communication between departments and involving the team more is important for successful check-ins and interdepartmental communication.
Key Moments
(1:59) - Ryan and Armando bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative
(5:24) - Ryan talks about how the film industry was changing and how VR was seen as a potential outlet for the future of entertainment
(9:51) - Ryan talks about the opportunity in mobile content and how it led them to explore bringing speech recognition and computer vision into mobile gaming
(12:02) - Ryan Horrigan had a midlife crisis in his 20s and left the film industry to pursue VR as an outlet for the future of entertainment
(15:39) - Ryan explained how they explored incorporating AI into mobile gaming but ultimately decided to strip it away and focus on solving problems and reducing friction for players
(22:35) - Ryan and Daniel discuss the challenges they faced with creating an AI-driven narrative game and how it wasn't scalable or replayable, and how they struggled to pitch it to other game publishers.
(26:12) - Pivoting may require recalibrating team members or parting ways with people, which can be difficult and requires owning the decision-making process
(29:33) - Ryan and Armando discuss the importance of owning tough decisions as a founder, even if it affects team members
(32:37) - Ryan shares advice from Dick Costello about caring deeply for your people but not worrying about what they think of you when making tough decisions
(44:57) - Ryan discusses different types of pivots and how to communicate them to investors, emphasizing the importance of having the right data points and assessing the pivot intelligently
(26:24) - Daniel asks about conversational skills needed for founders to have regular dialogues with each other, Armando mentions the need to be okay with a messy process, Ryan emphasizes the need to be willing to kill ideas and defend others, and keeping the North Star in mind helps
(34:36) - Ryan adds that founders must take ownership of tough decisions and prioritize their own health, as stress can manifest physically
(54:04) - Ryan suggests aiming for consent rather than consensus when making decisions as a company, and shares a process for identifying dissenting opinions based on business considerations rather than emotions or egos
MOre About Armando and Ryan
About Armando
Originally from New Mexico, Armando began his career in 2007, working primarily as a VFX and indie film producer.
In 2015, he embarked on a journey into the nascent virtual reality industry, joining one of the leading VR production companies as a Post Producer, Executive Producer, and Head of Post Production. During this time he worked with numerous award-winning directors, including: two-time Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker on A History of Cuban Dance and The Vodou Healer; Sundance Grand Jury prize nominee Sandy Smolan on The Click Effect, which was nominated for an Emmy; and Imraan Ismail on The Displaced, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. He also produced Take Flight, starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron.
In 2016, Armando began working as a freelance Director of Virtual Reality. He collaborated with Academy Award Best Picture nominee, Luca Guadagnino, on two VR films featuring acclaimed artists Rob Pruitt and Taryn Simon, and with Independent Spirit Award winner Gina Prince-Bythewood on LA Noir, a nine-episode VR film noir series, starring Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart, and Don Cheadle, which won an AICP Next award.
In 2017, Armando began writing and directing his own work, starting with Mercy, a VR film shot on location in Cameroon that combined 360-degree documentary footage with 3D animated dream sequences designed by social impact artist, Sutu. The film was an official selection at Tribeca and SXSW and was exhibited at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. He then directed A Life in Flowers (2019), featuring renowned botanical sculptor, Azuma Makoto. Participants reflected on themes of life and death during a conversation with artificial intelligence-powered, real-time renderings of flowers. The project was in competition at the Venice Biennale, received a favorable review by Art Critique, and was on display at the Phi Centre in Montreal, Canada. His most recent VR film, Nothing is Safe (2022), was an official selection of the Cannes Marché du Film.
Armando’s work in interactive VR and artificial intelligence led to an interest in video games. In 2018, he cofounded Artie, a next-gen video game company that has attracted nearly $40 million in venture capital from numerous notable investors, including: Warner Music Group, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and YouTube founder Chad Hurley.
In 2023, LA Weekly named Armando one of the top ten innovative minds disrupting the entertainment space. He has spoken frequently about the future of entertainment at venues such as: Sundance, Google, Facebook, SXSW, and the Toronto International Film Festival.
About Ryan
Ryan is the co-founder and CEO of Artie, a next-gen mobile gaming platform. We bring high-quality games directly to players on the world’s most popular social media and video apps – with no additional app download required. With Artie, people can easily discover, instantly play and share games with their friends on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more.
By circumventing app stores, we eliminate the friction of app downloads, bypass Apple and Google’s 30% store fees, and dramatically reduce customer acquisition costs while boosting virality compared to today's mobile games.
The Artie team is from Riot Games, Activision/Blizzard, EA, Zynga, King, Glu Mobile, Playtika, Jam City, Playstation, Tencent, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Snap, Lyft, and Disney.
Artie's investors include Digital (Steve Cohen, Mark Daniel, Benjamin Milstein); YouTube founder Chad Hurley; Zynga founder Mark Pincus; Roblox Chief Product Officer Manuel Bronstein; Kevin Durant & Rich Kleiman; Naomi Osaka; Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss; Cyan Banister; Warner Music Group; Allen & Company; Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment; and former Disney D2C Chairman and TikTok CEO, Kevin Mayer.
Before co-founding Artie, Ryan served as Chief Content Officer of the Comcast-backed VR & AR startup Felix & Paul Studios, where he oversaw content and business development, strategy, and partnerships.
Prior to Felix & Paul, Ryan was a studio executive at Fox/New Regency. He oversaw the development and production of feature films, including Academy Award Best Picture Winner “12 Years A Slave.” He began his career in the Motion Picture department at CAA and at Paramount Pictures.
Ryan is a two-time Emmy Award winner for immersive entertainment projects he produced with President Barack Obama and NASA, as well as a Peabody Award winner. He’s a former Hollywood Reporter 35 Under 35 honoree and has spoken at E3, Cannes, Sundance, Google, Meta, among other events.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman:
I will officially welcome you both to the Conversation Factory. Ryan, Armando, thanks for making time today. I really appreciate it.
Ryan Horrigan:
Thanks for having us.
Armando Kirwin:
Good to be here. Yeah, excited.
Daniel Stillman:
So my first question is how did you two meet and what are your favorite snacks?
Armando Kirwin:
So we met at a conference site, I think officially, but I had known about Ryan because we had both gone into virtual reality when that was at its peak. And we were both at two really successful VR companies. And Ryan had this reputation of being this absolute killer who could get all the money and all the best partnerships and all the best IP.
Daniel Stillman:
That's a pretty good rep.
Armando Kirwin:
So I knew of Ryan, but I don't think we officially met until the conference, right Ryan? Like in San Francisco, I think?
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah, it was the San Francisco Film Festival. We were on a panel together. And I don't remember what we were talking about, probably just VR and how it's going to change the world. And this was probably in 2016, I'm guessing, or '17.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
So you guys were on a panel together, hadn't met, and this is the meet cute.
Armando Kirwin:
Yes.
Daniel Stillman:
This is the moment.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah, and then we started chatting, and I remember thinking, "This dude should be the CEO of a company." I think I even told Ryan that. I was like, "You should be the CEO." But yeah, those were the early days for sure.
Ryan Horrigan:
And I also was like, "Well, Armando, you understand technology in a way that I don't. I'm just a business content strategy guy," almost like a salesman in better terms.
Armando Kirwin:
No, maybe in the beginning. I think that you've become a technologist as well at this point. But maybe in that era, yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah. But we started talking about the future of entertainment. I think that was the reason why we started hanging out and talking is we had this mutual fascination with the future of entertainment. And I think that's one of the reasons why we were in VR, because we both had come from traditional film entertainment, the movie business, from different corners of it.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
And we both wanted to leave that business to do something more innovative, more bleeding edge and interesting.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah, exactly. And we-
Daniel Stillman:
[inaudible 00:02:31] going to avoid the snack cover question completely.
Armando Kirwin:
Oh yeah, the snacks.
Daniel Stillman:
You're just going to leave that aside. I only asked this specific-
Armando Kirwin:
That's hard.
Daniel Stillman:
...because I just had a snack before I got here, and I'll just go first because I had a little spoonful of peanut butter. And for me, peanut butter is just this deeply soothing... It just always gets a little bit of protein, a little bit of flavor, and just gets me above the line again. So that's the reason why it's top of line for me is the snack that helps you just get through that bridge in the day. It's a completely personal and totally irrelevant question.
Armando Kirwin:
Does coffee count as a snack?
Daniel Stillman:
That's a great question, Armando.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Now we're going to have a philosophical-
Armando Kirwin:
I drink a lot of coffee these days. Yeah,
Ryan Horrigan:
I think it does, it's a like ritual.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
How much milk and sugar do you put in your coffee? Is it enough to...
Armando Kirwin:
That number's been creeping up for sure. Slowly but surely. I used to be like, no, you can't do that. And now I'm like, ah, I need all the support I can get. You know?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. No, I totally understand.
Ryan Horrigan:
So my answer would be if I'm trying to be healthy, which is hard, some nuts or a smoothie. And if I'm being my true self, it would be french fries probably, or something like that.
Daniel Stillman:
French fries as a snack is a really interesting concept.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah. Because it could go with a meal or you could just have a side of french fries for no reason, for your lunch. Which is a little strange, but I do that sometimes.
Daniel Stillman:
Whatever to get you over the hump. So that's good to know. Now I know what to send you guys in the middle of the day. If I was going to send a delivery to just make your day peak, that would be hot fries and a steaming cup of Joe. That's really good to know.
Armando Kirwin:
I mean, what else do you need, really?
Daniel Stillman:
Honestly, nothing else.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah. Honestly, yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
So this moment when you two met is really fascinating to me. I have to be honest, because the formation of human relationships is always a crazy mystery. Because there's tons of people you've met, tons of people you've probably been on panels with where you didn't have a second conversation and a third and a fourth and a fifth. What do you think kept you having a conversation all that time?
Armando Kirwin:
I think, well, part of it is that we had both been in the film industry for about 10 years, even though I was coming up through visual effects and Ryan was coming from the studio side. So there's different perspectives, but there's a shared knowledge base. So we could have conversations easily on a range of topics that we didn't have to start at basics. There was a lot of shared knowledge. But there was also a lot of shared pain because we had been through VR. And in a lot of ways our company today is based on that experience, like the way we're distributing games is almost an answer to how difficult it was to get things done in VR. So I think it was a shared context, both good and bad, that kick started things and made it pretty natural.
Ryan Horrigan:
Same with film and TV too. I think I was in the film business when it was starting to shrink and become different. I came to Hollywood to start my first job out of college when the first writer strike was happening, or the most recent writer strike... Well, I don't even know if it's... One of the most recent writer strikes. In 2006, and that was when we had iPhones. We had, not yet streaming, but we had maybe early YouTube if my dates are correct or we were on the precipice of that. So everything was starting to change, but people in traditional media hadn't recognized it yet. But I think there's some people like myself who were younger who were living online, who were starting to read the tea leaves.
So I think people like Armando and I were just of this generation where, I don't know, I'm not going to speak for Armando, but I grew up my whole life wanting to be in the movies. Not in the movies, but working on movies as a producer or a executive or a writer or a director. And to go from being 10 years old and being a cinephile to dreaming about that for the next 10 years while you're in school and then getting to do it, but then the rug gets pulled out from under you and you're like, oh wait, this whole medium has changed. Not because it's not a great medium, but consumer habits have changed. Technology is changed the way we consume content.
So I had this, it was almost having a midlife crisis but in your twenties over your profession that you had obsessed about forever. Where you're like, wait a second, this is not what it was supposed to be. And I'm like a decade too late, at least.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh man.
Ryan Horrigan:
So that's kind of what led me into VR. I had five years in the film business where I was climbing the ranks and I was working on some Oscar winning movies, but I was deeply unhappy because I felt movies were becoming less culturally relevant, particularly with young people. And I could see that economically the business was shrinking and changing and not in a good way. So for me, VR was an outlet or a stepping stone to the future where I was like, okay, I can have one foot in Hollywood and one foot in Silicon Valley. VR is being supported by Google and Facebook, among others, in a significant way.
This might be the future of entertainment where I can now be in the content, which is a whole different experience. And I still think that the concept of that is incredible. It's just that everyone got way too ahead of themselves in terms of how long or hard it would be. It's kind of like that quote, and I'm going to butcher it: a lot less happens in a year than you expect, but a lot more happens in 10 years than you could imagine your wildest dreams. It's that kind of thing. I think we all thought VR would just change the world in a year or two, but it might end up doing so in 10 plus years.
Daniel Stillman:
So Armando, was that some of the shared pain that Ryan was talking through, what the state of the industry and where you saw it-
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
...where it was and where you wanted it to go?
Armando Kirwin:
Exactly. And I think we were both at these really cool VR startups, some of the best funded, doing the best work. But just in a nutshell, there just weren't enough people. We couldn't reach enough people. 'Cause there was so much friction, right? You have to go buy this thing. And at the time, they were even much clunkier than they are even today.
And so I think it's hard when you're doing your best work creatively and technically, you're pushing the envelope, you're learning new things, and then no one even knows what you're doing.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
It's fun, it was really fun. And some of the coolest people I've ever met were in VR because they were true mavericks and they were just such interesting thinkers. But when we started this company, the thing that's actually been persistent for our entire journey was this idea of how do we reach the most people as easily as possible? And that's the one part of our vision that's never changed. And I think it was a direct response to VR. In hindsight, I don't know that I was super aware of it at the time-
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
...but now it's like really-
Ryan Horrigan:
In Hollywood.
Armando Kirwin:
...it was crystal clear. Yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
And film and TV too. It was film, and maybe not TV with Netflix and streaming, but theatrical film in a theater, it was reaching fewer people, particularly young people. So I think we were just thinking to ourselves, well, if VR is not here today like we all thought it was, in a massive way, then mobile is still the dominant platform for this foreseeable future. But what is the opportunity in mobile, in the content space? We have YouTube, we have streaming video, we have social networks, we have app based mobile games that go through Apple and Google. Where's the white space? And that's what led us to a number of thoughts.
The first was we were actually super early, because right now we're in this AI, generative AI hype cycle right now it seems like. And some of this stuff is awesome, but we were actually in the first hype cycle of that when we started Artie in late 2018, there was a little hype cycle. And what we were trying to do was bring speech recognition, natural language understanding and computer vision into mobile gaming in a way that would let players interact with game characters or NPCs in a more personalized, pseudo intelligent way. So imagine talking to your game characters and having a conversation as you play the game. That'd be pretty cool. Or instead of watching boring cut scenes or cinematics, those were more interactive and more human, more uniquely human. So we went down this path for about a year or so exploring that, and that was what we started Artie to do, all while also trying to do it over the top and through the mobile web. Which goes to what Armando was saying, which is reaching a lot of people.
And we're trying to do these two things at once. And I think, as you find in startups, don't try to do more than one thing, do one thing really well. And I think we've had a couple of instances over our trajectory where the bringing interactive entertainment or games to people over the top, to use a video term, has been the constant. But we've gotten involved in a couple of other things along the way, AI being one of them. I think what we found out with AI stuff is also that VR is going to take a long time. We had cracked the input side of things of we can get a game listening to your voice and then converting that into text and then using that text to make decisions in the game. But we hadn't figured out the generative dialogue part, the stuff that GTP-4 I guess today does really well.
And then the output of real time speech synthesis and coding that generative dialogue into a voice of a character you know in real time. So there's a lot of hard stuff there. And then the computer vision, whole separate thing, recognizing your engagement or your contextual stuff to your environment. So we still believe in all that stuff in the long term, but we also found it really limited us in terms of the type of games or interactive experiences we could make.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Ryan Horrigan:
So we at some point decided to strip that away for now and put that on the shelf, and then just focus on bringing really great mobile games to people in a unique and differentiated way that would solve problems, mainly friction, for players.
Daniel Stillman:
So this, I think, a really fundamental question for us to peel some layers of the onion on around the conversation at the heart of a pivot, deciding to double down on one thing or to leave something else behind. Armando, I'm wondering how you as a co-founding team approach the dialogue, the deliberation, the discussion, the decision around, let's do more of this, let's do less of this, and to make the decision to be all in. How does that get navigated. Because it's complex?
Armando Kirwin:
I wish it was a decision. Because honestly, it's not. It's more a year of throwing yourself against a wall and then eventually being like, okay, well we tried really hard and that's just not working. So like Ryan said, when we were attempting to combine AI and game engines and do all of that instantly on social media, we tried really, really, really hard. We made demos with huge IP that we can't talk about. We hired all the right people, which we had to poach from other bigger companies. And it's a lot. And then you're hearing, "Oh wait, this investor's saying that, or the feedback we're getting from this person who is trying this game out is this."
So it's not just one decision, but eventually, if you're honest... I think it's really hard, I think people get stuck when the decision that they made, they should have made 12 months ago and they're still not confronting it. That's when you're in trouble. But it's okay to take a little bit of time to make sure. And for us, that's what we did. We sunset a lot of our AI efforts in our second year, and then we just doubled down on... Everyone will tell you, you'll be like, "Oh, this AI stuff is not quite working. But I love the idea of playing a game on Instagram and TikTok." That's so crazy to me. So you'll be hearing it and then you just have to come to terms with bit.
Daniel Stillman:
Ryan, does that line up with your perspective? A million small discussions around-
Ryan Horrigan:
Oh yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
...signals you're hearing.
Ryan Horrigan:
This sounds horrible to say, but if you're a founder I think you understand this. If you would be like, how many times has the company pivoted? I think to anyone from the outside looking in, it's once or once and a half. But to us it feels like micro pivots every day. It's almost like you're trying to constantly get data points from users or from investors or other people. And the more data points, obviously the better. And you're constantly shaping this clay.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Ryan Horrigan:
You're kind of like, together, you're shaping this thing with new information every day. So to Armando's point, it's really hard to say do a pivot in a day. I think that there's probably almost no company that has done that.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
It might look that, But there's a lot of conversations and data points, and it's probably different for every company and every pivot. But for us, yeah, I think this first one, this one out of AI was over the course of maybe a year in 2019 and early 2020 probably. But I think by the time the pandemic started, we knew directionally where we were going, except we had a whole new problem, which is a global pandemic.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. And we can get to that in a moment. I wanna-
Armando Kirwin:
You also have to imagine, okay, now certain people on your team aren't relevant, but you need all these new people. And hiring, and that takes a long time. And also sometimes you learn certain things as you're building. As we built out some of our AI tech and we got a really, really nuanced understanding of the costs of operating it, that also factors in. So there are certain things you just can't even know conversationally that involve the types of people on your team or the nitty-gritty of getting this tech actually working and stuff that. So yeah, it takes time. It takes time.
Ryan Horrigan:
And that stuff's really hard, to those two points. We found out with this AI stuff that the only type of game that made sense for us to create was a voice driven narrative game. Think of it like a game meets Alexa, if you've ever done any of those interactive stories or choose your own adventures on Alexa. Or if you're familiar with the choose your own adventures on Netflix, like Bandersnatch is probably the first and most popular one. We were making games like that where you could be with a superhero character or a movie character and go through an interactive story where you're like their companion. And that is or was a genre that has been successful. But what we learned is it's actually a really tough genre, because it's actually more akin to film or TV in the sense that you have to make lots of content that will be experienced one time, or much of it will not be seen by the player at all because you're choosing your own path.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh my Lord.
Ryan Horrigan:
So it's exponential content creation. So there was this irony. It was like-
Daniel Stillman:
Which doesn't, all that surface material, that surface area doesn't even get exposed to the customer-
Ryan Horrigan:
Correct.
Daniel Stillman:
...necessarily. Wow.
Ryan Horrigan:
Correct. So that was the only genre that really made sense, that was so obvious to us. But it was also the genre that required the most art resources and production resources. And it wasn't a replayable game. So we were like, oh, this is actually horrible because this doesn't scale right? And it's really expensive and laborious, and it's antithetical to the idea of AI. AI should make things easier and more automated. And in fact, by having AI as a feature for players, it was making our game creation more complicated. And then when we went to go talk, this was the real test, we went to go talk to the founders of some of the biggest game publishers, mobile game publishers in the world. We happen to know three or four of them, one of them's our investor. What became clear to us was everyone thought this was neat, but they didn't feel there was a way to make it make sense for their current hit games. And their current hit games didn't need it, they were already successful.
So we started to compare ourselves as an analogy to Niantic, who makes Pokemon Go. In that we had heard a lot about their early story, and ours was starting to feel similar. And obviously they're very successful and it worked out for them, but we felt the outcome was going to be very much a coin flip or binary, and we didn't like the odds. So what I mean by that is Niantic was pitching a new type of gameplay experience to other game developers initially as a platform. So they were pitching GPS or out in the world games, there's probably a better... Location based games. And they were pitching AR, the combination of the two. And that's what Pokemon Go is. And I think the game publishers out there, from what I heard, didn't really respond to that. They're like, "Hey, we're not making games like that right now, and our games are already successful, so why are we talking?"
And then when they actually thought about it, they were like, "Okay, we're going to have to do this ourselves. We're going to have to make our own game," which they did. And then they re-skinned it as Pokemon Go and they got the rights and the game is still very successful, but there haven't been other games like it, which is interesting. No one has copied them. There aren't any other GPS AR games out there of note. Not really. And most people don't use the AR mode when they play Pokemon Go according to the data.
So anyway, it's really interesting, and we felt like we were going to go down that path. We're like, "Okay, we're going to be make these voice voice-driven games. No one else is going to care, none of the other publishers because it's just weird. And we're going to have to make a hit game with huge IP to make this work.
Daniel Stillman:
Right, which is very heavy approach.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yes. It doesn't feel a startup, like a scalable startup.
Daniel Stillman:
Right. Whereas the idea is let's make a platform and many people will use the platform.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yes.
Daniel Stillman:
So a couple of things that I'm hearing, which I want to make sure I've gotten this right, 'cause this is important stuff. One is that the feedback loops, the concept is sometimes this idea of a pace layer. That certain things take a while to get the feedback loop, to find out what customers think, to find out what the market wants, to find out how the technology really plays out to find out what the costs really are. It can take multiple months up to a year to make sense of all of those signals that are... and what all the constraints really are.
And you're having conversations constantly. Micro-pivoting on what does this mean? What does that mean? Are we seeing what we're seeing? And I think the question I have is, because you mentioned we're having lots of conversations, and that's of course the thing I care the most about. What do you think are the conversational skills that founders should be thinking about that enable them to have those dialogues on a regular basis? Because it's not one big conversation, it's many, many smaller conversations. What are the skills that you feel you're bringing into those dialogues with each other that make it possible to have those?
Armando Kirwin:
That's a hard-
Daniel Stillman:
It is.
Armando Kirwin:
...that's a hard one. But I think part of it is, I think you have to be okay. You have to be able to function in this really messy, noisy situation without wanting to kill each other. So that's a big part of it. Because you are, it's just so asymmetrical. I might hear one thing from one person, Ryan might hear another thing from someone else, or we might learn something a week apart or what... We have to constantly be sharing, but also with the team. So you're really signing up for a... It's pretty frothy environment. So I think part of the skillset is to somehow be okay with that. I think a lot of people can... It can be hard to take, and you can maybe end up just doubling down on your vision and not listening and then you're screwed. So I think that probably one of the skills is just somehow trying to stay calm, knowing that it's just really... It is a pretty sloppy process, to be honest.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah, I agree. I think you have to be willing to kill your ideas, basically. You have to be willing to have these moments where you think you have brilliance, but then on the other hand, be ready to kill them at a moment's notice and be okay with it. So you have to constantly find some source of energy to keep coming at it with new angles and ideas. And you need to know when there's a big thing when you're like, "Hey, we're going to let go of all this AI stuff and put it on the shelf and just focus on this other thing." You have to be willing to do that. And not everyone is, and I think there's this spectrum of when's the right moment to make that decision? When is too early, when is too late? But I think on the other hand, you also want to have conviction on the things that really matter.
So you have to be able to do both things. You have to be able to kill things and not get too bummed out and have fresh ideas, but also be able to defend things and continue with things when they get hard. So knowing the difference between the two is difficult.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, that is a needle to thread. You're right, Armando, it's not trivial, for sure.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah, it's not trivial. But that's also the difference between a goal and a piece of technology. If you're just broadly interested in the future of entertainment, yeah, you're going to be messing around with all kinds of stuff. You're going to be looking into the VR, AR, you're going to be curious about blockchain, you're going to be curious about AI. You might bring some of that stuff into your efforts, learn some stuff. So I think that you're still moving forward if you don't get too married to a specific idea or technology, per se.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
So I think that that also helps. It's remembering the big picture, I guess is a cliche way of talking about it, but it's true.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
So we're always trying to figure out what, what's actually working here? What do people want? What are people interested in? How can we reach a lot of people? Stuff that. And that helps get you through the more emotional side of like, wow, we just spent a year on this crazy thing and we're going to not use it.
Daniel Stillman:
So it sounds like keeping the north star in mind is something that's helpful. I saw Ryan, yes you, sir, in the back. You're raising your hand.
Ryan Horrigan:
Well, there's one other thing, which I don't know if this is part of another conversation you want to have, but also when you make a pivot, as Armando alluded to earlier, you may then find yourself with some mismatch or imbalance on the team, where now suddenly you have the wrong people on the team. So that then requires, in many situations, either recalibrating those team members into different roles or different functions or parting ways with people, which as you know, anyone can imagine is very difficult. And then feels as a founder, you have to A, own that, and B, you have to acknowledge that your decision making process along the way bears responsibility in that, right?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
So if you've decided to pivot the company, and now there's three people who you're going to have to part ways with, that's on you. And you have to own that. And I think the wrong decision would be to bury your head in the sand and try to keep them if they really shouldn't be there, because you're also stifling their careers too.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
Like we had some brilliant AI people who should go do brilliant AI things, but when we were no longer doing it doesn't make sense for them to be here with us. But that's a tough conversation.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, it really is.
Armando Kirwin:
It's really hard because these are high performers, they're your friends. They've done nothing wrong, you've done nothing wrong. It's really hard to sever that relationship.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, and you sold them a vision.
Armando Kirwin:
We actually, even last week I had to do this. And it's been years, and it was still terrible. So it's hard.
Daniel Stillman:
How do you take care of yourself? Because this is, I don't think many people think or have this discussion about the cost of a pivot. We think about, "Oh, we pivoted and we succeeded, we won. That was great." And we don't think about the shedding and the fact that, as you said, we have sold a vision, recruited these people, sometimes poached them. They may be friends and collaborators. And then we get to a point where we say, "Hey, this is where we part ways." Armando, that's hard. How do you take care of yourself emotionally and mentally? Because I definitely have friends who talk about the challenge of letting someone go just around pure economics. This is a decision you made.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Right?
Armando Kirwin:
It's really hard. I don't do anything special aside from therapy. We have an awesome coach. And only in the last year or so, Ryan and I have gotten much more serious about downtime and other things that we didn't have the liberty of doing in the first few years. And also just your body is pretty intuitive too. You'll crash hard and you'll phase in and out a little bit in those moments of stress, those weeks or days where you just can't. So I don't have a brilliant answer. Ryan, do you have a better answer? That wasn't great.
Daniel Stillman:
I think it's-
Ryan Horrigan:
No, I mean I-
Daniel Stillman:
We'll come back to you, Armando. 'Cause there's lots of [inaudible 00:29:31] there. But Ryan, what's on your mind?
Ryan Horrigan:
Well, I was going to say all of that is true in my experience too. I think that there's a human decision happening and real implications. So you have to take that seriously. You have to handle that eloquently and with compassion or empathy. But you also can't ignore a decision like that if it has to be made. You have to own it. You have to be the face of it. You have to stand up to it. You can't have someone else do it for you. It's yours. It's your thing to own. So I think as founders, we know that. It does get a little easier in that when you've had to do it a couple times, or if you've ever gone through a layoff situation, it sucks but you also have to learn how to get through it for your team. Because there are a lot of people who are still with you and you're doing it for a reason, to get better. So you have to focus on that.
But I would say to Armando's point, taking care of your health and your mental health is really important as a founder. And I think there's been times when myself and Armando have both found ourselves not doing that, and we try to be a little bit more aware of that today. Like I would say I'm getting older. I'm not that old, but I'm getting older. But I would say my health has never been probably poorer than the last few years of being a founder. And I do think a lot of that is just the stress manifesting as things like back pain or trouble sleeping or just stuff like that. And then just trying to make the time to work out more or be more intentional about how you eat. I think those things start to matter more when your body is reacting to say this mental stress that being a founder brings with it.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah. I think Ryan hit on a big one for me that I forgot to mention, which is the team. So when you're in the process of doing this, when you know you're going this way and everyone knows that say this person doesn't fit the new model, there's cognitive dissonance with every day that they're still there. Even if everyone loves that person and that person loves everyone... I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about... You know what I mean? So-
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
...when you do it, you actually help the team too though. So it's almost the hit you have to take as a founder, but your team will thank you because they have that extra clarity and they don't have the cognitive dissonance now of, "Well, what's that person doing if we're all over here doing this?" So-
Daniel Stillman:
Right, people know that. It's not like nobody's aware of this.
Armando Kirwin:
...that context is good. Everyone knows. They're all smart, they're all... So pretending that they're not is just such a waste of time. So getting really head on is great because even the person you're letting go also knows what's happening. So you can't just beat around the bush or pretend it's about this or something else, it's best to just do it. But yeah, thinking about the team helps, thinking about that boost helps a lot.
Ryan Horrigan:
Can I say one thing that-
Daniel Stillman:
Of course.
Ryan Horrigan:
...was a quote from, I think it's from a few years ago, at a TechCrunch Disrupt. I just saw it on YouTube. I think it was Dick Costello when he was at Twitter. And he was talking about team building culture and making tough decisions and dealing with tough things like these things. And he said something that really resonated with me. It sounds cold, but if you think about it makes sense from a founder point of view. He said, "As a founder, you have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time you can't care about what they think of you." And I thought that was really interesting. And his point there, what I think he was trying to say was, you actually do have to operate authentically in a way that shows empathy and caring. It has to be real because these are your people and this is your company. But when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings. You have to make the decision that you as the leader believe needs to be made. And you can't get weighed down by what someone might think about that. You have to move forward. And that is the hard part, right?
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Ryan Horrigan:
But I thought that was really interesting.
Daniel Stillman:
It is. I'm so glad that there's these layers of conversation that we're talking about. The conversation that you're having with yourself. I think Armando, I appreciate you bringing up, and Ryan, you bringing up listening to your body. Because that's the base level, the signals that I am giving to myself. And also it's not, sometimes men don't often seek therapy. And so the idea that a founder needs a therapist and a coach is not something that people... You need a therapist and a coach. I think it's great to hear you've advocate for that. 'Cause I think there are very different types of conversations that you're having.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
How would you characterize what you get from one versus the other?
Armando Kirwin:
Well yeah, in therapy you're learning about yourself and hopefully recognizing certain patterns that you have. Not that they're easy to fix, but at least you know what's going on. But a lot of the coaching that I get, I think Ryan, we have the same coach. That's more about where we're trying to go. It's more about the future and how to get there and how to think about things. So one's about you in the moment and maybe why you're this way. And the other is a lot more future oriented. Like okay, what are the steps you should be taking over the next 12 months to achieve this goal? That's where the coaching is about increasing future outcomes, whatever they might be.
Ryan Horrigan:
Tactical stuff of how you want to deal with this problem or these players or people in this situation. And it's interesting that Armando and I have the same coach, but we see the coach separately, which I think is really interesting. And we never see this person together. And I really like that. I think it, for whatever reason, that really works. Because sometimes there's this connection that's made between this person and Armando and I that there's certain things that Armando and I can talk about together, but then there's probably certain things that are better discussed separately where this person can build a bridge or help us. So it's been really good, I think, for both of us. But then also just personally, regardless of how we relate to one another, just for each of us individually it's quite good.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, it's very interesting you mentioned that. 'Cause I think there's some people who think, "No, no, no, we should have different coaches so that we can have total silence," versus the benefit of them hearing the stories or the complexity of them hearing stories potentially about the other person.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:36:21] makes sense. Again, it's future oriented though. So it's about helping us achieve certain goals. I think the added context is what makes that coaching even more powerful.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah, if it was about our childhoods or something, then you could totally keep that stuff separate. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Fair. So I think there's two more layers that I think that are important that I want to talk about. One is the cadence and format of how you two structure your own regular check-ins. Like how often you're having your own appointment with each other and how you structure that. And then there's another piece, if we think about the layers of conversation, we've talked about the pivot that you're having and this sensing that you're having with yourself and the conversations you're having. But we haven't talked about how you have the conversation with your funders, your investors as you go through that pivot. And I imagine that there's a level of complexity there.
So I'm hoping we can address both of those, are two very, very different questions. I probably shouldn't have introduced both, and that's bad hosting. But I'd love to talk about first how... You guys have your coaches, your coach. You got your emotional check-ins. How often are you two meeting and is there any specific structure you're using when you meet to make sure you're having the right conversations?
Ryan Horrigan:
I would say no, there's no specific structure and there's no specific time. And we talk once or twice a day, I would say, for 10 to 60 minutes. It really depends on what the conversation is.
Daniel Stillman:
That's interesting. So it's ad hoc?
Armando Kirwin:
It used to be a lot more. We used to call each other 20 times a day and it was craziness, but the company was smaller. In the last 15 months we've built a executive team for the first time. And so Ryan and I attend reoccurring meetings together, certain meetings with the team that operationally it's just easier for us, also for our team to not... Because the problem with telephone calls is no one else is there. No one else is learning and hearing and working through stuff. So it reached a point where it was actually harmful for us to have so many one-on-one conversations. It was driving our team crazy.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, because you're moving forward without your team.
Armando Kirwin:
Right.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
Exactly. So we had to retrain ourselves in the last year or so. At this stage of the company, as you're approaching maybe 50 people or whatever, you have to retrain yourself to actually not have all these one-on-one conversations because they're black holes of information. So we do talk still a couple times a day, but we used to make all of decisions on phone calls and we had to stop. So depends on where you're at, I think, in your journey. And also remote wise and stuff like that where people can't pick up what we're talking about in the office or whatever.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
That's a very interesting shift. Because obviously having, I've heard this from lots of early stage founders, a lot of conversation, just open dialogue, a lot of honesty and a lot of iteration. But you're at the point now where your senior leadership team needs to be part of the dialogue more frequently.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah. And I would say we've been really trying to work on right now in our company interdepartmental communication, because sometimes we find that different departments, let's say marketing and operations, and in our case, in a game company, art, engineering, product. There's all these different pods of people and they're all working towards this...
Daniel Stillman:
Uh oh.
Ryan Horrigan:
...goal, but-
Daniel Stillman:
Ryan warned us that his internet might do that.
Ryan Horrigan:
...sometimes they have different information, they have different strategies, agendas. Oh, sorry.
Daniel Stillman:
No, it's okay.
Ryan Horrigan:
Am I back?
Daniel Stillman:
We just had a tiny blip. You're back.
Ryan Horrigan:
Oh, okay.
Daniel Stillman:
So yeah, different strategies, different information.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah. So one thing we've been trying to do is create systems and processes that are simple and not too many of them that will bog us down to better disseminate information in an a sync manner, through a wiki, through Slack, through calendar invites. So we recently, and it's probably too late that we did this, we incorporated a process for agendas or meeting notes that gets shared through the whole company, except for sensitive ones like an HR meeting or something.
So let's say you're in engineering, you will have a multitude of ways to find out what happened in marketing this week, if you are so intrigued or if it matters to you. But then also getting departments to write weekly recaps and then larger monthly recaps and do some show and tell, sharing stuff during our all hands that's more about educating people on the great work they're doing.
Because one thing I think every company eventually finds out is you end up in meetings where people just go through status updates or slides, and that's terrible. If you have someone just reading to you what's on a slide that you should have read before the meeting started, that's just a waste of everyone's time. So what we've found is we need to get people actually having a discourse and having healthy debates or disagreements and also showing people how things work that they've built or that they're doing. So we're just getting more intentional with all that stuff. And it's taken us a while. But it's that thing where you don't want to do too many things, you don't have too many systems, too many processes. 'Cause then you get bogged down, right?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. You don't want to over structure, certainly not the size you're at.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah. And it's remarkably hard. You'd think, oh, there's so many startups, there's so many companies in the world or teams, this stuff has all been figured out. No, it's so hard. It's really remarkably hard to get 50 people to always have the same information as each other at the same time and be running in the same direction. You do all of these things, and then you still end up having to... It's very clear. It's like, oh, I'm probably two months ahead of certain people on the company right now in terms of what we're thinking about, whatever. It never really ends. So that part's also just part of the learning, I think, of hitting the stage that we're at. It's you can maintain a real time sync when it's two people and they're talking to each other [inaudible 00:43:04]-
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Armando Kirwin:
...times a day.
Ryan Horrigan:
Well another thing that we often talk about is in a company like a startup, you go from a small group of people, let's say less than 10 or five, where you're doing stuff and you're managing people who are doing stuff. That's the first phase. The next phase is you're doing stuff still and you're managing managers, I guess. And then at some point you really shouldn't be doing stuff. And I mean stuff like building stuff, you should just be... Or as a CEO, you got to do the fundraising, you got in charge of communication and culture and alignment. Which maybe for us is expressed through OKRs, right?
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Ryan Horrigan:
But if you find yourself making too many granular decisions, then you're probably doing something wrong and you're probably micromanaging people. So we've really tried to over the last year say to ourselves, "Hey, how many decisions are we a part of?" And sometimes, myself included, Armando knows, we'll make mistakes and we'll get too granular on something. For example, why is this red and not blue? But then the minute you do it, you know you shouldn't be doing it. That's someone else's decision to own.
Daniel Stillman:
Like, d'oh. I do care, but I shouldn't be making this decision.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
What a fascinating metric as a startup founder, number of decisions you are not touching but making and being a part of, it should drop.
Ryan Horrigan:
Right.
Daniel Stillman:
That's so interesting.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yes.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah, it should drop. If you're hiring the right people, it should drop.
Daniel Stillman:
So we're getting close to the end of our time, which is shocking because we really hit a great vein, and I'm really... This is wonderful stuff. Is there anything that we have not talked about that we should talk about with the few minutes we have?
Armando Kirwin:
Well, do you want to talk about how you communicate pivots to investors, Ryan?
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah. Look, I think it's not a secret that many, many startups, if not maybe more than people realize, do go through pivots. I actually think even companies who set out to build a particular product and end up succeeding have probably done a version of a pivot in terms of a product feature or who the customer is or their strategy of is it bottoms up? Is it top down? So I think there's different types of pivots. There's the real hard pivot. For lack of better examples, just the one in my brain, Slack was a gaming company that became a chat app. That's a pretty hard pivot, right?
Daniel Stillman:
Fair.
Ryan Horrigan:
And I think there was probably somewhere along the way, but they would probably tell you it wasn't a day that they decided. They had built this product for themselves, I think this is the story. And then they started using it, and then they were like, "Okay, we're going to actually just... this is the product." It's no longer a gaming company. Then there's like, "We were doing X and now we're doing Y," and it's a completely different industry. Those are super hard pivots. Then there's companies like us where it's like, "Oh, you were doing this thing and this other thing, and then you got rid of one of them." But you kept doing the same thing. You basically were doing two things and then you said, "Okay, it's just one thing now."
And then there's like the thing we just talked about where it's like, "Oh, I just changed my go-to market strategy and I'm going bottoms up instead of top down." But they're all versions of pivots. So I think when you go to an investor, A, you got to explain that succinctly and you got to prove that you have the right data points from the customer or the right people. But I think everyone's generally open to the idea if they feel you've assessed it intelligently with the right point of view or lens, with the right resources.
So yeah, we've never had an issue with that. I mean, I think if we were pivoting six times every year, that'd be a huge problem. But I think going from AI to bringing games into social media when that was already with us foundationally, for us that's worked out. But also building stuff in the gaming space is very hard and takes many years. It's a lot different than building a widget for Google Chrome that's going to do cool calendar stuff. Not to disparage that stuff, because those are huge businesses, by the way. But just gaming is a different level of complexity. And there are businesses that are way more complex, like in biotech or defense or something, right?
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Ryan Horrigan:
So-
Daniel Stillman:
It's quite a spectrum.
Ryan Horrigan:
...it's all relative. Yeah, yeah. So-
Daniel Stillman:
So one thing I'm hearing is you get one or two pivots.
Ryan Horrigan:
Yeah, that's it.
Daniel Stillman:
You can explain it with the narrative core, especially as you said, with the right data, saying, "Look, we've done our homework and our thesis we now know needs to be revised." Nobody's going to say, "No, stay where you're at." If they've bought into your vision, they may buy into your new narrative if you're sticking with the narrative core. So that's really helpful.
Armando Kirwin:
Especially investors. Investors theoretically are going to be like, "Yeah, that makes sense. I support you." I think the team can be a little harder, especially if someone's been working on... someone who's actually building whatever it was that you're not using anymore. Or even, "Oh shit. Well, this..." I don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but anyway-
Daniel Stillman:
You can curse as much as you want, it's all good.
Armando Kirwin:
...Oh darn, now you're going to lay off my friend. You're going to lay off my friend. So anyway, I think you get more feet dragging for sure on the team side, and that is obviously probably the most important relationship. So that you have to really manage in a more nuance way over a longer period of time.
Ryan Horrigan:
Or you get a fracture where half the people are gung-ho, and they're like, "Yeah, we see it too, and you're right." And then the other people are like, "No wait, why are you... What about this thing that we spent all this time on?"
Daniel Stillman:
How do you heal a fracture like that, when there are camps, factions?
Ryan Horrigan:
I don't think there's a perfect answer for that. I would say sometimes you're trying to bring people to the middle, but that's not always the case. Sometimes you're very firm like, "No, this is the direction." So it really just depends.
Daniel Stillman:
That's really interesting.
Armando Kirwin:
Yeah. And also your team composition, you'll have people on different sides of lots of debates. And as long as you can get them working together, even temporarily, it still makes sense. I'm sorry, it's torrentially down pouring so my [inaudible 00:49:27] is terrible now-
Daniel Stillman:
Actually, I can't hear... Zoom is really good at pulling away repetitive... So I can't hear it at all, you're amazing. It's all good. Yeah, sorry Ryan, go for it.
Ryan Horrigan:
One more just on that topic, something else I heard someone say, and I wish I could remember who recently. Someone who's sort of a operations guru, they said you ideally aren't looking for consensus, because consensus weighs you down. You're looking for consent.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Ryan Horrigan:
I really like that. You don't want a company where the CEO decides everything, that's not going to be good for anyone or for culture. And you might move quickly, but you're not going to get the best ideas. You're going to have bad ideas because it's going to be one person's idea. But then if you go for consensus, it's going to take forever and you're also going to revert to some sort of mean or middle ground that's not amazing.
But consent, like the way it was laid out to me, and there's a process for it. There's a high bar to actually challenge an idea when a group of people or whoever's putting this idea forward is put it out there. Let's say it's status quo or we're proposing something new. You want to make sure that you can identify when there's a dissenting opinion for a different strategy, that that opinion is pure from a business standpoint and it's not emotional or from a ego standpoint. And there's some ways to suss that out in a process that I read recently. I thought it was really interesting and just like, yeah, just get to consent not consensus.
Daniel Stillman:
If you have that link, if you dig it up, I'd love to see that.
Ryan Horrigan:
I'll share it with you, yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
And this really sounds like the disagree and commit mindset. Like we may disagree, but we need to get some data to learn and so let's get consent to at least try.
Gentlemen, this has been a wonderful, vital, vibrant conversation, but our time together is almost done. Where should people go to learn more about all things Ryan, Armando, and of course Artie. Where shall we direct people to the internet if they want to connect more to you two and the thing you're making together?
Armando Kirwin:
Just artie.com, A-R-T-I-E.com. You can keep up with us there. And our platform is already functional, so our first game is live on our platform so check it out. It's in alpha stage, so I'd love to have people playing the game and helping us improve it. And we have a second game that we're starting to work on as well. So lots of fun stuff. But yeah, I think that's probably the best way.
Daniel Stillman:
Awesome. Anything to add to that, Ryan?
Ryan Horrigan:
No, that's it. I mean, if you want to work at Artie, we're on LinkedIn too.
Daniel Stillman:
Excellent. Well, gentlemen, this has been a deep and nourishing conversation, so I will thank you for your time and call scene.
Ryan Horrigan:
Thank you.
Armando Kirwin:
Thank you so much.
Daniel Stillman:
All right.