Dan Martell - The Creator of Club Penguin - Lane Merrifield @ Wheelhouse Ventures

00:00:00.000 You know, I always tell people, like, there's two things you don't mess with.

00:00:03.640 You don't mess with someone's kids, and you don't mess with someone's money.

00:00:06.300 And we were literally doing both in real time.

00:00:22.400 Lane Mirafield, what's up?

00:00:23.980 How are you?

00:00:24.500 Dude, I'm so glad that we could do this.

00:00:26.980 We're actually sitting in your building, downtown Kelowna.

00:00:30.280 We are, we are.

00:00:31.120 The Innovation Center.

00:00:32.860 Incredible part of the tech community

00:00:37.860 you've built here in Kelowna.

00:00:40.100 All started with Club Penguin, which I'm

00:00:42.160 assuming you've been doing for so long,

00:00:44.100 or it's been so long since you've done it.

00:00:46.800 You've probably told this story so many times.

00:00:48.760 But I got to ask, because I believe

00:00:51.640 the number was close to a billion kind of outcome.

00:00:55.180 Yeah, well, it was 650 million with earn outs

00:00:58.280 and things like that.

00:00:59.020 And we ended up getting a good chunk of it,

00:01:01.320 but not all of it, so it ended up underneath there.

00:01:03.040 And I mean, for people that think that's crazy,

00:01:05.520 I mean, you guys didn't have to sell,

00:01:06.800 because my understanding is you guys

00:01:07.720 are incredibly profitable.

00:01:08.960 Yeah, we were fortunate.

00:01:10.560 I mean, we bootstrapped it and we'd kept things

00:01:12.260 so razor thin in terms of costs

00:01:15.420 that we ended up profitable after three months.

00:01:18.840 Yeah.

00:01:19.920 And I mean, not huge at the time, obviously,

00:01:22.220 but because we were so tight, you know,

00:01:25.980 and then we ended up within about six months, you know,

00:01:29.420 hiring and we went from four employees

00:01:31.580 to 180 employees in 18 months.

00:01:34.060 And yeah, and then we got to this place

00:01:36.420 where we didn't have the infrastructure to keep up

00:01:38.500 and we needed to, we wanted to diversify,

00:01:41.740 but I didn't, I had a young family,

00:01:43.260 I didn't really wanna have to run around the world

00:01:45.540 looking at real estate and offices to lease

00:01:47.460 and things like that.

00:01:48.300 To scale it up, yeah.

00:01:49.260 Yeah, yeah, and we were,

00:01:50.860 And it was critical for me because of our mission of taking care of kids and giving them a safe place online.

00:01:56.440 It was critical that we honor that globally.

00:01:59.720 We had kids playing globally, but we didn't have the infrastructure to be able to support them all the same.

00:02:04.200 And I didn't like that disparity.

00:02:06.480 I didn't want to create that.

00:02:08.380 And so we had to expand globally.

00:02:10.540 We had to put offices in different parts of the world, both from a time zone perspective and a language perspective.

00:02:15.680 And so, you know, we were looking for a company that had that infrastructure.

00:02:20.020 Was Disney the, I mean, when you think of, like, who would be the absolutely best partner to help deliver on that, you know, in regards to, like, translations and international and just horsepower, were they the only option for you guys or?

00:02:32.520 No, I mean, it was a huge process.

00:02:34.840 There's a whole bidding process.

00:02:37.400 Disney wasn't even the highest bidder.

00:02:39.400 So if it was purely about cash or purely about the exit, we could have done better.

00:02:44.900 Again, we're happy.

00:02:46.080 No complaints.

00:02:47.580 But it wasn't, when I say it wasn't just about the money.

00:02:49.900 It really, it really wasn't about the money for us.

00:02:53.400 It really was an infrastructure play more than anything.

00:02:55.600 And, and I wanted to see the company reach a billion dollars

00:03:00.400 at least from an LTV perspective.

00:03:01.820 And, and, and that was my goal pre Disney.

00:03:04.500 That was my goal post Disney.

00:03:06.500 And it's one of the reasons I stuck around

00:03:07.800 for five years to make it happen.

00:03:09.120 Dude, I remember I was going to,

00:03:11.720 I would have been 20, 19, 20 in taking a programming class

00:03:18.160 with a guy named Andrew.

00:03:19.140 and he had young kids, and they were playing on Club Penguin.

00:03:22.380 And I said, what is it?

00:03:23.580 And he goes, my kids are, and it was built in Flash, I believe.

00:03:26.200 Yeah, like I'm a bit of a nerd, so action script, right?

00:03:28.500 Yeah, oh yeah.

00:03:29.100 And he was just like, they're addicted to this thing.

00:03:32.780 And I said, oh, you pay for it?

00:03:34.200 He goes, oh yeah, you have to like buy stuff and in-game.

00:03:36.580 And this is early days.

00:03:37.800 Like today, it's kind of normal.

00:03:38.960 We have roadblocks.

00:03:39.780 We have all these examples.

00:03:41.560 But, you know, go back, like, because I know then there was Dave,

00:03:44.660 which he's the older guy, and then Lance, who I've spent time with.

00:03:49.140 How did that founding team,

00:03:51.140 because it definitely feels like it was lightning in a bottle.

00:03:53.540 Like there was a moment in time where this happened.

00:03:56.040 Go to those early days and tell us how that came to be.

00:03:59.240 Yeah, so I mean, obviously the people played a key role.

00:04:02.280 Lance and Dave and myself are very different.

00:04:06.040 I mean, truly, we'll still hang out

00:04:08.840 and grab a coffee once in a while.

00:04:10.600 But even when we were in the thick of it,

00:04:11.840 even when it was all going crazy,

00:04:14.880 we'd kind of meet up at a dinner

00:04:16.420 because we had to be there for some sort of function.

00:04:18.940 but we didn't socialize together.

00:04:20.240 You know, it was not the like, you know, bro-fest, 0.71

00:04:23.620 like frat boy, we're gonna go start a company together

00:04:25.820 because we just like hanging out all the time.

00:04:28.240 This was really, truly a serendipitous meeting

00:04:31.860 of very different strengths, very different weaknesses,

00:04:35.060 but a very unified philosophy

00:04:36.900 and really a unified value system.

00:04:39.380 And Dave brought a lot of that together

00:04:41.880 within the previous company that we started in,

00:04:44.800 the act of giving back-

00:04:45.640 So was that an agency of sorts?

00:04:47.220 Yeah, it was a marketing agency.

00:04:48.220 so we did website design and development uh video you know video um uh design i my background was

00:04:55.180 in design so that's kind of where i came into this um and dave was like hey can you hold down the

00:05:00.540 fort i'm going to europe to meet a bunch of our european clients we were working with john deere

00:05:04.060 and a bunch of others kind of out of europe and um and uh so so i did and i was kind of i was

00:05:10.620 meeting with all the team i'd only been there a few months at the time i was sitting down with

00:05:13.980 lance he started showing me some of these little mini games he was working on he kind of had the

00:05:17.740 the tech background and had the passion

00:05:20.240 around creating the games.

00:05:22.620 And for me, from a leadership perspective

00:05:25.020 and a community perspective, which was my passion,

00:05:27.660 we both got creatively talking about this.

00:05:29.640 And it was like, well, what if you took

00:05:31.080 these same little mini games

00:05:32.160 and we started bringing them together

00:05:33.520 and he kind of showed some different ideas that he had.

00:05:36.260 And then when Dave came back from Europe,

00:05:38.140 we literally were ready with our letter of resignation

00:05:40.800 to say, hey, we got to go.

00:05:41.640 You guys were gonna bounce.

00:05:42.860 Yeah, oh yeah.

00:05:43.700 Okay, there was never a thought of doing it.

00:05:45.460 Well, we were hoping we could,

00:05:47.340 but we're like, Dave's been building this company

00:05:50.520 for 20 some years.

00:05:51.520 Like we're about to say, hey,

00:05:53.320 we wanna stop all the things that we're doing

00:05:55.940 with this company, with your company right now.

00:05:57.900 And we're gonna, we gotta go do this thing.

00:05:59.460 So we pitched him, it took about two hours.

00:06:01.760 And at the end of the pitch, he looked at us and he said,

00:06:05.000 I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

00:06:06.860 None of this makes any sense to me,

00:06:08.800 but I've never seen either of you this passionate before.

00:06:11.920 And so let's figure out how to do it here.

00:06:14.680 And he just said, Lane, every dime of profit

00:06:17.440 that you can generate from this existing company,

00:06:19.460 you can pour into Club Penguin.

00:06:22.000 All your time and effort around that,

00:06:23.960 you can pour into it, obviously.

00:06:25.620 Lance, you can go full-time on Club Penguin right now.

00:06:27.860 And whatever you guys can scrape together

00:06:30.660 from your own funds, we'll use to hire a couple of people,

00:06:33.120 a couple of artists, and some folks to support Lance.

00:06:36.460 So that's what we did.

00:06:37.300 So he donated his company as the seed.

00:06:41.220 As a seed capital.

00:06:42.000 I didn't know that.

00:06:42.840 I thought it was like a separate thing.

00:06:44.360 No, he basically said, and so, you know, I was almost like moonlighting with Penguin.

00:06:48.060 I was working my ass off every day trying to, you know, drum up more business and negotiate contracts and things to try and eke out as much margin as I could from every single job, knowing that that margin could be reinvested back in.

00:06:59.620 And then we went, you know, I went down to the bank, took out a line of credit on my house.

00:07:03.720 Dude, you went all in.

00:07:04.880 We went all in.

00:07:05.880 Young family, line of credit.

00:07:07.720 Your wife was, did you tell her?

00:07:09.040 Yeah, I just, oh yeah, of course.

00:07:10.360 I had to sit down.

00:07:10.920 She might have had to. 0.99

00:07:11.420 we basically said hey we might move back into an apartment if this all goes to shit 0.94

00:07:17.580 wow and what was that rocket ship timeline uh well how quick did you get to revenue 0.80

00:07:25.020 yeah so how did it scale up we it was about uh nine to ten months in production

00:07:32.220 kind of we had about three or four people that were working on it you know we were paying them

00:07:36.380 part-time it was like hourly they were all working harder than what we could afford to pay them they

00:07:40.380 They were passionate about it and excited as well.

00:07:44.240 Lance had been at it full-time, obviously.

00:07:46.160 And we were literally reaching the point where we were running out of funds.

00:07:49.580 Because our money, Lance and I put in equal amounts from our houses.

00:07:53.320 That money was starting to run low.

00:07:55.480 The rest of the company was kind of supporting, but not enough to pay all these folks.

00:07:59.580 So we said, we've got to turn on the revenue.

00:08:01.420 We always knew it was going to be subscription, even from the beginning.

00:08:05.440 because one of our core beliefs and core values

00:08:08.600 was around not advertising to young kids,

00:08:11.320 especially when they don't understand the difference

00:08:13.200 between what's an ad and what's not.

00:08:15.440 And so we knew we weren't gonna go ad-based

00:08:18.820 and we knew we had to somehow pay for this thing.

00:08:22.780 Which is quite unique back then

00:08:23.800 because everybody just had banners.

00:08:25.680 This is pre-Netflix.

00:08:27.060 I mean, we were mocked openly by the media.

00:08:29.760 In fact, I still have a couple of articles

00:08:31.360 that literally said, they were reviewing the site

00:08:34.620 and they said, you know, it's neat.

00:08:36.960 They really seem to make a nice game here.

00:08:39.160 Eventually, they're going to grow up

00:08:40.380 and realize that you can't make money

00:08:41.920 on the internet without advertising.

00:08:43.620 So this whole subscription thing

00:08:45.340 is going to crash and burn. 0.50

00:08:47.860 And the only model we had, ironically,

00:08:50.280 was there's a couple of online games

00:08:51.680 like World of Warcraft

00:08:52.620 and things that we're charging a subscription.

00:08:54.640 And then we use the analogy of like HBO.

00:08:57.020 We're like, well, there's free TV with ads,

00:08:59.320 but people are willing to pay

00:09:00.300 for premium TV without ads.

00:09:02.920 Maybe they'll do the same with this.

00:09:04.620 you know, on behalf of their kids, because it's really the whole goal was to say, let's try and

00:09:07.780 give kids a safe walled environment that was ad free, because that's what we wanted for our own

00:09:11.800 kids. Looking back now, those same types of reporters who are mocking us are like, how did

00:09:17.920 you know the, you know, the, the trend of subscriptions so early? And it's like, we didn't

00:09:23.760 know anything. We just knew we had limited solutions and we, and we wanted to do the right

00:09:30.560 thing by the kids and how do you get the word out once you launch because nine months not a long

00:09:35.320 time to build i think people wait too long to monetize i mean the fact that you monetize out

00:09:38.940 of the gate um how do you get the initial user base going yeah so we um thankfully lance had

00:09:45.680 donated uh see again this is where it's like paying it forward doing the right thing karma

00:09:50.600 whatever you want to call it yeah lance had donated a few of his mini games that he had made

00:09:54.920 over the years uh in flash to this young guy young developer out in the uk who is trying to start a

00:10:03.240 collection of flash games like a website dedicated to this stuff and uh and he put up put out the

00:10:08.600 call to anyone who he could find on the internet who had made a flash game saying hey i can't pay

00:10:12.960 you now but i'll pay you down the road once i start generating revenue would you donate a game

00:10:17.900 most people just ignored him obviously you know hey i'm not gonna give this away for free lance

00:10:22.680 So it's like, listen, I'll give it to you now,

00:10:24.140 but pay me an extra, you know,

00:10:25.400 a hundred bucks for it down the road or something

00:10:27.580 whenever you can.

00:10:28.640 And so that's what he did.

00:10:29.480 And this was like four or five years before this.

00:10:32.740 Fast forward to where, you know,

00:10:34.680 we launched this thing, we're seeing the uptick.

00:10:36.620 We did a closed beta of about three or 4,000 kids

00:10:40.320 that had turned into 20,000 kids

00:10:42.720 inside of about two to three weeks.

00:10:44.020 And parents did not spend money on kids back then.

00:10:47.120 No, no, and certainly not on the internet.

00:10:48.920 I mean- No, even on the internet,

00:10:49.920 like where did you get your merchant account?

00:10:52.680 I mean, this is the thing that people take for granted

00:10:54.300 that we have Stripe today.

00:10:55.300 Yeah, you know what?

00:10:56.140 I remember getting a merchant account in early 2000s

00:10:58.360 and it's like the bank said no at first.

00:11:00.660 Oh yeah, I probably talked about seven or eight

00:11:02.760 different banks and companies before we could get it sorted.

00:11:05.200 I mean, those are the types of things

00:11:06.360 that it's easy to take for granted.

00:11:08.240 Even the authentication, like setting up the accounts,

00:11:11.780 we were doing manually during that beta.

00:11:13.360 So I was literally getting Outlook email

00:11:15.840 with requests for an account

00:11:17.360 and we were having to go into the database,

00:11:18.820 manually set up an account

00:11:20.280 and send a kid their credentials.

00:11:21.680 20,000 accounts.

00:11:23.140 Yeah, yeah, inside of like the first,

00:11:24.960 you know, I think it was three, four weeks.

00:11:27.360 And so, I mean, we were just scrambling.

00:11:29.160 I mean, it was all-nighters, nonstop.

00:11:32.220 We lived on like pizza and Coca-Cola

00:11:34.300 and just, you know, and just knocked ourselves out

00:11:37.060 trying to make this thing happen.

00:11:37.980 Because we knew we had something special.

00:11:39.820 We knew that, you know, over time,

00:11:43.200 eventually the big guys were gonna figure it out.

00:11:46.240 The Nickelodeon, the Disney,

00:11:48.780 they all had-

00:11:49.620 Just this moment in time.

00:11:50.460 in the market and we we thought okay we've got this limited amount of time it's also why we were

00:11:54.780 so secretive about it um so like we had a agreement among the three of us we're not gonna even when we

00:12:00.540 were making money like we we started paying ourselves i remember you telling me this where

00:12:03.660 you you guys agreed i'm nobody's buying a car no one's buying a car no one's buying a house no

00:12:08.300 one's doing anything there's no upgrades to your lifestyle yeah um i ended up having i ended up

00:12:13.020 needing a car anyway and so i got like the entry level lexus the cheapest one i could find because

00:12:18.060 because I was like a Toyota or whatever anyway.

00:12:20.460 And that was about as extravagant as I got.

00:12:23.340 And we turned down Business Week,

00:12:26.200 we turned down TechCrunch,

00:12:27.500 we turned down every reporter out there

00:12:30.900 because we didn't wanna go run around

00:12:33.300 and say how successful we were.

00:12:34.520 We were private, so no one knew.

00:12:36.640 They were looking at CommScore.

00:12:37.820 Because you were scared that somebody's gonna pick up

00:12:39.840 and try to compete.

00:12:40.680 Because we knew we had something special.

00:12:41.580 I mean, we were, it was-

00:12:42.520 So when you start getting these emails

00:12:43.880 from reporters that are hearing word on the street,

00:12:45.780 you're a little nervous like, hey.

00:12:47.180 We were popping up in CommScore.

00:12:48.780 And so, and CommScore wasn't very accurate back then.

00:12:52.060 So, and there would be mistakes.

00:12:53.380 So we would get an email saying,

00:12:54.960 hey, you guys have rocketed up to like top 10 kids sites.

00:13:01.560 You know, is this true and how and what's going on here?

00:13:04.360 So I do need to pause real quick

00:13:05.700 because I forgot to finish the story.

00:13:07.560 Yeah, I want to know how did you get that distribution.

00:13:08.860 Yeah, so I'll finish the distribution one

00:13:10.360 and then we'll get back to the reporters.

00:13:11.620 So in the distribution, fast forward then to Club Penguin,

00:13:14.700 we knew we had something special.

00:13:16.160 We had this beta.

00:13:16.940 We were ready to open up to the public, and we reached out to this friend of Lance's who he'd given these games two years earlier, who now is running Miniclip, which had about 50 million uniques a month of just kids, of our prime audience, going to this thing.

00:13:34.760 So we reached out to him and said, hey, listen, we want to put together, and he'd only ever hosted these tiny little one-off games before.

00:13:43.280 And so we went to him and said, hey, we've got something kind of bigger, more complicated.

00:13:47.780 We worked out a rev share agreement that was pretty generous for him at the time,

00:13:53.740 but he also had a massive distribution.

00:13:55.500 And we thought, listen, we've got the margin because we kept things so tight.

00:13:58.920 We kept our costs so low that we could afford to do it.

00:14:02.240 And then he started to turn on the tap.

00:14:06.920 And he would only open it up to every hundredth user.

00:14:11.500 user like you kind of show up on the list like 10 12 and and it was funny because he came to us and

00:14:16.480 and talk about this paranoia of time like this moment in time that we didn't want to lose

00:14:20.220 uh he said it usually takes the average game about three to four months to go full audience

00:14:27.100 because we just we we crashed a lot yeah and i said we're gonna do it in a month and he's like

00:14:33.240 it's not not happening but good luck yeah and it was like literally i think uh five weeks or

00:14:40.360 something we were like one week past what we wanted to um and we had the full audience on

00:14:44.440 there and and it was going nuts and from that point he wouldn't have taken this conversation

00:14:48.240 had lance not no he definitely wouldn't have featured us the way he did and and uh and and

00:14:53.980 or would have been a more aggressive contract or or or yeah a whole lot you know i mean in the end

00:14:59.420 when we were cutting him checks for four or five million dollars he was pretty excited he was

00:15:02.560 pretty happy about it um but um but he but he deserved it i mean you know he took a risk on us

00:15:08.220 The risk paid off, and those were checks I was happy to cut.

00:15:11.180 How did you keep the servers from not melting?

00:15:13.180 Because back then, this is bare metal.

00:15:14.620 You're in a server room.

00:15:15.820 They melted a lot.

00:15:16.940 They melted a lot.

00:15:17.660 I mean, we had a team that was just dedicated to it.

00:15:19.740 And frankly, we were hacking these servers,

00:15:21.260 because we were pulling off web servers

00:15:23.100 that were used to running websites.

00:15:25.260 And we were trying to hack them into these socket servers.

00:15:30.220 And a typical socket server will deliver packets of information,

00:15:33.660 and it'll be like a 15-second connection,

00:15:36.460 a 20 second connection while the website's downloading onto your local device um our

00:15:42.140 socket server connections were like milliseconds because we couldn't we had to just like deliver it

00:15:47.100 and then drop it it was like and so then the penguin would move on the screen to wherever

00:15:50.140 they clicked and then they click something else move it and drop it and uh we even brought we

00:15:54.700 brought in consultants from ibm one time because we couldn't keep the servers up because even after

00:15:59.020 even after we had all of mini clips audience on there that was great but we're also growing

00:16:03.020 independently as well um and so we brought in these consultants from ibm they sat down they

00:16:08.300 dug through the servers they were going to help us scale and um after like two or three days of

00:16:14.380 digging into it they literally said we're going to give you your money back like thanks but they

00:16:18.540 couldn't solve it we can't help you the people that sold you the hardware you guys you guys are

00:16:22.940 using this stuff in ways we've never seen before we don't know frankly how they're standing up as

00:16:27.900 as well as they are and you know let us know what you find out and so we're like all right we'll

00:16:33.980 just keep figuring it out ourselves and thankfully we we we really had worked hard to build a

00:16:38.780 community and to build that community sense it's one of the reasons why club penguin you know just

00:16:42.240 last week was trending again on twitter like it still still has that passionate fan base because

00:16:46.580 we really cared about them and they really cared about us and as a result they were very patient

00:16:51.740 when servers would crash we wouldn't get flooded with angry emails we get flooded with like

00:16:56.260 cheering us on like good luck guys we know you're working hard we know you're and and and that's you

00:17:01.060 know nowadays when i consult and try to help other companies about building an online community and

00:17:04.740 building their um building building their brand um within a community it's one of things i talk

00:17:11.140 about all the time is to not create an adversarial relationship with your community not hold back

00:17:15.860 information not try to hide things from your community be as transparent as vulnerable as

00:17:20.340 open as you possibly can and you will endear yourself far more than if you try to sculpt

00:17:25.060 the perfect message and hold back and i mean politicians are learning this now i mean everyone

00:17:28.980 is but back then companies were i mean we're literally dealing with like aol yeah that would

00:17:34.780 like you know try to trick people into not canceling their accounts and those and those

00:17:39.280 recordings were going online and we're listening to this stuff going oh god like someone's got to

00:17:43.620 do it differently it's one of the reasons why we had actual humans doing customer support you know

00:17:47.000 we had 300 people around real people real people doing customer care i mean and now i watch youtube

00:17:51.940 and their debacle with their algorithms

00:17:53.760 and the way that kids have been, frankly, harmed in some ways

00:17:56.540 by having content put in front of them that shouldn't be.

00:18:00.120 Because, like, listen, I'm as much of a nerd as anyone,

00:18:04.380 and I love technical solutions,

00:18:06.100 but there's some of the stuff that just requires human power.

00:18:09.180 Go back to the media people.

00:18:12.200 Oh, yeah.

00:18:12.560 How do you hold them at bay?

00:18:13.940 We lied to them.

00:18:15.060 Yeah.

00:18:15.340 When they would contact us and say,

00:18:16.860 listen, your comm score numbers are through the roof.

00:18:18.820 You guys are clearly doing something.

00:18:20.360 What's going on?

00:18:21.640 we'd be like, yeah, you know,

00:18:22.540 we're trying to get all the comms score.

00:18:23.700 We're trying to figure out what's going on.

00:18:24.560 It's totally wrong.

00:18:25.120 But it's just not accurate.

00:18:26.500 What I would say is it's not accurate.

00:18:27.840 It's just not accurate.

00:18:28.460 It's not accurate.

00:18:29.120 And they would assume, yeah, you know, it's not accurate.

00:18:31.960 It wasn't accurate.

00:18:32.840 We were actually outperforming comms score.

00:18:33.920 Way better than they were reporting.

00:18:35.120 But we didn't want to tell anyone.

00:18:36.460 We kept it secret for over a year

00:18:38.100 before finally people were like, okay.

00:18:39.780 And was there a cultural aspect of it as well

00:18:42.760 that you wanted to kind of represent the lean and mean team

00:18:45.340 in regards to like not disclosing the level of revenue

00:18:49.900 or was it just more of like,

00:18:52.600 hey, we don't want anybody to figure this out?

00:18:54.480 It was a little bit of all of the above.

00:18:56.940 You know, we had started this thing for our kids.

00:19:00.200 We were hoping that it would be sustainable.

00:19:02.460 Like literally we had goal sheets that were like,

00:19:04.680 could be sustainable or self-sustaining

00:19:06.760 inside of like two years.

00:19:08.360 And so when it was profitable in three months,

00:19:10.700 you know, we were hiring, we were, I mean,

00:19:13.020 part of why we grew so quickly is because

00:19:14.520 as the experience was growing, as the user base was growing,

00:19:18.420 we felt an incredible responsibility

00:19:20.240 to take care of them properly.

00:19:21.620 I mean, it's kids, dude, it's a different game.

00:19:23.620 A lot of people-

00:19:24.680 You know, I always tell people like,

00:19:26.780 there's two things you don't mess with.

00:19:28.180 You don't mess with someone's kids

00:19:29.500 and you don't mess with someone's money.

00:19:30.860 And we were literally doing both-

00:19:32.520 Whoa, that intersection.

00:19:33.360 In real time.

00:19:34.260 You typically, you have like your champion,

00:19:36.180 your influencer and your decision maker.

00:19:38.340 And our whole world was created around the fact

00:19:40.560 that our kids were the users,

00:19:42.620 but kids didn't have credit cards.

00:19:43.740 Their parents had the credit cards.

00:19:44.780 So the parents were ultimately the decision makers.

00:19:47.200 So the kids could influence, they could champion,

00:19:49.440 they could promote it,

00:19:50.840 but the parents had to be the final authority.

00:19:52.660 And so we had to keep both happy.

00:19:55.580 And as a result, it's one of the reasons why for us,

00:19:58.520 even when I talk about things like data and all of that,

00:20:02.040 like we had incredible sums of data.

00:20:05.360 It was all anonymized by our choice,

00:20:07.660 again, because we didn't need it,

00:20:09.560 we didn't need the data for advertising reasons.

00:20:12.380 And so our only objective was to align ourself

00:20:15.960 with parents as much as we could

00:20:17.840 and to justify every single month why that,

00:20:21.480 why that credit card was being charged

00:20:23.920 and why it was a good spend.

00:20:25.360 And we got so focused on that.

00:20:27.940 We used to have a saying around the office.

00:20:31.380 In fact, I had it on my wall at one point.

00:20:33.580 If it doesn't matter to an eight-year-old,

00:20:34.960 it doesn't matter.

00:20:36.300 And anytime we'd be like,

00:20:37.940 hey, well, maybe we should do this.

00:20:39.020 Maybe we should do this.

00:20:39.860 And maybe you'd literally like anyone

00:20:41.240 from the brand new entry level person

00:20:44.340 all the way through the ranks could say,

00:20:45.540 how does this matter to an eight-year-old?

00:20:47.780 And so when I'd be invited to go keynote

00:20:50.420 the Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas,

00:20:53.600 I'd ask myself, how does this matter to an eight-year-old?

00:20:55.760 No eight-year-old's gonna be in attendance.

00:20:57.380 No eight-year-old's gonna read the press media later.

00:21:00.520 Parents aren't gonna read that media. 0.99

00:21:02.040 I'd rather go talk to a mommy blogger conference

00:21:04.180 where I can talk to them about how much we value safety,

00:21:06.480 how we're taking care of their kids.

00:21:07.780 That is a worthwhile effort

00:21:09.220 because then we can help that eight-year-old

00:21:11.320 convince their parents it's worthwhile.

00:21:13.040 But for me to go toot my own horn,

00:21:14.560 For me to go just do it, you know,

00:21:16.060 really what it would have come down to is just ego.

00:21:18.340 And an ego wasn't going to grow my business.

00:21:20.820 Dude, having that level of awareness

00:21:23.400 at such a young age, early in your entrepreneurial career

00:21:25.560 is pretty different.

00:21:26.560 As you know, meeting so many entrepreneurs

00:21:28.360 that literally, you know, easily distracted,

00:21:31.500 you know, kind of high on their own supply sometimes

00:21:34.500 of their early success is really cool.

00:21:37.660 And then after that, you know, you have this huge success.

00:21:40.580 A lot of people decide to maybe go find a, you know,

00:21:43.900 private island somewhere and chill.

00:21:46.020 And you decided to double down on your community,

00:21:48.660 build this incredible building in downtown Cologne,

00:21:50.940 the Innovation Center,

00:21:53.860 essentially your investment vehicle wheelhouse, why?

00:21:57.820 Yeah, well, I used to have a saying

00:22:01.500 that if you weren't my kids or Mickey Mouse,

00:22:03.660 you weren't gonna see me.

00:22:05.060 And I would say that because I said no to everything.

00:22:07.780 Even after the deal, after the acquisition,

00:22:10.740 whether it was a foundation or a fundraiser

00:22:13.780 Because that happens and you're on everybody's list.

00:22:16.320 Yeah, and so I would send the check,

00:22:18.840 but I would never be there.

00:22:20.100 I wouldn't deliver it.

00:22:21.020 I wouldn't go to the event.

00:22:22.120 I wouldn't go to the, and I wouldn't,

00:22:24.200 God knows I would never hold the giant check

00:22:27.640 and do the thumbs up and do the thing.

00:22:29.500 I just didn't have time.

00:22:30.440 And I was so focused on that goal

00:22:32.440 of continuing to grow this business.

00:22:33.860 At Disney.

00:22:34.700 At Disney.

00:22:36.260 And so when I finally decided to leave,

00:22:39.240 it was increasingly difficult for me to do my job remotely.

00:22:42.460 My family was here.

00:22:43.560 I was traveling, I realized two things.

00:22:46.800 Number one, it's hard to navigate the politics

00:22:48.800 of a massive corporation from a distance

00:22:51.300 because you're always kind of outnumbered.

00:22:53.600 So even when you're trying to advocate for something

00:22:55.440 and move an idea forward, when I wasn't there,

00:22:59.180 I was losing ground.

00:23:00.320 And so then I always wanted to be there,

00:23:02.360 there being like Burbank or LA.

00:23:04.740 I always wanted to be there

00:23:05.580 to help move the ball down the field.

00:23:08.560 But then every time I was there, I wasn't with my kids

00:23:11.040 and that was killing me.

00:23:12.300 And in fact, I literally was in Australia.

00:23:14.380 I used to fly to Australia for 18 hours.

00:23:16.340 So I'd spend more time flying there than back,

00:23:18.740 than I spent on the ground.

00:23:20.360 Cause I didn't want to be away from my kids.

00:23:22.080 And every, to me, every bedtime was like treasure.

00:23:26.900 And I'm sitting in Australia and this reporter's asking me,

00:23:29.600 you know, a bunch of questions about the site

00:23:31.040 and about the experience.

00:23:32.580 And we just launched our office there.

00:23:35.280 And he's like, oh man,

00:23:36.120 your kids must think you're the coolest dad in the world.

00:23:38.940 And, and I gave him kind of a pat answer,

00:23:41.180 like out of them i'm just dad i'm just goofy i'm just a nerd i you know kind of but what really

00:23:46.020 hit me in that moment was like i haven't actually seen my kids for like two weeks because i was like

00:23:50.180 bopping around all over the place and i actually feel like kind of a shitty dad right now and i 0.53

00:23:55.060 realized that this this website that i'm running around the world talking about building for my

00:24:01.060 kids is actually turning me into a really shitty father and i i didn't want to do that i i'd been

00:24:08.200 saying yes to millions of kids around the world on behalf of them and been saying no to my own two

00:24:13.440 kids for for way too long and um and so that's when i i knew okay i had to i had to be done now

00:24:18.640 this had this was about a year and a half before so it took me 18 months i built a succession plan

00:24:22.480 i found my successor we did a proper transition i wanted to make sure that my baby was in good hands

00:24:27.040 and um and then i went back to spend some more time with my actual babies and and focus on the

00:24:31.840 community and i and i'd you know this community i truly believe club penguin wouldn't have been

00:24:37.760 to be launched anywhere else, at least not the same way.

00:24:41.540 The amount of empathy, the amount of heart,

00:24:43.240 the amount of passion.

00:24:44.080 I mean, you've been here a couple months now.

00:24:45.260 Dude, how do you, I mean, even the fact that

00:24:48.940 maybe back then it was 120,000 people

00:24:51.520 or 100,000 people to build that kind of company here

00:24:55.240 just doesn't make sense.

00:24:56.760 No, no, but if I were to have built it somewhere else,

00:25:01.060 it would have been so much easier for us to lose focus

00:25:05.140 and us to lose sight of what really mattered.

00:25:07.080 When we hired people, you know,

00:25:08.900 the way we could hire so quickly

00:25:10.620 and keep the values so oriented and so consistent

00:25:15.580 was because we hired people that genuinely cared about kids.

00:25:18.300 And so we were hiring people who had been like,

00:25:20.080 like literally our online events planner.

00:25:22.380 I mean, first of all, we're hiring jobs that didn't exist.

00:25:24.700 So you're saying we're-

00:25:25.540 Nobody's trained for this.

00:25:26.380 No one's trained for this.

00:25:27.220 It's not like we can go, you know, grab someone,

00:25:29.040 even if we were in the Bay area,

00:25:30.060 we couldn't grab someone from the company down the street

00:25:32.120 who was doing, holding virtual events and parties.

00:25:34.620 Like that just wasn't happening.

00:25:36.720 Literally, Facebook was being worked on by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard the same time that we had launched Club Penguin.

00:25:43.740 So it's not even like social networking was a thing, really, at that point.

00:25:47.200 MySpace was kind of starting to come up around the same time, but that was it.

00:25:50.860 And so what did we do?

00:25:53.620 We just found whatever the parallel was in life.

00:25:55.600 So we needed someone to manage customer support, create great customer service experience.

00:26:00.580 we hired i hired the local manager from my starbucks who i i would drive 10 minutes further

00:26:07.560 than i needed to go there because every time i went the experience was i mean starbucks runs a

00:26:12.780 great shop and they normally are known for their customer care but this guy just ran such an

00:26:17.400 amazing uh shop team and team and and everyone was all trained and and it was so consistent

00:26:23.500 i said that's what i want so i hired him out you know he now uh runs all of customer care for king

00:26:29.100 Supercell, who does all the mobile games.

00:26:36.220 He was running a bunch of safety stuff for Facebook.

00:26:39.340 He ended up having three or 400 people

00:26:40.780 reporting underneath him.

00:26:41.700 Wow.

00:26:42.540 And he continued through the ranks.

00:26:43.540 He plucked him from Starbucks.

00:26:44.380 And brought him in from Starbucks.

00:26:45.460 No college degree, just, I think actually no,

00:26:48.020 he might've had like a certificate or something.

00:26:50.060 But that was Starbucks, so that was customer care.

00:26:53.340 For our events and creative experiences,

00:26:56.260 we hired people from summer camps, local summer camps,

00:26:58.780 who, what were they doing?

00:26:59.740 They were running events for kids.

00:27:01.540 They were creating fun events for kids.

00:27:03.460 They were just doing it in the real world.

00:27:04.560 And we said, come do the same thing you've been doing.

00:27:07.100 Dream up these fun ideas,

00:27:08.480 but we're gonna do it virtually

00:27:09.840 and we're gonna have some different tools to work with.

00:27:12.200 And so, and all these people ended up staying

00:27:14.140 with the company and growing with it.

00:27:15.700 That's crazy.

00:27:16.540 So you don't think any other city would have allowed you

00:27:19.920 to build Club Penguin the way

00:27:22.920 that you guys could build it here?

00:27:24.500 I think, I don't think it would have had the same heart

00:27:27.020 if it was built anywhere else.

00:27:28.260 I've traveled the world. I'm a dual citizen. I've lived in a lot of places. I'm not throwing

00:27:32.300 shade at any place that, you know, every place has their own DNA and their own strengths and

00:27:35.820 weaknesses. I think one of the things that's unique about, um, unique about this town and

00:27:41.240 unique about the culture that we had here was, was this overwhelming desire to serve others,

00:27:47.480 to care about people, to care about others, um, to care about these kids and the empathy to build

00:27:53.600 on behalf of someone else.

00:27:55.040 You know, I, again, I've got a lot of friends

00:27:57.640 like in the Bay Area, they're awesome.

00:27:58.920 It's a great place to build companies,

00:28:00.220 but it does turn into a bit of a bro-fest sometimes

00:28:02.400 where it's like, hey, we're solving 20-something problems

00:28:06.200 with 20-something solutions and we're going to build,

00:28:08.760 you know, and all of a sudden they're growing big companies

00:28:10.420 and it's amazing.

00:28:11.720 If I were even today to go say,

00:28:13.580 I want to build a kid's website anywhere in the world,

00:28:17.740 you know, I wouldn't be going to Bay Area.

00:28:20.680 I love it, but I wouldn't be there.

00:28:21.680 I wouldn't be down in LA.

00:28:22.600 I wouldn't be down.

00:28:23.180 You know, you kind of have to find the right fit.

00:28:25.080 Find that community and culture.

00:28:26.440 Exactly.

00:28:27.000 I mean, I know a lot of companies have been spawned.

00:28:29.420 It's almost like the PayPal mafia in the Bay Area,

00:28:32.220 the Club Penguin mafia.

00:28:33.220 Like there's just literally sprinkled companies

00:28:36.880 that were inspired, minimum inspired,

00:28:40.660 but definitely came from the Club Penguin team.

00:28:43.300 When you came back to decide to do the community stuff,

00:28:46.100 how did you decide what to say yes to?

00:28:48.460 Yeah.

00:28:49.280 Well, so I knew a couple of things.

00:28:50.820 Number one, I knew the opportunity that Dave and the trust that Dave had put in us was unique, was not normal.

00:28:58.720 And so I wanted to do the same for others that Dave had done for us.

00:29:02.020 So I knew I wanted to invest in some other startups, some other companies, not just in tech,

00:29:06.100 but frankly, anywhere that I could find someone who was creative and passionate and wanted to build something great,

00:29:13.200 I was going to provide some seed capital for that.

00:29:15.940 And so Wheelhouse was born to do that.

00:29:19.040 I was in, I also wanted to volunteer some time.

00:29:21.400 And I had a couple of friends who were on the board of Accelerate Okanagan,

00:29:25.940 our local accelerator.

00:29:27.640 They were trying to help startups and they were working out of this,

00:29:29.940 you know, no offense, but crappy little space down the block here.

00:29:32.760 Startups do, yeah.

00:29:33.640 Yeah.

00:29:34.080 And it was like, and I, so I said, listen, I'll serve one term on the board.

00:29:38.700 I'll kind of pay my dues a little bit.

00:29:40.800 I'm talking about how I want to give back to the community.

00:29:43.560 This is an area that I can lend some expertise to.

00:29:45.500 Vote with your time.

00:29:46.040 That's the other thing, yeah, is I didn't want to go do stuff, again, for my own ego.

00:29:49.620 If I couldn't add value, I didn't want to do it.

00:29:52.480 And this was an area I thought I could add some value.

00:29:54.200 So I dug into it.

00:29:54.860 One of the first things that became apparent was the budget, which is government-funded,

00:29:59.540 80% of the budget was going to that space and to help subsidize space for some of these startups to be in.

00:30:05.260 And 20% was going towards programming and creating, you know, helping entrepreneurs learn how to be entrepreneurs.

00:30:11.420 And I'd experienced, you know, the loneliness of entrepreneurship.

00:30:14.200 Lance had experienced the loneliness of entrepreneurship.

00:30:16.040 And we talked all the time about, you know, people, some people thought it was like a rite of passage.

00:30:22.160 Like, well, yeah, entrepreneurship has to be lonely.

00:30:24.660 It just is.

00:30:25.380 And I didn't think that was the case.

00:30:26.680 I just thought, you know, there wasn't necessarily a great space for it.

00:30:30.180 So we noticed this problem.

00:30:33.300 I then had, thankfully, you know, amazing people, Jeff Keene, you know, who you know, amazing people around us.

00:30:41.800 And also enough clout to be able to make some of the phone calls we did.

00:30:44.840 And we ended up getting, you know, the vice chancellor of the university, the president of the college, the mayor, all of our local politicians, everyone around the table one night.

00:30:54.460 And we said, listen, we want to make this a tech hub in Canada.

00:30:58.960 We've studied, you know, we studied Boulder.

00:31:01.180 We studied Waterloo.

00:31:02.220 We studied, you know, the Bay Area, obviously, Seattle, all these other tech hubs.

00:31:06.120 We looked at ones that obviously were a little bit smaller.

00:31:07.860 So Boulder was kind of the closest parallel in terms of city size for what we wanted to do.

00:31:11.900 And we said, you know, what did they do 20 years ago?

00:31:14.840 you know, when computers were first coming out,

00:31:18.040 well, number one, they were intentional.

00:31:19.540 They were purposeful in a few actions

00:31:22.780 that led to some bigger results.

00:31:24.740 So what could those actions look like?

00:31:26.460 A lot of ideas came out of that.

00:31:29.120 And you know, I can point to that first meeting,

00:31:30.760 but what was most amazing is that we met

00:31:32.800 about 20 more times with that same group.

00:31:36.320 And it was truly the, every key leader from this community

00:31:41.160 showed up every single time to talk about

00:31:44.100 how do we make this happen?

00:31:45.480 And I think that's the key, you know,

00:31:47.060 and people have said, hey, we wanna do the same thing.

00:31:50.500 Listen, it was a lot of work, a lot of ups and downs,

00:31:53.420 a lot of times we thought it wasn't gonna happen.

00:31:55.700 But most of all, what really pulled us through

00:31:57.980 was the fact that we were genuinely cheering each other

00:32:00.840 on and working on it together.

00:32:02.340 And it was a community effort.

00:32:04.320 I mean, we had all three levels of government involved,

00:32:06.820 which has never happened before.

00:32:08.480 We handed all of our documentation over to the government

00:32:11.500 to say, go do this in other cities.

00:32:13.760 Here's everything we learned.

00:32:15.080 You kind of open-sourced it.

00:32:16.460 Of course, yeah, because I'd love to see a building like this in other places.

00:32:19.620 And what is the stats of this building?

00:32:21.860 Square footage?

00:32:23.260 Give people a sense of the visuals that may not be able to.

00:32:25.940 Yeah, so it's about 120,000, 130,000 square feet.

00:32:28.440 So it's six stories with a rooftop restaurant and big open area.

00:32:33.080 Outdoor area.

00:32:33.620 It's just beautiful.

00:32:34.420 Yeah, yeah.

00:32:35.000 So the goal behind that, again, was to – it was something that I learned at Pixar, frankly.

00:32:40.800 In fact, if you ever get a chance to or just look up Pixar's campus, when Steve Jobs was, because Steve Jobs founded it during his time away from Apple, they've got this incredible atrium in the Emeryville campus.

00:32:55.200 And one of the secrets behind that is that in that atrium, and this is one of Steve Jobs' requirements, so he was kind of instrumental in building out that campus.

00:33:04.860 He said, I want two things centrally located.

00:33:08.440 I want food.

00:33:10.100 All the food in the entire campus is only going to be located here.

00:33:13.080 And the only bathrooms at the time in the entire campus are only going to be located here in this atrium.

00:33:18.540 Because it's going to force people to get out of their desks, to leave their computer and interact with one another.

00:33:24.900 And what are the places they do that?

00:33:26.200 Well, a bathroom is going to draw people out and food is going to draw people out. 0.85

00:33:29.240 And so it was a very intentional desire to build that kind of bring that right brain and left brain together.

00:33:33.820 Build collisions.

00:33:34.960 So we have an atrium running through this building

00:33:36.740 very intentionally.

00:33:38.360 It's a huge waste of real estate.

00:33:39.860 100% waste of real estate.

00:33:41.180 We were told over and over again

00:33:42.440 what a huge waste of real estate it was.

00:33:44.780 But we wouldn't have been authentic to our vision

00:33:47.140 of building community and building collisions

00:33:48.960 if we didn't have that open space.

00:33:50.640 Because otherwise, what do you do?

00:33:51.560 You jump into an elevator, elevator doors close,

00:33:53.620 and the rest of the building is,

00:33:54.800 you're blind to at that point.

00:33:56.160 All the rest of it disappears.

00:33:57.940 We built a space where we wanted people

00:33:59.960 to see each other from opposite floors

00:34:01.360 and be able to wave at each other.

00:34:02.360 I watched, I think it's the floor underneath

00:34:04.260 fifth floor is a guy doing architecture drawings all the time like i don't know but i feel like i

00:34:08.180 know him because i see him do his work all the time it's one of the reasons why almost all of

00:34:11.140 the we actually help subsidize the the the build outs the ti build outs and um and gave increased

00:34:17.220 subsidies for glass because we wanted it to feel open we wanted you to be able to see and interact

00:34:21.220 with people listen the moment we disappear behind our screens and we're experiencing this you know

00:34:25.300 obviously and have uh with covet and and more remote work the moment it's so easy to disappear

00:34:30.020 behind your screen and lose sight of that personal connection and so we wanted to build a space for

00:34:34.020 that that didn't that that could happen naturally and freely um and i also believe the better

00:34:38.900 companies are going to be coming out as a result of it right i mean you you know the age-old story

00:34:43.060 the the invention of the ipod the original ipod that apple came out with which you know arguably

00:34:48.740 was the was the predecessor to the iphone and predecessor the ipad and one of the reasons why

00:34:52.740 apple's you know most valuable company in the world today um that came about from a you know

00:34:59.140 know, two guys coming from different departments, one who had just seen this, you know, this

00:35:03.840 presentation about this new little hard drive that I think Toshiba or Fujitsu or someone

00:35:07.220 had just come out with, meeting up with someone who had just been tasked to build a MP3 player,

00:35:14.100 you know, build a device that could hold a thousand songs, was like, you know, the Steve

00:35:17.660 Jobs requirement or something like that. And they were like, almost kind of complaining

00:35:21.980 to each other, like, oh, I've got this impossible task, where the hell am I ever going to find,

00:35:25.560 And this guy's like, well, I just came up with this wasted presentation because they made this brick that will never fit in a laptop and and we don't need small size for a desktop.

00:35:34.480 So what a waste of a hard drive design, you know, it's like, wait a minute.

00:35:37.780 And but but but but one thing leads to another and the iPod is born.

00:35:41.660 And that came out of a collision that was not in a meeting that was not by design, that was not management led, that was not organized and formulated.

00:35:50.180 it came out of a collision of a conversation

00:35:52.720 of two folks griping about their day, frankly,

00:35:56.480 and ending up birthing an incredible magic, yeah.

00:36:00.680 So out of doing all this stuff,

00:36:02.920 because you definitely don't lead a timid life,

00:36:05.900 so busy, lots of demands,

00:36:08.480 why or how did you come to the decision to be a dragon?

00:36:14.380 Yeah, well, boy.

00:36:18.180 So they had actually reached out

00:36:19.320 while I was still at Disney.

00:36:20.600 And remember I said, if you weren't Mickey Mouse

00:36:22.560 or one of my kids, you weren't gonna hear from me.

00:36:23.920 100%.

00:36:24.760 And people like to overly glamorize it,

00:36:28.300 like, oh, they reached out, they asked me to be a dragon.

00:36:30.440 No, they didn't.

00:36:31.280 They asked if I'd be willing to audition.

00:36:33.260 And it happens every time that there's a new dragon,

00:36:37.160 there's a whole audition process.

00:36:39.000 The amount of times, by the way,

00:36:39.840 at dinner parties that people are like,

00:36:41.260 oh, I was asked to be a dragon.

00:36:42.500 I was asked to be a dragon.

00:36:43.340 I've had three or four friends say that.

00:36:44.640 Yeah, I'm like, sure.

00:36:45.680 Yeah.

00:36:46.620 Well, you might've been asked to audition,

00:36:48.420 but you were asked along with about 50 to a hundred

00:36:50.240 other people, right?

00:36:51.140 And that's what,

00:36:52.080 so they had asked me to audition seven years ago,

00:36:55.260 eight years ago now.

00:36:56.860 And, and I said, no, I said I couldn't.

00:36:58.700 Cause again, I was already traveling too much.

00:37:01.220 I was already feeling guilty about my kids.

00:37:03.680 And the idea of spending, you know,

00:37:05.700 three weeks a year in Toronto straight without my kids

00:37:10.360 was just, I didn't have the time for it.

00:37:12.660 So I said no.

00:37:13.800 And, and, and honestly I'd regretted it a little bit.

00:37:16.220 Cause I thought, man, that'd be fun.

00:37:17.360 Like anyone who knows me, I definitely,

00:37:20.740 I was never diagnosed, but I probably have ADHD and-

00:37:24.040 Yeah, you do.

00:37:24.880 And scattered.

00:37:25.660 Yeah.

00:37:26.540 And love to take on a lot of different things.

00:37:29.540 Love new challenges.

00:37:30.880 So I was always a little bit bummed about that one.

00:37:33.160 Fast forward, this building had just completed.

00:37:36.060 We had just moved in.

00:37:38.160 I was still managing some investments, doing some advising,

00:37:41.120 helping out a startup that I'd helped found,

00:37:43.400 but wasn't running at the time.

00:37:44.800 And they called again, and actually my assistant

00:37:50.180 almost ignored it thinking it was a prank call

00:37:52.300 because we get prank calls all the time.

00:37:53.680 Yeah, or it's like some weird random person

00:37:56.280 and you're like, you're not even connected to this thing.

00:37:58.620 Yeah, like sometimes these emails don't even make sense

00:38:00.840 because it's a production company or whatever.

00:38:02.520 Yeah, and part of my EA's role is vetting

00:38:07.520 like stuff to pass on to me.

00:38:09.600 And so she almost threw it away.

00:38:12.660 It was actually one of the other folks

00:38:14.720 working for me at the time, he's like, wait a minute,

00:38:16.980 Lane mentioned that this happened once,

00:38:19.560 like I heard him at, you know,

00:38:20.660 some dinner conversation, bring it up.

00:38:23.160 It might actually be legit.

00:38:24.180 So then she dives into it, turns out it was legit.

00:38:26.640 I went to an audition and I thought,

00:38:29.640 at the time I thought, oh, I was so honored and so excited

00:38:32.320 and maybe I might be auditioning

00:38:34.440 just with like four or five people.

00:38:36.760 And I got there and I was only auditioning

00:38:38.360 with four or five people, so I'm like, all right,

00:38:39.680 you know, 20, 25% chance this could work.

00:38:42.340 What I found out later was that that was only one

00:38:44.540 like four auditions they held in vancouver and then they held another like five or six of those

00:38:48.940 sessions in toronto and um yeah so when i learned that even on the day of i'm like hey this was fun

00:38:55.180 i you know popped out to vancouver for the day got to pretend like i was a dragon with five other

00:39:00.780 guys a couple of my new you know ryan holmes and a few folks out there who are great guys

00:39:05.580 uh and so it was fun it was a fun experience you know i get a call back about a week later hey can

00:39:09.980 Can you come out to Toronto and do this again?

00:39:12.660 I did, I didn't have to do the full,

00:39:14.720 you know, we did a full like two to three hour pitch session

00:39:17.700 with a bunch of different pitchers and-

00:39:19.460 Like real-

00:39:20.240 Full cameras.

00:39:21.080 It was a real deal.

00:39:23.100 I went out there, didn't have to do the full thing.

00:39:25.840 Met with some of the more senior people.

00:39:27.700 Again, I was just then shortlisted.

00:39:29.640 And I think that it was one of like five or six

00:39:31.680 at that point and got a call a few days later saying,

00:39:34.720 hey, if you're interested.

00:39:36.200 What was the motivation?

00:39:37.580 Like, what did you see as an opportunity for,

00:39:40.180 I mean, I know it's probably not a deal flow thing.

00:39:42.300 Like, I mean.

00:39:42.980 No, no, it's not deal flow.

00:39:44.160 And it, you know, to be, I am investing my own money

00:39:47.320 and they don't pay us a ton of money.

00:39:50.500 And again, I'm not complaining,

00:39:51.580 it's a couple of weeks worth of work,

00:39:53.180 but it's not extravagant.

00:39:55.480 But for me, it's an opportunity

00:40:00.340 to help raise awareness for entrepreneurship.

00:40:04.560 I was so fortunate to have gone through

00:40:07.000 like almost a fast forward experience.

00:40:09.680 You know, I felt like at, you know,

00:40:12.040 when I was leaving Disney at 30,

00:40:15.100 I would have been 32, 33 years old when I was leaving,

00:40:19.020 maybe 34, I had gone from starting a company,

00:40:25.240 hiring the first four employees,

00:40:28.060 hiring then three to 400 employees there,

00:40:30.640 then hiring globally, then moving my way up.

00:40:33.160 And I ultimately ended up overseeing

00:40:34.800 a bunch of the different studios within Disney.

00:40:37.080 When I left, there was about,

00:40:38.420 I think about 1,500 people reporting into me

00:40:40.520 in some form or fashion.

00:40:42.820 And I was the youngest executive vice president

00:40:44.820 of the company.

00:40:46.460 I had incredible mentors.

00:40:47.780 I made a ton of mistakes.

00:40:49.220 Yeah, you know, it's one thing like,

00:40:51.700 I'm not saying this because it was like,

00:40:53.340 wow, I was so good that this just happened.

00:40:56.880 I was good enough.

00:40:57.940 You worked at it.

00:40:58.940 But I worked at it and I also made a lot of mistakes

00:41:01.140 and there's a lot of patience thrown at me.

00:41:03.740 And I'm thankful for that.

00:41:05.140 So when I'm at a stage in my life where I've got health,

00:41:08.320 I've got some wealth, I've got opportunity,

00:41:10.960 I've got a crazy experience, you know,

00:41:12.860 to end up in like a fortune, I think at the time,

00:41:15.620 Fortune 10, Fortune 20 company.

00:41:19.840 And I've been on that rollercoaster

00:41:20.900 and like fast forwarded through that in five years

00:41:22.780 was unique.

00:41:24.700 And I thought, there's no reason,

00:41:27.520 my first job was at Disneyland.

00:41:28.880 That was one of the other kind of fun things of this.

00:41:30.420 So I still remember the first time I set foot

00:41:32.380 into Bob Iger's office, the CEO,

00:41:35.020 while we were negotiating this deal.

00:41:37.060 And I just was like, I had to almost pinch myself going,

00:41:41.400 man, like I never imagined.

00:41:43.720 Like you worked at Disneyland,

00:41:45.060 your first job as a teenager?

00:41:46.800 Yeah, at 16 years old.

00:41:47.740 Cause you grew up in the US.

00:41:48.900 Yeah, so it was literally 12 years later,

00:41:51.540 I'm sitting in the CEO's office,

00:41:53.000 negotiating the sale of my company.

00:41:54.540 You can't make this stuff up.

00:41:55.480 No, no.

00:41:56.480 And from that point on then going to board meetings

00:41:59.440 with board members of the Walt Disney company,

00:42:01.420 including Steve jobs and these others. And like having just this mind blowing,

00:42:05.780 like I'm just, all I can say is I was filled with awe, humility, gratitude.

00:42:11.680 Um, and I felt like imposter syndrome all the time as well,

00:42:14.940 all the way through this experience. But you know, with a lot of time,

00:42:20.080 a lot of therapy and a lot of, uh, you know, kind of processing, I realized,

00:42:25.360 okay, rather than just like, Hey,

00:42:26.660 how can I now pivot this into an even bigger thing for me? I'm like, listen,

00:42:31.420 Who knows like I'm not against doing other cool things, but

00:42:35.380 But I almost felt a responsibility to say how can I how can I help others experience a journey like this?

00:42:41.340 How can I make it a little bit easier for them to experience a journey like this and

00:42:45.420 And so I you know, we built some infrastructure here in the innovation center a oh by the way

00:42:50.420 The end of that story is accelerate Okanagan

00:42:53.320 Their budget is now inverted so 20% of their budgets going to the operation and the real estate costs and

00:42:58.620 And 80% is going to help other startups,

00:43:01.280 which is one of the reasons why this building is full.

00:43:02.740 Even throughout COVID, it's remained at full capacity

00:43:06.060 because the health of the startup community

00:43:10.100 and the tech community here.

00:43:11.620 And again, I'm not taking credit for that now.

00:43:15.480 Everyone is really, I mean,

00:43:16.580 we've got an amazing infrastructure here.

00:43:19.580 But Dragon's Den was an opportunity

00:43:22.280 to take some of those lessons to an even bigger level

00:43:25.560 and be able to encourage entrepreneurs

00:43:28.600 entrepreneurship, not just in my hometown, but encourage entrepreneurship nationally and meet

00:43:33.560 people from all around the world or all around, I should say, all around Canada, all across Canada,

00:43:37.400 hear incredible stories, learn from them, share a little bit of what I've learned. Hang out with

00:43:42.560 Jim. Hang out with Jim. Dude, what a stud. I love that guy. He's a stud. Jim is the real deal. I mean,

00:43:47.100 they're all, they're all amazing. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, but Jim's the OG. I told you this,

00:43:51.280 like Jim is the grandfather I wish I would have had because he's just so wise and seasoned.

00:43:57.820 Yeah. Jim is truly one of those guys. Cause I'm guilty of it too. And so many people are guilty

00:44:01.900 of like, you, you manage your time. You know, you're trying to like, I don't want to waste

00:44:06.120 time. You know, sometimes people want to talk and it's like, listen, I got 15 other things I'm

00:44:10.720 late for right now. I got to go. Jim is the guy who will stop and kind of fold his arms. And he's

00:44:15.240 usually towering over people. Cause he's like six, five and he'll just, he'll talk you off.

00:44:19.500 You want to talk hockey? We'll talk hockey. You want to talk business? We'll talk business. You

00:44:22.880 You know, he just, he has time for everyone.

00:44:25.180 And that's an amazing, it's amazing trait.

00:44:28.480 I wanna be Jim when I grow up.

00:44:29.760 Something to admire.

00:44:30.600 Yeah.

00:44:32.560 As we wrap up, Lane, I love to ask everybody, you know,

00:44:36.080 looking back, you know, from the 19, 20 year old version

00:44:40.600 of you to the person that sits here today, you know,

00:44:44.600 you mentioned a lot of therapy, a lot of lessons learned.

00:44:48.160 Who have you had to become to be the person

00:44:50.740 that's achieved this level of success?

00:44:52.820 hmm it's a great question um i think first and foremost uh i had to become someone who who

00:45:08.600 i had to become someone who knew it wasn't about me and i see that mistake a lot with entrepreneurs

00:45:16.400 you know they they they're so passionate about their idea they're so excited about their idea

00:45:20.300 they end up kind of just wrapping this idea around them and it might work for a time they

00:45:25.440 might even have some success with it um but then it starts to mess with succession then it starts

00:45:29.900 to mess with um uh with workflow and and and getting in their own way it starts to mess with

00:45:35.960 their heads it starts to mess with their families it starts to mess with their friends um because

00:45:41.080 in success it can be incredibly enticing um and in failure it can be incredibly defeating if it's

00:45:46.380 all about you i think the best thing that i did number one is i had great partners who reminded

00:45:51.440 me daily it wasn't about me and so that was helpful um um people say lance and i used to

00:45:57.000 fight like an old married couple uh um but we always respected each other like we'd always

00:46:01.360 hug it out at the end but but when we were arguing about what the next experience should be for those

00:46:06.460 kids and we were arguing on behalf of those kids we were passionate about it because we were both

00:46:10.340 very creative and we both really wanted to do the best we could for the kids and um and so having

00:46:16.580 that was amazing uh having my own kids at the time reminded me every single night that it wasn't

00:46:21.260 about me that you know uh that that there's more to life than that um and then having great friends 0.81

00:46:27.900 who who also didn't really give a shit you know i mean i had some i lost some friendships of course 0.81

00:46:32.460 when when the deal happened and all of a sudden they like woke up and and i was this other thing 0.96

00:46:36.880 to them. And that was hard. And that's just, that's the nature of it sometimes. And it's,

00:46:41.140 I don't blame them. You know, who knows what, and I don't even know who knows what their

00:46:44.820 experience was with money as kids or their experience with money is now today. I had one

00:46:50.180 who wrote me a letter who literally was like, it's not you, it's me, but I just need to pause

00:46:53.700 on this for about a year. Because it's too hard for me to be around you with the success right

00:47:01.120 now. And I get it. And I, you know, it was almost like the irony was I got the worst grades out of

00:47:05.700 all my siblings. I, my siblings used to joke about whose couch I was going to be sleeping on as,

00:47:10.660 as I got older, cause my grades were so bad and I was so distracted at school and I was so,

00:47:16.200 um, you know, I was, I was focused on art and creativity. So I'm like, I was the last person

00:47:21.240 anyone around me thought this would happen to. Um, and I think that's one of the reasons why

00:47:26.420 it happened, but it's also been a reminder for me that it really wasn't about me. My uncle was an MP

00:47:30.360 for for 12 15 years something like that in alberta member of parliament and he um i asked him i'm

00:47:37.800 like man how do you go from being a farmer one day because he was you know dairy farmer and grew

00:47:43.240 how do you go from being a farmer one day to like flying with the snowbirds or flying in an f18 and

00:47:49.000 cold lake uh in these crazy experiences and being he was a minister of transportation for quite a

00:47:54.440 while as well under harper and i said how do you like how do you make sense of that and he said

00:47:59.640 he said lane i remind myself every single day that the power is with the seat and the chair i'm

00:48:06.600 sitting in the power is not mine i happen to be lucky enough to be sitting there for now someday

00:48:11.800 i won't be i'll be sitting back in a tractor and someone else will be sitting there and as long as

00:48:16.600 i remind myself every day that it's not about me that the power is about the seat and and and not

00:48:21.320 about me when i have to leave eventually uh it won't be so hard and uh and i'll be able to

00:48:27.480 to graciously hand it off to the next person

00:48:31.880 because it was never about me in the first place.

00:48:33.960 And that really stuck with me

00:48:38.100 and I try to remind myself that every day.

00:48:39.980 Some wise words.

00:48:41.740 For the ones that are listening that want to reach out

00:48:44.340 and thank you for the inspiration,

00:48:48.000 where's the best way for them to find you online?

00:48:51.040 I've got a website, lanemeryfield.com.

00:48:53.980 So you just have to figure out how to spell my name.

00:48:56.660 Try Google.

00:48:57.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:48:58.320 Yeah, I'm on Instagram and stuff.

00:49:01.120 I just use my same handle for everything.

00:49:02.920 So it's all Lane Merrifield.

00:49:04.000 Thankfully, it's a unique enough name

00:49:05.260 that no one else took it.

00:49:06.500 Yeah, yeah, it's always available.

00:49:08.860 So fun fact, as we close up Lane,

00:49:11.520 I wouldn't be here if you didn't build this building.

00:49:15.060 Because this building houses two of my favorite people,

00:49:18.840 Matt and Brad at PILA.

00:49:19.940 Oh, yeah.

00:49:20.940 And I came out for Brad's 25th wedding anniversary

00:49:25.160 last year with my little boy and I just fell in love

00:49:28.540 with Kelowna and then this year, you know, with my wife

00:49:31.300 we kind of asked ourselves where we wanted to spend time.

00:49:34.220 And so how crazy is that, that when you sat down

00:49:38.480 with those people so many years ago

00:49:40.100 to design this epicenter to attract people.

00:49:43.540 And I know, you know, MetaBridge has played a big part

00:49:46.280 bringing people here, that that would be the case.

00:49:49.160 So I'm sure if my family was here, they'd say thank you.

00:49:52.400 I love it.

00:49:53.240 No, listen, man.

00:49:54.080 nothing warms my heart more than to hear that because that was what we set out to do you know

00:49:58.020 we we didn't have to build any of these pieces the pieces were all there they were just scattered

00:50:03.000 across the city so we said well why don't we just concentrate it together and see what happens and

00:50:07.760 um and that i love hearing that man thank you for sharing that and and thanks for coming out here

00:50:11.520 super cool the the city uh when i when i heard that this was uh going to be more than a temporary

00:50:17.260 uh temporary setup man i was so happy and i'm happy for you and your family because i raised

00:50:23.240 my kids here and it's an incredible place to do that um but you know even more than that i'm happy

00:50:27.680 for this community because uh dude you're a rock star man it's an easy place to do life

00:50:31.680 appreciate you lane you too my friend

Dan Martell - September 27, 2021

The Creator of Club Penguin - Lane Merrifield @ Wheelhouse Ventures

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