Episode 05: John Vitti - VersusGame
What is the value of a stock anyway? And what is a market…actually? When I first met John Vitti the CEO of VersusGame several years ago, the company was called MrktStar and these thought provoking questions came to the top of my mind.
I knew enough as an investor to understand that the performance of the market had more to do with the way people felt than the actual performance of the company. John got my wheels turning about redefining what a market actually was, and how markets could be made. I came to the conclusion there could be an entirely different way to make a market where consumers could drive the indicators. I believed (and still kinda do) there could have been a potential for a future MrktStar index.
But I was a newbie VC at the time, still learning the ropes…and I didn’t have the autonomy to call my own shots yet. My colleagues opted to pass on investing in MrktStar, which eventually became VersusGame. I had to sit on the sidelines and watch as John Vitti turned VersusGame into the fastest growing game in the nation, awarding $17 million to more than 9.5 million players thus far by allowing players to compete by making predictions on topics like pop culture, sports, entertainment, food, and select the outcomes for each question.
I began to be fascinated by John’s journey and what might happen with VersusGame, whether they’d define a market, or simply be a cool game. In episode 5, John shares behind the scenes insight into his story as an entrepreneur and his journey of becoming.
My key takeway as an investor from this lesson is this:
Early stage investing is an art and not a science.
Sometimes you have to go with your gut. Sometimes you just know.
If you look for reasons to say No, you’re going to find them. If you look for reasons to say Yes, you’ll find them too. There is no black and white, only shades of grey. And as much as we love hockey sticks, and there are no straight lines in this world. John’s story is proof positive of that.
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foreign ERS we are back for The Adventurous podcast and I'm so excited to introduce you guys to John Vitti he is the founder and CEO of versus game which is one of the fastest if not maybe the fastest-growing game in the country he's a Serial entrepreneur he has an incredible story to tell and I cannot wait to
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introduce you to John but before we dive in let's talk a little bit about Trident coffee Trident coffee takes pride and craft by helping you feel your day with Organic keto friendly canned lattes and roasted whole bean coffee found in Sprouts Nationwide and an all-high-end natural grocery stores in Southern
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California you can also visit one of their tap rooms located in San Diego and immerse yourself in the full experience and shop online of course at tridentcoffee.com Trident Coffee live life full steam ahead so John welcome to adventurous finally I'm so thrilled to have you here thanks for having me and I just moved to LA and
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I just started going to Sprouts so you did yeah this is I'll look for that coffee pick up some coffee actually yes it's pretty amazing if you are a coffee drinker it's good stuff I'm a big fan yeah and I will fully disclose I'm an investor trying coffee that aside you know I wanted to Dive
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Right In with you know nobody goes off and builds the fastest growing game in the country and doesn't have some stories to tell can you start off you know introduce yourself and share with our audience here at Adventurous about you and about versus game Yeah absolutely and I definitely it's giving me some gray
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hairs for sure lack of sleep well I guess though the way back story is that you know give credit where credit's due my parents were Born and Raised on a farm like in Italy and I was born in Boston in a basement so I definitely understand the world of have and have-nots I moved out to California the day
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after I graduated from University which I almost failed out of twice once or twice I forget it really doesn't matter yeah no I now I like I give I do guest lecturing at different universities around the country which is interesting I think people want the real story and not just oh I had a business idea and
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then you know I raised the money and now I'm on my yacht right like it doesn't really work that way no but yeah I came out here and I jumped into a company called Proof Point as an employee my only company you know when I was working for somebody else I learned a lot but I was young and stupid
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and had a big ego I thought I could do things better and differently you know like the Hallmarks of an entrepreneur yeah and so I went off my own and I started four companies before versus game my first two failed miserably I wouldn't change a thing I learned a lot yeah and my last two companies I
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successfully exited one was in the consumer space and one was in the hardcore B2B Tech SAS space yeah and but the whole time I've always had this idea for which is now versus game so I kind of figured it out and put it together and we launched it to the public in 2019 and versus going to jump into what
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versus this game is yeah yeah just share a little bit about what it is and the growth that you guys have been having cool it's basically a prediction game where people get to predict the outcome of culture if they're right they win stuff so you know it could be traffic in La it's what's going on in the crypto
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world or this TV show or that podcast or whatever music whatever is trending in the universe Finds Its way into a game and people get to answer these questions play for fun and for free when cool prizes play against friends Brands celebrities and create their own games too and let them make some money too so
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really empowering users to be parts of the conversation because too many people just sit there and watch you know culture go by go by on whatever screen right and we want to interact so you know the Genesis is that we're consuming so much content all day long we naturally form these opinions and predictions off
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that content it's that reptilian Primal part of our brain we can't stop or hardwire to do this we're having these conversations but there's nothing for you to do it on so he built that thing so this is already your habit which has helped us get amazing Partnerships and the team and stuff like that yeah so
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there's an elephant in the room I want to unpack a little bit later which is I had the opportunity to be an early investor in Versus game and passed and it kills me but I had to sit there and watch John on LinkedIn as Versus game took off just like I thought it would and I wasn't a part of it and it
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sucks and that's part of being Adventurer we'll talk about that later yeah everyone teaches risks and you know you know yeah and I just think you know you got to come clean with that and be like you know I respect that I respect you for that yeah I mean but before we get there I wanted to talk about your
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article in Forbes and you know you made a quote and when I read this quote I thought to myself you know or the article in Forbes that had a feature about two in it and I thought no one says something like that without having something some sort of wisdom that they would want to on part onto another person and that
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quote says from you says nobody ever says they want to grow up and be stressed out never have days off lose friends and have no salary but that's what starting and growing a startup in the early days is like if you're authentic helpful love challenges problem solving and having the right team around you then it can be
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fun and rewarding but make sure you can't live without creating this business so you mentioned when you were giving us your background you know you had some failures and you've had you know you wouldn't take them back you know when you look back at kind of moments in time when was the opportunity that you almost
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quit or should have quit in the past but you didn't and why didn't you within any company or within any company yeah like yeah I mean there's probably multiple opportunities pick one choose one you know multiple moments but you know it's always fascinating when was the moment when you almost or should
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have quit and what kept you from doing it that's such a loaded question so within versus even let's go I like to just be raw and real and transparent the one of pretty much like in there in the first couple years of raising money and any time that happens I'm like oh this is done like there's no it's not
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gonna work and we're not gonna get funding I should just hang it up and then the rounds started getting easier and easier and amazing people started coming in but definitely in the first couple times that we were fundraising it's like you get so many you know you're eating those for breakfast like you've got a little of a
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diet of nose right and self-doubt just absorbs you it's overwhelming and so but you know if you have this either stupidity or hunger or a little bit then you can kind of fight through that and hopefully your gut is right and things start you know coming together yeah you know I guess I mean I wanted to
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talk about this a little bit later but you know when the time when I had the opportunity to look at versus game back when you were called Market Star you know there was I didn't it was like kind of this thing it was so early I was like I kind of get it but I also don't get it but I think there's something here it's so new
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that it's still new it's like what you have to its educational sales yeah well and it's still like you I kind of felt like it was like I saw an opportunity to define a market that didn't exist the market to create basically to price opinion and because if I'm predicting that some this celebrity is going to be
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successful or That Celebrity is going to be successful basically we have just created a market of opinions of public opinion about culture and I was like this is just so fascinating I was thinking about how markets are made and I was thinking about how you know what is it what is the value
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of a pre of stock anyway, you know is it actually the earnings and the p e ratios or is it the opinions of the cup of the people and so that was my big impetus for wanting to do Market Star and this was back when I was at a small VC fund based out of Oregon but my in early stage investing and I
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think also operating in a business well I know also because I was a Founder it's about it's an art, not a science, and sometimes you just have to go with your gut and you have to do things that sometimes don't you have a hard time justifying it but you're like I just know and that was where a lot of the Clash kind of came
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from with my other partners because they were looking for reasons to say no and when you look for reasons that it's not going to work you're going to find them and I was looking for reasons to say yes and you know I wasn't a senior enough partner at the time I was not a managing partner I did not run the fund you know
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so I didn't get to overthrow them it must make it must be so hard to be an investor everyone's pitching you these ideas and this and that it must be I don't know how you do it I wouldn't know it's heartbreaking to say no to people you don't want to say no to like yeah you know but you know I know that
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I'll have to have a good time saying though I can I can feel it there's not my type of people but you know it's like you know when you're when you're working at such these early stages on such the bleeding edge you get so much rejection and it's hard to it's hard to explain when you're just looking for people
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who are like I want to say I don't want to see the vision you know like what do you do about that yeah I think well we're in a little bit of a different spot now luckily and fortunately and we're very grateful about it so a lot of the I mean the investors in the last round we did our series eight a
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lot of that was inbound a lot of that was through referrals from our amazing legendary investors so it was more about hey I'm interested you know let's take a look and then I was able to do my job better by qualifying them in a route are they right for us yeah and I know not everyone's in that position but
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we got lucky there's not a by day that goes by that I don't slap myself a few times for many reasons and that's one of them is just that we're surrounded by amazing people that get done you know so when you think about bringing in not just investors in terms of the right people but even like your core advisors and your
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team and things like that can you share about a time that you made a really bad mistake in hiring and a bad investor fit or whatever you know I think a lot of people just think they need they find someone they fit the bill on paper and they just want to run with it and you know I'd love to hear
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your wisdom about building teams and recruiting the right people around you yeah I know I made a bad investor mistake my last company I learned from that I was very careful this time I think it was more on the advisor side that you mentioned or you know everyone's like I know this I know all these people I can do
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this and that for you I can deliver you the moon right and then you're like sold because you're you know hungry and you know desperate to get some deals done or whatever and meet people and then they come on board and then they just kind of disappear right and so I had to you know to kick off or you know stop vesting before
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and it's just like I just want to stay away from you know certain people and it's just these things are all organic relationships right so I mean think about any relationship friend partner lover whatever all that stuff is you know my favorite color is a black and white I don't ever see those colors
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anymore all I see is gray in the world so it's never a straight line and that's the deal that's the real deal with relationships you know yeah I think a lot of people it's like it's so hard I'm getting a little better at like smelling that out and weeding them out where you know you get a lot of attention all of a sudden and then
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everyone can deliver any everything and then so you have to get a little smarter and about how to deal with that I think some of the best advice I ever got from like major CEOs over and over and over again from different places over and over is higher slow and Fire fast yes yeah and every time I've talked to
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really successful like founders of unicorn companies multiple unicorn companies and I ask them about their success or their advice I don't even lead them I just ask they all start talking about team and hiring and recruiting it's the number one thing oh yeah the people are the biggest asset you could ever have
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because no matter what happens out there The Good The Bad reality is going to happen every day if you have the right team that you can figure it out if you don't you gotta battle all that plus the team it's that would be overwhelming you know I had an experience in one of my first tech startups way back in the day it was
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called crowd compass and it was acquired by Cevent which is an event technology company we were doing mobile apps for events and that's actually how I got started in the startup world was through that company and I was in charge of basically whatever wasn't engineering and wasn't sales yeah yeah yeah it was very early
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and so we I had this little team and I needed to recruit more and I had a little budget and to work with and I had this stack of resumes and there were some people on paper who were very qualified like you said and they were promising to deliver the moon and here I am sitting in a broken school desk in a hot loading dock
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sweating and interviewing people you know and they're coming in and I like that yeah I'm like you know it was a broken office the dishwasher didn't work like I mean you just you name it it was a startup real like this like why don't like me and you fully transparent no ego like you know we're not trying to go
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it's like wow why is everyone forced to think that they have to be like the best and it's the best and oh I really I raised this and that it was perfect it's I don't know it's such a yeah I mean it's cool it's like it is more harm than good because the upper comers if they feel any sense of you know struggle I think they're going
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to be like oh well what's wrong with me because these books I read all these podcasts I listen to all these Invest Founders they're they were like one and done that's not it's not I've been at this for like seven or ten years like you know I think for a while and by a while I mean not that long ago I think
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my family was legit worried that I was going to end up homeless yes I was I had so many failures nothing was working out like I mean I had some bad like garbage fires oh yeah my family and my friends were like what is wrong with you and to now they don't understand me still they still don't get this whole thing
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Adventure but they're like you seem like you're gonna be okay I remember going out on like dates and going to the ATM I'm like dang I got 40 bucks and I got all weekend now like what do I do like you know as friends and the date you know there's no dinner for forty dollars right so what
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did you do so I got really good at cooking and it saves a lot of money if you cook but no it's more about just not going avoiding dinner yeah well I mean but then you find some people that don't care about that which is the most important thing because they actually just care about you and not
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like what you have and that makes them cool well and when you try to explain you know a lot of times you're like I'm building a company and I'm doing this and I'm doing that some people think that's really cool and they want to hear all about it and other people are like oh so you don't like have any time and you're like yeah oh my
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God I mean still out hanging out with whoever and it's like oh I gotta it's like 10 11 o'clock it's like I gotta go do work you know it's a Saturday but they don't get it and sometimes that's a little bit of a struggle if it's a relationship type of thing yeah well and for me to inventor you know I'm like
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fundraising I'm in a closing you know like it happened with you and I I called and I'm like I'm sorry I can't come because I gotta like go I got invited to this catamaran boat trip with a whole bunch of investors and I have to go you know and I'd be like like when are you free for dinner I'm like two weeks
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from now just banging away on spreadsheets and math for partners and then I've had a 6 a.m call this morning like it's just you know that's all weak it's eight days a week yeah yeah exactly it's yeah the struggle is real but you know I think like what you were saying you know I I ended up hiring the person who was like resume at
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the bottom of the stock may be on paper I would have scored his qualifications on paper as like a c people thought I was crazy they were like you pass on all these guys and you want him and I was like I want him and the thing about it was it was because I was like in my head thinking I don't care like when things get
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hard you and I this we'll figure it out me and those guys We're Not Gonna figure it out together and my hire he stayed with that company for almost a decade that's amazing congratulations yeah the first thing I looked for when hiring anybody is they ideally they started their own company because then they've been through
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shed they've been through yeah and so they have the grit yeah succeeded it doesn't matter you know and then I want them to be smarter than me I love being the dumbest person in the room for sure yeah I joke with people because people think I'm since I'm a VC I'm some sort of like amazing genius I'm
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like I actually am the stupidest person in my firm I know one thing and one thing alone early stage venture capital yeah and everyone else is like incredibly smart they're phds master's degrees they're a doctor like I'm like hey yeah I'll get the deal done there's room for everybody yeah yeah so I so
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when you're talking about you know looking for that person who has that Grit and who has that background and that experience in a startup because they're going to be a good fit on the team what kind of questions do you ask for what do you look for when you're courting people and meeting people to
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see who hasn't and who doesn't it depends on the role and I usually do more like the business side obviously but I wish I was technical in another life in another life I'd be a designer and an engineer oh and another life I would be I'd be an art history okay and another life I'd be food history or food traveler
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I still want to do what I'm doing now I mean I would want to be I would want to know design and no engineering so I could just talk and not be like what happens now you know what I mean yeah yeah but anyway so on the business side yeah I asked you know you know I love understanding it's about for me
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it's about understanding their Arc and because if you can look for and you can discover patterns and Trends then and they're good obviously you know if during an interview or anything in life if you're gonna discover patterns and Trends then you can understand things at a deeper
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level and so I try to look for that through their Journey their Arc yeah but yeah it's always about asking you know you know Point Blank you know I'd be working for another company like you know do you like startups have you done your own startup you know all those types of questions are really important I'm trying to dig
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in and figure out what was your hardest time and how did you get through that mm-hmm so what was your hardest time and how did you get through that oh yeah okay the heart well oh my God and every company there's so many I remember I remember I remember the consumer company I had it was a product a physical product and I was I
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had I was living in a like an apartment condo in San Francisco and I just had you know no storage so I had to put everything in my condo and I was just living in boxes and then that that plus one of those companies when they folded I had to figure out how to pay off a bunch of debt this is one of the not
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succeed I had to pay off a bunch of debt and then figure out how to start over recreate it myself and start over and start something else and then going from that failure to something else and trying to go raise money with an idea with a zero on the board was super hard because the investors had your patterns
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and Trends right successes and if you don't have any and you have fresh off a failure you got to figure it out real quick and so that's when you just do it yourself and until it becomes hard to ignore for investors and partners and things like that's such it's so hard it's that's a lifetime of knowledge and
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learning that it's great it's hard so there's something you're hitting on here that I find very in my opinion is almost deep and almost like a spiritual principle most people would throw in the towel and they would say I failed and I have debt to pay and I'm gonna go get a job and I'm going to you
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know act like a regular person and go do that you didn't yeah why not yeah so this stems from my childhood I didn't know it then but I discovered this maybe like 10 years ago I just I was so aware of it I was self-aware of this even though it was in my DNA but my father you know there's no my parents were
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born a farm there's no college education there's no education and they were doing you know whatever jobs like my family was the ones on the street corners with the bag trying to pick up work for construction for the day right they're from Italy and they just worked with it they were like I'm going
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to be a laborer right and so anyways my dad was always getting fired like I never I either never see him like eight days a week and never seen breakfast or dinner right he was come home and have like a little piece of bread and a little tiny glass of wine and pass out and I wouldn't see him or I'd see him for like half a year
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or four or five months and I guess he was either always working hard for somebody else or he was always getting laid off or like oh sorry whatever and so I didn't know it then but that deeply affected me because I discovered that oh I can't I need to be able to control my own destiny
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and so I just kept on going plus when you realize and that word is very specific because it's not thinking but when I when you realize there's the idea is good and this should be live this should be out there in the world not that you think it's going to work or whatever you realize like you
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have of pure belief like a religion like you believe right what's that saying there's no atheists and foxholes right like you've gotta believe yeah and when you just have that and it keeps you up at night so those two things together you know formed just for me I guess so you know you had a formative
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experience obviously growing up or many of them and I understand that too I was you know oldest of three I had a single mother and you know I have a lot of that in me too like I never want to be in that position where I can't control my destiny but you know I I think at a certain point you know that's not even
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enough when the going gets really tough it's like you know for me it comes down to I know that I was meant to do this and I refuse to act and operate as somebody that I'm not meant to be and so m you know I'm curious you know what you feel in terms of like ultimately your purpose as an entrepreneur how to do purpose and
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Entrepreneurship intersects in your world foreign I think it really goes back to like you have that deep realization that belief that's in your core that this thing has to happen this has to be out there I'm the person to do it I can do it but all that is taught over time because no one's born like I don't know with that confidence
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or stupidity a little bit of both right and so I think it it's like when you believe in this thing that's your purpose that's your calling you know it just has to be something that you can't ignore like if you're like it's one of those things like what do you do every day if can you monetize
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that's right and you have to love it because you do every day you have to love it right so if that's like exercise fine if that is reading fine that's watching TV fine whatever it is but if you are addicted to this thing I mean every day then that's your purpose that's your calling you know but if it's like
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something you can just put down like I'll get to it on Monday because it's Saturday right it's yeah it's not quite there yet yeah I get that like and that's not healthy I'm trying to find a balance it is you know well it's yeah whatever I've got it's interesting because how I came to entrepreneurship many years ago
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was actually started out as a writer nice and you know one of the things that I learned as a writer was you have to be like so obsessed with your story and with getting it out in the world that you'll do anything yeah and that's why the best journalists are like dogs like just dogs on a bone they'll go they
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don't care and you know one of the journalists that I just totally idolized is Anderson Cooper I've always really respected Anderson Cooper one of the reasons why is because he was flying himself he was going himself as a young journalist like in a teen to war zones because he had to report the news
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and I'm like that means like that person Edward R Murrow hiding you know in a tiny apartment Senator McCarthy's after him you know they're going to throw him in jail for Life he's reporting about McCarthyism and the whole Witch Hunt around Communists and calling out people and things like that his life is in
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danger and he continues to broadcast because he has to and you know you know people be like Anderson Cooper oh he was like the son of you know Gloria Vanderbilt and he had a silver spoon in his mouth I don't care about that I you know in fact that probably made him even a better journalist because he didn't
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need to make the money so he's like I'm gonna go out there and show everyone what's happening Kosovo because I'm in a position of privilege to be able to do that I'm like respect yeah yeah for sure talk about a purpose if you're going to put your life into the line yeah I mean when you're like 19.
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yeah he's crazy yeah but journalists are like that like true journalists, not today's clickbait writers and so that's how when I started writing it was like I fell into the startup world randomly and that's another story but it was like if you will literally die if you don't get the story then that you're writing the
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right story and you are doing what you need to be doing and that's kind of how it needs to feel like a company like starting your company like if you will wither up and die if you don't do it yeah and you should do it I mean that is that's it in a nutshell literally I felt like when I worked in some jobs
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like work for companies I felt like I was dying like honestly I was like I'm withering up and yeah the other way in a bad way though in a bad way yeah I'm like without not of a good way not the good way well so I would love to leave our readers with a really strong piece of wisdom for not readers we're
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talking about writing listeners with a really strong piece of wisdom from you so if you were sitting across from someone who was basically you maybe 10 years ago and they're in that horrible Place their apartment is full of inventory and they owe everyone money they have failed and failed and failed and failed and they
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are all of a sudden sitting across from you having coffee and you have just a few minutes to tell them something that's going to change their life what would you say you don't have to be eloquent about it you can like to struggle all you are you know at all in this conversation yeah that's not me so I got this and it's something that
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I live by because I lived it which is you've already experienced the worst right you're in that yeah really kind of tough place so who cares like if you experience the worst it can only get better right you already know so what does this feel like you're experiencing now what does that feel like okay
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you're still going to wake up tomorrow you still have an opportunity so what are you afraid of go try because the worst already happened absolutely there's yeah exactly you know you the prior episode to Chris Thompson from sober psychic you know his story sober
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psychic basically started when he woke up on the sidewalk on Thanksgiving morning soaked in rain and was like could this be the first day of my next like you know and I don't even know I'm like that must have come from like God or something because I don't know how he would have come up to that he was in
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like that state of alcoholism when you get the Tremors and things and he started sober sidekick which has turned into a movement but that what you said there is his is similar to his thing which is like you're already Like a Rock Bottom I think you're gonna find when you talk to a lot of these entrepreneurs they all
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know how to fail they all have failed they've all been at their worst it's it's that's another trend for sure it's a matter of just like I think at the end of the day like you said you've got to believe yeah because you have no proof yeah if you can get through that then you can get through a meeting
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or a tough call or whatever you know yeah and it's a numbers game you're a hit rate you know you run a game you're running a gaming company you know this the hit rate you're eventually gonna hit yeah if you just stick with it okay yeah well any final words what's that thanks for asking by the way that was a cool question you're welcome
33:18
it's my job do you have any final words for our audience here at the Adventures who are primarily entrepreneurs VCS investors people who are on this crazy journey of Entrepreneurship yeah I would say get crazy in love with what you're doing you know like Beyonce style yes that's your fiance song yes I'm not
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that's cool you're not like we'll get you around a game that everyone around cultured everyone around everybody you hire other people to be cool for you all right well Adventures here you have it John Vitti from versus game I will go ahead and put a link so you guys can all download versus game and get started
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monetizing your knowledge about a culture that John doesn't have so you better go and get on there and help him out there'll be some links in the show notes John is there any other way that you would like people to be able to connect is there anything that you'd like to share before we sign off
34:25
yeah I guess you can go check us out on Instagram versus game and you can go check out the website as well versus game.com and yeah we have a fun TV show coming out next year we're getting producer hopefully coming out with Mark Burnett producing it so that'll be fun so we'll be we'll be in a few places on your screens
34:42
that'll be fascinating game all right there will be cool stuff in the show notes and thank you so much for your time today John thank you.
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