148: Neither Fish Nor Fowl: The Foo VR Story

00:00SPEAKER- Quick, remember your dreams.

00:01SPEAKER- Okay, so I've had really weird dreams since I got sick.

00:04SPEAKER- Still ongoing?

00:06SPEAKER- Last night, this morning, five o'clock in the morning,

00:08SPEAKERI woke up and I was like, that was a weird dream.

00:10SPEAKERAnd I got up and peed and I was like, I still remember it.

00:12SPEAKERAnd then I was like, okay.

00:14SPEAKERAnd then I went back into the dream

00:16SPEAKERwhen I got up from peeing.

00:17SPEAKER- Wait, you continue dreams usually?

00:20SPEAKER- Do you not continue dreams?

00:21SPEAKER- Oh, usually I start a new one.

00:23SPEAKERWell, these days, frequently if I wake up at three or four

00:27SPEAKERto go pee, there are even odds that I'm not going back

00:30SPEAKERto sleep.

00:30SPEAKER- There's a real, like, it's very important

00:32SPEAKERthat I not open my eyes fully is what I've learned.

00:35SPEAKER- Yes.

00:36SPEAKER- If I don't open my eyes fully, I'm just kind of like,

00:38SPEAKERugh.

00:39SPEAKER- Don't perceive.

00:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

00:41SPEAKER- Don't think, don't, yeah.

00:43SPEAKER- Like the act of having to aim at the toilet

00:46SPEAKERsometimes is enough cognitive load that it wakes me up.

00:48SPEAKERSo anyway.

00:49SPEAKER- Don't cogitate on the way through the bathroom or back.

00:52SPEAKER- No, no.

00:53SPEAKERSo, well, okay, hold on.

00:55SPEAKERThere's like three different ways this could go.

00:57SPEAKERHave you seen the threads about how everybody experiences,

01:01SPEAKERhow everybody's brain works differently, you know,

01:03SPEAKERthe, how everybody's neuro-diverse and like,

01:08SPEAKERwhen some people are able to make pictures of things

01:10SPEAKERand hold a really solid picture of a 3D object in their head

01:14SPEAKERlike with close detail and the whole thing.

01:16SPEAKERAnd some people can only have like a 2D flat,

01:18SPEAKERlike a relative caricature essentially.

01:21SPEAKERAnd some people just have like the basic shape and that's it

01:24SPEAKERlike color shape, maybe not even the color.

01:26SPEAKERAnd some people just aren't capable of doing it.

01:28SPEAKERI learned today that that also applies to inner monologues.

01:31SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

01:32SPEAKERAre you talking about the thing that was going around

01:33SPEAKERa few months ago, maybe a year ago now?

01:35SPEAKER- It goes around, it's always going around.

01:37SPEAKERIt's eternally cycling, depending on your friend groups.

01:40SPEAKER- Yeah, that's probably what it is.

01:41SPEAKERI remember there was a minor hubbub on my Twitter feed,

01:43SPEAKERat least maybe within the last year of people going like,

01:47SPEAKER"Oh my God, I just learned that some people

01:48SPEAKERdon't have inner monologues."

01:49SPEAKER- I don't have inner monologues.

01:51SPEAKER- You don't?

01:52SPEAKER- I have no, no, like, like, okay, so this has happened

01:56SPEAKERto me multiple times in my life.

01:57SPEAKERLike when you read, do you like say the words in your head

02:00SPEAKERwhen you're reading?

02:01SPEAKER- Yes, I do.

02:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I've never done that.

02:03SPEAKERI just read the word and the ideas in the brain.

02:05SPEAKER- Like I can read and not like slowly, you know,

02:08SPEAKERI can not take the time to pronounce the words out loud

02:11SPEAKERand I can still derive the meaning,

02:12SPEAKERbut just like naturally, unless I force myself,

02:15SPEAKERlike I hear the words as I read them.

02:16SPEAKER- Yeah, see, I never ever hear the word.

02:18SPEAKERLike when I started working in the magazine and I had to,

02:20SPEAKERone of the editor tips was like,

02:22SPEAKERyou have to read the word out loud.

02:23SPEAKER'Cause like if you read it out loud

02:24SPEAKERand it sounds right when you're saying it in a sentence,

02:27SPEAKERlike I literally have to move my lips to make that work.

02:29SPEAKER'Cause I can't, I can't do it in my head.

02:31SPEAKER- No kidding.

02:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:33SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

02:34SPEAKER- Anyway, no interior monologue.

02:37SPEAKERBut the dream last night, I dreamed that I was,

02:39SPEAKERfor some reason, applying for a job at Activision.

02:41SPEAKERI think working on Call of Duty.

02:43SPEAKER- Sounds more like a nightmare to me, am I right?

02:46SPEAKER- It's not, it's not anything I would consciously do.

02:49SPEAKERI dreamt that when I got there,

02:51SPEAKERI went in and there was nobody to like greet you

02:52SPEAKERor tell you what to do.

02:53SPEAKERYou just got put down in a,

02:55SPEAKERlike you walked into like a vestibule

02:58SPEAKERwith some couches and like ferns.

03:01SPEAKERAnd then somebody came in and called your name,

03:03SPEAKERlike you were at a doctor's office with a clipboard.

03:05SPEAKER- It's all true to life so far.

03:07SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.

03:08SPEAKERWhen I went through this door with this person,

03:10SPEAKERthey assigned me a portable air conditioner,

03:14SPEAKERlike a one on wheels with the hoses at the back.

03:17SPEAKERAnd I had to carry that through this entire,

03:19SPEAKERlike all day, eight person interview process.

03:22SPEAKER- Were you in fact interviewing in hell?

03:24SPEAKER- I like, look, it was, it was very severance.

03:27SPEAKEROkay, the whole thing was a little bit weird.

03:30SPEAKERAnd I got to the end of the interview process

03:33SPEAKERand like nobody took the air conditioner away,

03:35SPEAKERbut they had made me leave my phone in the car

03:38SPEAKER'cause I couldn't have like an electronic device in that,

03:41SPEAKERin, you know, where the Call of Duties are made.

03:44SPEAKERAnd so I was like, well, I can't,

03:46SPEAKERthey told me not to leave the air conditioner unsupervised

03:49SPEAKER'cause somebody would steal it.

03:50SPEAKERSo I was really paranoid about like,

03:51SPEAKERI took it in the bathroom with me,

03:52SPEAKERthe whole thing all day long.

03:54SPEAKERSo I was like, if I take this out to the parking lot,

03:56SPEAKERto my car, they're gonna think I'm trying to steal

03:59SPEAKERthis portable air conditioner to get my phone

04:01SPEAKERto call the, you know, call the information number.

04:03SPEAKERBut if I don't, then somebody will steal it

04:05SPEAKERand then I'll have lost the air conditioner.

04:06SPEAKERBoth of these things are bad.

04:08SPEAKERWhat do I do?

04:09SPEAKERSo I carried the air conditioner out to the car.

04:11SPEAKERAnd then of course, the moment I step out

04:13SPEAKERand it hits the parking lot wheels,

04:14SPEAKERwheels on the parking lot, somebody comes out and was like,

04:16SPEAKERhey, what the hell are you doing with that air conditioner?

04:18SPEAKERAnd that's when I woke up.

04:19SPEAKER- Boo.

04:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I wanna know what the air conditioner means, man.

04:23SPEAKERWhat does it mean?

04:24SPEAKER- I was very excited for you to get a free air conditioner,

04:25SPEAKERhave this dream, a dream air conditioner.

04:27SPEAKER- Oh man, I'd love a dream air conditioner.

04:28SPEAKERThat sounds so good.

04:30SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:51SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:58SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.

05:00SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

05:01SPEAKER- Brad, what are we doing this week?

05:02SPEAKER- What are we doing this week?

05:04SPEAKERWell, let's see, let me flip through the like previous six

05:06SPEAKERor so discarded ideas before we got to this one.

05:09SPEAKER- I think that the air conditioner represents my fear

05:11SPEAKERthat we didn't have a podcast topic

05:13SPEAKERwhen I went to bed last night.

05:14SPEAKER- We're starting to sweat.

05:15SPEAKER- And the air conditioner was my anxiety

05:18SPEAKERabout the podcast topics this week.

05:20SPEAKERGetting a little hot under the collar

05:21SPEAKERas the deadline approaches.

05:23SPEAKER- Maybe, yeah.

05:24SPEAKER- Talk about this on the Discord a little bit.

05:26SPEAKER- Yeah.

05:27SPEAKER- Was it two weekends ago or was it three weekends ago?

05:29SPEAKERWhatever weekend outside lands was here.

05:32SPEAKERI ended up editing that week's show

05:35SPEAKERat about 1130 that night.

05:37SPEAKER- Yeah, that was two weeks ago.

05:38SPEAKER- I basically started editing that podcast

05:41SPEAKERabout an hour before it needed to post.

05:44SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a little late.

05:45SPEAKER- And like, look, I think if our episode went up

05:47SPEAKERat like say 1230 instead of midnight,

05:49SPEAKERwhat are they gonna do?

05:50SPEAKER- I'm surprised you're up that late.

05:51SPEAKERThat's late for you.

05:52SPEAKER- I'm usually not.

05:53SPEAKERI was listening to the Green Day Show.

05:55SPEAKER- Oh, that's right.

05:56SPEAKER- Anyway, I got it in under the gun.

05:58SPEAKERI exported the WAV file at about 1157.

06:01SPEAKER- Thank God you have fast internet.

06:02SPEAKER- And then it was a race against time

06:04SPEAKERto encode and tag and upload.

06:06SPEAKER- I was, you know, I'm not gonna lie.

06:08SPEAKERI'm the right kind of procrastinator

06:09SPEAKERthat like, I kind of enjoy that.

06:11SPEAKER- It was a bit exhilarating.

06:12SPEAKEROh, let's see, here's the thing

06:14SPEAKERthat I derived the most satisfaction from.

06:15SPEAKER- Okay.

06:16SPEAKER- I still scheduled it.

06:17SPEAKERI didn't just click publish.

06:18SPEAKER- Okay, so you made it in time.

06:20SPEAKER- The time on my Windows clock's at 1159 PM.

06:23SPEAKERSo I scheduled it for midnight with about 30 seconds to spare

06:26SPEAKERand then it auto posted just like always.

06:27SPEAKER- I only have one question for you, Brad.

06:30SPEAKERDid they play Basket Case?

06:33SPEAKER- Of course, absolutely.

06:34SPEAKER- Okay.

06:35SPEAKER- Thousand, but I think that might be their most popular song

06:38SPEAKERor definitely up there. - Only for people our age.

06:40SPEAKER'Cause they have a whole 21st century pop punk renaissance

06:44SPEAKERfan base that is like American idiot era.

06:47SPEAKER- Dude, is there a single Green Day fan on the planet

06:49SPEAKERthat does not revere Dookie?

06:51SPEAKER- I think, so when I saw them,

06:54SPEAKERwhen they were on the American idiot tour at Pac Bell,

06:56SPEAKERwhat was then Pac Bell Park, they did not play Dookie.

06:59SPEAKER- At all?

07:00SPEAKER- They played.

07:02SPEAKER- I could see it.

07:02SPEAKERThat was like their big comeback

07:04SPEAKER'cause they had a period of commercial insignificance.

07:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't think they played,

07:11SPEAKERthey might've played Welcome to Paradise,

07:13SPEAKERbut yeah, I was disappointed.

07:15SPEAKERAll I wanted was Dookie.

07:16SPEAKERI wanted nothing, I would've gone to a,

07:19SPEAKERat that point in my life, I would've gone to a show

07:20SPEAKERthat was just a start to finish track one through 14

07:23SPEAKERDookie playback concert.

07:25SPEAKERAnyway.

07:26SPEAKER- All right, I think I have officially burned my quota

07:29SPEAKERof talking about Green Day on podcasts now.

07:31SPEAKER- This week on Nextlander too?

07:33SPEAKER- It's been like two or three times now.

07:35SPEAKERYou know what?

07:35SPEAKERI shouldn't say we discarded all the ideas

07:37SPEAKERwe went through this morning.

07:37SPEAKERI think like two or three of them

07:38SPEAKERare going to become episodes.

07:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I think there's an episode

07:42SPEAKERon the history of electronic music that I would love to do.

07:44SPEAKERI think that's really cool.

07:46SPEAKER- I can't believe we've never done this.

07:48SPEAKERWe got a request for a Bluetooth episode,

07:50SPEAKERjust kind of everything about Bluetooth start to finish.

07:52SPEAKER- Yeah, and then a friend of the pod, David Ellis,

07:55SPEAKERasked for an episode about home video recording technology,

08:00SPEAKERwhich was like super interesting.

08:02SPEAKERAnd then the iPhone 4 came out and it all just went away.

08:05SPEAKERIt's all just phones now.

08:06SPEAKERSo remember the flip camera?

08:08SPEAKERThat was a cool thing.

08:08SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I think we bought three or four of those.

08:11SPEAKER- We had like five of them at whiskey.

08:13SPEAKER- Yes, they were not great.

08:15SPEAKER- You know what?

08:16SPEAKERIt's better than the alternative.

08:17SPEAKER- It's fair.

08:18SPEAKER- Yeah, this week, people have asked for this.

08:21SPEAKERThis is another listener request episode.

08:24SPEAKERPeople asked for like the history of FooVR,

08:26SPEAKERwhich was the company I started in 2015

08:29SPEAKERwhen I left tested, I kind of got the VR bug.

08:33SPEAKER- This is a great idea.

08:34SPEAKERI had no idea that like you wheeled this out,

08:36SPEAKERjust like, oh, we could do the history of FooVR.

08:37SPEAKERI was like, wait, what?

08:38SPEAKERWhere did that come from?

08:39SPEAKERI had no idea people had requested that,

08:40SPEAKERbut if I had, I would have said, yeah, let's do it.

08:42SPEAKER'Cause it sounds fascinating.

08:43SPEAKER- We've gotten a bunch of requests over the years.

08:45SPEAKER'Cause it kind of came out of nowhere for viewers, I think.

08:50SPEAKERLike realistically, it all started

08:51SPEAKERwhen I saw the vibe at GDC in 2015.

08:53SPEAKER- Right, and I remember talking to you

08:55SPEAKERabout that at the time it happened.

08:57SPEAKERI will say, before we get into this real quick,

08:58SPEAKERlike I think this topic is even just interesting

09:00SPEAKERfrom a general perspective,

09:02SPEAKERlike setting aside the VR component,

09:04SPEAKERlike also just hearing about the process of founding

09:07SPEAKERand trying to run a little boutique tech startup, I think,

09:11SPEAKERis also a fascinating thing.

09:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, so like in a lot of ways,

09:16SPEAKERwe had the normal tech startup loop of, wow, this thing,

09:23SPEAKERwe could change the world with this, right?

09:24SPEAKERWe could be like the next Desi Liu,

09:27SPEAKERwhich was a thing I literally said

09:28SPEAKERin a pitch meeting one time.

09:30SPEAKER- So phase one, idealism.

09:31SPEAKER- Yeah, all the way down to the grim reality

09:35SPEAKERof a multi-year worldwide pandemic

09:38SPEAKERthat destroyed a lot of in-person events.

09:40SPEAKERAnyway, spoilers, I guess.

09:43SPEAKER- But I remember talking to you,

09:45SPEAKERand maybe talk to Norm as well,

09:47SPEAKERbut I remember you guys coming back from that GDC meeting

09:51SPEAKERand just like gushing in a way that it was hard for me

09:54SPEAKERto actually envision what you had seen there

09:56SPEAKERbecause you were using borderline magical language

09:59SPEAKERabout the experience of being in that headset.

10:02SPEAKER- Well, so, okay, so up until that point,

10:04SPEAKERwe had done, we'd played, we'd done a lot of Oculus stuff,

10:07SPEAKERand the Oculus stuff at that time, there were no hands.

10:09SPEAKERSo you were using like a gamepad and a headset

10:11SPEAKERor a keyboard and mouse and a handset or a joystick

10:13SPEAKERand a, you know, like established PC gaming controls, right?

10:19SPEAKERAnd the difference with the Vive was that they put you,

10:23SPEAKERthey belted this thing on you in a small room,

10:25SPEAKERand there was somebody in the room with you

10:26SPEAKERto kind of supervise and make sure if something crashed

10:28SPEAKERor whatever, it wasn't gonna go bad.

10:29SPEAKERAnd then they gave you these controllers

10:31SPEAKERto hold in your hands that you could move representations

10:34SPEAKERof your hands around in the world.

10:36SPEAKERAnd there's a video on Tested, you can watch it.

10:39SPEAKERNorm and I did these demos.

10:40SPEAKERWe weren't allowed to record any of them.

10:42SPEAKERSo we literally had a video of us like walking down

10:45SPEAKERthe booth of cool Vive valve hardware in their GC booth.

10:49SPEAKERAnd then we stood outside in front of a sign

10:52SPEAKERand talked for like 45 minutes about what the experience was.

10:56SPEAKERFantastic video, could have been changing the world

10:59SPEAKERwith that stuff.

11:00SPEAKERBut it's interesting because it literally is our react.

11:02SPEAKERLike we literally walked out of that room

11:05SPEAKERand stepped straight outside and started talking.

11:07SPEAKER- Oh yeah, you guys were like buzzing about that thing.

11:09SPEAKER- Hard. - Well, so like up until

11:12SPEAKERthat point, I was, I don't wanna say skeptical

11:14SPEAKER'cause I wasn't really skeptical,

11:15SPEAKERbut I was kind of lukewarm 'cause up until that point,

11:18SPEAKERVR stuff felt like a, just like a novel screen

11:23SPEAKERfor existing types of like cockpit games

11:25SPEAKERand stuff like that.

11:27SPEAKER- Did Oculus have a product on the market

11:29SPEAKERbesides the DK2 at that point?

11:31SPEAKER- No, so both of the headsets came out in the spring of 2016

11:34SPEAKERwithin like a week of each other.

11:35SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

11:37SPEAKEROh, that's right.

11:38SPEAKER- Maybe two weeks of each other.

11:39SPEAKERI think, yeah, we did streams too, I believe, I remember.

11:41SPEAKER- Yeah, you did.

11:42SPEAKER- I remember that whole VR window.

11:44SPEAKER- Yeah, so this was in March of 2015 or April of 2015

11:49SPEAKERaround GDC and it was basically a year out from the Oculus

11:53SPEAKERand then we saw the Vive for the first time.

11:54SPEAKERAnd we had heard about, you'd hear people talking

11:58SPEAKERabout Valve's VR room where they had QR codes and stuff,

12:04SPEAKERbut I hadn't seen anything and it was unclear

12:07SPEAKERif it was ever gonna become a product, right?

12:10SPEAKER'Cause they had a handful of developers working on it

12:12SPEAKERand not a lot.

12:13SPEAKERSo I saw this and we talked about it on the video

12:15SPEAKERand we got to the point that was important,

12:17SPEAKERI think, in the video, which is that like having hands

12:19SPEAKERgives you access to a lot more verbs,

12:21SPEAKERbut I couldn't stop thinking about it

12:23SPEAKERand I wasn't exactly sure why.

12:25SPEAKERIt took me a while to figure it out.

12:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not just the verbs, the actions you can do.

12:29SPEAKERAlso, there's just a, it's gotta happen

12:31SPEAKERat the subconscious level somewhere

12:33SPEAKERin the lizard brain component of just like moving your hand

12:36SPEAKERand seeing a one-to-one action

12:37SPEAKERwith the movement of your hand is like that activates

12:41SPEAKERcertain very like primal sorts of feelings

12:44SPEAKERabout movement and interaction.

12:46SPEAKER- It means that a lot of stuff that you have to think about

12:48SPEAKERin video games when you're translating,

12:50SPEAKERlike throwing to pulling a trigger just happen

12:53SPEAKER'cause your brain already knows how to do them, right?

12:56SPEAKERAt the same time, there's a real separation

12:58SPEAKERbecause you're in environments

13:00SPEAKERyour brain completely doesn't understand.

13:01SPEAKERLike I can't remember the name of the company,

13:04SPEAKERbut the blue is the first, it was one of the things

13:07SPEAKERthat blew me away there, ha ha.

13:09SPEAKERAnd that was the thing where you walk on the deck

13:11SPEAKERof the ship that's sunk under the sea

13:13SPEAKERand you see the whale spinning by and all that stuff.

13:14SPEAKERAnd like, that's stuff that your brain can understand, right?

13:19SPEAKERBut it was interesting.

13:21SPEAKERAnd so I thought about this like nonstop for like six months.

13:25SPEAKERIt was literally, I was completely obsessed with it.

13:28SPEAKERAnd it took me a while to understand

13:31SPEAKERwhat I realized was important, which is,

13:33SPEAKERhey, all the stuff that they showed us,

13:35SPEAKERthere wasn't really a lot of storytelling.

13:36SPEAKERIt was all like arcade-y type game stuff,

13:38SPEAKERlike shooting bows and arrows at guys at balloons

13:41SPEAKERand stuff like that, or blowing up balloons,

13:44SPEAKERor drawing in Tilt Brush,

13:46SPEAKERor I think there was a Google Earth demo in there.

13:48SPEAKERI can't remember now.

13:51SPEAKERBut like nobody, there wasn't any storytelling stuff.

13:55SPEAKERAnd the reason there wasn't a lot of storytelling stuff

13:56SPEAKERwas none of the language that we've developed

14:00SPEAKERaround telling stories on 2D screens, like TVs

14:03SPEAKERand movie screens and stuff like that,

14:05SPEAKERor video games even, was going to work in VR

14:09SPEAKERbecause you had to look like,

14:13SPEAKERwith traditional storytelling,

14:14SPEAKERyou could control what the viewer sees

14:16SPEAKERby aiming the camera in a different place.

14:18SPEAKERAnd that's not possible in VR

14:19SPEAKER'cause the viewer controls where the camera

14:21SPEAKERis looking at all times.

14:23SPEAKER- Like you physically, for reasons of nausea,

14:25SPEAKERyou can't force them into stuff.

14:28SPEAKER- Yeah, and I knew people who were working on 360 video

14:31SPEAKERstorytelling stuff, and I tried it,

14:31SPEAKERand I was like, oh, this is not great.

14:35SPEAKERI knew that making game-like 3D content that was interactive

14:40SPEAKERwas going to be as expensive as making games,

14:42SPEAKERand I knew that the people that were making content for VR

14:47SPEAKERwere thinking in terms of film,

14:49SPEAKERwhich is a more predictable, straightforward cost structure.

14:54SPEAKERAnd I was like, is there a way to take the stuff,

14:56SPEAKERthe interactivity of games,

14:58SPEAKERand build it on a cost structure

15:00SPEAKERthat content creators can work with?

15:05SPEAKERAnd so I started looking at IK and stuff like that,

15:07SPEAKERand I was like, at that point,

15:09SPEAKERI realized I'd watched at that point.

15:11SPEAKERAt that point in my career, I'd started in '98,

15:14SPEAKERand I'd seen PCs take off, and I'd seen the internet

15:17SPEAKERkind of become a mainstream thing,

15:19SPEAKERand I watched phones happen, and I was like,

15:20SPEAKERI don't want to watch another one of these things

15:22SPEAKERfrom the sidelines and write about it.

15:23SPEAKERI want to do it.

15:25SPEAKER- Can I stop you real quick?

15:25SPEAKERDid we define IK?

15:26SPEAKERI assume you mean inverse kinematics.

15:28SPEAKER- Inverse kinematics.

15:29SPEAKERSo inverse kinematics is something,

15:31SPEAKERthe first place I learned about inverse kinematics

15:33SPEAKERwas probably with the tripods in Half-Life 2,

15:36SPEAKERbut basically it's a mathematical formula

15:39SPEAKERthat lets you determine how to get joints.

15:42SPEAKERIf you have the two endpoints of a chain of joints,

15:45SPEAKERyou can figure out legal positions for them along the way.

15:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the practical example

15:50SPEAKERis foot planting for characters in games.

15:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

15:54SPEAKER- I remember when characters would run up steps

15:56SPEAKERand their feet followed a very scripted,

16:00SPEAKERprescribed running animation and kind of disregard.

16:03SPEAKERThey were running up a flat slope, flat incline,

16:06SPEAKERrealistically, not actually steps.

16:09SPEAKERIK is the thing that made its way into games,

16:11SPEAKERand I had friends in visual effects

16:12SPEAKERthat had made me understand what it was back around 2000

16:16SPEAKERwhen Star Wars prequels were coming out and stuff like that,

16:18SPEAKERbut seeing it get into games

16:19SPEAKERwas a mind-blowing revelation,

16:21SPEAKER'cause like, oh wow, this character's feet

16:23SPEAKERactually respect where the steps are now,

16:24SPEAKERand like more or less realistically look like

16:27SPEAKERthey're planting their feet in the right places.

16:29SPEAKER- Yeah, the thing we used it for early on

16:32SPEAKERis that you could place elbows,

16:36SPEAKERlike if you knew where the hands were

16:37SPEAKERand you could make a guess where the shoulder is,

16:39SPEAKERwhere you could place the elbows in a reasonable place

16:41SPEAKERand the wrist in a reasonable position.

16:42SPEAKER- Right.

16:44SPEAKER- It's more complicated than that, obviously.

16:45SPEAKERAlways, it's always more complicated than that.

16:49SPEAKER- Sorry for the digression.

16:50SPEAKERYeah, so you're like watching VR happen and going like,

16:52SPEAKER"Oh, I can't miss this boat."

16:54SPEAKER- Well, and the thing I realized

16:56SPEAKERis that the work we had done at Whiskey

16:57SPEAKERand we had done it tested,

17:00SPEAKERwhere we were figuring out where...

17:03SPEAKERI think the defining characteristic of Whiskey Media

17:05SPEAKERwas that we were pretty good at figuring out

17:07SPEAKERwhat were the corners we could cut in terms of production

17:12SPEAKERto make something that was still compelling and interesting,

17:16SPEAKERbut without spending a bazillion dollars

17:18SPEAKERon every single piece of content.

17:20SPEAKER- Yes, yes, there's no career will prepare you

17:23SPEAKERfor churning out content as fast and cheap as possible

17:25SPEAKERas working in online media.

17:27SPEAKER- Yeah, but so anyway, I told Tess that I was leaving.

17:35SPEAKERI flew down to L.

17:35SPEAKERI emailed my boss one morning, I was like,

17:37SPEAKER"Hey, can I come down and talk to you about something?

17:39SPEAKERI have some questions."

17:39SPEAKERShe's like, "Yeah, hop on the plane.

17:40SPEAKERThey'll see you tomorrow."

17:41SPEAKERShe's like, "Okay, sure, this is great."

17:43SPEAKERSo I flew down and we had this great conversation

17:45SPEAKERabout what she was excited about.

17:46SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh, by the way, I'm gonna quit."

17:49SPEAKER- What she was excited about with Tested specifically.

17:51SPEAKER- With Tested, it was very, it was a very...

17:54SPEAKERAnd of course, the whole time I'm on the plane going down,

17:56SPEAKERI'm like, "Is this a horrible mistake?

17:59SPEAKERAm I fucking this up really badly?"

18:00SPEAKERAnd then I got into the meeting

18:01SPEAKERand she gave me the out, right?

18:03SPEAKERShe gave me the, "I could chicken out right now."

18:05SPEAKERI talked to Gina about it and I talked to friends

18:07SPEAKERand a bunch of other people.

18:11SPEAKERI was like, and she's like, "Oh, wow.

18:13SPEAKERWell, that was awkward, huh?"

18:14SPEAKERSo anyway. - She was cool about it.

18:16SPEAKER- Yeah, she's great.

18:18SPEAKERI absolutely love her to death.

18:19SPEAKERShe's one of my favorite people.

18:20SPEAKER- So one of the things I wanted to unpack

18:22SPEAKERwhen we started this episode was the psychology of,

18:25SPEAKERGod, there's a bunch of things here.

18:26SPEAKERI mean, A, leaving a steady paycheck, steady employment

18:31SPEAKERto go start a company that may or may not succeed.

18:34SPEAKERLike that in and of itself,

18:36SPEAKERI guess, depending on your personality is either terrifying

18:39SPEAKERor exhilarating or both, probably both for most people.

18:42SPEAKER- Both, I would say, yeah.

18:43SPEAKER- But some people can be so risk averse

18:46SPEAKERthat that idea just is an abdomen of their personalities.

18:50SPEAKERThe mere possibility of failure is enough

18:54SPEAKERfor a lot of people to say, "You know what?

18:55SPEAKERI like having health insurance.

18:57SPEAKERI like having a steady paycheck.

18:59SPEAKERI'm gonna stick with a job

19:00SPEAKERand not go try to start something."

19:01SPEAKERAnd then there's the layer on top of that here

19:03SPEAKERof this is an unproven technology.

19:05SPEAKERIt seems amazing, it's very capable and it works.

19:08SPEAKERBut for example, I know this is a lot of questions,

19:11SPEAKERbut you must have thought about this

19:14SPEAKERas you were going your way out the door.

19:15SPEAKERWhat if headsets don't sell at a scale that allows me

19:19SPEAKERto actually monetize the stuff we want to make for them?

19:22SPEAKER- I mean, so the plan was to make B2B tools,

19:26SPEAKERnot to make B2C tools.

19:27SPEAKER- Oh, okay, so that's interesting.

19:29SPEAKERThat's an interesting thing to discuss

19:30SPEAKERbecause I had never quite understood

19:32SPEAKERwhat the ultimate goal was

19:33SPEAKERbecause you did launch with like,

19:35SPEAKERand I'm getting ahead of ourselves,

19:35SPEAKERlike Kickstarter with more front facing,

19:38SPEAKERlike kind of consumer level content,

19:40SPEAKERbut I'll let you get into it.

19:42SPEAKER- So the pitch was,

19:44SPEAKER"Hey, people are gonna need tools to make content cheap."

19:48SPEAKERAnd part of it is that we need something

19:50SPEAKERthat lets us experiment

19:51SPEAKER'cause we don't really understand

19:52SPEAKERhow storytelling is gonna work in this medium.

19:57SPEAKERSo I told Tester I was leaving

20:00SPEAKERbefore I'd reached out to any employees or anything

20:02SPEAKER'cause that's what my attorney friends had advised me to do.

20:06SPEAKERAnd in the Reddit thread,

20:08SPEAKERokay, so to get into your question about the psychology,

20:11SPEAKERlet's see, Obamacare had passed a few years before,

20:14SPEAKERso I was reasonably sure

20:15SPEAKERthat I'd be able to get decent health insurance

20:17SPEAKERwithout pre-existing conditions.

20:20SPEAKERI think if I had had socialized medicine,

20:22SPEAKERit would have been a lot less scary.

20:23SPEAKER- Dude, I cannot, don't get me on a soapbox here.

20:27SPEAKERYou cannot overstate how discouraging

20:31SPEAKERto even small scale entrepreneurship,

20:33SPEAKERthe lack of healthcare in this country is.

20:36SPEAKERAs somebody who is dealing

20:38SPEAKERwith some unbelievable COBRA bullshit right now

20:42SPEAKERon a COBRA plan that's only got like three more months in it

20:44SPEAKERbefore I'm on my own for health insurance, it sucks, it sucks.

20:50SPEAKER- So yeah, so I was confident that we could get healthcare.

20:58SPEAKERI knew that I would be able to do some freelancing

21:01SPEAKERfor other folks and help cover some of my expenses,

21:05SPEAKERwhich I was not as concerned about.

21:09SPEAKERAnd yeah, I don't know, I guess at the time I quit,

21:15SPEAKERI was looking at the dates before this,

21:16SPEAKERI don't think that the pricing for any of the headsets

21:18SPEAKERhad been announced yet.

21:20SPEAKERSo it was unclear, so I was taking a gamble

21:24SPEAKERthat yes, we were going to have this,

21:29SPEAKERlike there were a lot of questions,

21:30SPEAKERlike whether they'd be able to sell headsets,

21:32SPEAKERwhether they'd be an audience

21:33SPEAKERwhere other people would actually like it.

21:35SPEAKERHonestly, I was pretty convinced after seeing the Vive,

21:37SPEAKERlike I don't really know any people

21:39SPEAKERwho spent a lot of time in Vive stuff

21:40SPEAKERthat weren't pretty blown away by it.

21:42SPEAKERI don't know that everybody was convinced enough

21:44SPEAKERto spend, to dedicate a room of their house to it.

21:47SPEAKERBut I think with what ended up being the quest from Facebook,

21:55SPEAKERI think you have a pretty close approximation

21:57SPEAKERof something that's good.

21:59SPEAKERNow it has a lot of baggage

22:00SPEAKERbecause of the Facebook connection, which is unfortunate.

22:02SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, so it was scary.

22:06SPEAKERLike it wasn't not scary.

22:07SPEAKERI just turned 40.

22:08SPEAKER- Okay.

22:09SPEAKER- I was like a year or two,

22:10SPEAKERI turned 40 that year, actually, I guess.

22:12SPEAKER- That's like a good point in your life to go like,

22:14SPEAKERI want to do something else.

22:15SPEAKERI've still got time.

22:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I was like, if I'm going to do this,

22:17SPEAKERthis is the last chance probably.

22:20SPEAKERSo yeah.

22:22SPEAKER- You don't see a lot of like 50 plus year old

22:24SPEAKERstartup founders out there, do you?

22:25SPEAKER- You do more now, it turns out.

22:27SPEAKERYeah, 'cause the people who started doing this 30 years ago

22:30SPEAKERare still at it, like a lot of them, yeah.

22:34SPEAKERBut then it was a little bit more unusual, I thought.

22:36SPEAKERAnyway, it was scary leaving without a tech founder,

22:40SPEAKERwithout somebody to help who could actually do

22:42SPEAKERthe programming and figure out how to glue

22:45SPEAKERall the ideas together.

22:48SPEAKER- Is that, do you mean from like an investment standpoint?

22:50SPEAKERLike if you--

22:51SPEAKER- No, it meant from a me, like a header.

22:54SPEAKERIdeas are worth nothing, Brad.

22:55SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

22:56SPEAKERI mean, of course there's the practical,

22:58SPEAKERbut I mean, you can hire for technical skills.

23:01SPEAKER- Yes, so I mean, we can talk about mistakes

23:04SPEAKERI made later on, but this is one of the mistakes.

23:06SPEAKERNot actually taking the time and finding somebody

23:11SPEAKERwho is an established and had like Silicon Valley chops

23:18SPEAKERto serve as a tech co-founder and splitting with them

23:21SPEAKERin the beginning was a mistake.

23:22SPEAKERLike that would have made a lot of stuff a lot easier.

23:27SPEAKERSo anyway, there was a big Reddit thread

23:28SPEAKERwhen I announced I was leaving.

23:30SPEAKERAnd at the bottom of that thread,

23:31SPEAKERthere was a post from a guy who said,

23:33SPEAKER"Hey, I think that there's some really interesting

23:35SPEAKER"social stuff you can do if you do hand tracked VR plus IK.

23:40SPEAKER"If that sounds interesting, do you send me a message?"

23:42SPEAKERAnd I sent him a message and he posted a video.

23:45SPEAKERAnd I looked at the video.

23:46SPEAKERI was like, "This is exactly what I want.

23:47SPEAKER"This is what I'm thinking about."

23:49SPEAKER- Video of his work?

23:50SPEAKER- Video of a demo he had put together

23:52SPEAKERusing like the default Unreal mannequin,

23:54SPEAKERor sorry, the default Unity mannequin

23:57SPEAKERand some IK code that he'd written up

24:02SPEAKERusing basic IK libraries and then some work he'd done to,

24:05SPEAKER'cause the thing, okay, so here's the other thing

24:08SPEAKEReverybody thinks they understand and they don't.

24:10SPEAKEREverybody says, "Oh, you can just use IK to do that."

24:12SPEAKERWhat that means is you can use IK

24:14SPEAKERto make horrible nightmares.

24:16SPEAKERLike IK--

24:17SPEAKER- We've seen, I remember.

24:19SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.

24:20SPEAKERThe thing that you saw was bad,

24:21SPEAKERbut not anywhere near that bad.

24:23SPEAKERLike IK will make,

24:26SPEAKERit basically just is path of least resistance

24:28SPEAKERand you can put resistance on each of the joints.

24:31SPEAKERAnd if you're good at tuning,

24:32SPEAKERyou can make something that looks kind of okay,

24:34SPEAKERbut not great.

24:35SPEAKERThe trick is you have to have some other systems

24:37SPEAKERpushing back against the IK

24:39SPEAKERto push it into more human constraints.

24:41SPEAKERAnd that was where we did a lot of our work over the years.

24:43SPEAKER- So what are some examples of the counter systems though?

24:46SPEAKER- Oh, there's all sorts like machine learning

24:48SPEAKERand like SIBs and stuff like that.

24:49SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

24:50SPEAKER- There's like, there's a bazillion different approaches

24:53SPEAKERand all of them have problems

24:54SPEAKERand you can combine them in interesting ways

24:55SPEAKERand build structures that like switch back and forth

24:57SPEAKERbetween them based on condition of the model

24:59SPEAKERand stuff like that.

25:00SPEAKER- You're talking like programmatic systems.

25:01SPEAKERI was imagining like simulation of physical systems.

25:04SPEAKERLike I thought you meant like maybe gravity

25:05SPEAKERor musculature or something like.

25:07SPEAKER- Well, so one of the things we did was,

25:11SPEAKERso yeah, you use gravity, you use musculature,

25:14SPEAKERyou mimic those with springs

25:15SPEAKERand like I can't remember the hydraulic piston analogs,

25:20SPEAKERright, resistance that goes the other way than springs,

25:22SPEAKERpushing resistance.

25:25SPEAKERAnd yeah, but there's a,

25:29SPEAKERnone of it works perfect in all situations.

25:31SPEAKERYou end up either having to do the best you can

25:33SPEAKERfor the most situations or you switch back and forth.

25:35SPEAKERAnd we tried a bunch of different things over the years

25:36SPEAKERto make it look better, look more believable.

25:40SPEAKERAnd the goal, of course, with all of this

25:41SPEAKERwas to let people do motion capture with a cheap VR headset.

25:47SPEAKERWell, you know, it is a cheap by motion capture

25:49SPEAKERcensus VR headset without,

25:52SPEAKERyou know, so that they could experiment

25:54SPEAKERwith interactive 3D rendered VR stuff

25:57SPEAKERfor the cost of making some models and rigs

25:59SPEAKERand stuff like that.

26:00SPEAKER- Right, so was that the business plan from day one?

26:01SPEAKERLike let's ultimately distill this down to something

26:05SPEAKERwhere all you need is the off the shelf VR hardware

26:07SPEAKERand you can do at least like basic animation.

26:09SPEAKER- Well, and art, yeah.

26:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

26:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that was the plan.

26:12SPEAKERAnd actually we hewed to that pretty closely

26:15SPEAKERthrough the time that Foo was active.

26:18SPEAKERSo I met Andre on Reddit from his video post

26:21SPEAKERand talked to him on the phone and he sent me some videos

26:24SPEAKERand then he sent me some code and I could try it out

26:26SPEAKERat that point.

26:27SPEAKERI'd sent Chet at Valve who was leading their VR efforts

26:30SPEAKERand we knew him through, you know, through a bunch of stuff,

26:33SPEAKERbut a note and was like,

26:35SPEAKER"Hey, I'd like, I'm gonna quit testing and do VR stuff.

26:38SPEAKERCan you send me hardware?"

26:38SPEAKERHe's like, "Sure, what's the address?"

26:39SPEAKERAnd sent me like dev kits immediately,

26:41SPEAKERwhich was super sweet.

26:46SPEAKERLet's see, we met our tech artist,

26:48SPEAKERSindra Skar from Campo Santo.

26:51SPEAKERFriends at Campo had recommended him.

26:53SPEAKERHe had done the rig for Henry and they were like,

26:55SPEAKER"He's really awesome.

26:56SPEAKERHe's just like, you know."

26:58SPEAKERTech artists are rare and wonderful people

27:01SPEAKERwho do things like, it's a really, it's a wide,

27:04SPEAKERit's one of those things that people in games say

27:07SPEAKERas a category, but it means like 15 different things.

27:10SPEAKER'Cause it's like, sometimes a tech artist is the person

27:13SPEAKERwho does all of the rigs for all the models,

27:14SPEAKERwhich are what let you turn a 3D model

27:16SPEAKERinto something that moves, right?

27:17SPEAKER- Something you can animate,

27:18SPEAKERlike the rigging is kind of what binds

27:20SPEAKERto your animation stuff.

27:22SPEAKER- Yeah, it binds the bones to the mesh

27:24SPEAKERso that the mesh moves in believable ways.

27:26SPEAKERAnd it's a really dark, it's hard to do.

27:27SPEAKERIt's a high skill job.

27:30SPEAKERA lot of them write shaders.

27:31SPEAKERA lot of them write tools that let you add variety

27:36SPEAKERinto the game without having to create a bazillion art assets

27:39SPEAKERso you combine like five different textures

27:40SPEAKERinto variations of an enemy or something like that.

27:46SPEAKER- Again, the label here is technical artist.

27:47SPEAKERThat's the common term.

27:48SPEAKER- Technical artist is the label for that, yeah.

27:50SPEAKER- 'Cause a lot of what you're describing

27:51SPEAKERsounds way more like programming than art.

27:53SPEAKER- Well, so it is, but it'll be programming

27:57SPEAKERin like scripting type programming.

28:01SPEAKERI mean, also it's also programming

28:02SPEAKERand it's also shader programming.

28:04SPEAKERIt's all sorts of stuff, yeah.

28:07SPEAKERBut it is a, it's funny 'cause like in our studio,

28:13SPEAKERthey're not the people, like they're, I don't know.

28:16SPEAKERThey work and they both write code and they make art.

28:19SPEAKERIt's like, it's a weird.

28:20SPEAKERSo Sindre ended up making all of our environments.

28:22SPEAKERAll of our original art was made by him,

28:24SPEAKERincluding the models, the character models

28:26SPEAKERfor the Fusho and the other stuff we did,

28:29SPEAKERas well as a lot of the 3D assets.

28:31SPEAKERWe often would bring contractors in to help him,

28:33SPEAKERbut he did the main brunt of that work.

28:37SPEAKERSo we had a core group of three people.

28:38SPEAKERWe built a demo of like the record of the output,

28:42SPEAKERthe recorded output that played as a game

28:44SPEAKERthat people could interact with and walk around

28:47SPEAKERand started showing it to people, first friends,

28:49SPEAKERand then VCs and angel investors.

28:51SPEAKERAnd that process was awful, it turns out.

28:54SPEAKER- Can I ask, I don't know how much

28:55SPEAKERyou wanna get into this stuff?

28:56SPEAKERLike, was everyone just kind of working

28:58SPEAKERon spec at this point?

29:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I think at this point,

29:03SPEAKERwe hadn't even incorporated the company yet at this point.

29:05SPEAKER- Okay.

29:06SPEAKER- 'Cause there was no reason to, like,

29:07SPEAKERwe didn't wanna do that until we were sure

29:08SPEAKERwe weren't gonna have to shut it down

29:09SPEAKER'cause there was cost involved with shutting it down.

29:12SPEAKERSo we were mostly, like I was, I had quit test.

29:14SPEAKERI was still working at Tested at this point,

29:16SPEAKERbut had told them I was quitting

29:18SPEAKERand was doing this in evenings and weekends.

29:21SPEAKERAnd the other guys were working their normal jobs

29:25SPEAKERor doing, like, Sandra usually works as a contractor often,

29:28SPEAKERso he was doing this in his spare time.

29:33SPEAKERAnd then the VC demos, like, we had interest

29:37SPEAKERand we had got late stages with people,

29:40SPEAKERand then we invariably got to the point

29:42SPEAKERwhere, like, the VC that we had spoken to

29:46SPEAKERand that was advocating for us inside their agent,

29:49SPEAKERinside their fund, had to take it to his deciding board

29:53SPEAKERand that we almost always didn't make it past that point

29:55SPEAKERbecause, like, A, we were a little bit late

29:58SPEAKERfor VR investment at this point.

30:00SPEAKERLike, the hot period for that was, like,

30:02SPEAKERtwo years before to a year before.

30:05SPEAKERBut B, what we were talking about

30:07SPEAKERlooked like really shitty animation

30:10SPEAKERfor people who were, like, used to seeing 360 video

30:13SPEAKERof, like, the top of Mount Everest and stuff like that.

30:16SPEAKERAnd, like, if they didn't understand either storytelling

30:19SPEAKERor, so, okay, there are a couple of fundamental problems.

30:23SPEAKEROne is that we looked bad, which is fair.

30:26SPEAKERYou know, it's like the animation wasn't,

30:28SPEAKERespecially back then, was not great.

30:31SPEAKERTwo, we looked like a content company

30:34SPEAKERto the Silicon Valley people that wanted tech companies,

30:36SPEAKERand we looked like a tech company to the LA funds

30:41SPEAKERthat wanted content companies.

30:43SPEAKERSo we were kind of neither fish nor fowl.

30:46SPEAKERI think, in retrospect.

30:50SPEAKERAnd then the other thing I messed up there on

30:52SPEAKERis that instead of pitching the actual product,

30:53SPEAKERwhich was the tool that lets people

30:55SPEAKERcreate the content inexpensively

30:56SPEAKERand, like, letting somebody record something

30:58SPEAKERand then play it back in the demo,

31:00SPEAKERwhich I think we maybe did,

31:01SPEAKERbut we didn't make it clear what was happening,

31:03SPEAKERwe showed them the product of the product, right?

31:06SPEAKERSo we showed them what the VR content looked like,

31:09SPEAKERnot what the tool that lets people

31:13SPEAKERcreate the VR content looked like.

31:15SPEAKER- Right. - Which, you know, oh well.

31:17SPEAKER- Would there have been downsides of taking investment

31:19SPEAKERif that had gone through?

31:20SPEAKERI mean, like, do you think that,

31:22SPEAKERor maybe another way to put it is, like,

31:24SPEAKERwould that have dramatically changed the way things went

31:27SPEAKERif you had gotten that funding?

31:29SPEAKER- We could have hired our way out of a lot of problems,

31:32SPEAKERand we wouldn't have had to do things like raise money from,

31:38SPEAKERlike, we wouldn't have had to take as many contract jobs.

31:40SPEAKERWe would have taken contract jobs

31:41SPEAKERto use as dog food for the content

31:42SPEAKERrather than to pay the bills,

31:44SPEAKERwhich is what we ended up doing.

31:46SPEAKER- Right.

31:46SPEAKER- So we ended up, like,

31:48SPEAKERif we had had a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank

31:51SPEAKERat this point, it would have changed that.

31:53SPEAKERI also would have personally incurred a lot less debt,

31:55SPEAKERso that would have been nice.

31:56SPEAKER- Actually, let me hone or rephrase that question.

31:58SPEAKERWould that have given investors oversight

32:00SPEAKERover what you were doing in a way

32:01SPEAKERthat would have interfered with your goals and processes?

32:05SPEAKERLike, I don't know.

32:06SPEAKERI mean, and maybe every deal is different,

32:07SPEAKERbut I don't know, like, once you take investment like that,

32:09SPEAKERlike, how much of the money people are then

32:12SPEAKERable to stand over your shoulder and, like, constantly

32:15SPEAKERquestion what you're doing?

32:16SPEAKER- I mean, I think we would have had

32:18SPEAKERa little bit more oversight,

32:19SPEAKERwhich probably wouldn't have been a bad thing.

32:21SPEAKERI think having, like, as a first-time CEO,

32:24SPEAKERI could have used help, for sure.

32:28SPEAKERYou know, it's, you take venture money,

32:31SPEAKERand it comes with good and bad, right?

32:32SPEAKERLike, the bad is that if you do a bad job,

32:35SPEAKERthey can take over your company for you,

32:38SPEAKERwhich is actually, if you're,

32:40SPEAKERI guess that depends on whether you think

32:41SPEAKERyou're doing a bad job, too.

32:44SPEAKERBut, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know.

32:49SPEAKERIt doesn't, I don't know how that would have gone.

32:52SPEAKERI don't know what it would have been.

32:52SPEAKERWe would have been able to hire out of some problems.

32:55SPEAKERWe could have actually gotten help with stuff

32:56SPEAKERthat we desperately needed help with.

32:58SPEAKERLike, having somebody to help with the finance stuff

33:00SPEAKERwould have reduced my stress levels infinitely.

33:04SPEAKERHaving, having, having somebody who could help us

33:08SPEAKERwith, like, the, like, set up a little bit more structure

33:11SPEAKERon the engineering side, since Andre was relatively green

33:14SPEAKERat this point, too, would have helped us a ton.

33:18SPEAKERYou know, I think we would have incurred less tech debt

33:23SPEAKERon the, so, so, okay, so after that demo,

33:27SPEAKERwe, we basically put together the first episode

33:30SPEAKERof the Foo Show, 'cause we wanted a piece

33:31SPEAKERof dog food content, dog food meaning

33:33SPEAKERwe wanted something to prototype our tools against,

33:36SPEAKERso we needed a piece of, like,

33:38SPEAKERif it's the same problem we had with,

33:40SPEAKERwhen we talked to the Blender guys,

33:41SPEAKERthey described, right, where they needed people

33:44SPEAKERmaking animated films with Blender

33:46SPEAKERin order to be able to test, to build tools

33:50SPEAKERagainst the types of content that people

33:52SPEAKERare going to produce with the tool.

33:55SPEAKERAnd we were in a similar situation.

33:56SPEAKERSo we started working on the Firewatch episode,

33:59SPEAKER'cause, 'cause, you know, we, I'd known the guys

34:02SPEAKERat Campo for years and was like, hey, here's this thing.

34:05SPEAKERThey were one of the groups of people I talked to

34:06SPEAKERwhen I was, when we were starting, I was like, hey,

34:08SPEAKERyou just recently started your own thing.

34:09SPEAKERHow, how, how do you feel about this?

34:11SPEAKERWould you do it again now?

34:13SPEAKERThis was, I guess, before Firewatch

34:15SPEAKERhad come out at this point.

34:18SPEAKERAnd they were like, hey, well, anything we can do to help,

34:20SPEAKERlet me know.

34:20SPEAKERSo then about six months later, I was like, hey, can we,

34:23SPEAKERI'd love to make your, here's what I would like to make,

34:28SPEAKERa version of Tested that works on things

34:31SPEAKERthat are ephemeral, that you can't show in real life.

34:33SPEAKERYou can't put a camera out.

34:36SPEAKERAnd they're like, that sounds awesome.

34:36SPEAKERWe were in, and they, and literally Jake Rodkin handed me,

34:40SPEAKERhe was like, do you have a portable hard drive or something?

34:42SPEAKERI was like, yeah, sure.

34:43SPEAKERAnd he copied their Unity project over onto it.

34:46SPEAKERThis was after the game was out, in fairness.

34:48SPEAKER- Okay, sure.

34:48SPEAKERI mean, I remember the first time I got into that thing

34:50SPEAKERand how cool, 'cause I had played through Firewatch

34:52SPEAKERnot that long before.

34:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

34:54SPEAKER- Like the idea of walking around in the same assets

34:57SPEAKERof the game you had just played a few months earlier

34:59SPEAKERwas like kind of magical and transportive.

35:01SPEAKER- The reaction, and we left this in the show.

35:03SPEAKERI wasn't, we had a real long conversation

35:06SPEAKERabout whether we should leave it in or not.

35:07SPEAKERBut when they first put their headsets on,

35:09SPEAKERwe were doing the recording with them

35:11SPEAKERand they were in the watchtower.

35:13SPEAKERLike it was such a moment.

35:14SPEAKERIt's such a triumphant moment.

35:16SPEAKER'Cause it's like they, hey,

35:17SPEAKERthey get to physically experience this thing

35:19SPEAKERthat they had worked on for a really long time.

35:22SPEAKERIt was cool.

35:25SPEAKERSo yeah, that episode launched,

35:29SPEAKERI think the Friday after the rift came out

35:33SPEAKERand the day of the Vive launch.

35:36SPEAKERAnd like a quarter of a million people

35:39SPEAKERended up watching it overall.

35:40SPEAKERI think that's my understanding in the first year.

35:42SPEAKERLast time I looked at stats.

35:44SPEAKER- And that's, let's see, how was it distributed?

35:46SPEAKERWas it just on Steam?

35:47SPEAKER- It was on Steam and Oculus store, both.

35:49SPEAKER- And Oculus, okay.

35:50SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you had a CV one,

35:51SPEAKERyou could, Oculus Rift CV one, you could play,

35:54SPEAKERif you had a Vive you could play

35:55SPEAKERor any of the other Steam PR headsets still on Steam.

35:58SPEAKER- I'm sure that targeting the launch of the hardware

36:00SPEAKERwas not an accident.

36:02SPEAKER- I mean, we were gonna run out of money pretty soon.

36:04SPEAKERSo we were just trying to do the best we could.

36:08SPEAKER- Okay, so was there any kind of crunch

36:10SPEAKERleading up to headsets launching and trying to get it out?

36:13SPEAKER- When it's a three person,

36:14SPEAKERso we'd raised a little bit of money from friends and family,

36:16SPEAKERwhich gave us like six months of runway

36:18SPEAKERif I didn't take, if I basically just took enough money

36:21SPEAKERto pay for the mortgage, right?

36:22SPEAKERAnd then paid for the rest of my stuff out of savings,

36:25SPEAKERwhich is what we did.

36:27SPEAKERAnd we ended up,

36:32SPEAKERwe ended up, yeah,

36:34SPEAKERlike that got us basically to the launch

36:36SPEAKERof the headsets a little bit after.

36:42SPEAKERAnd then we,

36:45SPEAKERlike that being very popular got us a lot of interest

36:49SPEAKERfrom media companies and advertising agencies

36:53SPEAKERand stuff like that.

36:53SPEAKERAnd we ended up spending a lot of like 2016 and 2017

36:58SPEAKERand actually 2018 too, working on contract projects

37:02SPEAKERand fu show episodes, right?

37:04SPEAKERSo we did some ads for GameStop.

37:07SPEAKERWe did a show for Adult Swim called,

37:14SPEAKERwith Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force every Saturday,

37:16SPEAKERevery Wednesday, talking about NFL

37:18SPEAKERthrough the entire NFL season in I think 2017, 2018.

37:23SPEAKERWe did a bunch of pilots that I can't talk about.

37:26SPEAKERWe built some other multiplayer experiences

37:28SPEAKERthat were live using our animation pipeline

37:30SPEAKERthat were like prototypes and proofs of concepts

37:32SPEAKERfor other people that were, some of them were really cool.

37:34SPEAKERWe built a really fricking cool escape room

37:37SPEAKERthat I can never show anybody, unfortunately.

37:39SPEAKER- Does that work still exist?

37:41SPEAKER- I mean, it's on a backup somewhere here, but yeah.

37:45SPEAKER- We'll never see the light of day.

37:46SPEAKER- Can't show it.

37:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:49SPEAKERLet's see, did we?

37:51SPEAKERI'm sorry if I'm losing track of the timeline.

37:52SPEAKER- Did I skip stuff?

37:53SPEAKERI did skip a bunch there.

37:54SPEAKER- Yeah, we didn't talk about kick, so okay.

37:57SPEAKER- The Kickstarter was before this later contract stuff, right?

38:00SPEAKER- The contract stuff was happening

38:01SPEAKERkind of throughout this entire time.

38:02SPEAKER- Okay.

38:04SPEAKER- The contract stuff was how we paid our bills

38:06SPEAKERafter the initial 50, 75 grand of seed money

38:13SPEAKERfrom friends and family wore out.

38:15SPEAKERWe took another 50 grand from somebody else,

38:16SPEAKERbut we didn't take a lot of investment.

38:21SPEAKEROur friends, the Andes, who run XOXO in Portland

38:24SPEAKERasked us to come and do a food show episode

38:26SPEAKERon this part of their animation track of their festival,

38:30SPEAKERthe nighttime events at XOXO.

38:32SPEAKERXOXO is a festival for indie creators.

38:35SPEAKERThey do it, well, they used to do it every year

38:36SPEAKERand the pandemic happened.

38:38SPEAKER- Yeah, this is also 2016, same year as the headsets?

38:42SPEAKER- This is 2016, same year as the headsets.

38:43SPEAKERSo we talked to Brendan Chang at Quad Cow at Blendo Games

38:51SPEAKERand we're like, hey, we'd like to do Quad Cow on stage

38:53SPEAKERat XOXO and he said yes, and we were thrilled.

38:57SPEAKERAnd then we ported, so let's see,

39:00SPEAKERFirewatch is a Unity game,

39:01SPEAKERQuad Cow is a Quake 3 engine game, I believe.

39:04SPEAKER- Waiting for, wait, is it Quake 3 or Doom?

39:06SPEAKERI know, let me see, I believe a lot.

39:08SPEAKER- I'm pretty sure it's Quake 3.

39:10SPEAKER- A lot of his stuff, I think he built on Quake 3,

39:12SPEAKERbut I wanna say he switched to the Doom 3 engine

39:15SPEAKERat some point.

39:15SPEAKER- He might've switched to Doom 3, but anyway.

39:18SPEAKER- I just, I love to death the fact that he makes

39:22SPEAKERall of his games on these old open-source id engines.

39:25SPEAKER- Well, and the cool thing about Quad Cow

39:27SPEAKERis the assets were really straightforward.

39:28SPEAKERSo it was really, like this all came together

39:31SPEAKERin maybe a month, maybe six weeks.

39:33SPEAKER- Wow.

39:35SPEAKER- So yeah, there was crunch.

39:36SPEAKERI mean, I don't know if I, it wasn't like forced crunch,

39:38SPEAKERbut like we all wanted to do it

39:40SPEAKERand we had to get there somehow, so.

39:43SPEAKER- Okay, yes, yes.

39:44SPEAKERSo that one was, sorry, just to correct the record,

39:46SPEAKERthat one was Doom 3.

39:47SPEAKERI think all his previous stuff was Quake 3 for that.

39:50SPEAKER- Yeah, Tech Four, I guess, right?

39:52SPEAKER- Yeah, whatever they're calling it now.

39:55SPEAKER- Anyway, so we put that together really fast

39:57SPEAKERand Brendan sent us a bunch of assets over

39:59SPEAKERand we jammed it together and Syndra did his magic.

40:02SPEAKERLike a large part of what Syndra did

40:04SPEAKERin addition to making the models was porting shaders

40:07SPEAKERthat were designed for 2D flat screens

40:10SPEAKERinto 3D stereo correct shaders.

40:13SPEAKERAnd it was, turns out not as much of a problem

40:16SPEAKERwith Quad Cow 'cause not a lot of shader work there.

40:21SPEAKERBut we did that live on stage.

40:24SPEAKERSo we set up a Vive with two people in it on stage.

40:27SPEAKERAnd for people who don't know,

40:29SPEAKERwe posted a bunch of videos about it at the time,

40:31SPEAKERbut for people who don't know,

40:32SPEAKERwhat we did was we set up the Vive lighthouses.

40:34SPEAKERThis was back in the old days

40:35SPEAKERwhen you can only have two of them in a space.

40:37SPEAKERAnd we set them up on as high a poles as we could get,

40:40SPEAKERusually some really tall light stands.

40:43SPEAKERAnd we tilted them down so they'd mostly hit from above.

40:46SPEAKERAnd we would use the full five meter by five meter area.

40:53SPEAKER'Cause when you're in a multiplayer VR experience,

40:56SPEAKERyou can't really teleport unless you teleport everybody

40:58SPEAKERthe exact same amount or else you get out of sync

40:59SPEAKERwith each other.

41:01SPEAKERBecause we needed the people in the space to not,

41:06SPEAKERwe needed your physical position in the real world

41:08SPEAKERto align with your virtual location,

41:10SPEAKERthe virtual world for both of you.

41:12SPEAKERAnd if you slipped,

41:14SPEAKERthen you'd walk into each other almost invariably.

41:16SPEAKER- And there were also cable problems still.

41:18SPEAKERThat's a whole other thing.

41:19SPEAKER- Sure.

41:20SPEAKER- And if we lost line of sight to any of the,

41:24SPEAKEReither of the hands or the headset,

41:27SPEAKERthen that person would fly off into space,

41:28SPEAKERusually back to the origin, which also is undesirable.

41:32SPEAKER- I mean, you know.

41:33SPEAKER- I mean, it's pretty funny.

41:35SPEAKER- There's something entertaining about it.

41:35SPEAKERI cannot imagine how nerve wracking it must have been

41:38SPEAKERto rely on this, I'm not gonna say unproven technology,

41:41SPEAKERbut it was still certainly very new and a bit unknown.

41:44SPEAKERAnd to have to do that all live on stage

41:46SPEAKERand hope that it all works, I just, ugh.

41:48SPEAKER- Well, so like, I didn't actually say

41:50SPEAKERwhy pitching to VCs was horrible.

41:51SPEAKERAnd it's because VC offices, the VR hardware back then,

41:55SPEAKERespecially pre-Vive,

41:57SPEAKERif there was anything reflective in the room,

41:59SPEAKERit just would not work.

42:00SPEAKER- Yeah, and I bet there were a lot of like glass tabletops.

42:03SPEAKER- Oh my God, it's so much glass and Chrome in VC offices.

42:06SPEAKER- Oh God, I bet.

42:07SPEAKER- So I had like, I had basically by the end of,

42:11SPEAKERand also there were no laptops that would drive VR back then.

42:13SPEAKERSo I had to carry two desktop computers,

42:17SPEAKERtwo monitors, a VR headset, maybe two VR headsets,

42:22SPEAKERthe light poles, all of this stuff,

42:23SPEAKERpower strips enough to make everything work,

42:25SPEAKERnetworking stuff to make them talk to each other

42:27SPEAKEReven without internet access.

42:29SPEAKERAnd then on top of all of that,

42:31SPEAKERI had to have another bag that was full of black drapes

42:34SPEAKERto put over anything metal or Chrome

42:35SPEAKERin the offices that I went to.

42:37SPEAKERSo yeah, it was great.

42:40SPEAKERIt's like, I didn't do, I did, I did,

42:45SPEAKERI think I stopped counting when I hit 500 people,

42:47SPEAKERI demoed 500, did 500 VR demos

42:49SPEAKERand a lot of it was like family and friends to practice

42:51SPEAKERand stuff like that.

42:52SPEAKER- Hang on, hang on.

42:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:53SPEAKER- It was hard for me to wrap my head around that number.

42:56SPEAKER- I mean, I was doing three or four a day.

42:58SPEAKER- That is two, holy, that's three or four sessions

43:01SPEAKERwith usually multiple people would come

43:02SPEAKER'cause people were really curious about VR.

43:04SPEAKERThat's the other thing you don't remember is like

43:06SPEAKERpre the headsets coming out 'cause this was all in like 2015

43:09SPEAKERand pre the headsets coming out,

43:11SPEAKEReverybody wanted to see it 'cause nobody had seen it yet.

43:14SPEAKERSo people would be like, come and bring their,

43:17SPEAKERlike I had VCs come and bring their kids.

43:20SPEAKERIt's a little weird, but it's fine.

43:22SPEAKER- I bet, depending on the VC,

43:25SPEAKERI bet if you convinced their kids,

43:26SPEAKERyou might convince them to.

43:28SPEAKER- Well, that was part of the, I mean, that was part of it.

43:29SPEAKERYeah, so yeah, we did a whole bunch of demos

43:34SPEAKERand the 500 was over the course of the first year and a half.

43:36SPEAKERIt wasn't all in that three month period, obviously.

43:39SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, so many demos.

43:45SPEAKERI was so sweaty at all, every single one of those

43:47SPEAKER'cause I'd schlepped up 200 pounds of gear.

43:49SPEAKERAnd then, yeah, the worst one was the person who got,

43:53SPEAKERI got there and they're like, hey,

43:54SPEAKERwe're really sorry, our elevator's not working.

43:55SPEAKERWe're on the third floor.

43:57SPEAKERI was just like, can I just reschedule?

43:59SPEAKERThis is no good.

44:01SPEAKERAnyway. - Did you do it?

44:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I carried it up.

44:03SPEAKER- Oh my God, all right.

44:05SPEAKERSo, all right, so you do this live stage show at XOXO.

44:09SPEAKER- Yeah, the thing I was most worried about

44:10SPEAKERwas walking off the front of the stage, honestly.

44:13SPEAKERBecause like- - Is this understandable?

44:14SPEAKER- Yeah, like the problem with the chaperone stuff,

44:18SPEAKERthe guidelines that keep you from walking outside

44:20SPEAKERof the playable bounds is that normally they align

44:23SPEAKERwith a wall so you can cheat them a little bit

44:26SPEAKER'cause there's usually a little bit more room on the edge

44:28SPEAKERif you need to.

44:29SPEAKERAnd with this one, if we had cheated on one of the sides,

44:32SPEAKERwe would have just walked off into space.

44:34SPEAKERI don't wanna talk about this anymore.

44:36SPEAKERWe have to move on.

44:37SPEAKER- Well, and then we had Andre.

44:38SPEAKERAndre was there and we had just built a 2D camera

44:41SPEAKERfor the first time for this experience.

44:45SPEAKERAnd so we had built a 2D camera so that we could have

44:49SPEAKERa third computer backstage that's hooked up

44:50SPEAKERto the projector and project the video game world

44:54SPEAKERon the screen above us standing on the stage.

44:57SPEAKERSo it was really cool.

44:59SPEAKERSo people could see what we were doing on the stage

45:02SPEAKERand in the game and he was of course was flying around

45:05SPEAKERwith drone controls using an Xbox 360 controller

45:07SPEAKERor something.

45:09SPEAKERBut yeah, so after that we did the Kickstarter

45:13SPEAKER'cause people, we'd gotten pretty positive reaction

45:16SPEAKERto the whole thing.

45:19SPEAKERAnd I guess maybe the Kickstarter was running

45:20SPEAKERwhile we were doing that.

45:21SPEAKERI can't remember the exact timing,

45:22SPEAKERbut I feel like the Kickstarter and the Quad Cow episode

45:27SPEAKERrecording were more or less at the same time.

45:30SPEAKERMaybe we recorded the Quad Cow episode

45:32SPEAKERand then launched the Kickstarter and the Quad Cow episode

45:35SPEAKERwas one of the awards.

45:35SPEAKERI don't remember the specifics.

45:37SPEAKERIt's been five years, six years.

45:41SPEAKERBut we got bad signal from, oh, we raised 20,

45:45SPEAKERwe raised 60, we ended up walking away with about 60 grand

45:48SPEAKERfrom Kickstarter, which was like not paying me five

45:52SPEAKERor six months worth of runway.

45:54SPEAKERAnd we assumed that would take about five or six episodes,

45:56SPEAKERwould give us about five or six episodes to make

45:59SPEAKERthat we would then be able to sell on Steam

46:01SPEAKERto people heading back to the Kickstarter,

46:02SPEAKER'cause Steam and the Oculus store.

46:04SPEAKER- Right.

46:06SPEAKER- The problem with that was that we had bad signal

46:09SPEAKERfrom the first two games we tried to bring to the Fusho

46:13SPEAKER'cause they were a lot easier.

46:15SPEAKERWe built Fusho in Unity, so bringing,

46:18SPEAKERand we happened to be running the same version of Unity

46:20SPEAKERas Firewatch was using, so we didn't have to port anything.

46:22SPEAKERThere was no, bringing stuff, bringing assets in

46:25SPEAKERfrom Firewatch to our thing was really easy.

46:28SPEAKERThey hadn't written anything with shaders

46:30SPEAKERthat weren't 3D correct, so all of their shaders

46:32SPEAKERwould just run in our game.

46:35SPEAKERAnd it was, because their kind of art style

46:37SPEAKERwas relatively low-fi, high-style, it ran really well.

46:43SPEAKERIt ran well enough on the Oculus min-spec hardware

46:45SPEAKERto run at a non-barf-y frame rate

46:48SPEAKERwithout us having to do a ton of work.

46:50SPEAKER- Sure.

46:50SPEAKERCan I stop for a second and make note of your use

46:53SPEAKERof the phrase bad signal?

46:54SPEAKERLike, I've inferred what it meant since you talk about it.

46:57SPEAKERLike, it means you got bad intelligence

46:59SPEAKERfrom the early experience you had, right?

47:00SPEAKERLike, it means that there were,

47:03SPEAKERthere were, you know, lessons yet to be learned

47:06SPEAKERthat were lurking underneath the relatively easy time

47:10SPEAKERyou'd have with this.

47:11SPEAKERThe reason I bring this up, though, is like,

47:13SPEAKERis there a whole handbook of, like, Silicon Valley,

47:16SPEAKERlike, tech startup, VC-type terms, like, bad signal?

47:19SPEAKER- God, I hope not, but there probably is.

47:20SPEAKER- Like, there has got to be a giant glossary of, like,

47:24SPEAKERyou know what I mean?

47:24SPEAKERLike, the kinds of, the kinds of, like, slightly smarmy

47:28SPEAKERjargon like that that develops around, like, work cultures.

47:31SPEAKER- I feel attacked.

47:33SPEAKER- I mean, like, look, it's fine if you know what it means.

47:35SPEAKER- Well, bad signal is a programming,

47:37SPEAKERis, I always say it's a programming thing.

47:38SPEAKER- Okay, sure.

47:39SPEAKERWell, that's what I mean about tech industry,

47:41SPEAKERstartups and stuff.

47:41SPEAKER- Yeah.

47:43SPEAKERBut yeah, it was, like, I think from the time they gave us,

47:51SPEAKERwell, first off, a friend of ours came in

47:55SPEAKERand helped with the Firewatch episode, Eric Florenzano,

47:59SPEAKERand he came in and helped Andrei and Sindre and me

48:05SPEAKERget that out the door, and I think we did it

48:07SPEAKERin, like, three weeks or four weeks or something like that.

48:09SPEAKERIt was really fast.

48:11SPEAKERThe quad couch took a little bit longer,

48:12SPEAKERbut it was a similar, like, less than a month timeframe,

48:15SPEAKERwhere we were like, okay, if we can do all of these,

48:17SPEAKERif we can do an episode in a month,

48:19SPEAKERthat means we can, you know, we raise 60 grand total for us.

48:23SPEAKERWe'll make, we can make five episodes, no problem.

48:28SPEAKERBoy, was I wrong.

48:30SPEAKERWe, in the meantime, we were doing a bunch of other stuff,

48:33SPEAKERlike, we were doing the other stuff.

48:34SPEAKERWe started working on the Carl show

48:35SPEAKERand some pilots and other stuff they can't talk about.

48:39SPEAKERAnd we had the, well, okay, so the contract work

48:44SPEAKERwas lucrative enough that we couldn't say no to it,

48:46SPEAKERbecause it was like, hey, we're gonna make a lot of money

48:49SPEAKERand it will fund us for a long time

48:50SPEAKERwithout us having to go out and raise money.

48:53SPEAKERNow, knowing what I know now, at the moment we had

48:56SPEAKERa bunch of business coming in and had a lot of money,

48:59SPEAKERI should have gone out and raised, like, $2 million

49:01SPEAKERfrom VCs, 'cause then we had a working business

49:03SPEAKERthat we could have raised against.

49:05SPEAKER- Sure.

49:08SPEAKER- But, you know, the money fountain is never gonna dry up,

49:12SPEAKERso, you know, you do what you can.

49:15SPEAKER- Best laid plans, hindsight is 20/20, et cetera, et cetera.

49:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:21SPEAKERLet's see, so we got through this whole run,

49:23SPEAKERwe've done a couple more episodes of the Foo Show.

49:27SPEAKERWe did one with Creative Assembly for Warhammer Total War II

49:33SPEAKERwhere we went through a bunch of different ways

49:35SPEAKERwe could do it and we were like, do we wanna be giants

49:37SPEAKERwalking around on the maps?

49:38SPEAKERNo, we think that the coolest thing about this

49:40SPEAKERis having, like, huge scale Warhammer characters.

49:43SPEAKERSo, kindly, you all were at E3 and had the suite

49:47SPEAKERat whatever hotel you used to do the suites in.

49:53SPEAKERThe standard, I think, I can't remember.

49:54SPEAKER- Yes, in the later years, the standard, yeah.

49:57SPEAKER- Yeah, like, it was not in the skeezy,

50:00SPEAKERit used to be a shoe store with a murder room upstairs.

50:02SPEAKER- No, but the standard is plenty skeezy.

50:04SPEAKER- I mean, different kind of skeezy, though.

50:08SPEAKERBut, yeah, you all let me set up there during the day

50:10SPEAKERwhile you are all out at the show

50:11SPEAKERand we recorded the Total War War II episode

50:14SPEAKERin the giant bomb suite at the standard there on the QT.

50:18SPEAKER- How nice of us.

50:18SPEAKER- Don't tell anybody.

50:23SPEAKERBut that one ended up being incredibly difficult

50:25SPEAKER'cause the assets that we used for that

50:27SPEAKERwere the cinematic assets

50:28SPEAKERfrom their cinematics between levels.

50:32SPEAKER- Jeez, it seems like I could imagine those

50:34SPEAKERare maybe not meant to be kind of procedurally animated

50:36SPEAKERin real time.

50:37SPEAKER- Well, they were performant.

50:39SPEAKERWe had to scale 'em down a little bit,

50:41SPEAKERbut it just ended up, the animation,

50:45SPEAKERI wanna say those are Unreal Engine games, I think.

50:47SPEAKERI can't remember.

50:48SPEAKERThere was an engine problem

50:49SPEAKERin that they used a different kind of animation that we did,

50:51SPEAKERso we basically had to re-rig almost everything.

50:54SPEAKERAnd, yeah, it was a lot.

50:57SPEAKERIt took a long time, it took like three or four months.

51:00SPEAKERThe episode after that, which we did in 2019 or late 2018,

51:05SPEAKERwas I wanted to do some science episodes

51:07SPEAKERthat showed small world, big world stuff.

51:10SPEAKERSo we did nanomachines, making nanomachines out of DNA

51:14SPEAKERwith a professor at UCSF.

51:17SPEAKER- That's cool.

51:19SPEAKER- And that one, Sean Douglas is the professor's name.

51:25SPEAKERThat one was phenomenal

51:26SPEAKER'cause he'd built an entire lab in VR.

51:31SPEAKERHe'd gotten a grant and hired an artist

51:34SPEAKERto recreate all of the tools in his lab in VR

51:37SPEAKER'cause he wanted to train grad students and postdocs

51:39SPEAKERhow to work in his VR version of his lab

51:43SPEAKERso that he could accelerate time.

51:45SPEAKER- That's very cool.

51:46SPEAKERI started to say like, oh, this must've been the first one

51:48SPEAKERwhere you had to build all the assets yourself, right?

51:49SPEAKERBut I did not expect to hear that a college professor

51:52SPEAKERwas gonna show up with an environment ready to go.

51:54SPEAKER- Well, so the problem was he hired somebody

51:56SPEAKERwho was like a film modeler

51:59SPEAKERwho was used to working not in real time.

52:01SPEAKERAnd so the assets, nothing was performant.

52:03SPEAKERIt took us, we had to basically recreate everything.

52:07SPEAKERWe had to rework everything to make it performant

52:09SPEAKER'cause when we loaded it up the first time,

52:11SPEAKERwe got like a third of a frame a second

52:12SPEAKERon whatever with the beefiest computer we had at the time was

52:18SPEAKERthat we eventually got there.

52:20SPEAKERBut that took five months or something ridiculous.

52:23SPEAKERSo between those two, we already spent more money

52:26SPEAKERthan we had raised on the Kickstarter

52:29SPEAKERjust getting those next two episodes out,

52:31SPEAKERwhich didn't feel good.

52:33SPEAKERIn the meantime, in order to make up

52:35SPEAKERfor the pricing of the Kickstarter,

52:37SPEAKERwhich was like 20 bucks, so five episodes,

52:39SPEAKERwe wanted to give people one episode free.

52:43SPEAKERWe were selling like 18 copies on Steam.

52:47SPEAKERWe did not sell on Steam.

52:51SPEAKERAnd at this point, the Fusho had become

52:54SPEAKERkind of a financial stone around our neck.

52:58SPEAKER- Not a money pit.

52:59SPEAKER- I mean, I don't know, I still,

53:02SPEAKERI'm really proud of the work we did with them.

53:03SPEAKERI think they were really good.

53:06SPEAKERBut yeah, it was costing more money than it was taking

53:09SPEAKERand we did not have money to spare, which felt bad.

53:12SPEAKER- I'm actually looking at the Fusho Steam page as we speak.

53:15SPEAKERThe Fusho featuring Will Smith.

53:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm obviously, I put featuring Will Smith

53:20SPEAKERbecause I thought people would search

53:22SPEAKERfor Will Smith on Steam maybe.

53:27SPEAKERAlso, I was kind of famous briefly in the VR scene.

53:30SPEAKER- Oh, right. - Around that time.

53:31SPEAKERYeah, well, not just the photo, but the tested stuff.

53:33SPEAKERWe were really popular in the communities on Reddit

53:37SPEAKERand stuff like that.

53:38SPEAKER- I just landed on, I just completely forgot about,

53:40SPEAKERthere's this kind of evening, late night talk show set

53:45SPEAKERwhere you are behind the desk in a suit

53:48SPEAKERtalking to yourself as the guest in T-shirt and jeans.

53:52SPEAKER- That was one of the VR pitches.

53:53SPEAKERThat was one of the VC pitches we made

53:55SPEAKERwas me interviewing myself about why we did this.

53:59SPEAKERIt turns out it was really hard to interview yourself.

54:01SPEAKERWho knew? - I can imagine.

54:02SPEAKER- Getting the timing right was a bit rough.

54:05SPEAKER- I see, I see you're still in early access.

54:08SPEAKER- Look, I got bad news for you, Brad.

54:15SPEAKERYeah, anyway, so we did that.

54:17SPEAKERWe ran out of money on the Fusho stuff,

54:18SPEAKERbut we were spending the money we were making elsewhere

54:20SPEAKERto continue making those episodes

54:21SPEAKER'cause we thought it was important.

54:24SPEAKERAnd we had reached the end of a long run

54:26SPEAKERwhere we were really working hard on stuff for other people

54:31SPEAKERand had some money in the bank.

54:32SPEAKERWe were like, look, we've identified a bunch of problems

54:34SPEAKERwith the thing that we've built and some things.

54:36SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, the productions that we did

54:39SPEAKERrange from the Adult Swim thing they did

54:42SPEAKERwith a half dozen people in their Atlanta studio

54:45SPEAKERon Williams Street once a week live,

54:47SPEAKERand they literally did a live YouTube video out.

54:50SPEAKERSo they were doing live animation with the Fusho out to 2D

54:59SPEAKERon YouTube or on their private streaming service, I think.

55:02SPEAKERAnd Matt Harrington at Adult Swim had seen the Fusho

55:07SPEAKERwhen the vibe was brand new.

55:09SPEAKERI think somebody had brought a vibe

55:11SPEAKERinto their offices down there too

55:13SPEAKER'cause they made games and stuff at the time too.

55:15SPEAKERIt was like, "Hey, you should check this thing out."

55:16SPEAKERAnd he was like, "Man, we can make cartoons with this."

55:19SPEAKERAnd he called, he literally went through like five,

55:24SPEAKERsome friends that, mutual acquaintances and friends

55:27SPEAKERand called my cell phone and was like,

55:29SPEAKER"Hey, this is blah, blah, blah from Adult Swim.

55:34SPEAKERCan we talk about the thing that you've made?"

55:36SPEAKERI was like, "Sure, love you guys.

55:38SPEAKERI'm a big fan."

55:39SPEAKER- Let me think about that.

55:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:41SPEAKER- The major television network wants to talk.

55:43SPEAKER- Yeah, so, but anyway, then we figured,

55:44SPEAKERthen we talked and I came down to Atlanta a couple of times

55:47SPEAKERand we put together some prototypes

55:50SPEAKERand he got sign off from the other people at the studio

55:53SPEAKERto spend some money on it.

55:54SPEAKERAnd we did a weekly show for 20 weeks, I think.

55:59SPEAKERAnd other stuff like the GameStop ads

56:04SPEAKERwe shot in a sound stage in Austin.

56:07SPEAKERWe had 25 people, it was a regular commercial production

56:11SPEAKERwith script supervisors and audio techs and the whole thing.

56:15SPEAKERAnd Andre and I were running all the tech stuff

56:17SPEAKERon that point.

56:18SPEAKERLet's see, another one that we did was weird.

56:20SPEAKERThis was just something we did

56:22SPEAKER'cause I wanted to speak at this conference

56:23SPEAKERand couldn't go to Copenhagen that year.

56:25SPEAKERBut we were invited to speak at a virtual reality conference

56:28SPEAKERor a new media conference in Copenhagen.

56:32SPEAKERAnd instead of me flying to Copenhagen

56:35SPEAKER'cause it was all we were doing another shoot,

56:37SPEAKERwe just sent them,

56:38SPEAKERSyndra took a laptop down there

56:41SPEAKERand plugged it into their projector with our client on it.

56:45SPEAKERAnd then I did it from the garage in San Francisco

56:49SPEAKERat like two o'clock in the morning.

56:51SPEAKER'Cause I mean, can't really be sending that much data.

56:54SPEAKER- Hardly anything.

56:55SPEAKER- Movement and positional data

56:56SPEAKERhas to be pretty damn small.

56:58SPEAKER- Look, the voice was way more data than the movements.

57:01SPEAKER- Right, that's cool.

57:04SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, we took like,

57:07SPEAKERwe were like, we've got problems, right?

57:09SPEAKERLike there's tech problems here we can fix.

57:11SPEAKER'Cause all this time Andre had been working

57:13SPEAKERin the background on some new stuff

57:14SPEAKERto make the animation better,

57:15SPEAKERbut we hadn't had time to test it

57:16SPEAKERand integrate it and all that stuff.

57:19SPEAKERAnd he was like, let's take three months.

57:23SPEAKERI mean, we all thought it would take three months

57:24SPEAKERand it's not just Andre, just to be clear.

57:27SPEAKERLet's take, 'cause we had built the entire thing

57:28SPEAKERin three months, right?

57:29SPEAKERSo like how hard could it be to fix it, right?

57:33SPEAKERIt ended up taking a year.

57:37SPEAKERAnd like Syndra and I were still finishing,

57:38SPEAKERwe were doing Fusho episodes during that.

57:40SPEAKERWe had other stuff going,

57:42SPEAKERlike it was mostly, hey, let's integrate.

57:45SPEAKERWell, first off the index was coming.

57:47SPEAKERSo we had the ability to do fingers,

57:49SPEAKERwhich was a huge increase in fidelity.

57:53SPEAKERLike having paddle hands

57:55SPEAKERor like programmatically animated fingers

57:57SPEAKERversus being able to point is a big deal.

58:01SPEAKERWe also wanted to do some stuff

58:02SPEAKERwith better lip sync and face tracking.

58:05SPEAKERSo he integrated the ability to do,

58:09SPEAKERaround that time, the iPhone depth cameras

58:11SPEAKERstarted being able to do face tracking.

58:15SPEAKERThey use it from emojis,

58:16SPEAKERbut there's APIs for everybody.

58:19SPEAKERAnd you can do the same thing on Android.

58:20SPEAKERSo we did some experiments with that stuff

58:22SPEAKERand had that working.

58:24SPEAKERAnd we came out of this with like a thing

58:26SPEAKERthat we could put a voice actor in front of a phone

58:30SPEAKERand have them drive the face

58:31SPEAKERwhile a physical motion capture actor is driving the body.

58:34SPEAKERLike it was really cool.

58:35SPEAKERIt works really well.

58:38SPEAKERSpecifically thinking about production,

58:40SPEAKERwhere often it turns out with animated stuff especially,

58:44SPEAKERoften the voice actors are kind of old

58:46SPEAKERand not particularly mobile.

58:47SPEAKERSo you can put somebody who's young and able

58:49SPEAKERand is good at the motion acting part in the bodies

58:52SPEAKERand then do the voices

58:54SPEAKERand then just map the voices to the faces

58:55SPEAKERwhen the face is on the bodies easily in post-production.

59:02SPEAKERSo we did that.

59:03SPEAKERWe came out of that

59:04SPEAKERand we finished that up in like, I don't know,

59:07SPEAKERDecember of 2019.

59:10SPEAKER- Fateful.

59:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:13SPEAKER- Fateful pause, dot, dot, dot.

59:14SPEAKER- Yeah, nothing happens between Thanksgiving

59:18SPEAKERand like January MLK day basically in content world often.

59:24SPEAKER- Executives are all taking a lot of time off.

59:28SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a big time off time of year for people.

59:31SPEAKERSo we came out of that window into February

59:35SPEAKERand had stuff moving.

59:38SPEAKERWe had a show that was supposed to run

59:42SPEAKERin front of a live studio audience.

59:45SPEAKERSo like audience sitting in front of a stage

59:48SPEAKERwith performers on it, wearing the tracking gear.

59:50SPEAKERAnd by this point we'd added foot tracking

59:52SPEAKERand hip tracking too.

59:52SPEAKERSo we had much better fidelity on the legs,

59:54SPEAKERwhich is an early piece of feedback we got.

59:57SPEAKER- Wait, what were you tracking those with?

1:00:00SPEAKER- We could do with a bunch of stuff.

1:00:01SPEAKERWe mostly used five trackers.

1:00:03SPEAKER- Okay.

1:00:04SPEAKER- But like if you had an IMU suit, you could use that.

1:00:06SPEAKERLike it was, the thing that Andre wrote during that,

1:00:10SPEAKERyou know, 12 months was basically a hardware agnostic.

1:00:19SPEAKERLet's see, an IK solver that would work regardless

1:00:21SPEAKERof the number of points of data you put on it.

1:00:24SPEAKERSo like you could animate a whole body with just a head,

1:00:26SPEAKERwhich was hilarious.

1:00:28SPEAKERBut you could also, if you gave it like 20 points of data

1:00:30SPEAKERor 50 points of data or a hundred points of data,

1:00:32SPEAKERit would be increasingly good.

1:00:33SPEAKERIt's a lot like what the metahuman stuff is that,

1:00:36SPEAKERsorry, not metahuman.

1:00:38SPEAKERIt's what Matt Workman is doing with Unreal these days.

1:00:41SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, we were literally about to sign a deal

1:00:47SPEAKERto do the live animated show in front of the live audience

1:00:51SPEAKERwhen the state of California shut down everybody.

1:00:57SPEAKERAnd then we had two other potential projects fall through

1:01:00SPEAKER'cause we couldn't figure out how to do the recording safely

1:01:02SPEAKERin 2020.

1:01:04SPEAKERWell, I mean, that was one of them.

1:01:05SPEAKERThe other one, sometimes things just fall through.

1:01:08SPEAKER- Right.

1:01:10SPEAKER- But yeah, company still exists, the IP still exists.

1:01:14SPEAKERIf anybody wants to buy it, let me know, we're talking.

1:01:18SPEAKER- I mean, like obviously, like you just said,

1:01:20SPEAKERthe pandemic like logistically made it difficult

1:01:23SPEAKERto impossible to get together and record stuff.

1:01:25SPEAKERLike I assume that also had a dampening effect

1:01:27SPEAKERon people's willingness to throw money at new projects

1:01:30SPEAKERjust generally.

1:01:32SPEAKER- I mean, I don't think so.

1:01:34SPEAKERIt basically meant that the stuff that we were pitching

1:01:36SPEAKERduring that time window was much less

1:01:39SPEAKERlike two or three or more people interacting in a space.

1:01:42SPEAKERSo one of the big things that we shifted

1:01:44SPEAKERafter the first wave is that we stopped recording

1:01:48SPEAKERwith everybody in the same physical space

1:01:50SPEAKERbecause it turns out having the performers

1:01:52SPEAKERbeing able to teleport around was really important.

1:01:57SPEAKERBut yeah, so like we were already recording

1:01:59SPEAKERwith people in separate spaces by that time.

1:02:02SPEAKERSo we could have put them in different rooms

1:02:03SPEAKERand just have them in an area with a like network, right?

1:02:07SPEAKER- Just made me realize how much that tracks

1:02:09SPEAKERwith the production process of this podcast.

1:02:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:12SPEAKER- We were also, God, we started that in late August, 2019,

1:02:15SPEAKERkind of a little past the halfway point.

1:02:17SPEAKER- God, was it that, yeah, wow.

1:02:19SPEAKER- Yes, it has been three years.

1:02:21SPEAKERAnd yeah, we were trying to get together

1:02:23SPEAKERto record this thing every week for a while until.

1:02:26SPEAKER- Yeah, until May or March of 2020, weird.

1:02:28SPEAKER- And then it turned out like, oh, it is way more convenient

1:02:30SPEAKERto not have to like plan travel

1:02:32SPEAKERaround getting this thing recorded.

1:02:33SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause it's funny,

1:02:34SPEAKERwe don't live particularly far apart,

1:02:35SPEAKERbut like if the wrong time of day,

1:02:36SPEAKERit's like a 45 minute drive each way.

1:02:40SPEAKERBut yeah, so we were doing that remotely.

1:02:42SPEAKERWe did a couple of things with our Cartoon Network

1:02:45SPEAKERand Adult Swim where we had people in Atlanta

1:02:46SPEAKERand people in Burbank like performing together.

1:02:50SPEAKERSo like we've been doing that for a long time.

1:02:51SPEAKERIt works really well.

1:02:52SPEAKERIt's like normal video game latency situation.

1:02:55SPEAKERAnd Turner had a really fast internet connection,

1:02:58SPEAKERlike a straight shot pipe from Burbank to Atlanta.

1:03:01SPEAKERSo it was like one hop, it was good latency.

1:03:05SPEAKERIt was like speed of light latency there.

1:03:08SPEAKERBut yeah, like it's been weird.

1:03:10SPEAKERI see, I think Jeff Grubb this week on something,

1:03:14SPEAKERjudging by my Twitter comments,

1:03:17SPEAKERsome Jeff Grubb joked that I made,

1:03:19SPEAKERinvented VTubing, which is absolutely untrue.

1:03:24SPEAKERAlthough we did talk to,

1:03:25SPEAKERlike when VTubing was getting popular in China,

1:03:27SPEAKERa bunch of those people reached out

1:03:28SPEAKER'cause they wanted us to build a VTuber client.

1:03:29SPEAKERAnd I was like, I don't know that we'll last long enough

1:03:32SPEAKERto make money at the rate at which this,

1:03:34SPEAKERin time for this to become a thing.

1:03:36SPEAKER- Right.

1:03:39SPEAKER- I look at what Horizon,

1:03:41SPEAKERFacebook's metaverse bullshit thing is,

1:03:44SPEAKERand I feel really good about the level of animation

1:03:45SPEAKERwe were doing in 2015, 2016, 2017.

1:03:49SPEAKERI don't know, that's the big takeaway, I guess.

1:03:51SPEAKER- Compared to what apparently

1:03:52SPEAKERseveral billion dollars can buy?

1:03:54SPEAKER- I mean, there were three of us and some contractors, so.

1:03:57SPEAKER- Yes, all right, okay, I have a question.

1:04:00SPEAKERIt's kind of blunt.

1:04:01SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:04:02SPEAKER- Feel free to defer.

1:04:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:04:05SPEAKER- Do you feel like the pandemic was the thing

1:04:06SPEAKERthat kind of put a bullet into everything?

1:04:09SPEAKEROr like if the pandemic had never happened,

1:04:12SPEAKERlike do you think you'd still be going?

1:04:14SPEAKER- Well, so the weird thing about having a business

1:04:16SPEAKERthat you need to sell like one or two things a year

1:04:18SPEAKERto continue going is that it's real easy

1:04:21SPEAKERto get into like a life support territory.

1:04:24SPEAKERI don't know, like I was pretty tired and burned out

1:04:29SPEAKERby the time we reached the pandemic,

1:04:31SPEAKERand then the pandemic made everything worse.

1:04:34SPEAKERSo I, look, had we, had we leaned into the Foo Show

1:04:45SPEAKERearly on and had that ready to go on Quest,

1:04:50SPEAKERwhich we could have been able to do,

1:04:54SPEAKERwhen the Quest 2 landed, we probably could have done okay

1:04:57SPEAKERif we'd had like 10 or 15 episodes

1:04:59SPEAKERand a subscription thing or something for that.

1:05:01SPEAKER- Is Quest 2 the one, like in terms

1:05:03SPEAKERof market penetration and install base?

1:05:05SPEAKER- My understanding is that install base

1:05:06SPEAKERof Quest 2 is pretty, pretty stupid.

1:05:08SPEAKER- Okay.

1:05:09SPEAKER- Pretty good.

1:05:10SPEAKERSo that's the other thing that definitely hurt us

1:05:12SPEAKERis that there was no consumer market for VR

1:05:14SPEAKERfor the first like three years, unless you were,

1:05:16SPEAKERlike if you weren't one of the top three

1:05:18SPEAKERor four VR applications, you were at best breaking even

1:05:22SPEAKERif you were, if you ran real, a friend of mine told me

1:05:25SPEAKERin 2016, he was like, look, this market feels

1:05:29SPEAKERlike one of those ones that's gonna,

1:05:30SPEAKERthat the cockroaches are gonna survive.

1:05:34SPEAKERAnd meaning the people who are running the most lean

1:05:37SPEAKERand spending the least money and figuring out

1:05:39SPEAKERhow to survive on revenue and stuff like that.

1:05:43SPEAKERAnd that's the opportunity here,

1:05:45SPEAKER'cause the people who come out of that cockroach period

1:05:47SPEAKERwill be in a good position to, to excel.

1:05:51SPEAKERAnd then as we were starting to come out

1:05:52SPEAKERof that cockroach period, the pandemic hit, which was bad.

1:05:56SPEAKERAnyway, would I do it again?

1:06:00SPEAKER- Wow.

1:06:01SPEAKER- I don't know.

1:06:02SPEAKER- You're just sitting here asking my questions

1:06:03SPEAKERfor me at this point.

1:06:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I spent a lot of my own money doing this.

1:06:06SPEAKERDon't spend your own money doing your own startups

1:06:08SPEAKERif you're getting, if you, if you can help it.

1:06:10SPEAKERThat's my advice.

1:06:11SPEAKER- That is rough.

1:06:12SPEAKERIs there, is there any upkeep around the company

1:06:14SPEAKERcontinuing to exist?

1:06:15SPEAKER- Yes.

1:06:16SPEAKER- Like, is there?

1:06:17SPEAKER- It's not much.

1:06:17SPEAKER- Okay.

1:06:18SPEAKER- It's like, you gotta file a tax return.

1:06:20SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

1:06:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:06:22SPEAKER- Yeah, like is there like, is it,

1:06:23SPEAKERis it essentially easier to just keep doing that

1:06:25SPEAKERthan go through whatever rigmarole there is to shut it down?

1:06:28SPEAKER- Well, once I go through the rigmarole to shut it down,

1:06:30SPEAKERthe chance of recovering any money out of it goes away.

1:06:32SPEAKER- Aha, okay.

1:06:33SPEAKER- So, yeah.

1:06:34SPEAKER- Oh, I see.

1:06:35SPEAKERThere's always a chance.

1:06:36SPEAKER- There's always a chance.

1:06:38SPEAKERPeople, like people reach out every few months.

1:06:40SPEAKERLike I get, I get emails from people, so we'll see.

1:06:43SPEAKERI, it probably will not be around it, definitely.

1:06:47SPEAKERYeah.

1:06:48SPEAKER- Well, thank you for this candid look behind the scenes.

1:06:51SPEAKER- Yeah, starting companies.

1:06:53SPEAKERI'm gonna go and tell you, when Trump got elected

1:06:54SPEAKERand was like, I'm gonna repeal Obamacare,

1:06:56SPEAKERI suddenly started getting really nervous.

1:06:57SPEAKERLike that, that, that, the stress of that added,

1:07:00SPEAKERmultiplied dramatically, what is already a stressful thing.

1:07:03SPEAKER- Yes.

1:07:05SPEAKER- And I, I, my question to anyone who says

1:07:07SPEAKERthat socialized medicine is, is going to hurt innovation,

1:07:13SPEAKERI think that those people, what they really mean is

1:07:15SPEAKERthey're going to make it harder for talented companies

1:07:18SPEAKERto retain talented employees who might wanna go do something

1:07:20SPEAKERon their own.

1:07:22SPEAKER'Cause right now healthcare is a shackle

1:07:23SPEAKERin the United States.

1:07:24SPEAKER- It's a nightmare.

1:07:25SPEAKER- There's a reason most of our guests on the tech,

1:07:27SPEAKERon the FOSBOD are from Europe, I believe.

1:07:29SPEAKER- Yes, I fully agree with you on that.

1:07:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:33SPEAKERAnd that was, that was the biggest thing.

1:07:36SPEAKERThe other, the other thing I will say is that

1:07:38SPEAKERthe amount of bullshit that you have to understand

1:07:40SPEAKERabout how incorporation and legal stuff and paying tax,

1:07:46SPEAKERlike everything is so much more infinitely complicated

1:07:49SPEAKERthan it needs to be.

1:07:50SPEAKER- You have no idea.

1:07:51SPEAKER- I, I'm, yeah.

1:07:52SPEAKER- But you know.

1:07:53SPEAKER- I know.

1:07:54SPEAKER- People listening who have never had to deal with the stuff

1:07:55SPEAKERlike you have no idea.

1:07:57SPEAKER- Yeah, like, like if people are serious

1:07:59SPEAKERabout encouraging small businesses,

1:08:03SPEAKERthe, you know, ask your politicians what you can do

1:08:06SPEAKERto make starting a small business easier.

1:08:08SPEAKERBecause it's, it is frightening, frighteningly complicated.

1:08:12SPEAKERNow the good thing is, and somebody,

1:08:13SPEAKERa friend of the pod told me this

1:08:16SPEAKERwhen we were about two years in and I was like,

1:08:17SPEAKERI'm really worried I'm gonna go to jail or something.

1:08:19SPEAKERHe laughed, he was like, oh look,

1:08:20SPEAKERall of the problems that you're gonna have

1:08:21SPEAKERare pay fine problems, not go to jail problems.

1:08:25SPEAKERSo, you know, if that helps.

1:08:27SPEAKERAnd I was like, okay, that was when the bank account

1:08:30SPEAKERwas good, so that did actually help.

1:08:31SPEAKERWhen the bank account was bad, pay fine problems

1:08:34SPEAKERwere maybe scarier than go to jail problems, I don't know.

1:08:37SPEAKERAnyway, I said the one thing I would like,

1:08:41SPEAKERdo stuff with co-founders.

1:08:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:08:44SPEAKER- If you're gonna start something, have two people.

1:08:45SPEAKER- Yes.

1:08:46SPEAKER- 'Cause it's nice to be able to split that load.

1:08:47SPEAKER- Sure.

1:08:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:08:49SPEAKER- It's lonely at the top.

1:08:50SPEAKER- It's only, when it's only one person,

1:08:54SPEAKERyou only have yourself to blame, so.

1:08:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:09:00SPEAKER- Yeah, fucking health insurance, man.

1:09:02SPEAKER- Yes.

1:09:03SPEAKER- Health insurance kills you.

1:09:04SPEAKERI was spending as much money on health insurance

1:09:06SPEAKERat one point during that whole thing

1:09:07SPEAKERas I was on the house loan almost.

1:09:10SPEAKER- Good God, man.

1:09:10SPEAKER- And that's in the Bay Area, so three people.

1:09:13SPEAKERIt's ridiculous.

1:09:14SPEAKER- Some might say it's unsustainable.

1:09:16SPEAKER- Yeah, well, not the health insurance companies,

1:09:18SPEAKERthat's for sure.

1:09:19SPEAKER- No.

1:09:20SPEAKER- They love it.

1:09:21SPEAKER- All right, this is getting depressing.

1:09:22SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.

1:09:24SPEAKERBrad, I guess this is the time when we thank our patrons.

1:09:26SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you, patrons.

1:09:28SPEAKER- Thanks, patrons.

1:09:29SPEAKERI hope people enjoyed this episode.

1:09:31SPEAKERIt feels oddly kinda cathartic to talk about, actually.

1:09:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see that for you, and educational for me,

1:09:37SPEAKERand I hope a lot of people listening.

1:09:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I hope people don't feel like it's self-indulgent.

1:09:44SPEAKER- No, I don't think so.

1:09:45SPEAKERIt's instructive.

1:09:46SPEAKER- Yeah, there you go, cautionary tale.

1:09:49SPEAKER- I mean, we could probably do a whole series

1:09:50SPEAKERabout talking to people, trying to get investment,

1:09:52SPEAKERand paying employee, how to handle employees,

1:09:54SPEAKERcontractors versus full-time.

1:09:56SPEAKERLook, there's probably a zillion ins and outs

1:09:58SPEAKERof this topic that would be interesting to discuss.

1:10:01SPEAKER- I don't know if Gusto started while I was doing this,

1:10:03SPEAKERor if I just found out about them late,

1:10:08SPEAKERbut when somebody was like, "Hey, do you know about Gusto?"

1:10:11SPEAKERI went and looked at what it was, and I was like,

1:10:13SPEAKERit does payroll and all of the associated taxes

1:10:15SPEAKERand stuff for you.

1:10:16SPEAKERI was like, "Oh, thank Christ."

1:10:18SPEAKER'Cause even like QuickBooks and the stuff

1:10:20SPEAKERthat also does payroll, it's still a huge pain in the ass,

1:10:23SPEAKERand Gusto handles all the reporting and stuff for you.

1:10:25SPEAKERLike with QuickBooks, you still have to print out stuff

1:10:27SPEAKERand send it in every quarter, three,

1:10:28SPEAKERsix weeks or something, and Gusto is really nice.

1:10:32SPEAKER- Yeah, it's kind of crazy how many little turnkey services

1:10:35SPEAKERthere are now that facilitate small business stuff,

1:10:38SPEAKEReven like you can hire part-time CFOs now.

1:10:41SPEAKER- Yes, I mean, it used to be you had to know a CFO

1:10:43SPEAKERwho's willing to work part-time to do that.

1:10:45SPEAKERNow you can just get somebody, yeah, it's really good.

1:10:48SPEAKERAnyway, that's it, that's us.

1:10:51SPEAKERHi.

1:10:52SPEAKER- Hi, hello, thank you.

1:10:53SPEAKERThank you for the walk down memory lane,

1:10:54SPEAKERand thank you to our patrons for supporting us.

1:10:56SPEAKER- Yes, thank you, patrons.

1:10:57SPEAKERIf you would like to find out how to become a patron

1:10:59SPEAKERof Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod,

1:11:00SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.

1:11:03SPEAKERThat's patreon.com/techpod.

1:11:05SPEAKERAnd for two bucks a month, or more if you want,

1:11:08SPEAKERI mean, we'll take more.

1:11:10SPEAKERYou can help support our show, we appreciate you all.

1:11:14SPEAKERBut we especially appreciate our executive producer

1:11:16SPEAKERto your patrons, including Paddle Creek Games,

1:11:18SPEAKERmakers of Fractured Veil, Andrew Slosky, Octothorpe.

1:11:23SPEAKERI feel like there's a share thing happening here.

1:11:26SPEAKERWedge assistant to the Thread Club manager, Joel Krauska,

1:11:29SPEAKERTwinkie at Hacker Summer Camp, and James Kamik.

1:11:31SPEAKERThank you all so much, we appreciate you.

1:11:33SPEAKER- Yes.

1:11:37SPEAKER- I guess that's it for us this week.

1:11:38SPEAKER- You look a little frazzled.

1:11:40SPEAKER- This is a lot, man.

1:11:41SPEAKER- I'm sure it was, thank you for taking the time.

1:11:44SPEAKER- That's, I feel like I'm the guest this week, that's weird.

1:11:48SPEAKER- You look.

1:11:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that much, it turns out.

1:11:53SPEAKERAnyway, see you all next week, bye everybody.