Jimmy Law: Finding and Organizing Basketball Games Digitally (Full Transcript)
Listen on Apple | Spotify | Google
Full Transcript:
Ronen Ainbinder 1:06
Joining today's episode is a guy from Hong Kong who lived most of his life in the UK.
This guest has tons of experience in the financial industry under different roles, including investment banking, trading, quantitative finance, and more. Additionally, he worked for three years as a data scientist for the sports streaming company DAZN. Today, he's the co-founder of GameOn Active – a company that is looking to help everyone play more sports through digitizing the entire process of organizing grassroots sports gatherings.
I can't wait for his lessons in sports, technology, finance, and more. Ladies and gentlemen. Allow me to introduce Jimmy Law!
Jimmy Law 1:14
That's an awesome introduction. Good to see you.
Ronen Ainbinder 1:27
Good to see you too. Jimmy. How are you, man?
Jimmy Law 1:29
Excited to chat with you today!
Ronen Ainbinder 1:32
My icebreaker for you is if you could have dinner with a sports player, dead or alive, you can choose. Who would you choose? And why?
Jimmy Law 1:43
I mean, not like I probably say Chris Paul, the way he plays that old-school basketball floor general. He can shoot, he can pass, and yeah, the guy hasn't got the rain. So I'm just like, Chris, man, you need to get around. And I love to know that if I'm gonna like, meet an NBA player, I definitely have to be him. I think I know many people are going to hate on me for this because there are people who hate him, but it's my man.
Ronen Ainbinder 2:11
I love it. Man. I love it. I'm sure he will accept your dinner after he listens to this episode. Jimmy. I'm so excited that we're going to talk about so many different things in the realm of sports technology and what you guys have been doing. But I want to first all touch on your story and your background. You have a finance, finance background, you worked in the corporate side of finance. So I want to know if you can share with us a couple of lessons that you learned from working in a job in the corporate side of finance that helped you develop the successful product that you're trying to build and that is helping you in GameOn in your day by day today.
Jimmy Law 2:55
My career, as you like our CNC, is quite diverse. I've certainly spent a lot of time in investment banking, corporate finance. I was a trader on the trading floor for a stint but basically ended up also consulting at noon from some big bags like HSBC, Credit Suisse, UBS. And I like you say I also work for designing for comm Yes, I've seen. I wouldn't say up by talking like. Obviously, I picked up things in my career that have been useful. For the company, for example, I have a fairly good understanding of accounting. I can code. I understand how to write a pitch deck, how to talk to investors, and that sort of stuff. But I wouldn't say those are like, only applicable to sports technology. I think it's not a genuinely useful skill. But I mean, like to answer your question more directly. These are a couple of things that maybe I picked up as I watched companies grow and how companies solve problems in my, in my across my whole career. I did definitely pick up a couple of things that I have consciously applied in GameOn Active; one thing is that if you don't try stuff, if you don't innovate if you don't change unless you're moving forward, you're basically moving backward. So I've seen a lot of big companies. They're trying to innovate. So, for example, good examples, all these retail banks trying to go into FinTech. They want their customers to bank with them on the app. But when you're in a massive company, change is very, very slow. There's politics; there are legacy systems. There are all sorts of things like trying to stop change from happening. And one thing I've learned is that the only way to stay ahead is to keep changing as you keep evolving. And that's certainly something that I've instilled in how we do things in the cable. We like to let people come together like we have ideas and try stuff out; it doesn't work. We try to figure out what we can learn from that. And then we'll move on. And that will make sure that we don't forget the lessons of that. Another thing that I think I've picked up is, always, always don't obsess with your competition, or don't spend all your time looking at what competition is. And don't worry about people knowing about what you have. Because to be honest, in this world, on technology, like where most companies are delivering services, or mobile apps, web apps, websites, and so on, anyone can like, get an account on your product, and they can figure out like, what are you doing, So I see a lot of startups like, obsessing with what their competition is doing, or something. What you should do is obsess about, I think, Jeff Bezos assassins are quite tight. Just go and talk to your customers well, and one of the things that we did at GameOn was a bit like Uber and Airbnb like you've got a marketplace. Now, just because you've got an app doesn't mean people will start using it. So, no, Uber, I don't know if it started by basically paying drivers to just drive around so that when customers come in, they see that stuff for them to do. Same with Airbnb, the founders basically started renting out their own property to seed the marketplace with some supply. And we did the same thing. Basically, we just started running basketball games on our app. And to basically learn from people who are joining our games, what do you think about the app? What can we do better? Was it annoying, and it's through that, that we'd be literally eating the product over the last couple of years? And yeah, I mean, just, there's just a whole always, we would listen to people who use the app and use that as sort of a North Star. That's, that's the guiding light in terms of what we should do next? What's important, what's gonna make a difference? Right. And maybe another thing is that some may disagree with me, I think, increasingly, as everything becomes more digitized, I think tech, even though if you're not a tech company, or certainly, if you're a tech company, as a core competency, that you shouldn't try and outsource it, especially if they're a startup, I see a lot of the technology startup journey, right, they pitch for some funding of this well, they get some funding. And they outsource, they write up this beautiful app and get a developer to write it three months back. Now we have a product we're trying to sell. But, this is not my first startup. And I've had stints and other startups before. Still, at the beginning of your startup journey, a lot of it is about learning a lot about figuring out the gaps in the market and what your customers want? What are the existing products not doing that customers want? So you're learning, and you need to iterate; you need to move fast. And if you attack all sorts, that slows the whole thing down. Basically, imagine below half your funding for the MVP. And then you learn that, okay, that's not how the screenshot we need to change it. And you're going to talk to the developer, okay, that gives you a different developer. You need to draft a whole new contract by the time they are ready to get started. Again, it's like a month has passed. And then by the time you've learned something out, and then you just start that cycle, just get grinds to a halt. If, as a tech startup, you outsource all your tech from day one. We made a conscious decision to not do this. And not all our tax offices developed, developed in-house by myself.
Ronen Ainbinder 8:42
Yeah, I think I think it makes sense. First of all, the first one that he mentioned is change. That change is something that is basically never double. And they can get big companies with a lot of struggle in changing because of how they're made and how politics work and how culture is cut is quite different. And so change is an important thing. And I also think that the second one you mentioned in terms of technology and developing it in-house is also a very important key. If you're a technology company and you're outsourcing your technology, then you're not a technology company. I'd say you're basically just relying on somebody else's servers or relying on someone else's code. So Exactly. It doesn't make any sense for you, at least in the long term; maybe in the short term, it would work but not in the long term. And I'm curious to ask you, of course, coming from that background and with your experiences over there and, of course, in the zone. I can see that you're very passionate about sports, as well. So how exactly was your vision for grassroots sports future grassroots sports triggered? How did you come up with, let's say, the idea of this app to solve a problem there? Like, how was it that you felt that pain? You were like, Man, we need an app for this? And what are the problems that there are today in that space? And what is in your mind? How do we get there in terms of filling the gap?
Jimmy Law 10:31
Yeah, it's a good question. What got me thinking about GameOn most probably about 14, 15 years ago, when I was still working in banking. And as bankers famously worked, hard. And I certainly was stressed hours, I was working all hours of the day, weekends, like nights, like, what have you, um, and eating very healthily. And my health took a toll on my health. And I mean, on people like that, everyone has their own place, and like, you go out drinking, or you've got partying or whatever, like to try and get your mojo back, if you will, right, to keep you sane. And something happens. At one point, I always loved playing basketball. I was like, I made my school team just before I came to the UK to study while I'm in Hong Kong. And I still keep my jersey with me number 12, which was John Stockton number, was my favorite play at that time. And coming over to the UK, like basketball, is not a big thing in the UK. Even though it's quite big in Europe, as you might know. And I basically like Sony or Sony stopped playing, there wasn't a small team, and I was disappointed. I was playing pick-up on it. And by the time I got to uni, people were going out partying, and then when I got into banking, that's just not time to play. And a friend of my base said, oh, by the way, I know this guy who's like doing a basketball run sort of near your work. Every night, Tuesday night, I'm in this place called Angel in London, why don't you join? So I started going like the first game. The second game got me upset, as I remember myself being such a terrible basketball player. And I kept going, And then Honestly, I can't, I can't tell you. What a difference in May to my mental health, I think. I think most people who play sports probably sympathize. You come back, and you get this adrenaline rush, and when you feel good about yourself and feel like you're getting fitter, you get this fantastic appetite. And if you play team sports as well, like overtime, inevitably, you end up making loads of friends. And then that time was about the time when we started to get the smartphone revolution, a revolution that everyone was starting to have, like iPhones and stuff. And you're starting to get things like Airbnb, Uber, delivery services, and so on. And I thought to myself, like, why, why, why can't I just find a basketball game to join? Um, why is it so hard? And then I asked the guy who was organizing, and he said, Yeah, you have to. I happen to know this guy at the gym. So I basically have a block booking with him. And now I was like, Can I book the court? He's like, "Well, no, because we don't they don't have a website, you have to call him or her and have an email address." You can try that. And then, if you are lucky, you can find a call that you can book. Now you're worrying about where to find the players? You can go to WhatsApp. Obviously, most people still do that. But then you'll find that if you try to do that, there's never quite enough players in your, in your world of friends to join again, a regular game that plays at that time, every single week, as people are planning for it while I'm on live in the same place. And then you have to worry about Okay, you're so lucky you find enough players. Someone that might not show up at the last minute happens all the time. And then how do you collect payments? You want to deal with cash, especially in the world of COVID, 90. So basically, I realized that there's something to be done here. There are clearly loads of people who want to play sports. That's the demand out there. And people would love it. Are people guys who started turning up to that run basically become regulars, and they're always the same guy showing up? And they always say to the organizer, oh, my God, I know what I do without you organizing this. And it just occurred to me that if I have such a good experience, starting to play a basketball game, what if I could extend this these benefits to lots more people like a question mark, Are their loads of people out there like me, who used to play sports when they were back in school because it's easy to play sports. After all, that tends to be like a good team, like a playground; it's easy to get going. But once you enter university and start a professional life, it's not so easy anymore, right? People that you play with probably are in the same city as you. And that basically everyone has a social life. It goes, Well, artists question that question mark. I had 15 years old Sterilite demand that there are lots of people out there thinking exactly like me, who is I? Why can't that just or even the website where I can find games to join, and I just know, pick us up that suits me? And I just joined, just pay, and let's just go, why can't that be something like that is that demand for it? That's kind of what started it. About four or five years ago, I had a career change. I decided I was fed up with the job that I was doing. And this comes back to how big companies are resistant to change. And I've always wanted to like to do things that make a difference if that makes sense. And being in a big company, you don't have an opportunity to make big changes. And I just decided, screw it, I'm just gonna give it a go. And that's kind of how an activity started. that answers your question.
Ronen Ainbinder 16:12
Yeah, man, I love it. And I was reading through the deck, the same information that you sent about GameOn Active. And one of the things that resonated with me is that you guys tried to expand quickly or do many sports, and you realized it was a little challenging. So you decided to focus only on basketball in the UK. So I was thinking if this was kind of like a, a failure in a way that you did something that it's not that you regret, it's just that it took you a while to just understand that this was something big, but you need to focus first, first of all, in something small. So I want to know if this is the biggest failure you ever had. And I'm not meaning failure in terms of that you guys failed. But that's something that you guys learned. So what is the biggest thing you guys learned through something that didn't go as you thought? And why is this an important pivot or turning point in the product life cycle of games when active?
Jimmy Law 17:21
If that was a must pick out a failure of GameOn Active, it will be that like, I mean, we try to go down the route of like, usually how a startup begins life, Like you, you write a pretty pitch deck, you have an idea, right pitch dag, you try to spell out what is the what's the gap in the market was a problem to try to solve. You take it to angel investors, and you pitch them. And usually, in the UK, an angel investor will probably come in; they give you 15,000 pounds for probably about somewhere between 10 to 15% of the equity. And I basically span maybe like four or five months, just kidding around, getting in touch with like the angel network in my Oh, universities, and just basically pitching like angel investors on networks. When I had quite a few meetings, almost every single one said to me, this idea is not new. A lot of people have tried your idea before. And we're not saying that. There's no demand for it. But sitting on our side of the table, we see that many people have tried, and almost all of them have failed on none of that scale. None of that became your household name, like an Uber or Airbnb, So they asked me, so why do you think you will succeed? And I gave him a bunch of reasons. Obviously, I don't think they were good answers. And we had some decent answers. But we know we're good enough to convince them. But every time I left a meeting like that, I asked them, so how do you judge that? My approach to solving this problem is successful. Give me a number, like give me a yardstick. Now, even though I'm leaving with no money, I'd like to know how far I have to get for a meeting. I'm going down the right path. And they said, Well if you get to about maybe 100 monthly active users if you get your product out there, that means 100 people are logging into your app and doing something with it once a month. I think you've got next, and I think you're getting somewhere. And then I can't set it as I want. Okay, that I'm probably gonna have to live with no money, and we don't have to write the app ourselves. And if I got that far, why would I give away 50% of the company for 13,000 packs? Stuff probably not worth getting out of bed for when they said yeah, you're right. To be honest, they said to me, a lot of them advised me to go to the West Coast, America, and they said, Go to LA right now. I just now try to meet up with the masses out there. '' they're much more open-minded about investing in startups in the US, and someone will probably make up constantly, and I said why? Don't want to leave the UK. And then they say, well, then you don't have a choice, you just gonna have to do this on your own. And that basically made me take the time out to study prior attempts at something like a GameOn Active, which is like a marketplace app that helps players connect with activities. A lot of people have tried this. And one other thing that I've noticed, a lot of them do is they will write an app. And you can put up events, and you can put up any events you can think of under the sun. It could be football, basketball, badminton, tennis, squash, some others even do poker video games. And what I realized was by no your startup, you don't have a lot of money. And you're trying to create some meaningful interaction, as I call it, which is that if you have a product out there. You're doing some marketing, or you're trying to get people to download it. Hopefully, most people who end up downloading your app come in again; again, there's something useful for them to do; there's something relevant to them in the app. Now, suppose you spread yourselves out, thin, and you're trying to serve all the sports in all the countries. In all the cities in the world, the chances of creating a meaningful interaction are very, very, very small, right. In that case, you're going to have to have so many people come into the app, right? You have to spend so much money on digital marketing to bring people into the app. Because so and so few of them will find something relevant, Because on the other hand, you have to have organizers putting these events that we can put some upon, we can't be an orderly city, nor the world. We can't be doing things in all the sports possible. So if you're a startup I basically rely on to get traction quickly, you have to start small. And that probably means starting in one sport, and probably starting in one city. So basically, we have a chance of making sure, like basically, when we first started, we started putting on basketball games for people to join. And that means that you can focus on your digital marketing in London and for basketball. And that means that your conversion rate hopefully is higher because there's more stuff for them to do. And customers are hopefully more sticky. Because once when they come in, they see that there is something, basically, and I think it's helped us build a product that avoids all and to market it in a way that hopefully has learned from all the lessons of people before we have tried it.
Ronen Ainbinder 22:36
I want to ask you what macro or macro element do you see as the main thread for gaming activities in the future? How likely is it to happen and to become real? And how are you planning for it to pivot in case that happens? For example, COVID was a major threat because it threatened meetups and life events, meaning interactions one on one. So let's divide the question to first of all, how was COVID? How did you change? Or How did you adapt to the pandemic? And then post COVID, meaning, in the world after COVID, what do you see as the main threat? And how are you planning towards it? And how's the likelihood that you see something like that happening affecting your business?
Jimmy Law 23:31
Yeah, I mean, like, macro wise, I think you hit the nail on the head has got to be COVID; I think there's still a nonzero chance that we get some sort of variance and that we have another lockdown again. And that would basically put a stop to literally everything that we do, like sports halls, will be shut. No sports events can take place. And that reminds me of when the UK went into lockdown; last March was like March 2020. That comes back to my point; I made it right at the very beginning that our tech company should not outsource their tech. Because we realized, okay, great. We were just starting to hit new highs regarding user engagement in terms of several events in the app. And boom, there's a lot that everything has to stop and are sitting now. So Oh my God, this could be the end, Like if this goes on for a long, long time. This could be the end of GameOn. And one thing that we did quickly was it so happens that by April and May, the playoffs were starting to happen in the NBA. And even though people came to play, everyone was watching the NBA. So one thing that we did, and we did it ourselves quickly. In about a week, we released a brand new feature on the app that we call a community chat: anyone who's gone to canned can chat, and there are many threads, if you will. Everyone can see so people can talk to each other freely. And basically, people just started talking about the NBA man. And we found out our user engagement figure that we track our monthly active users. Drop like a stone, when lockdown happened that first month they went from basically, where we were pre lockdown was 100%, at once, maybe about 10% by the time the lockdown came in, and the moment we released the chat feature, quite a few all started to come back in. They wanted to keep each other up to date on the latest rules around what you can do what you can't do. What if there was any news about which sports halls were shot like some outdoor venues still open. And folks, we're trying to keep each other updated on all of that stuff, outdoor core, you can still play that they still haven't locked it. And people were like trash-talking about the NBA and so on. And it basically kept an eye on as many of our users in the avenues in the app as possible. And it comes back to my point earlier about if we had an outsourced attack. Obviously, we had no money coming in? Do we want to spend money and get a developer to write this new feature when we will, which may or may not work with that? We have now made the same decision that we couldn't change the app ourselves? I don't think we would; I think we would have just shut up shop and just pray to God that this doesn't last very long. But instead, we could pivot quickly. And we can try stuff. And it ended up helping us. I imagine that there was still some level of use in an engaging manner. When we came out of lockdown. People were posting on the community chat when the event started to happen again. We can get up and running quickly again because people were so engaged with the app. And with your questions about micro, I don't know what you mean by microlight. But anything that's sort of not all-encompassing, maybe. So basically, we managed to raise a round of funding, even during the lockdown, the last lockdown we started last October. We now finally are a funded startup. And as part of the funding round, we had a vision about an attack roadmap, like we're basically a big change coming in our suite of products, hopefully in the next three months. And I think if I was the thing, what's the next thing that keeps me up at night, it would be that I'm not executing our roadmap before we've run out of this funding that we've got. I can't say too much more right now. But if we manage the product with signing on clients, it would mean that we'll have cash coming in, unlike the mobile app, which is completely free to use. So I think for me, for us, that we're 100% focused on basically executing on our roadmap that we pitch to our investors during this funding round.
Ronen Ainbinder 28:21
That's great, man; when the threat is inside and not from the outside, at least he can control it. So I guess that that's a positive side. I am excited to see what's gonna happen in the next few months with the GameOn Active man, and this conversation has been so fun. The time: Yes, super fast. I've already realized that Halftime is almost over, and the game is starting. So we have to wrap it up. So let me just ask you a last personal question, a quick one, and that is what has been the best day of your life? And why do you remember that day to be the best day of your life?
Jimmy Law 28:55
Wow, that's a tough question. You probably talk to a lot of startup founders and a lot of our property like me. You have a plan, and you execute, and good things happen. People are signing up on the app, and you're hitting milestones. But suppose you are starting to find it. In that case, you find that basically, you very rarely allow yourself the luxury of being happy and celebrating. Because you know that there's so much more to do. But there was one thing that happened now, I distinctly felt like, oh, wow, this is good when we started to raise our funding round at the LOC when we were just plunging into the second lockdown last year. And the first guy that I pitched is a longtime user of the mobile app. And we basically met up for lunch, and I took him to our investor presentation. And at the end, he was basically like, Man, I've been using your app for two years. I can see what you're doing. I can see that you've got things under control. I can see that you're pivoting quickly. And yes, I would like to invest. And he ended up being our biggest investor in that round. And to have started the GameOn, as I said, try not to change your indices, and all of them say no. And even some of my friends have always asked you how you're going to make money doing this house has come on the scale, I can't see it working. And so I've come through three years of this, and to try and pitch someone for funding. When we are in a situation of lockdown when no sports can happen. There's literally nothing going on in the app other than people trying to have a user of the app basically coming in. With still our biggest investment so far, having talked to him for about an hour to be validated and vindicated—my approach to our strategy and how we have been executing. And even me, I allowed myself to celebrate that day when he signed on the dotted line and started; I'm going to come in and invest in this startup. I believe in you guys. I think if anyone's gonna make this work, you'll be you guys, basically. And he's a very seasoned developer. He's a very good developer. And he said, No, you guys are not professional developers. And what you have developed is much better than what I've seen in some professional houses, students, so he was like, credit, kudos to you. Our lighting doesn't. Even me, I had to allow myself to celebrate.
Ronen Ainbinder 31:36
That's awesome. Jimmy, thank you so much for sharing that. And I want to also thank you so much for coming to the halftime snacks. It has been fun. And I appreciate your time and your insights on everything related to finance man, your previous background, grassroots sports division game when active, or whatever you guys are doing. Sure, it's gonna be fun in the future to see how you scale, and I can't wait to see it, man. So thank you so much for coming to the Halftime Snacks.