Joey Levy On Raising A $50 Million Series A By Creating The Robinhood Of The Gambling Industry

Joey Levy is now on his third startup. A venture with Jake Paul that went right into raising a $50M Series A round to take over the sports betting space. His venture, SimpleBet, attracted funding from top-tier investors like GoodPaper Ventures, Sachse Family Fund, FJ Labs, and Grit Capital Partners.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Customer acquisition and product experience
• Taking market share in a big space, with well-funded incumbents
• Joey’s own $15M investment fund

SUBSCRIBE ON:

This episode is brought to you by Gelt. As a referral from the Deal Maker’s podcast you can skip the waitlist and get priority just mention Dealmakers as your referral on the schedule a call form here.

.Tech Domains is sponsoring this episode. To unlock the special offer for the DealMakers audience, which includes 1-year domain for $10, or a 5-year domain for $50, go to go.tech/dealmakers.

For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. 

Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

About Joey Levy:

Joey was a Co-Founder and CEO of Draftpot, a daily fantasy sports platform that was acquired in 2017. He was a Thiel Fellow and previously studied at Columbia University.

Joey was the Chief Operating Officer at Blue and White Publishing Inc. He is now the Co-Founder and board member of SimpleBet.

Joey is also the Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at 305 Ventures. He invests in startups as an angel investor. 

Connect with Joey Levy:

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Bloomberg
• PitchBook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the show. So today. We have a very interesting guest. You know he’s been actually tackling you know the the problem that he’s solving from many different angles for the past ten years with different companies I think that we’re going to be learning a lot. We’re going to be learning about building scaling. Financing all of the good stuff that we like to hear on this show so without further ado. Let’s welcome our guest today Joey Ley welcome to the show.

Joey Levy: It’s good to be on Thanks for having me.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Florida so not far away from Miami so give us a little far walk through memory lane. How was life growing up.

Joey Levy: Sure, um, yeah, so born and raised in South Florida and in Broward County which is just north of of Miami and um, yeah, enjoyed enjoyed being raised down here I’m I’m back you know, basically at at home now but growing up as a kid I never thought. You could be a technology entrepreneur in in Miami so it’s great to see some of the recent developments around Miami you know becoming a tech hub and there’s a ton of work to do on that front. But it’s trending in the right direction. Um, ended up moving to New York when I was eighteen years old to go to college at Columbia University um during my sophomore year I started my first business um called draft.

Alejandro Cremades: And where where and where did that where did that day drive. You know for entrepreneurship come from. Did you have anyone in in the family or anything you know happening there around you in Florida that that got you this book right away or what where did that come from.

Joey Levy: Yeah I you know I would say if I were to identify a family member. My my grandfather was like a you know businessman and very entrepreneurial and um was certainly an inspiring figure for me. Um, but I think like the the. The the primary source of it was you know I started working when I was like fourteen or fifteen years old I had like a tutoring business I you know worked at a sandwich shop I did like all this other type of stuff these random gigs and um, because really I just. For whatever reason I don’t even know the you know maybe because I was like arguing with my mom as a kid or whatever and I always wanted to have independence right? I always wanted to make money so that I wasn’t beholden to anybody. Um, so that was just something that came um to me from a very very young age. Um, having been working since I was like 14 or or 15 and um and and sort of got the creative juices flowing and and when I started in in college you know I didn’t I didn’t start university thinking that I was going to be a technology entrepreneur I was a. History major focused on Nineteenth century american history and the reason why I did that was because I was good at history and I thought it was a good thing to study because you read a lot and you write a lot and you analyze a lot but the primary reason why I did that to be honest was because I didn’t come from a lot of money and I thought that.

Joey Levy: And the reason why I wanted to go to an ivy league school in the first place was because I would go on all these Wikipedia pages and see like these successful political leaders and business leaders and the 1 common denominator I saw was a lot of them went to ivy league school. So when I was young, you know a freshman or sophomore in high school. Um, like okay I just got again into an ivy league school and then step 2 is get into the ivy league school and get as high of a Gpa as you could possibly get and then get a job at like Goldman Sachs or something like that and you could start your life with a six figure income and then sort of figure out what you actually like to do from there. So. I started college I was focused on studying something that um you know I was good at and you know started making Dean’s list and having a high gpa and my plan was working but then along the way I was introduced to fanduel and Draft Kings which were these new businesses that were really starting to. Gain mainstream attention back in you know, 2013 2014 when I was starting school and I thought that those companies had amazing ideas like I was like as a kid. My favorite hobby was season long fantasy sports and they essentially introduced. Instant gratification to make that consumer experience orders of magnitude more engaging and but I thought that their product experiences were too complicated and intimidating for normal mainstream casual sports fans.

Joey Levy: So I started draftpot initially as kind of like a project I thought you know it could be a good thing to do something a little bit entrepreneurial on the side and I had a lot of belief and in the need for a casual fan-focused daily fantasy product and. The more that I got into building it and marketing it and getting users and generating revenue I just became addicted to it there. There was nothing better than um, just building something and like so my strategy as I alluded to a couple minutes ago was like. Get into this ivy league school get a really high gpa make Dean’s list every you know semester and just keep going and I did that freshman year but then sophomore year when I was really going after the project in earnest I find myself just I found myself just not going like I couldn’t go to class like I was so like I missed like. I missed like a final exam because I had an investor meeting that like I just had to take and it didn’t even cross my mind to like take the exam and you know my Gpa ended up plummeting and um, it was just ah it just my.

Joey Levy: My point is it wasn’t like super deliberate it just kind of happened as I went along the ride and pretty much ever since then I’ve been you know now I founded 3 businesses and ah the second and third of which have you know, really you know taken off and and but i. It’s been ah one decade long journey of essentially just trying to solve the same problem of of building the category defining consumer product experience for a mainstream casual sports fan to enhance their consumption of sports.

Alejandro Cremades: So on the on the first attempt with a Draft Pot you know you ended up it became every then I mean as you were saying you know you had investor meetings you had the exam so you had to prioritize you know the business building so eventually, you know you decided to drop out I’m sure that your parents were very excited with that. And they you drop out and so so so so so obviously you drop out but then you know like with dropout you know, obviously there was like a bunch of stuff. You know that that ended up unfolding and you end up exiting the business. So what happened there.

Joey Levy: They they thought I was a moron. Yeah, they literally called me a moron. Um, yeah.

Joey Levy: Yeah I mean know a lot happened there. We we launched. Ah you know like an alpha beta product and early of 2015 and and then over the course of the spring and the summer we made a lot of progress on the product and. Ah, started acquiring customers and things were generally going pretty well and there was a lot of growth happening in the daily fantasy sports sector during the first half of 15 so you know our strategy was to really invest in growing during the upcoming football season. 15 um, so we did things like overlay some contests so that our guaranteed price pools were six figures which we thought was table stakes if we were going to be competitive in the category and you know we we did. We just didn’t raise enough money to support that strategy but our ah but our thinking was if we showed growth. Then we could go out and raise a series a to fund that additional growth and then do a series b in series c and beyond just given you know. Ultimately, we all thought that the ltv of these consumers would be really high so the investment in Upfront customer acquisition particularly behind a differentiated product experience would ultimately be. Have you know proof to be fruitful and it was working to to some extent. Um and this is generally the strategy that Draft Kings deployed when they you know fanwol was founded in 2009 2009 or 2010 Draft Kings came two and a half three years later

Joey Levy: And they ended up blowing past them in the daily fantasy sports sector because they have this more aggressive strategy around overlays and um and customer acquisition. So we were trying to replicate that a little bit with a differentiated product approach and and.

Joey Levy: You know, but ultimately I don’t know if you recall but in like October of 2015. There was like this insider trading scandal between like a Draft Kings employee on fandul and that led to a whole slew of um, like cease and desist letters that came to all the operators in the category and. New York attorney general at the time Eric Schneiderman led this like weird crusade against daily fantasy sports claiming it as being illegal gambling and um, it basically crippled the industry from late 15 essentially almost pretty much until the repeal of paspa. Which lifted the federal ban on sports betting in may of 2018 so it was a years-long. You know, sort of industry paralyzing predicament and we were just way more aggressive than we should have been with our customer acquisition budget with our pretty you know. Immaterial $2,000,000 seed round or or whatever it was we exactly raised at the time and we just couldn’t survive that and there were some other smaller companies in the space. So very small amount I think a couple that were able to survive that they were a lot more um, disciplined and resourceful than we were and. Um, you know and and we exited the business in a way that wasn’t like a you know super positive financial outcome by any means. But um, it was ah it was a tremendous learning experience and made a ton of mistakes that I you know and you know have have learned from and.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, yeah.

Joey Levy: But that business was ultimately the inspiration for what became simple, bad and um because I started draftpot with this as I alluded to thinking that the daily fantasy sports product experience was too complicated for a casual sports fan. You have like this. Lobby of hundreds of gpp you call them these guaranteed prize pools and then you enter the guaranteed prize pool and you try to create these fantasy lineups against arbitrary salary caps and you know the quantitatively savvy users were taking everybody else’s money and um, so. It was ah it was ah it was a clunky intimidating complicated product experience but through that experience I was introduced to traditional sports betting and when I first tried to bet on sports. Um I saw what essentially was an uninterpretable spreadsheet. So the product experience around traditional sportsbook back then in like 2 16 and still to this day quite literally looks and feels like a spreadsheet if you go on these other companies. You know, desktop sites or or mobile apps. But then you also see things like minus one seventy five moneyline plus five and a half points bread and. I remember thinking to myself when I first. Um when I first tried to like bet on the dolphins to beat the jets minus one seventy five moneyline like I had no idea what that meant like it wasn’t intuitive to me that minus one 75 meant to bet one seventy five to win $100.

Joey Levy: Or plus 200 met you know for every hundred dollars you bet you win 200 if if if you’re successful in that outcome. So I started forming this vision that kind of like what Robin hood did today trading like etrade fidelity Charles Rob etc built really robust. Product experiences around power users in the day trading segment but regular casual people weren’t buying and selling stocks and day trading until robinhood came around and obviously they had business model innovation through the 0 Commission trading model but I think it was really the simple intuitive nature of their uiux that enabled them to capture a lot of incremental tam and bring a lot of new people to the day trading category and um and I felt like back in 16 when I first stumbled upon traditional sportsbook that. The same thing was going to happen in this category or needed to happen in this category and the data today shows that I mean fanwill and Draft Kings are twenty billion and ten billion dollars businesses respectively. But they only have about one and a half to 3000000 monthly active users depending upon the quarter. Which is a lot for real money gaming and it’s informing really large. Um you know, profitable businesses. You know fandoll is already profitable and and Draft Kings is is is on a path to profitability I mean fandoll did $3000000000 in revenue last year. Um, and they’re rapidly growing on a path to $10000000000 in annual revenue.

Joey Levy: But 3000000 may use which is what they’re peaking at is not a lot when you consider that there’s a 100000000 gambling aid sports fans that they’re already in front of and there will be and they will be in front of about 200000000 gambling aid sports fans at maturity. So and they certainly don’t have a brand awareness problem they they quite literally advertise like car insurance companies except they’re perhaps not as as funny in the marketing I think there’s a product problem where the experiences that are out in the marketplace back in 16 and still today are are built for. Hardcore gambler and sports and and sports better. That’s been doing it for a long time with these offshore books. But I think the more interesting opportunity is to build a product experience that really is simple intuitive engaging entertaining for the casual sports fan who is. Betting on sports for the for what sports betting should all be about which is enhancing your consumption of sports and being all about entertainment value. So I started simple bet with that vision started it as a project in Eastern Europe because there wasn’t any legal sports betting at the time in in the United States back in 162 realized along the way like even if it wasn’t legal in the us I needed to headquarter the business in the United States this would be far more successful as like a us-based venturebacked business which is you know what? what draftpot was so we incorporated the company in New York in in April of 2018 and.

Joey Levy: You know, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart because literally six weeks later the supreme court repealed the federal ban on on sports betting. Um and that didn’t result in like sports betting being legal everywhere right away. But um, it basically said that it was unconstitutional of the federal government to. Not allow states to go ahead and legalize sports betting and pass legislation legislation excuse me to do so and codify their own regulatory frameworks um, and what what since happened is a ah ah very aggressive proliferation of sports betting in this country I think we’re already at you know over 30 states that. Have passed legislation for sports betting just in the span of literally 5 years the anniversary of Scotus repealing passpo was about ten days ago um

Alejandro Cremades: And I guess and I guess in this in this regard. You know for a simple bet you know because obviously this was the segue into better. What ended up happening with simple bet that you know landed you guys you know, pushing better.

Joey Levy: Sure, um, so like I said I started I started simple bet um to initially go after this direct-to-consumer product vision and literally called the company simple bet because it was all about simplifying the betting experience when passpo was repealed. We decided. To focus exclusively on us sports. So we started designing the simple user experiences around us sports and specifically we were interested in offering experiences around things like what’s going to happen in the next pitch or a bat of a baseball game. Will it be a ball strike and play will the app app be a single double triple home run strikeout walk at other. Um. And Nfl is King right? play by playbatting seemed like an obvious thing that needed to exist will the next play of a football game be a pass or run will it be a first down or not will the drive result in a touchdown vehicle punter turnover. So we started designing these product experiences and then we went to the b two b technology companies like sportradar. Um. You know bet genius stats and perform who were 2 separate businesses at the time and we realized the extent to which pretty much none of these companies offered really robust technical infrastructure to enable. Microbetting on us sports which is ultimately the play by-play stuff that I just alluded to but really a lot of other forms of like in-play betting around us sports and and just bespoke forms of betting content for Us sports and it made a lot of sense why they didn’t do it because before paspa was repealed.

Joey Levy: The global marketplace was driven predominantly by soccer and if you think of the cadence and composition of a soccer game. It’s a very different product experience than or a different consumption experience than baseball which is pitches and at bats Nfl plays and drives soccer is a fluid game. Without any discrete moments without a lot of scoring and the us sports are just the opposite. So we realized it’s simple that the sort of holy ship moment for us was there. There was a lot of opportunity to build the requisite technical infrastructure to enable microbetting on us sports. Other forms of betting that were bespoke to us sports that maybe didn’t make as much sense for soccer so we went down this path of building a lot of machine learning and automation infrastructure to enable this to exist and then along the way it became very apparent to us that that was a wholly separate business of just building the product and technology. And so we decided to license it as a b two b technology provider and companies like Draft Kings and caesar’s and v 3 six five and this week they you know we they had announced hard rock as a partner and um. And it’s becoming ubiquitous the technology to enable microbetting around us sports powered by simple bet is becoming ubiquitous in the marketplace and it’s become ah, you know, ah really thriving successful business. Perhaps the fastest growing most exciting b two b technology company in the us online sports betting market today. But the problem is.

Joey Levy: By licensing technology as a backend technology supplier to other operators we have at simple bet. We had no control over the frontend consumer experience which I thought. Was the most limiting factor to the mainstream adoption of sports betting to begin with that’s why I got involved in all of this almost a decade ago and I just candidly as a founder who like started to do this consumer thing and then we sort of inadvertently built this v 2 b technology business I just. I kind of I kind of hated it the lack of control and ability to execute against my product vision. So ultimately the most creative solution because simpleback couldn’t do it itself because then it’s b two b customers would just tell us to fuck off right? We would be competing with them. So what we ultimately decided to do is I was going to spin out. Um, a new entity which is what better is gave simple bet 25% in exchange for a long-term license to the technology at most favor nation rates and then the other 75% ah split evenly between myself as the founder Ceo of the business and I brought in Jake Paul who I had formed a relationship with over the past few years who um, you know is is likely I would say the world’s most famous athlete influencer at this point. Um and really a content creation. Genius and somebody perfect to build this media business alongside the gaming business that I’m focused on.

Alejandro Cremades: And how did you meet him? yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: And how did you guys meet Joey. Yeah.

Joey Levy: Um, yeah in terms of ah in terms of how we met. Um I actually went to a dinner here in Miami and ended up sitting next to this guy Jeff Wu who runs he recently co-founded antifund with with Jake. Um. And they were doing a lot of venture investing but they were interested in doing company incubation and and you know this was also around the time that like barstool penn was really taking off in the stock market and Jake saw what Dave Portnoy and barstool were accomplishing and thought that he could given his unique vantage point as ah. As an influencer but also ah a world-class athlete himself. He could go after that opportunity and um and and and that was actually around the time that I was thinking through the mechanics of how to spin out the consumer opportunity from simplebet in a way that made sense because you know we could have this. As you could probably tell from from my bio and and background I have a lot of opinions and insights and conviction behind my product vision but this category is full of you know, nearly a dozen multi-billion dollar. Enterprise value incumbents with hundreds of millions of dollars or in many in some cases billions dollars on their balance sheet and customer acquisition is incredibly expensive in this in this space and the biggest question I always got in terms of thinking through the consumer opportunity was.

Joey Levy: Could build this amazing product. But how are you going to acquire customers. How are you going to compete in a market where vanduel and Draft Kings are literally giving users hundreds to thousands of dollars in free bets and bonus bets to their customers. How are you going to compete against that and you know I always thought that. If you build a great product. There’s going to be a lot of organic growth alongside it and you know I have had enough of a background at that point where I could still go out and raise capital and you know try innovative ways to acquire customers but a material step change in the customer acquisition approach would be. What if we built like a bonafide media business from the ground up with Jake and his 70,000,000 or so social media audience as an initial catalyst to bring some brand awareness. But most importantly to build a content creation engine that Establishes Brand Affinity with our audience at a grassroots level and then sort of goes up from from there. Um, so that’s what we so so that’s kind of how we met and we started speaking about this for several months and ultimately decided to do this thing together.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing And now you know for for for the people that are listening to I mean you guys have raised quite a bit of money. In fact, you guys skipped the seed round and you went straight into the series a and it was quite ah, quite a series a so how much capital have you guys raised to date and why did you skip the seatd round.

Joey Levy: Um, so in terms of like raising 50 to start. It’s funny because like by conventional standards and I know you you know, sort of interview and interact with many entrepreneurs and investors and. When you initially come across. They skipped seed round and they went straight to a $50000000 series a and like that’s crazy. You know, but the truth is in this category. Just to give you some specific context our first market where we launched real money gaming and was was Ohio on January first which was the universal start data in that state and just in just in January just in Ohio just fan duel and Draft Kings combined for. More than 3 times our entire equity financing just on bonus credits to consumers in that state and that month just those 2 companies and that doesn’t even include the pay Ua around like television advertisements and um and ah you know billboards and everything else are doing so my point is. 50000000 sounds like a lot for a series a but it’s ah it’s a pimple on an elephant’s ass in this category. It’s nothing and I think the the correct question is are you capable of just of being a disruptor brand in.

Joey Levy: Online sports betting in casino in the United States as a consumer company with only $50000000 series a that’s the correct question so because we’re building this media business without a lot of investment because of Jake and some of the. Really talented emerging content creators. We’ve surrounded him with and the executive team that we’ve surrounded him with um who are really experts at production and content development and you know original short form content and and all of that because of that we had this thesis that 50000000 would be enough to get our gaming business off the ground and um. To prove concept that we can consistently and scalably ah take our media audience to product and acquire them for load and ocac and that validation combined with you know, being commercial in a few other areas on the real money gaming side which. You know where I I can comment on and in a couple months you’ll you’ll see some news about it. Um could get us to profitability or at least close to profitability. Um, and ah you know I think we’ll be able to sit here with a straight face eighteen months from now and better will have by far the best unit economics. And the online sports betting and casino category in the United States and then I’m going to go out and you know put a couple hundred million dollars to work in this thing and really start playing the market share game but 50000000 my point is fifty. Million is is what we thought um would be required to.

Joey Levy: Get to that point of being able to validate that we have really offered offered a differentiated product experience and a differentiated business model that results in the best unit economics in this category specifically initially with respect to low to nocac I think Ltv will catch up over time as we really enhance the product experience. Um, and we recently acquired a company a couple of weeks ago to get us from a V 0 product experience to a v 1 product experience to really increase ltv um, but a very long-winded answer of of sort of why we went with 50 and um. You know in terms of the capabilities of of raising that I mean we you know simple bet has become a ninth you know, figure valuation asset within a relatively short period of time I think investors appreciated that you know I’ve been going after the same problem for a really long period of time and you know I started. Finally seeing some real market validation that I’m right on the on the product vision side. We’re so certainly nowhere near where we want to be or need to be but there’s some initial you know, substantial indications that I think we are right and you know sure.

Alejandro Cremades: So talking about that Joey real quick talking about being right? So and also talking about the investors and division that that you shared with him imagine if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of better is fully realized what does that world look like.

Joey Levy: Um, so I’m going to go back to what I said ah about five five ten minutes ago when you know Vandu and Draft Kings as I said are twenty and ten billion dollars enterprise value businesses respectively. But if you stack up their monthly active users against the amount of gambling aid sports fans that they’re currently in front of they have about 2 to 3% market penetration and then if you compare that with sort of you know where they ultimately will be in front of it’s it’s even lower than that. So I used the robinhood analogy earlier. But I think this business if we’re right will be a lot bigger than robinhood because while Robinhood has executed really well in sort of building this mainstream day trading product experience day trading is. Limited to day trading right? You’re buying and selling a finite amount of public equities. But here we’re turning every moment and an infinite combination of moments and outcomes into a. Ah, a wide variety of different real money gaming opportunities. There’s a far greater amount of engagement touch points that better can offer to consumers on the real money gaming side than um, you know like a Robin hood for example. So if we’re successful on the incremental Tam front.

Joey Levy: You know and and and I’m not saying all of the you know call it 97000000 or so gambling 8 sports fans at fandola is not acquired yet I’m not saying all of them can or should gamble but let’s say there’s 30000000 ma so we could capture. By by having this incremental tam approach I mean I don’t want to like be I don’t want to be exhibit too much hyperbole here but you could do the math in terms of what the enterprise value of the opportunity could be um, not to mention not not to mention.

Alejandro Cremades: They finallyly a lot. Ah a lot of Zeros. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joey Levy: Yeah, there’s a lot correct I mean I mean yeah, you know it’s ah it’s at least ah a $10000000000 plus opportunity particularly when you consider there’s a lot of embedded asset value through this bonafide media business that we’re building that we that we think will actually generate cash independently of.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah.

Joey Levy: Of of the gaming business over time because we’re monetizing the media company directly celsius energy drink is signed up as a sponsor. For example, there’s um, you know I think this could be at least a $10000000000 opportunity if if we’re right? and. But it’s going to require stellar execution along the way because this is indeed a series of David versus Goliath matchups for us.

Alejandro Cremades: Nice now. Let’s talk about the past but you know being able to do so with ah with a length of reflection here. Imagine you were to let’s say go back in time you know I put you into a time machine I mean it’s incredible that you’ve been able to target you know this problem from so many different angles for.

Joey Levy: Um.

Alejandro Cremades: For all these years but let’s say you know I put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time to that moment where you are a sophomore in Columbia you’re wondering how the hell do you tackle you know like this this this problem. How how do you launch your your company your baby. So let’s say you’re able to have a chat with that younger Joey and you’re able to give. That younger self one piece of advice before launching a business. What will that be and why given what you know now.

Joey Levy: It’s so great question. There’s a lot that I would I would say um I think um, when I initially like I would say like because I reflected on the. 5 ive-year anniversary of of simple bet recently actually because we formally incorporated the company about five years ago and and the three things that I sort of came to were and these are I would say the 3 most important things. Yeah, and there’s a lot of other things. But I think it goes into through these 3 buckets to be. Ah, successful entrepreneur at least an entrepreneur with an opportunity to be successful in order of least and most important. So so you got to be smart enough to identify opportunities before they become obvious to others I think that’s table stakes to really drive innovation and and value creation and and what we’re doing here. The second thing is be humble enough to. Admit to and learn from mistakes. Um I would say this is something that initially I really struggled with when I was younger right? like when you’re going through school whether it’s high school and you’re graduating at the top of your class and then you go through college and you’re like trained to like. Read something do an exam get 99% and like get a pat on the back and it’s like it’s a very like it’s a world where where you’re like kind of I’m not doing the best job of articulating it. But it’s like it’s.

Joey Levy: There’s really this like fear of failure almost that’s kind of like ingrained and like all the work you do is like a high school and college student and the fear of failure. What what ends up happening is when you do actually inevitably make mistakes as an entrepreneur along the way. You struggle to identify that those things were mistakes and admit to those mistakes and then you let your ego get in the way and it becomes like a fucking disaster right? and that happened to me early on and um and ah I think like Jeff Bezos has a really good quote about this where he says. You got to be stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details right? as you figure out the details along the way you’re inevitably going to make mistakes but don’t let any 1 thing um, be like the hill you die on like if you made it product decision and you had a lot of conviction behind it. But then ultimately along the way it like. Marketplace is screaming at you that you’re wrong about this or you think you’re requiring customers well but then you realize you’re acquiring a bunch of like low- quality customers. It’s way better to be open to admitting with a quarter or two of data that hey wait a minute like I’m wrong about this. Right? And I’m not going to let this be the hill that I die on I don’t have a problem telling myself and my team that I was wrong about it. I admit to the mistake. Let’s learn from it and get better going forward. We. We still think our vision is correct. So let’s say that’s the second thing being humble enough to admit to and and learn from mistakes and then.

Joey Levy: The third thing which is something that you know has has never really been a problem for me. But I think is is ultimately the the most important thing is being sufficiently determined being determined enough to never give up and find a way to win. There’s going to be hundreds. To thousands of different things along the way that are going to be thrown at you that you didn’t even know existed or you didn’t you don’t know what these things are going to be and they’re going to test your your willingness to to push through it and problem solve and get to the next level and um. I think that’s the most important thing. So I guess a long-winded way of answering your question of if if I could go back. Maybe I would sort of say some of what I just said to my younger self because you know I I never really so struggled with. Points 1 and 3 but I think I a little certainly struggled with number two and I could have avoided a lot of um issues if if you know I really took that to heart at the time.

Alejandro Cremades: I hear you I hear you and also for the people that are listening. You also have put together a fund. You know you have a UM about 15,000,000 there with other founders to invest in other founders. But for the founders that are listening that will love to reach out and say hi where is the best way for them to do so. Joey.

Joey Levy: Um, yeah, just ah at Joey S Levy on on Twitter and same on Instagram and and yeah, my email address is just my first stop my last name at at better app. So pretty responsive.

Alejandro Cremades: Mason.

Joey Levy: You know, try to check most of of what we get in. but um, but um yeah always interested and in you know, learning more about ah, what What other founders are are working on. Obviously within reason we’re incredibly busy here at at better and it’s a 24 7 hand-to-hand combat here. But um. Have been fortunate enough to to help support some of the best entrepreneurs at the earliest parts of their journey through through the venture fund that I’ve been investing out of but.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing! Well hey Joey thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been and on earth to have you with us.

Joey Levy: Awesome! Thanks so much for having me man.

 

* * *
If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at

al*******@pa**************.com

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More