183: Award Tour | MegaFans | Jeff Donnelley and Colin Bracey

0:11 Hey there, I'm Pete Townsend, and this is money, never sleeps. We look inside the minds of entrepreneurs, and at the crossover of startups, Enterprise Finance, technology and Life. As We Know It, This episode of money. Never sleeps is sponsored by Phillip Lee. One of Arlen's fastest growing corporate law firms and expert, advisors the heart of the Dublin in London start-up fintech and crypto communities. On the show this week, we've got I'm Jeff Donley CEO and co-founder of Mega fans and, and I'm calling Boise. I'm the CTO and co-founder of Mega fans, Mega fans is a mobile Esports platform and Community reaching web to web three to play to earn an environment for gamers collectors and developers. Mega fans are the sixth of ten founding teams formula launch Bill Webb three techstars accelerator class of 2020 to we've got on the show over the next couple of months in this episode I talk to Jeff and Colin about how their paths First converge with the predecessor to Mega fans, before we get into an in-depth, look at the mega fans platform and how Mega fans are mining web to users and bringing them to Up 3. And we talked through the longer term vision for Mega fans and the Esports Market overall and how Jeff and Colin are approaching the big challenges in front of them right now. All right here on money, never sleeps. So listen guys, it is a Tuesday night for me, it's a Tuesday afternoon for you.

1:32 How is everything going? You're only part of the way into your day. Yeah, yeah. No, it's been fantastic. Hard and fast. I think, I got it. But around 5 a.m. this morning. So we've been going hard and fast but yeah, I think things are moving along. We've got a lot of different aspects that we're working on, on the business development, side marketing, side, investment side, and then Colin is handling the all the text. Language has all of its own facets so Colin yeah. Pretty much the same nice five am stock, which is not as early as the other ones I miss the other day. You know, throughout the day, I've been interviewing to expand the team and also meeting with the dev team and the marketing guys as well, cool. All right, listen guys, just to get started.

2:14 Why don't we get going with Jeff? And how about you bring us to your back story and how you got to this very point where we're sitting here today. Sure, long story. Worry, I'll condense it down. So I was an oil brat growing up. My father was in mining and minerals I lived around the world, gave me a really global perspective on on Humanity, really at large. And I've carried that with me my entire life. And my career, I started an advertising in the mid-90s worked for some small boutique advertising agencies in San Diego. After I graduated from college. And then, in 1998, I noticed some patterns, I'd worked at three agencies at that point, to saw a lot of consistencies and processes in place. Found ways to improve on.

2:55 House and decided to go out on my own venture out on my own and started my own Ad Agency. A couple of graphic artist had pulled me aside after work one night and asked me if I would join them and starting a new agency Endeavor and I was thinking the same thing. So we went ahead and did that. And I gave myself a six-month run to try out this new business. I had about six months of money, enough to survive on, in my bank account. And so I said, look, I'm going to spend three months building this business. If I succeed, I'll keep going if I Don't, that'll give me three months to plan another job and the plan worked within three weeks. We landed our first account, three more weeks, we landed a second account. And then I, I got very lucky fortunate. Some of my friends that I got into college with it. Moved to Costa Rica and we're working in the eye gaming industry and one of them called me up and said, hey, we think we could use some help marketing and advertising US market for these Brands.

3:48 And so I ended up spending the next 12 years running advertising marketing campaigns primarily focused on User acquisition retention and monetization programs for online casino sports books, and poker rooms. And instead of that brought me to about 2009 when the US government officially made that market, it legal. So I had to stop working for those companies which was unfortunate. I was first time I'd had a huge loss in my life. I was doing about three million a year in revenues marketing, and advertising that I had to had to unwind that at the same time. Headhunter found me and said, hey, we've got this other advertising agency in your backyard that's doing television. They're looking for somebody that's an expert in the gaming space, which mine interviewing?

4:35 And so, I went over and I ended up working for Havas Abbas, is one of the top agencies in the world, took the number five and number six. And obviously, we couldn't, do I gaming? But they said, you know, can you apply the same? Same methodologies to the gaming market and they put me in front of you but soft Jam City back then known as SG and games. And I What to work and work through the same process of user acquisition. Retention monetization programs for those gaming companies worked with several Brands. So, those to work with World of Tanks, and then got really fortunate and we landed DraftKings back when they were still just developing their brand. They hadn't even gone to market yet, they had a prototype at the time and they approached us and said, look can you show us to go to market strategy for this?

5:16 How do we acquire new users? Where's the best place to do? It must cost, effectively and efficiently, and so went to work for them and that was sort of my piece de resistance. So I worked with DraftKings and help them model out and build their user onboarding and retention and monetization programs for about five years until they ran into the same issue that the I gaming did. So in 2016, The Regulators came out in the US and said, oh, we need to regulate this. They were making amazing amounts of money and growing so quickly. And so, I'd already seen that movie knew how it ended. And so, I shook hands and took a golden parachute jumped out. And at the time, I was had my eye on this Esports pay. it's so I already had a sense that I wanted to go there and really my My career had sort of culminated to that point.

6:02 I'd already worked in I gaming, PC gaming, mobile gaming, fantasy sports gaming, sort of, in a unique position. And so, I went and started another Ad Agency and Media company at this point and started working with some other gaming companies while I started building my own, and that's, that's how I met Colin. I was actually doing a global go-to-market strategy for for his company which is another mobile Esports company and that's what brought me to to make a fans. Gotcha. Now it's a good story and I was looking back at Author, your track records and so what you just walked us through. Jeff but also saw and Colin a very unique stat that I that I shared with him earlier that, you know, 27 28 years as a developer / programmer before becoming entrepreneurial and Colin. Why don't you walk us through your story as well and let us know why it took you that long.

6:50 There's sure. Thanks the yeah. I was I was a corporate boy right on my entire life. Yeah, I've always been a developer. I grew up in Bristol in England and now Believing in Kelowna, BC Canada. Since I left College, I went into a company that was making Erp manufacturing software, and I then got lucky, and I, I got into the very, very early days of telecoms. So, H in myself here, but I read the First Billing System for a company called orange, which was way back in the wild west days of, we didn't really know what was going on, but 300 people working for the company. Good times, I then moved from Orange stain, and telecoms to Vodafone, or I became their UK, the developer, Meat from Vodafone to meet a roller or a became the European lead developer and it quite funny actually been working with Motorola. We, when she made the first ever over the air mobile game, and it was a Nintendo Game Boy, heavily wires coming out of the whole thing.

7:46 We had a lab bill is Valley in the office and there was a Nintendo Gameboy board onto the back of a Motorola had set, huge thing and made a call over the network and actually saw Go to Mario's running on the screen at the same time. Say That's my kind of intro into the world of gaming, which is called. Wow. Are you know what? I'm thinking of? I'm thinking that I'd seen from Lethal Weapon, where Mel Gibson picks up that like, brick phone, you know? And I'm thinking of that, right? Exactly what it was. Like, yeah, crazy times. I know about 15 people are in this little. Tiny room is our thing. That's good. Awesome. Yeah, I love move back into the Erp software. Whereas working for manufacturing company called TRW. Very huge.

8:29 Aerospace company was a European lead developer and in 2006 decided to make the leap and move out to Canada. Same. You'd like to Kelowna BC brought my job with me. I was working nights turned a bit crazy because I was waking up at 2 a.m. work in all the way through till 8 a.m. in the dark by myself. And one night, I found myself having a full-on conversation with by myself. So I thought. Yeah, I need to get a real job. Yeah, they I got a job for local company in Kelowna, doing EMR software, electronic medical records. Then decided to start my own company. So we had a mobile game company which was kind of like similar to two Mega fans but based, or around sweepstakes. So I did the first legal Ico in Canada. So working with the Canadian government and the BC Securities commissions.

9:18 Yeah, we did all this stuff and then at the end they said, you know, we're ready to go with our big press releases and they said, yeah, you can't tell anybody about this so great. So yeah, that was a Handcuffs okay. I bet ya know that's tough when you go through all that effort and then you can't actually tell anybody about it, I really, yeah, that was going to be our big big press release and that's actually what Jeff came into it because Jeff was doing that Global. Go-to-market strategy sigh. Yeah, it affected him, probably more than it did me. Okay here. So ready to go to tell the world we just did the first legalized CEO of Canada said, no, you can't say anything and the story got even better. So unfortunately we had a bad actor in the group.

9:59 Who took all the money from the Ico and left Colin, and I high and dry. Okay, that's how we got together. And that's, yeah, yeah, it's like my buddy Neil Ryan. Shout out to him, right? He and I were working at Fidelity together in the 90s and we had this group, a like four, five six, guys at all hang out together, then all those guys left, and it was just kneeling me and we're the only ones left to go out. After work to watch Red Sox games, we'd sit there and like, not really say anything to each other. We didn't weren't really that close, but then, through that process of forcing each other to go out. Each other watch Red Sox games, the Boston beer garden. You know, we became good friends. So there you know it sounds like you guys had a similar experience. Yeah, we were doing virtual beers. I remember we had a few happy hours online. We're cry correctly, right?

10:44 No. But I was working on Mega fans at the time. I'd had a prototype built, which I had developed offshore and just a test and market and calling called me. And we've got you and I we've got great developers. You've got there was a couple of the people on the business side. Why don't we just pull them all over to Mega fans and just take that? That to Market instead and I said yeah let's do it. And and so we you know I gave him a crappy prototype that was duct tape and zip ties. Right? Basically the old man things, they do completely rebuilt before he went to market with the Prototype, but we did. We started testing it in 2018 and we it was just brilliant. Everything actually worked perfectly for us in our favor. So we tested the product and Market, it was off chain originally and tested it in the app stores and various markets around. World, India, southeast Asia.

11:31 South America North America Europe live in the Middle East and and then every quarter we write a report on our findings and we and so we were really estimating, you know, what are the kpis? We make assumptions and we challenge them, we question everything. And then we go to market say, well, what does the market say? And we take a real Market feedback loop and then we just kept iterating the product according to the feedback we got from these markets. And and we had a couple competitors, you know, in the Open web to competitors that we had our eye on and we were watching what they were doing. And then we were listening to the market and it just didn't match up like, what would they had built? And what they took the market, the market wasn't looking for, was it asking for? And so we went the opposite direction and so we made some to adapt adaptations, I'd say to Market needs. So we can just, you know, Market Market, desire need, and then built the product accordingly.

12:24 And and then in 2021, we knew that we were always In to go to web three and offer, you know, integrate web, three products, as prices. So, it's an Esports platform, right? Is what we built is a software kit that can integrate into any mobile game and offer Esports tournaments in those games, two players around the world simultaneously and you can win prizes, if you win an Esports tournament, playing this game for high score and so it's, you know, if you take a step back it's almost like back in the old days when you had game rooms and people would you know, play They each other for high score in a game room. Well, it's the same thing, but it's virtual, right? And now instead of just playing against you, me and the game room. Now, you can play everybody in the world's game room. So you're on a mobile device, you can play anybody that has the app on that mobile device simultaneously, the we can literally offer, you know, an infinite number of tournaments to an infinite number of players simultaneously inside of one game for different prizes.

13:23 And so it really lowers the barrier for people to be able to try these Forts and do it a fun way. It's not It's not so hard core. These are mobile casual games, right? This isn't hardcore first person shooter PC games. These are very simplistic. Fun family from the games, but now you can go play it and you can compete. And then we're building a community around that too. And that's, that's a unique offering. And this particular Niche, build a community around casual gaming with using Esports and so it's worked quite well. So far, it's big, it's big and being able to say, you know, that in web, three building a community is the biggest single most important thing, right? Because you got to bring the users at. Yeah. And, you know, bring in developers as well, is critical. But the first thing is, getting the users in, tell us the Bare Bones, the business with mega fans right? In terms of what you've built so far, you've got the software development kit as well with.

14:16 Tell us what's there today and what the user base looks like and you know where you think it can go from here? I'll talk to it from the business side and there's an important distinction here is that we don't actually build the game. We have the Esports tournament system that goes inside the games. Now we need a game with a scoring system and once we identify that which there's tens of thousands of in the App Store as then we drop in our software and we've limited the amount of touch points that need to be developed for coding. So it's actually very simple. We've had our our team is actually integrated our software into a game as fast as in one day. So we made it very simplistic so that it's almost like a plug-and-play that you can drop into a mobile game and now you can open up An Esports system within that game, that's got leaderboards.

15:02 All the graphics already built in. They can also be customized. So, it's a white label solution from a business perspective, we're looking for Partnerships and collaborations with other game studios. And we're already forming those, we've been approached by several and we're having those conversations now. But the first games that we went to Market with, we're proof of concept gains. Yeah. And we've identified several over Market places where you can go buy these games from Indie developers. So that are there, okay? These games very quickly they're almost hyper casual but they're really casual. And so we would take the publishing rights of games that were already already in the App Store. So they were already in Google and apple primarily and and then we take over the publishing rights by the game from them and then drop in our software. Republished the game is an Esports version offering prizes and start marketing it and that's the business side. But on the tech side calling, you want to talk a little bit about what we're doing with the in a few? Yeah, yeah.

15:53 CSS is Jeff mentioned, our SDK is a community-based the The way the whole thing was designed was with the prime minister is going to be a lot bigger than what it is today. So everything has to be scalable, it has to be secure and also open-ended as well. So I can say we, we do have the unity SDK but we can also white label the solution to other game developers as far. So they have access to all our server and API endpoints and they can build out their own to whatever they need to do then, of course, moving into the the web 3 side of things with the NF T's and the And the Takens is is fun. I mean when we first started talking guys back in December, January time frame.

16:35 One of the first things you said to me, was that once you started making it of T is available as prizes that your user engagement with through the roof. So that must've been quite a technological Journey for you calling to get done and implement the pretty quickly. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah I'm at these nft is a perfect for us for for the mobile gaming because if you win one of these lefties it's great because we can just, you know, give special Entries into higher pain, tolerance. If you're an mft holder, a special events that we're running and then of course you can you come in design of T's by placing in a tournament? We can hide them as Easter eggs or you can ease the, an end, the thing about the end of T is you can sell it on Open. See if you want. Or the unique thing that we're doing is we're giving you know that nft the ability to create their own tournament.

17:21 I give that an fto, a surprise many return, they get a percentage of the entrance fees, the total entrance fees into that tournament. Sigh. It's pretty good feels good. Yeah yeah that sounds like a little bit of a flywheel starting to take hold their its unique offering Pete and I might be happy to know. We haven't publicly announced yet so once this podcast goes live that will be the first time the world's heard it and we're ready. But really you know offering cryptocurrency and FTS our audience is what activated them between the two years that we tested in Market, as a web to product, and the apps, we gained, a pretty decent sized user base. It took us two years though, to get about 50,000 people to register and we had about 5,000 people. Follow us on social media, but then in December, when we offer the first nft, our audience started exploding and between December and April.

18:13 We went from a hundred fifty thousand registered users to 375,000 registered users. It's actually I think it's just hit 400,000 and it's growing at a pace and these are people registering. So we have their to data capture exercise for us. The reward for registering is that's how they get. That's how they receive their prizes, right? Contact them in order to be able to reward them right or award them, their prizes. And our social media is went from 5,000 people, sort of passively following us on Facebook and Instagram and December to almost 60,000 today. And it's primarily Discord Twitter, and then Telegram. And so these are crypto curious. And what we're really doing Pete is were mining remaining web the web to Market. So the mobile gaming Market in the web, Who has almost 3 billion daily active users?

19:02 That's 3 billion. Uniques people that are playing a casual game on a smart device every day and we're offering them web three prizes. And so what they're doing is they're winning these prizes and then they're saying wait how do I access this? What do I do with this? What's an NF T? Well here I'll show you the were creating building this community around it and they are engaged and chatting and they've taken full ownership of this process. So we have this heavily engaged. Aged community that sharing with each other talking about, hey speculating, what we're going to do with the nf2 is waiting to hear from us, what we're going to do, anxious to find out more, but they're so positive and they're, so loving, and they're so good, and they're really enjoying it. And so, we really feel.

19:45 We see that this is a true community in the true sense of the work. It's not just some passive hardcore day trading, you know, a hardcore gamer Community. It's people that want to learn their crypto curious. They want to find out what this is all about. And so it has a really good feel to it as well that that's going a long way. And we're doing some cause marketing as well which is one of the purposes of this business is to raise awareness. One of the areas we support as women in gaming a technology for instance. So we support an all women's coding school called code to inspire that's actually operates in Afghanistan. I'm going to Asia soon and I'm going to be talking to people about establishing an all-women's coding school there as well. And it's Dual Purpose, it's one sport, you know, show women they can gain right.

20:29 Right? The two areas of the world that need more women are gaming and Technology stem, right? So I psychology engineering and math, so we can do both with this. We can show them. Hey, here's a game where you can go compete fairly and you don't have to place, you know, Call of Duty, 16 hours a day. You can just go try this casual game and see if you can win. And then also hear you curious about this because, you know, if we can support these women's coding programs around the world, then we can help bring them into the fold and then hopefully by some games from them someday. Hey everyone, this is Pete. Let me tell you about the folks at Phillip. Lee few years ago is that my first Venture Capital industry dinner in Dublin and honestly I felt a bit lost. I bumped into and Rita's Ali.

21:12 One of the partners at Phillip Lee. He bought me a pint introduced me to the team and they took me under their wing. That take you under their wing approach has been what I've heard consistently from fintech. And crypto startups who I know have worked with Phillip, Lee, and Dublin and London to help them wrap the right legal framework around their business. As fundraising and Regulatory needs, and I can't recommend them enough, get in touch with a team at Philip lead that IE or on money. Never sleeps. That IE /. Phillip Lee to learn more, but it is there a learning curve here right? And that well, once the user gets up the curve and once they go from being no longer descriptio curious, but crypto informs our those in your community, engaging on the games and Ideas on the games or is this about them? Sharing ideas about the crypto side of it. I think it's both and and I think the, you know, the, the amount on each side is going to change, right? And they become more mature.

22:14 And so, you know, we're hoping they become our brand ambassadors. Matter of fact, we just kicked off a campaign this week asking our community members to invite their friends. Okay. So they can help teach them. Now, you have somebody that you trust, right? Saying hey, Darren try this, here's how you do it. Teaching them, educating them on how it works or what it's about. And then we want the conversations to evolve into what are the use cases for these in FTS Collins talking about. And we're planning on doing open-source to have the community that helped us build build out these ideas because we're exploring new territory, we're on the frontier, we are truly the explorers that are out there. And so why don't we share that with our community? And we've already used a feedback loop to iterate the product initially.

22:59 And web to why don't we continue doing that web 3? Let them tell us what to try. Yeah, I think there's a point there that okay, we've got 100 to 200 million users of crypto on this planet right now. But what 8 billion people and three billion Gamers like you mentioned. Yeah. And so even if we get to the point where those that come on board Mega fans and that they move from crypto, curious to crypto and formed and that eventually Krypto - that there's plenty more people to come in behind him. Right back. As long as they're bringing their friends and that you guys continue to innovate on the tech side and on creating this flywheel of these different opportunities to put in front of the users. Then there's some pretty good longevity here. That's exactly why we decided to build mobile first Colin. And I both the previous gaming platform and this one, right? Because the next billion people that come online next, at least 80% of them.

23:55 Their first interface is going to be on a smartphone mobile device. So That's our Target. And when they first, you know, turn to explore this. This internet thing on these smart devices there. You're not going to know the difference between our brand and some of the biggest brands in the world. So we have an opportunity there to breach, those emerging markets that are just coming online. And I think I chose a real value for large media companies of the world that are trying to reach those people, because they have to go big and Broad, and deep in their Market. Well, we're Nimble and we can open up and move from Market to Market and hit all the Emerging Markets as they come online. You know, they're not building land lines across the plan anymore. They're putting in cell phone, towers and satellites. And so we're built for that.

24:41 Oh yeah. Oh, I'm thinking all different types of in, you know, overlap here with big, big media companies and a casual games and will allow games and the things that could drive more users to their content, their own native content. So, I think I'm answering my next question here before I ask it, but it terms, the longer-term vision. And how big can this get? And, you know, from probably let's start this one from a technology perspective. Colin, what is this? Look like. When you've got the first billion users right from a mega fans perspective, huge huge. We've got the team in places online like I say we're hiring need developers but because of the whole techstars project we've got some amazing mentors who are in place and are helping us. I think I'd mess in the right direction and everything is just kind of built around the neck.

25:29 Stat. So for me in particular, I have to start looking into, you know, maybe what happens, after move our gaming, we can move into PC gaming to HTML5 games anything. We could link it up to a Peloton you know and have a competition to see who can burn those calories. And we there's so many opportunities for us in terms of tech, absolutely either go. The big thing is the fact that you're not publishing in developing games, you're just creating these Bridges between different ways that people engage. With smart devices for pleasure for leisure, that's actually the Irish way to say Leisure. I'll go back to saying Leisure it, you know, maybe the summer when I'm back in the US, but how do you say it Colin, do you say Leisure Leisure? I'll say, lygia.

26:14 Yeah, there you go. All right, cool. From a market perspective. Jeff, how big can this get? My gosh, that as an entity as a market, it's going to reach. I mean, you have 3 billion people already playing casual games. So there's already a market. Can we activate half of those potentially with? If we had the right Partnerships and with this a collaborative process for us, right? It really is about that, that white label solution is about partnering, with, with bigger Brands, bigger games, and sharing in our communities, sharing our community, with them and vice versa. So we can grow exponentially based Matt, right. So if we found another game studio, for instance, one of the ones were talking to you right now that also has four hundred thousand registered users and we're sharing this suddenly, we have eight hundred thousand users we integrated in their game so we just to X. So this can happen very quickly and you know, potentially we could reach physically about half of the market about half of the markets in China.

27:12 We cannot reach that they're kept. There is the a firewall there that we can't breach, and they have some restrictions around gaming for prizes, and there's a few other spot markets. That also has some restrictions, but potentially, I mean, the total available Market to us is approximately 1.5 billion players and okay. And there's, there's look, there's some of the biggest brands in the world, you know, are going after it. The, we know the potentials there and Gamers. Don't just live on one game. They might play one game most of the time. But as you said, this is a Leisure. It's casual gaming, right? It's to take up some down time. It's, you know, you're on the train or the bus commuting or at the airport or you're at your kids, you know, football game or, you know, the u.s. baseball where you're sitting around for a few hours and so you're playing multiple different games.

28:04 What this is is a toolset that's a retention of monetization tool because Competitive Gaming turns on a chemical reaction has a chemical reaction that people have and so it brings out the competitiveness and people, right? So now yes, I can play against this casual game. One of our League games, candy business, connect three puzzle game. I can play against it all day and try to get my high score. But wait, there's other tournaments going on where people are winning prizes the now, my high score, I can actually get rewarded something for that, your competitive juices to start to get released and orphans, things like that. So there's a natural innate want or need to compete and then add in large prize pools.

28:44 Let's say we're doing, you know, in Ft, that's worth, you know, 25,000 dollars, two hundred thousand dollars, Let's scale that up with the audience. The more people that join the larger, our prize pools can get and that creates another stickiness Factor. So you have dual stickiness factors their competitiveness, which is natural ease of play. The again, these are casual games that were starting was. So again we lowered the barrier right for people so you don't have to be a heavily. Skilled gamer. That's playing for 16 hours a day. You can jump on one of these games and you can you can practice for a couple hours and become good, right? So anybody can We call it in sports bra. We actually trademark that. Esports for all meeting were offering this to so the world to everyone.

29:28 So we I think we could reach you know 1.5 billion people with this with the right Partnerships and collaborations in place. I get it I get it. And from a technology perspective, Colin what other Innovations does this open up, right? You guys get this right in terms of scaling, the platform, what are the other opportunities that it does open up in order to integrate not just with other markets? But If the technology platforms that others you using out there and areas that people not may not be thinking about right now. Yeah, I mean, this is the, the beauty of the way it's been written as been made with all this in mind. So, like I said, mentioned earlier, we got these open apis so anybody can call them from wherever they like it obviously needs to be secured as well with API Keys Etc security, but it's really Limitless.

30:17 You know, we can, everything's has an open API now whether it's a Fitbit Fitbit, have that open API Guys we can connect to that, I like I mentioned earlier there the palette alms there could really be anything console gaming. Obviously at some point steam has open apis that there's is really kind of unlimited. I think we're concentrating on mobile games at the moment but yeah, next step is could open up anything. There are three. Okay first phase which were still in is to call for 100 games and 100 markets with 100 million players and we think that's a first good step and it's an audacious goal. But it's Capable and we've seen scale like this color and I both have Large Scale Company backgrounds.

31:00 We know what that looks like and what it feels like we've been on those teams and so really, it is achievable bring you back to the Here. And Now, what is the biggest challenge for 2022? And obviously, the biggest objective for 2022 to get to get done our goal this year. So what were fundraising right now? We're about halfway through our seed round, which is great. So we've raised about a million and a half u.s. towards the 3 million goal. We're going to launch a token with some of those monies and Q3 hopefully depending on market conditions and we're going to leverage that and we are developing in Ft sale as well around some of our game characters who will use that to raise as well. So we've got some good levers that we can pull and that are in development right now to help us get to a 5 million total goal this year, and we're using those Monies to continue building out.

31:47 The team is, Colin said we've been adding to the technical side. We're also adding to the, the marketing affiliate marketing and The partnership side as well. And the goal is to have ten games in Market. We're now currently, we've just launched on Samsung and Huawei. So now we're on Google, Apple Samsung Huawei stores, we can have 10 games in those stores. A million registered users, half a million gauge followers on social media, That'll put us in position next year to 10x again. So in 2023 pain and that's the goal and then from there, you know, we know the conversations it's going to be a global conversation, the end of 22 degrees. So we're a little over a year year and a half out.

32:27 All right. From a, from a tech perspective. Colin what's the biggest objective for right now? So, yeah, we've kind of gone from 0 to 100 and like a few weeks because of mainly due to the textiles and I guess it's alright, it's great. I love it. So we've gone from, you know, kind of small Not so, some serious, you know, we've been working when we can and get things working, you know, as well as we can. It's gone from that to, okay? Now you're in the next phase of the company, everything needs to be security side of things. Employing new people building out the products at the same time and it's just getting a balance as well. It's also not so much fun. Yeah, I hear, you know, and I was thinking about this this morning, actually, when I was out for my walk, in thinking about Mega fan specifically, and it was something I think it was real.

33:12 Paul on a podcast was talking about a security. You just mention it being that bridge from web to web three and that you're bringing value in two types of platforms that today aren't in mass and where there's not a whole lot of. Hey, this is how others have done it before. And so you're implementing the security to prevent this whole Honeypot style attack of, okay? Look at this new mobile gaming platform, they're paying or It's and entities are paying rewards and tokens. There is an ability to take those tokens off platform and monetize them if it's you that's earned them but also monetize them if it's a bad actor that's done that and building up security around that is pretty critical and it's a very very fast-moving industry in web three obviously or fast-moving World in web three where you've got to, you've got to do all that.

34:05 You got all that copper. Fastened down, is that something common that keeps you up at night? Oh totally. Yeah. I wake up in my in spots cold sweats. Is this hold on me as well? I see these. It's all on you. It's all you. It's like a scientist my fault. Yeah. So we have to stay one step ahead. I mean, China secure gaming systems is very, very hard because it's obviously open to a lot of cheating and bad behavior behind the scenes. So we just have to try and stay one step ahead. We've got a lot of things in place for security using, you know, Cloud, right? From cloud fly all the way down to anti-cheat system. Them on the server side, but the client side is very very very difficult to secure itself so we try and do everything on the server side of the can. So you know, you started game, okay? We know how long they've been playing, we know what level they've been playing you know the maximum points are they can score in that time.

34:59 So if anything outside of those kind of bands we flagged them and then we investigate that. Yeah. Yeah I think you mentioned this to me before so almost like a cryptocurrency platform will have a whole bunch of transaction history. And they'll know for each one of their customers, each one of their users, what their Tendencies are. And so they're going to run algorithms based upon their usage in their transactions and see if anything jumps out. For example, I was on a crypto platform, a couple weeks ago, I was pulling up my list of annual transactions, for some reporting that I was doing and I hadn't logged into that platform to get something like that a year and within I don't know, 45 hours. I got an email that says your account is under review. That clears within 24 hours but then we'll give you access back to your account now.

35:46 Mike, that was it? I did something out of the ordinary and they immediately, shut it down. Yeah, and you can do those types of things. You don't need to be a cryptocurrency platform to do that. No. Fortunately web 3 gaming platform. The ground was sort of cut force on the web to side because there's, there's plenty of gaming companies in this world that have had to go through basic security. We're adding another area that needs to be secured in the web three. The Bridge right? The process, but those live in our accounts. So, the bridge is actually the players account. So, you'll be able to see and access your web three and web to assets within your account. It'll be sitting on a web to server, but it will have links that will take you to the web 3.

36:28 So we do and Colin's been working on the security truck called, like you said, this is what keeps them up at night. But luckily, you know, for us of the gaming companies had already shown us, some of the basics, and we've worked towards, you know, achieving all those. I think we've been successful at that butt. Part two of this second side of it is our community. As I said, this is a collaborative. So we've established the world's first mobile Esports Gaming Community, not for a single brand, but as a, as a vertical, right mobile Esports and and we want them to take ownership and they have. So we're going to keep continue promoting that because if they see a bad actor, well I wouldn't want to be in their way. That's that's for sure, right? Let the let them think of we've seen. We've seen what happens on Reddit and places like that and when you say something that's out of line, imagine somebody doing something, you know, illegal or you know, something malicious within our community.

37:23 I believe that our community would jump all over them and make sure that they were called out. And, you know, contact doesn't make sure they were banned and so we, we are going to be using that as well. Is our community will be our eyes and ears, as well as what we're seeing in the tax system that Collins building these algorithms, right to watch the metadata and make sure that We're catching anomalies. Yeah. What's awesome about you guys that you kind of interests think of this. Your kind of like I was going to say the stealth web 3, but it's not even stealth, right? It's a fact that you're talking about community, and that is a very, very strong web, three narrative. What you call SDK or software development kit or white label is a very, very strong web, three narrative called composability or Lego block or the fact that others can build on top of what you've built right and you do have this compounding Act between you bringing more users to developers, and developers bringing or game Publishers in the, in that instance, bringing more users to you, right?

38:21 So you have the strong compounding crossover effects. Another strong web three narrative. So, is this a sign of the times? Or was this thought out? Well in advance? Yeah, early early. You were well doing the first legal Ico and Canada. You had your head around this early days and it's just been it's been quiet and but now It's moving like a house on fire. So we have this and look we're a true platform play, right? That's what this is the Platinum. You can build off of it. We can add games to. We can add communities to it. They can interchange One account. You open up an account with us. You register, an account set of one of our games. You can now use that account across all of our games in our ecosystem, so it's a platform play.

39:02 So we want to be sitting alongside the Roblox in the Minecraft, so the world and we are, but we're mobile first right though? That's Our Niche right now, will expand and go compete against the bigger players later when we're ready. But right now there's so much the mine here and there's so many people to draw in and bring over and and show and tell you know, web three assets and what they're about. So that's what we're going to do. It's something we've always thought about it and I'm moving into is that was going to happen eventually because crypto tokens and gaming just go hand-in-hand and especially when you bring an FTE since the equation as well. I can lead you into one of your stories. Happy about the They check each, he's actually kind of thing because, you know, use those tokens to get things and then you get paid back in those taken.

39:48 So I know I know but for the audience out there was some was referring to a Chuck-E-Cheese example. Today about getting paid and tokens at an arcade. And I said, listen, once I saw Kanye West at Chuck E cheese now, that's a shout-out to his gold digger song but I never actually saw a Kanye West to Chuck E cheese, but I have been to a Chuck E cheese on the global side of it. Now you'll be winning tokens right in her games and tokens are aiming up Gamers have been you. Using digital asset since the mid-90s they've been trading them since the mid-90s. So, this is, this is native to the gaming environment. Cryptocurrency is just another digital asset in FTC is just another digital asset and their world. But digital assets are native to gaming, right? And, and when you're in our game system and you're you're buying and then playing using your buying tokens using them to play in, tournaments, your winning back tokens and then you're trading those tokens out.

40:39 It's like a casino model. It's Chucky Cheese, is we recognize that. But for the rest of the world, is taking your tokens from the table to the cage. And then saying, what can I get for this? Well, you can get this in Ft. This cryptocurrency, this product would be, we offered fiat currency, so anything everything anything that can be transferred digitally we can offer. And so this is such a scalable and expandable platform from every facet, every asset that we're using is, is the scalable and we'll call in. And I Got together and design. This particular model. That's that's what we had in mind. The entire time for Mega fans was, you know, let's build this for Enterprise level. Let's build this for scale and when we find the right partnership, you know, will take this and be able to have a complete Global Endeavor with it. So that's what Mega fans is all about nice last. Question guys, what's one thing that people wouldn't expect to know about you?

41:36 And we'll start with Jeff. I like my quiet time. No, you don't. I'm talking all the time. I really enjoy my time by myself. It's very spiritual for me on bike. I surf those for my moments of reflection. I'm a humanist. I'm very loud about that because I believe everybody look work. As I tell my kids, it's a great day for a race and they answer the human race. Let us all enjoy the race together and so that's I'm going to always work it on and build businesses around that premise and that's what that does. A couple things about me, absolutely better. The human race from the router here, you know? Absolutely Colin.

42:17 What about you? Wow. Okay. Well, I have an embarrassing story about how I ended up in Canada. So, I used to be, he's feeling marching band, and I just got all these stories about surfing. And there's another guy who works in the company with the next person. A border. Now I was a drummer in a marching band and that's one of the reasons I moved out to Canada actually say okay my to be to Vancouver but the Expo 86. It was quite a big thing and Right to the interior, which is called cleaner and all that. It can, I Canaria hated it. I can stand it because I was a teenager and everything was going on. If I give her all that was here was just lakes and mountains and kind of boring stuff. So speak about moving out to Canada in the early 2000's and you know it's good Vancouver. That's where it's all happening but it rains there a lot. So it's very similar to England.

43:04 Okay, how about Kelowna see if it's looked on the internet to make sure it's still there? Since I was quite a big heavy Tech sector so Wow. Your anniversary of Wyoming in Kelowna and I'd be fine. Wow, no. Just told the world, but it's all good. And there's a video of me. Ashley was Jeff, doesn't even know. This is a video of me on YouTube when I was in the band being interviewed by the BBC by Collin I've seen it if something it. Okay. Oh dude, that's got to make the rounds. That's got to make the rounds. Absolutely use a child products. Get we're all going to see it in a marching band and then becoming a developer for all those years and then finally getting it together. Is it gets dark, that's what he is. He is at X star, he is at X.

43:47 Star will give him that 100%. All right guys, we'll listen, it was awesome. Having you on the show it was a great chat really looking forward to to our next chat, which will likely be tomorrow at this stage. So thank you again, guys. This has been great. Thank you so much for being on your show. Yeah, thanks baby. I'm fold everything. You've done with the text laws program as well. So really enjoying it. Thank you guys. That does it for this week, folks, thanks to Jeff Donnelly and Colin Bracy for opening up their minds. Help us figure out why they do what they do like to get in touch with Jeff and Colin. And learn more about Mega fans, or in the show, notes on our website money, never sleeps, that IE. So, check us out online.

44:29 Also, thanks to Conan Brophy, from create sound for mixing and editing. This episode Conan is an excellent medium and to get in touch with when you're thinking about launching your own podcast. As for me, I'm an early stage, startup investor and advisor focused on where fintech meets crypto and crypto meets web 3. You'd like to talk to me about your business, drop me a line on Money never sleeps that. I finally till next time. Thanks for listening. See you