Folk Stories

Stories from Awesome People

Hosted by: Kevin S Lin

21: Building an esports platform with Grant Farwell

November 11th, 2019 (59 minutes)

Grant Farwell is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Matcherino, an esports platform that helps game publishers and tournament organizers run successful esports tournaments.

Prior to Matcherino, Grant founded Barc, a social web browsing experience for people browsing the same web sites. This was before the rise of services like discord and slack and offered some of the same functionality. Grant says that while the team had a solid technology base, they struggled with sales and monetization. This led to the eventual shutdown of Barc and the start of Matcherino.

In this episode, we talk about the esports industry and challenges tournament organizers face, we talk about doing sales in startups, and we talk about brands and sponsorship in esports.

Quote

And it was really like an aha moment… All these fans wanted to donate money… and to not just financially, but in so many different ways, contribute to this event that was happening.

– Grant Farwell

Notes

  • story behind the camel
  • economics, crypto and financial platforms
  • Barc'ing up the wrong tree
  • listening to customers but not taking suggestions literally
  • matcherino and techstars
  • esports, tournaments and payouts
  • sustainability in esports
  • how brands navigate esports
  • present and future of esports

Closing

  • inspiration
    • being at esport tournament with fans, seeing communities getting together and helping support it
  • surprising fact
    • life is quite boring at home, mostly working
  • principle
    • treat everyone like how you would want to be treated k- closing notes
    • if you want to engage with esports fans, matcherino can help you reach these audience and drive whatever KPIs you're looking to drive
  • Matcherino: Grant's company, esports platform to help game publishers and tournament organizers run successful tournaments
  • Techstars: Startup Accelerator

20: Nick Hughes and Building a Global Community of Entrepreneurs

October 7th, 2019 (68 minutes)

Nick Hughes is the founder of Founder's Live, a global entrepreneurial community started by Nick to inspire, educate and entertain entrepreneurs around the world.

19: Hospitality and Community with Alex Mondau

September 27th, 2019 (68 minutes)

Alex Mondau is the Community Ambassador at the Collective. The collective is a co-working space located in Seattle's South Lake Union, and is described by its founders as an urban basecamp for the mind, body + soul. Alex started The Collective Seattle one and a half years ago with business partners Tommy Trause and Scott Barber in order to create a diverse community where people can build genuine relationships as well as find refuge from life outside the walls.

18: Leaps of Faith with David Mays

July 8th, 2019 (71 minutes)

David Mays is Senior Public Relations Manager at Amazon where he oversees multiple high impact initiatives. I actually worked with David in my former life at Amazon but we never had a chance for an extended conversation. But as they say, better late than never and today's conversation makes me wish I'd done this earlier. Turns out we have much in common, besides the common employer and the pathological need to run long distances. Prior to Amazon, David has had an expansive career across multiple industries, including public news, the department of defense, and healthcare.

17: Following the Filmmaker's Journey with Bao Tran

May 27th, 2019 (66 minutes)

Bao Tran is a professional filmmaker currently raising money for his first feature film, The Paper Tigers, a "Kung Fu indie feature film about three guys who are one kick away from pulling their hamstrings".

16: Friends, Family and Startups with Robert Sweeney

May 6th, 2019 (82 minutes)

Robert Sweeney is CEO of Facet, the premier platform for hiring senior contract software engineers.

15: Domain Expertise with Jay Westerdal

April 22nd, 2019 (68 minutes)

Jay Westerdal is a CEO, founder, board member, and investor of a wide multitude of companies.

14: Focusing on the Message with John Lauer

April 8th, 2019 (44 minutes)

John Lauer is the CEO of Zipwhip, a Seattle based businesses that enables businesses to text message their customers through software and API solutions. Zipwhip is one of Seattle's fastest growing private companies and was the first business that made it possible for landlines and cellphones to communicate with each other.

13: Creating Film and Community with Vivian Hua

March 25th, 2019 (59 minutes)

Vivian Hua is the director of the Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) , a non-profit film and arts center dedicated to public dialogue and creative action through collective cinematic experiences. Prior to NWFF, Vivian was Communications Manager for ICANNWiki, a collaborative resource dedicated to simplifying the complex issues, policies, and players in the sphere of internet governance. Vivian was also editor in chief of REDEFINE Magazine, a print and web magazine focused on music and the arts.

12: Feeding Ghosts with Tessa Hulls

February 15th, 2019 (68 minutes)

Tessa Hulls is an artist/writer/adventurer whose work spans a multitude of genres and whose travels have taken her across all 7 continents, much of it on bike. She is the daughter of two first generation immigrants and is currently working on a graphic novel about her grandmother titled "Feeding Ghosts".

11: Building a Successful White Label Technology Platform After a Decade of Pivots With Mark Michael and Daniel RustExplicit

January 31st, 2019 (54 minutes)

Mark Michael (CEO) and Daniel Rust (CTO) are the co-founders of DevHub, a white label technology platform that powers some of the world's most recognizable brands. Companies license DevHub technology to create sites /landing pages pages at scale. Companies also use DevHub as the repository for their experience data.

10: Getting Off the Couch with Mike Grabham

December 3rd, 2018 (69 minutes)

Mike Grabham is a serial entrepreneur who has founded six companies over the past twenty five years. He currently consults would be founders who are interested in launching either software or hardware based products and services. Mike is also the founder of "Package Guard", a company based around a patented product that protects items left out after delivery.

9: Telling Stories with Paul Currington

November 19th, 2018 (93 minutes)

Paul Currington runs the Fresh Ground Stories(FGS) meetup in Seattle. If you're not familiar with FGS, its a meetup that comes together ones a month to share personal stories (based off "The Moth"). Every month, there's a theme and people tell stories based on that theme. Anyone can go up on stage and tell a story, provided that they are true, personal and under 8 minutes.

8: Not Living on Automatic with HB Siegel

November 12th, 2018 (73 minutes)

H.B. Siegel is Prime Minister of Ideas at Amazon and also one of a very select group of people who have been at Amazon now for almost two decades. In that time, H.B. has been the Director of Media Technologies, the CTO of IMDB (an Amazon subsidiary), and helped launch the "search inside the book" feature for Kindle.

7: Running the Distance with Evan Williams

November 5th, 2018 (83 minutes)

Evan Williams is a man of many miles and talents. He has degrees in both physics and biomechanical engineering and for his day job, Evan works as a design engineer at MSR (Mounstain Safety Research), a firm which designs and manufactures high performance gear for the outdoors.

6: Hands on Learning with Sarah Smith

October 15th, 2018 (70 minutes)

Sometimes I have days when I wake up and think of everything wrong with the world (this is fun - I encourage you to try it sometime). Sometimes, this can feel overwhelming with all the problems going on - climate change, nuclear weapon proliferation, extreme social inequality, etc. Sometimes, it's hard to know where to start. And as a consequence, I do nothing about any of it.

5: Love, Math and Design with Janet Galore

October 8th, 2018 (78 minutes)

My guest today is Janet Galore, Creative Director of Amazon's Retail Experience Concept Lab. The Concept Lab is a department that looks 3-5 years ahead and explores potential retail experiences that could be possible in that time.

4: Celebrating the Century with Hallie Kupperman

October 1st, 2018 (73 minutes)

Before introducing today's guest, I like to setup a bit of context. Within the last two years, I wanted to get out of my regular circles and do something that didn't involve technology (for people unfamiliar, my day job is a software engineer at Amazon). I ended up picking up salsa dancing - little did I know that this decision would lead to some of the most significant relationships that I have today.

3: Taking No Shortcuts with Colm MacCárthaigh

September 24th, 2018 (67 minutes)

Colm MacCárthaigh is a Principal Software Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS provides on demand cloud computing services to individuals, companies and governments around the world.

2: Just Playing with Jay Hitt

September 17th, 2018 (69 minutes)

Jay Hitt is a cast member and Managing Director of the Unexpected Productions (UP) Theater. UP is Seattle's longest running Improv Theater and Jay has been there for two of the plus three decades that its been around.

1: Directing the Narrative with Johan Liedgren

September 10th, 2018 (76 minutes)

Johan Liedgren is an award winning film director, consultant and investor/advisor/CEO of over 15 ventures. His clients include major brands like Amazon, Nike and Warner Brothers.