Now we're live we're live now. Yeah Hey float playing peeps. How you guys doing?
We're only 17 minutes late. It's his good influence. This is pretty good for me. Oh
I'm not usually that late, so I didn't know that was a subtle job or if that was something else. No, no, it's a jab at me. I
Promised to do okay. Well No, we're actually very late if you think about it because I promised to do this in I think the first few weeks of your
tenure. I told the float playing people that I would kind of sit down and interview you
Back then I guess it was more of like a job interview now. It's more of a like, hey, you've been in this job for
Six months. Yeah That's crazy. I either don't remember this conversation or you never told me so I don't think I ever told you
Yeah, I had promised the float playing people that as a as an exclusive
I would do like an interview with you so they could get to know you a little bit better
Before you settled into your role and then August happened. Yeah
So why don't we why don't we kick off with that?
How did your first two months here compare to your first two months of any other job? I
Think every role has sort of different challenges
I'm not sure how much I should be talking about my previous role
But when I was brought in they're like, hey, this is what you we want you to do and then so we went through
a month of a Lot of time with consultants and just kind of discussing the business overall
Yeah, I remember you telling me about it and it made a ton of sense to me at the time
I don't know if we can kind of say what it was maybe not
but I was looking at it going like wow that seems like a really sensible kind of
Direction for for them. It sounded like a really sensible direction. And then once we did the analysis
Everybody's like, wow, that was a great analysis. This totally doesn't make any sense. And then I was just like
Really? Oh Is that the is that the conclusion that the conclusion was we we really don't want to be growing the part of the business
Like you we brought you in to do and I was like, okay, this is
This is slightly awkward It's not exactly why I signed up for but we'll we'll we'll we'll roll with it
so it was it was Challenging from a different perspective and then obviously
The first few weeks here were great. I hadn't met the team previously
So I don't think there were any sort of major surprises on
But then it was basically all hands-on deck and we have an existential crisis
So it's just like well, this is a somewhat different as well. So
Yeah, roll with it. That's my career advice for anybody watching this
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think what's what's kind of funny to me is that a lot of the things that were were part of the
Crisis were things that we had identified
They were just things. I think we felt like we had a little bit more time to fix
Yes, I 100% agree. It's not like some things that were brought up were complete surprises
I think we had a plan in place and we're working towards things but again the runway seemed to be longer and
I guess my hope and my dream was that this would be less than the public eye as we sort of unwind some of the things that
You know, maybe we're not as happy with Make sense. We've got a bunch of questions from the audience as well. So
Elijah was coordinating this. Oh, that's Dan. Well, the Elijah's shoulder was there. Hey, look, there he is
Oh, there I am. All right. See you later Elijah. Um, so these buttons actually work. I shouldn't hit them. Oh, yeah, please
Elijah was coordinating some questions with the community over the last couple of days with some help from Chewy
So I've got some questions from them. I also have some of my own questions
This one is can you tell us about your work history?
I've kind of given bits and pieces you've talked bits and pieces like in our response crisis response video
But walk us through it. What what have you done? I think I know all the different pieces, but maybe I've missed some stuff
I'm probably dating myself for sure I came out of
school during the Was it the Great Recession or?
the dot-com bust The dot-com bust. Oh the dot-com bust. Yeah, because I think I joined the work force during the Great Recession
Is that's what we call 2008, right? Yeah, that was probably slowly after I remember being on vacation for the first time and God knows how long
and The world was melting down from a financial perspective. So I was like, yep
Maybe I just uh, you know, stay here in Southeast Asia for the next
Year or two while everything recovers just because it was a bit of a scary time
But um, no, I came out during the dot-com bust. Um, so my background was
Computer science, which was the hot booming thin back in the early 2000s and is again now
But when I came out there were essentially no jobs at that point in time. Um, so I was sitting on the sidelines for a bit and then
our friend sent me a Craigslist listing for a random job, which was
Tech press I was like, hey, how would you like to review computer hardware and write about it?
And I was like, yeah, that sounds right up your alley and I was like, okay This is sort of interesting and then that's how I got my sort of foot in the door
um from there I went into product management at a local computer company
um Then went into product management where I met Linus
Uh, then transitioned to a sales role and then went back into product development product management. So it's been
I don't know. What's the best way to describe it circular or non-linear in terms of the way that I've um
Found myself stumbling their jobs. So I don't think that my
Core aspiration ever has been oh, I need to be the CEO of a company or whatever, but here we are today
Yeah, and I mean I he has no I shouldn't say no experience with media because you started in media but in terms of like leadership experience
In a very different age and that was a very print focused I think engagement with media was very different at that point in time
um So there was still some of the same dynamics. I think you see today to some extent. Okay, so then I guess yeah
I am aware of everything. I didn't know you're with neoseeker. I guess you weren't with them for that long
I think it was three four years actually was not really so then it would be pretty easy for us to find some stuff that you wrote
Oh, perfect back in the day. Yes, um small form factor round up by
I mean, does this link work? Probably
Nice
Evga hurricane relief fund Um wrote a comment it was wms. I'm much more. I'm much less
Active on forums and posting nowadays. I know was back there in the past couple weeks
We've taken a look at a good number of sff systems today We pit them head to head and look at the relative performance between the different implementations
All right. Well remember soltech soltech was
Was that a global thing or was that just a thank you for special? I never sort of figured that one out. I can't quite tell ncix sold a lot of soltech
That one on the right. I still remember that one. I think that's the fec. It was actually a pretty cool design overall
I think the thing opened up like a sort of a bread box to both sides
Um, the big ones back then I think included shuttle. Yes as well
But I don't know why we didn't we don't have shuttle inside this round up probably because we didn't have the leverage and
Shuttle was super cheap Like they were extreme cheap case cheap cases cheap cheap cheap bums
I remember that because um, I got saddled with the shuttle relationship
Oh, that's not what I meant to do. Uh, there we go. I got saddled with the shuttle relationship when no one else wanted to deal with it
So when I when I first started product managing, um, I don't think you were formally
Like you were just like you weren't really like my boss, but you
Sat next to me and so you'd hear me say dumb shit and then we were we were at one end of the office
And this is sort of funny because I had a meeting with ces. Um, so we were at the end of the building. I had
the crappy sort of Corner office is probably uh
Does it count as a corner office if it's not actually the corner of the building?
It's just the corner of the units you have rented. So there's a so there's a solid wall on the one side
And then Linus didn't have an office. He was sitting out in the open area And then I did I called it the box office and because it was made of boxes and somebody pointed that out last week
It's like, um, I think it was our old contact at ozz is like, oh, I remember visiting, uh, you know
You and Linus and he had built him this office out of cardboard boxes. I was like, yep, that's uh, that's uh
pretty accurate and
I hope you don't remember stuff like this, but anyway, that was brought out specifically
That's great. Sorry. I cut I cut you off. You're talking about how we were we were over in the end. Yes, and then so
We had a call that management light style. I don't know. That's probably the best way to describe it
There was a one gentleman who was the head of product management at this point in time. So
you know, whenever You had the inclination you just calling the office to chat for an hour or yell at you for an hour
And that was the management style back then Yeah
I tried to be somewhat helpful. I think I'm pretty much
um Okay, how about some people want to know what are some passions of yours outside of work anything that you've wanted to learn
Anything I wanted to learn or anything I I do what is their distinction? How about uh, first one then the other
Nice. Oh good interviewing
I think I'm curious about a lot of things and then so I think what
I mentioned earlier was I had a bit of a circular
Sort of journey from a career perspective. So It's forced me to learn about areas. I don't know a lot about
Whether that's through I guess internal mentorship or coaching or just you know, kind of personal research
I remember the first time I put together a presentation
at Corsair You know to kind of describe my power point skills at that point in time
it was black and white and just Bullet points and there was very little else
I um, I don't think I'd ever seen you really put together a power point at NCIX because I don't think that was ever the expectation
basically everything was you know, you could
As long as you can speak coherently for
Well, let me tell you about after you left
I'm not going to name any names, but certain MBA holding individuals were were brought in
which You know, I think was a big part of
um Our mutual discontentment
Why certain people felt sort of Disrespected and and looked over
For for you know, a leadership role within the company and all of a sudden, you know, they were trying to implement address code
Um, I don't know if I've told you this before but I actually laughed this individual out of my office
When they tried to tell me to take off my earrings and wear clothes to choose
Like are you are you kidding right now?
um I mean look you if you want to if you want to get into this with me you can but like
I'm our star product manager right now So you can either piss me off or you can leave those two options right now
Um, anyway, um, so poor power points were was my sort of mo so
I think three weeks in the job. He liked power points. Sorry. That's where I was trying to go with that
Okay. Well, yeah for us. It was a little bit more ad hoc
Like I think we owned our numbers, which is good But it was never anything that was super formally documented just because we weren't processed heavy at that point in time
um So I go into I go into this like qbr of course, sir and um
I take a look at the time slots and everybody has like 30 minutes to present and then for me I had three hours
I was like what I was like, yeah, is this a type of like on sales like it
Yeah, this is like two three weeks into my job at this point number go up other number go down
And that's a sort of funny thing. You just kind of took the arrow my sales
I had the numbers going like this just because I had the most
Recent quarter as the first column and the oldest quarter at the bottom one
And then everybody was very appreciative of the presentation
I think because I think the one thing I took away was this is really good. This is really insightful
We never understood how Canada worked before and now this totally makes sense
But one more advice is like yoga should be going the other way it should be up into the right not
Down into the left or the power rails ended up so that's actually a pretty elementary error. I'm surprised you did that
I think that was the way that reporting was set up or the data was that's my excuse anyways, but
Whatever, but what can't you read an x-axis? Yeah, who cares what direction it goes in?
Oh, yeah developing skills um developing skills over the course of your job is super important and just being professionally curious
Okay, but what about outside of work? What's your outside of work passion outside of work passion? Um
As a parent It's parenting
I don't think you have a a whole lot of other choices are
Um, so that's sort of the boring answer um before that
I love my motorcycles. So I think so this is something that Linus knew we got one
That was probably my big first purchase after entering the workforce. Yeah, you actually advised me on my first bike
I yeah, I guess you don't remember that the sv 650. Yeah, you were you were sort of um, you were sort of um
Terse and disinterested about it in your way
But I showed you to be to be clear. I'm terse and disinterested
At surface level about most things resting terse face. Yes
I'll show another story after this which is sort of funny But I uh, I basically knew absolutely nothing and in my in my signature way
I just kind of got really interested in it all of a sudden and I just I sent you this craigslist post
And I was like, what about this one? Uh, is this one a good choice? Is it a good price?
And um, I could I could practically hear the gears grinding in your head going
Does he really expect me to go into a bunch of like market research on what this particular used bike is worth and its various states of condition?
Sure. Yeah, it seems like a good starter bike now get out of my office
Um, and so I I went and I could I didn't have my license yet
So I went and I I rode bitch on the back while he took me for a test drive with the bike not insured
Which I'm sure was a great idea And then I bought it and I think had it towed home
Um, so I I owned it for like months before I actually was able to ride it
But but in a way you got me into into motorbikes
Perfect. Um, you were gonna tell me another resting terse face story resting terse. Oh, this was uh, this is my last role at doll
So, um, I had gotten feedback that I had
a bit of a Terse expression. Um, so they used the other word though. They did use the other word and then so this story
so I was so self-conscious about that right just to make sure that I'm
I have a broader emotional range than zero or one which sometimes seems to be the case
on non-purpose So I'm having a conversation with my boss and there was something that was relatively serious and thing I I smiled at the end
And then and then he says something like what's so funny?
So I go into the story. It's just like look I've been given the feedback in the past that I just like stern
Angry or whatever else so I try to make note of just, you know, lightning things up a little
No once in a while just to make sure that everybody feels comfortable around me. I'm not
Communicating the wrong thing. It's it's not intentional. I'm usually I don't think I'm that serious when people get to know me
I'm somewhat sarcastic and
It's a dry humor. It's a dry humor My boss looks at me. This is over zoom
And then there's just this awkward silence for maybe five or six seconds and he says
So you just have resting bitch face And I was like, yeah, that's that's exactly it and then there was other you know
Couple seconds of awkward silence and then we both busted gut. Um, but that was why
Expressionless expression Yeah
There are some icebreakers in here, I feel like we've kind of already gotten past that point
But I also like gaming if we're talking about um things I do
I just don't game a whole lot anymore because I have no time Yeah, I I tried to get you to add me to steam like way back in the day when I was your subordinate
And you sort of very reluctantly
um, we're like K I guess so I have you on steam
But I think we've only ever actually played games together like once or twice
We played a bunch. We played left or dead all the time. Did you did you join us often?
I thought you only joined us a couple times. Yeah, that was probably for that two months period because again not gaming spurts
I don't yeah, that's fair regularly anymore whereas we would play um, so
Me one of the other product managers um
A bunch of members of our forum. We would game like every night
Yvonne would join us most of the time like that was probably the most intense like gaming period of my life
Yeah, I don't think gaming was cool back then Well, no, I mean that's that's my whole handle like my my old forum handle closet gamer
Yeah, because I was like, uh I thought it was really funny because the layout of my bedroom was such that there wasn't really a convenient place to put my computer
Desk, so I came up with this idea of putting it literally in the closet so that when my chair tucked in
It was just close because I didn't keep my clothes in my closet. Like why would I do that when the floor is right there?
um, so I so I had my gaming setup in my closet and I was like, oh, yeah, and like
I liked I would like to think aspirationally. I would like to think that at school
I'm a little cooler than like the gamer kids with their like briefcases and whatever else I
He's a delight. Um, and actually he came to the land at my house
Um, but there was this guy in our school who was definitely a gamer and definitely didn't use a backpack
He he carried a briefcase at school um
Anywho, so I was like, okay, so I'm gonna be like stealth gamer the closet gamer
Yeah, I mean, you know not not anymore. I've other similar story. Um, I used to I used to be a part of the clan back in
My university days and that definitely wasn't cool at that point. Definitely wasn't cool at that point. Yeah
um What was sort of cool was we had really random people on our
In our we played team fortress team fortress classic before tf2. The one was a little bit more serious
Um, wow, did you see did you see that toxicity?
You know when it was I I'm being I'm being judgy Do you have to is a gamer casuals now?
Casuals with hats though casual hats. Yeah Um, no, but we had a lot of random people. We had a guy who was an engineer at GE. So he was like on the stealth bomber program
um, okay So just really random people from run was a life. There was one guy though who was
Cool in real life. Um, he was
popular in school I think we started playing with him when he was high school and then you know, he was
No, the president of his frat or whatever else when he was at uh,
boulders boulders boulders state So like actually cool actually cool. Okay. So he was also a classic gamer
So it was better to tell his friends that he had therapy sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays when we had
Clan matches and practices rather than telling him that he had to go play
Video games on the internet with a bunch of random strangers. I don't know. So that's
I never told you this one. No. Yeah, so, um, yeah, that's how uncool gaming was back in those days
And guys like it really was in 2003. I think it was I had my first exposure to esports
Um, I was on a train and again, this was with a very eclectic mix of people
But what brought us together was we were doing a french language exchange in kebac for the summer. So, uh, one
One kid from each household switched households and it was a really cool program. It doesn't exist anymore. Um
But the government would find you a job So you so the idea was that by forcing you out into the workplace in an anglophone or francophone environment
You would be language immersed in a way that if you were just like
Bumming around for the summer you wouldn't and what was cool was the program was free
And you got to keep the money you made How's your french? Um
A lot better than it was when I left for the exchange program, but a lot worse than it was, you know, 20 years ago when it finished
It's a program being shut down
It was cool it it was it was very cool. Um
And uh On the train
I was kind of doing the the get to know you with all the different people in our group and one in particular
Stood out to me because uh, he he explained that, you know, one of the highlights
Of his summer or whatever like basically he talked about like a highlight moment for him was uh, was land parties
And I go, sorry. What's what's a what's a land party?
And he explains that all your uh, all your friends carry their computers to your house
And you set up a network and you all game with each other
And I um, I don't know if there are many times in my life when I have laughed so long
and so hard Continuously
We ended up getting along okay, and in fact when we returned from the exchange he built my first computer
in front of me And then I Took it home took it back apart and well it was still fresh in my mind put it back together
So he actually got me started on this path
um, but man when he explained to me competitive gaming and and and land parties
I just I lost it man. I couldn't I I couldn't I'm like
So you have a party Where you all have your computers you sit and you look at your computers and that's a party
he's like Yes
Okay, sure buddy, and you drink energy drinks
I know that people travel super far nowadays It's but I know especially for LTX when we had during the summer because we were talking to people
To me with the guys that I gamed with yeah, I Dragged my giant CRT back in the day just because you know there weren't lcds
Again, I'm dating myself and nobody series would be playing with it lcd anyways
Just because of how much ghosting there was back in the day. Yeah, um, so your luggier
1920 inch CRT that weighed 60 70 pounds through in the back of the car
I drove down to The bay area or Sacramento more specifically to hang with my gaming buddies
There was no GPS back in the day. So I had my pilot paper with my map quest instructions
What turn by turn from where I was living seriously. Why wouldn't you just buy a road map?
I don't know those way any better like you go to AAA
Yeah, oh man. I was I was like king of having the map open on my steering wheel while driving stick, right?
Still the king of driving stick with my chief of map quest papers and
No burger king or whatever it was. Um during the five minute pit stops. So neither of us are um
You know what? I don't think either of us get in a lot of accidents. No, I'm pretty good. Yeah, okay
But our habits would probably make you a little nervous. Yeah, okay any who yes, so you were heading to the bay area
Yeah, uh with the my nine or ten pages of map quest instructions and it was perfectly fine
There's no internet back then, right? There's no mobile cell phones or whatever. Yeah
Everything was offline be prepared. I was thinking it would be a really cool video for me to not have a cell phone for a month
Just like How would we even sir? I can't even I can't even imagine like how did
If you if you had a coordinated meetup point and one person wasn't there what you just
You just waited forever or like I don't even remember how life functioned
There's a lot of text messages and I think because there were fewer distractions. Um, I think people were more reliable back then in terms of
kind of meeting meeting up That's my impression, but those could be my rose colored classes
Um, oh Apollo the space fox asks. What's your favorite thing about LMG so far?
And Conversely, what's your least favorite thing about LMG so far? Yeah, we're going there
It's pass and answer Is what sorry pass and answer
though um
Favorite thing is learning new things. Um, so I know that
being in The media side of things isn't necessarily always new but video production and how things all sort of work together is
relatively Is not new to me. Um
So that that's been a really cool learning experience just to see how I guess the magic happens behind the camera
All the prep work that gets goes into Ideation before we get into the writing phase and how quickly things come together for things like shoots
So I think the finished project is not necessarily a representative of
Well, it should be of all the hardware that goes in the background So I think that that's sort of eye-opening there and I think that I've been very lucky
with the network that Linus has and speaking to other youtubers and just kind of understanding the
the trials and tribulations of
What's the best way to put this how people Try to scale their sort of media empires as uh small business owners. So it's
The trajectory of how that's happened and um, just you know, hearing everybody's sort of creation stories
That's really neat for me. Just because I think that was something that was um, also
That I've been professionally curious about especially in the IT industry
A lot of the people that we had worked with in the past that had they had their own creation stories
So there were refugees from you know, vietnam that have started, you know, large computer chains. Um
The owner of n6 he was you know, china
I don't know assembly line to Create a large retailer in canada. So there's been a lot of very influential people that have come out of
I guess Nowhere. Yeah, we replace us. So just to hear some of these stories are sort of neat
Yeah, that's something that I find is a common thread with almost every youtuber I I meet especially like the the old school ones
Is I mean like look at mr. Beast. He literally just
Kept throwing spaghetti at the wall absolute nobody said a goal
Did it and I'm not saying that just because you follow the same path. You will have the same success. He's obviously
Extraordinarily talented, um, but
He didn't he didn't just like raise venture capital
And and and just you know become a media empire. He was just a guy
Um and almost everyone I meet who's like that their story is riveting
um All right, let's uh
Um greed asks um, what's your rig specs right now and what would you most like to upgrade about it?
Is it bad if I say I don't 100% remember
No All right, it's valid one of my old coworkers helped me build a rig just because I didn't have time to do it
And he had a lot of spare parts. So I think I've a I'd like to say 3,800 x
As a CPU, um, I got somebody hooked me up with a 600 x t
32 gates of memory One or two terabytes of
So basically your classic, um, you know 1080p plus
Yeah Your your your classic whatever whatever, you know falls off the the demo the demo track. Yeah rig. Yep. Got it
I'm not happy with the case. It's it's hot. The airflow isn't really good
So on that note We will be running another reddit poll this time not with questions for our ceo, but this time
With suggestions for what kind of computer we should build for our ceo
So this is going to be similar to the Linus needs a new phone poll
We'll be asking you guys to come up with a style and theme for the pc
That taren will use here at the office
And it should be based kind of on you know, some of our conversations in this interview and also if you guys have some
Fun ideas to be clear. We're looking for a theme or style
Not the you know spec I mean be funny to give them an optiplex with like a first gen core i5 or whatever
Um We're more looking for like what a theme of a ceo setup should be
And then we're going to pick hardware that goes well with it
We have a match max budget of xxxx. It is apparently undecided right now. Thank you very much elijah. These are good. That's good
We'll put that in the reddit post
But you know, it'll have similar specs to our standard hardware, but in terms of decorations or stuff
Um, we want to stay within like a reasonable budget So we're not going to do like the hundred thousand dollar desk pc 2.0
But I you know, I think you should have something you know, you know nice
Um, and then number three is be appropriate. This is an office space and the video is going to go up on youtube
So it's got to be safe for work and non political. Uh, we're going to pick the best theme after about one week from the posting date and
If something that we can do and follow us the guidelines, we will build it for a video
Oh, okay. No, if it's something we can do. Yeah, no, we're definitely going to pick something that we can build for a video elijah
I'm not we're not going to pick something that's like too stupid to be a video
So, yeah, that's something you can look forward to you'll come in one morning
Um, you know, maybe after like a like a remote work, you know stint and then you'll arrive in the office and it'll be
CEOed out for you
And maybe you'll like it even maybe Um
Oh, this is a good one From whizbiz o2 with LTT being so diverse in its products channels and
general ambitions What struggles do you foresee with expanding such a diverse?
business um
Getting focused and making sure that we
Know what brings us value over the longer term Um, I think that's been one of the things that has been
Difficult, uh, just in terms of where we want to put resources. Um
You know, the the cheesy line that I've told the team is basically we can do
Anything, uh, but what should we be doing just because I think it's a
sloppy answer to say, oh, yeah
It's easy to run a business without focus. Um, and I think at some point in time you just stagnate and it makes it very
difficult
Um, so Just getting just getting understanding in terms of what the strategy needs to look like. Uh, we're people's
Ambition and passions lie. I think has been a lot of the the groundwork that ideally we would have like to done in the first few months without
All the outside distractions. So I think we have a good idea in terms of direction that we want and
We'll start leaning in I think over the next six months or a year
Yeah, I think that's a really nice way of saying that, uh, we were managed by someone with a severe case of ADHD
I appreciate the tact. Um
Uh Oh, this is a good one from techie taco if you'd been ceo of LTT from the beginning
How different do you think it would be from what it is today?
I Don't know if it would be
all that different in some ways. I think, um
for me, it's been good to have Been in several different roles because I think there's a lot of takeaways that you get from every sort of organization
in terms of how things operate and it kind of helps you
Understand or hone what's possible or how things should be done. So I think having come from fairly similar backgrounds
I'm not sure that Things would be much more organized based off of not how we did things in the past
So I think it's probably a blessing that I didn't immediately hop here. Um, I guess that's true. Our our work history is not
Really that different no, I mean, um
Like other than in between while I was doing LMG and kind of insulated here. Yeah, you were
doing other things You know, one thing I I told a lot of my
Old coworkers about was I In some ways, I wish I went to an organization like Dell much earlier in my career
Just because it teaches you how to be Much more organized and how you should think about scale and how you should think about team structure and everything else
So for me, that was a super super valuable experience. Even though that was you know
A little bit shy of two years. Um, so I I think
Yeah, make sure there are takeaways from every single role that you take just because um
If you're not learning then there's probably a bit of an issue
This question is one of the most common says the notes from Elijah
How do you handle the shareholder
minus an evan boss of ceo taran boss of
employee Linus relationship. Is there a safe word?
Do you just do you just escalate to evan when you have a problem with me?
Apparently a lot of people have asked this. Oh, um, I think I just tell you whenever a problem with you. Um
It's Is that bad? You're you're sort of chuckling about the way you deliver that. Um
I think there were there. I don't know. There were more concerns at the beginning I think part of why I took this is because I didn't think this would be a long-term issue. Um, and this isn't me brown nosing
Um, I don't know that sounded like a threat to me. Yeah
Okay, the thing I appreciate about Linus and evan is they're very pragmatic. So I don't really think there's any sort of conversation that's
um You know the third rail that we we can't approach. Um
And conversely, I think they both solicit a lot of feedback. So
It's it's been fine. Um, I think it feels a little bit weird sometimes
Just in terms of how involved both of them can be from a day-to-day perspective. Um,
I don't know how well the audience knows about but she's incredibly detail-oriented and that's something I really really appreciate about her
um, she can insert himself into a situation and
Understand most of the indents out much quicker than anybody else I've met inside my career
So that's something that's a massive massive skill that she has. Um, and for you, I mean
I don't know dragon energy Dragon energy your quick to point out things. You're not happy about I think I can read you relatively well just in terms of things
that are bugging you um And again, I don't think I really hold back when I tell you I don't think so tell you things that
Don't work me or that I think it needs to be on your radar. So I mean
I think this worked out the reality of it is that, you know, every problem taren identifies is
um kind of you know For better or for worse, you know, I was I was the guy in charge
You know when this whole issue developed, right? So
Um, I don't think you've I don't think you've held back from just having honest conversations about that
so And I I like to think I have
You know on the one hand, you know been open to hearing it But on the other hand acknowledge that realistically, you know, the reason you're here is because I didn't know how to solve it
So, um, yes, I'm glad we're having this conversation, but please fix it
no hundred percent and um, I think the The
The guardrails are pretty loose at this point in time. So again, it's been super refreshing and a little bit scary
Just in terms of how open liners and bottom up and it was just like, how do you want to do this? It's like, well
How much money can I spend? or something, uh, you know
Equally in need from my side in terms of questions. So, um
I hope that answers the question Um, okay. I mean there was a bit of a follow-up
How do you handle saying no when someone comes up with an idea or a decision?
I guess this could be this could be not just from, you know, me or evan
But this could be, you know from someone internally. How do you how do you see no?
Um, by making sure that everybody's aligned in terms of what the point of view is
Um, I think that's one thing I also coached on in the past is like don't
It's good to be forward with people but just don't say no and just kind of leave out that kind of like how I answer the
Hey, you said read your new pc bill. That's good magically period office. I could probably handle that a bit better
um But it's understanding where the person's coming from and kind of walking them through their thoughts and you know trying to
For a lot of better term inception them into the answer that you want them to come through so it's
That makes it sound a lot more evil than I think it is
Inception them. Inception them. Yeah, I was just watching a lot on Netflix the other day. So that's why
Um
But yeah, I think what you're trying to say is reach a consensus reach a consensus
next question We hear a lot of the bad about ncix and why they failed
But is there anything at ncix that you thought actually worked really well and you would want to implement at LMG?
This is from zata 21. I think we had a really tight team
I think that was the one thing that I really really appreciated Especially the the core team that we had so I mean obviously all of you are familiar with Linus
I don't know if everybody knows that I didn't need a cameraman or we should just refer to cameraman
He's respectfully asked me to not disclose his name
So cameraman was also part of that group and you know the manager that we uh that we keep on referring to I think though
One of the the ways I described him before is he's a person I learned the most from um back at the last stage of my life in terms of
Things to do and things a hundred percent not to do both in a professional as well as the social setting
Um I don't think he would object to that no that description
I think I told him that to his face as well probably you've probably told him that to his face multiple times
I think I've told him that to his face multiple times. I'm I'm still in touch
You know, he's someone that I I you know, yeah
Same thing um taught me so much Grand a lot of good things. Yeah, great pitch person. Um, you know the boundaries that he had uh
when no liquor got involved that was when
It was a bit of a coin toss. I didn't get as exposed to that
I think just um, you know, because I I'm a bit of a I'm a bit of a dry
influence like I I don't
I I feel like it's it's harder to really, you know, get completely wasted
When there's someone kind of sitting there not drinking at all just being sort of a wet blanket over everything
Oh, it's terrible being the silver person with a bunch of drugs. Well, it's like
I don't know. I mean the other way around as well Like it seems like it's not as much fun to drink around me because I'm just sort of boring
But I don't know. Maybe that's just a vibe that I got and it was my own insecurities that I am projecting or whatever
I think you're projecting. Okay. Yeah, sure fine Um, either way, I didn't get I didn't get exposed to that as much
So maybe it was just less of an issue for me And I think it was a lot of things sort of not to do as well just at n6. Um, like no one where your limits are
professionally and allowing people who should know better to sort of deal with those responsibilities
I think um delegation is something that's incredibly difficult
In organizations all sizes um
so Yeah, I think that would be what we want here just a very tight core team
I'm making sure that no, these are people that you like in respect. So one of says these kind of weird
Projections about how I didn't want to engage with them or whatever else a problem annoying, but I don't think that was true at all
or somebody that I thought was really good. Okay. I just I it's funny you um in your own way
You taught me a lot of things as well Like I still remember our road trip when you made a comment to me at some point and it was like
You know, you don't have to fill every moment of dead air with talking
Because I was just sort of nervously Chattering and we were driving so much that it kind of went on forever
um Wasn't tactful, but it was
Something I hadn't thought about before I'm
I'm more of an introvert than I'm extrovert. I can be social at times, but it takes a lot out of me
so when there's expectation to fill the air with like small talk or whatever I just become
withdrawn and awkward and Probably a little bit more snippy in there. I probably should be so that's my excuse
Yeah, I I I feel like that's something that we see a lot in this industry is we have people who are gamers
Tech enthusiasts. Uh, well, I feel like there's almost like two funnels
Like there's the funnel of the business people who force themselves to learn a little bit of tech so that they don't look like complete idiots
When they're talking to the people who come from the other funnel Where they're tech people who force themselves to learn social skills so that they can interact with the other people
And I feel like we see that type
A lot where I feel like this is something that I go through as well as people assume that I'm very extroverted and I
Enjoy socializing when actually I'm not really a people person
And I like the first thing I did once I had my own company is I stopped schmoozing more than I absolutely had to
um Which is something he always he and our and our other and our boss, uh, rode me about was like
you need to like
Filled relationships with people. I'm like, uh
I still think that's true. No, you're still right
You're still right um Bob Martin asks would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?
Uh, the one horse-sized duck really? Yeah
Huh, I don't have the stamina to like fight a hundred hundred ducks are there
Like what the hell? Okay. All right, that's fair um, you just have to line one lucky hit with the giant duck with
This you have to be able to keep out for god knows how long um
George asks when you look back on your career What decisions would you go back and make 100 of the time again?
Um, I don't think a lot of regrets just in terms of the way that I've um, sort of
Vote my career. I think the way that I've
Again, you know, I sort of joked about um, how I was probably a little bit too
Stone-faced or a little bit non-emotional at times. There was things I probably would have handled differently just in terms of um
Engaging with my team Engaging other people the amount the way I push back, right? Uh, the previous question was how do you say no to people?
um Without saying no and no that half joke was you know, make sure you understand their position. Uh, one of the challenges I had was
I thought I knew the answer most of the time so I could keep things relatively short just because I think that one thing that
also comes across with me is I It feels like a hurry through things. Um, and it's not intentional. I don't I don't think I
Don't give people time But I also want to make sure that the conversation is moving on at a reasonable clip
So I think I've been too short with some people in my life even though that hasn't necessarily been the intent
um, but I think most of the decisions that I've made have been
for the most part correct just because even after our vacated roles, um
No, we would stay the course in that direction. So
To me that sort of validates the the business approach in terms of how things were supposed to go
But maybe not so much the human approach We got kind of lucky that ncix was leadership light. I think both of us
I think so, um They gave us a lot of rope there as well just in terms of how to
I guess run the business or to kind of
No playing that sandbox the way that we will I I wanted more guidance sometimes, but it just uh didn't exist
Yeah, I I remember talking to you about my first shuttle po
and I was like Do I have the mix right like what comparable should I be looking at?
Can I get access to this other report so I can see the Intel AMD mix and chipsets and and what about price points?
We haven't because because I was bringing in a palette of these mini PCs and we effectively have been selling like
To a month on special order from distributors at terrible pricing. So we were going direct with shuttle
They were gonna just we were gonna have better pricing. We were gonna have access to the whole lineup and
You said something along the lines that I like gave you my whole spiel and you said something along the lines of like
Linus, it's like $50,000. Who cares? It's fine. You'll sell through it. I was like
Okay, but you didn't look at my product mix at all
Good luck, everybody And so it what it did was it forced me to do the critical thinking on my own which
Works for me, but may not have been great for everybody else. Yeah, why did I bring you in here to lead after?
I think you sort of stole the words out of my mouth in terms of critical thinking
Just because there were a lot of things that I think we developed intuitively
I know that people are probably You know cringering right now who have like a product management like a merchandising background
Just in terms of how you do analytics or whatever else, but I remember there's a high degree of
discomfort when we started No suggesting things like category management. It's like look we have
10 different memory lines here. So it would behoove us to
At least somewhat coordinate with each other rather than have this
No, no modal gp or f1 approach where the first person you want to be is your teammate or whatever else, right?
I think that was almost an environment that was fostered in some ways in terms of how we distributed the lines
Just to make sure there was a healthy amount of internal competition It could be messy sometimes because if Taren did a big buy on like a Corsair
ddr2 skew and then He's still got 90% of that inventory and we're planning to promo it on, you know x day
And then one of the other p.m. Ah, okay. Let's say I
Do a buy on an ocz skew that is, you know, slightly higher spec
But probably more likely to fail at the same price And then we have to like go and put those up against each other if I went and I bought like 50 units
And he bought 500 units
And then I'm undermining his deal
That's really bad. Um Because all of a sudden we're going to sell through my 50 and sell through like 20 of his 500 and then we're stuck with, you know
Hundreds of units of inventory that are now harder to sell less is in disruption. So um, yeah
So, uh, yeah, we did all right, but there were definitely some challenges
Was taking this position a hard decision
Asks paranoia 2k
That's semi-ironic, uh, I don't know if it was a hard decision, but there's definitely, um
No challenges, uh, I did the
move from canada to the us maybe just under 10 years ago and you know
It's much more simple early in your life to pack up things and unbox and move to a different part of the country
Or to a different country. Um, I think I'm in a very privileged position where um when I'm moving, you know, there's a
There's a job already here for me. So it's much less scary to do something about than other people who have to do it for
I guess sustenance reasons if that's fair. Um
I think that was something that there needed to be a lot of alignment with just because um, you know, my wife has her own career
Um, my son was born in the u.s. Um, so it's just trying to figure out the trade-offs, right? What kind of environment that we want to bring out and
Whether I want to deal with vancouver weather with our 10 fetus no outside and
Bitter cold over the last week Um, or stay in sunny california. So, uh, I don't know what's a hard decision
It's just kind of weighing where we want to be over the next Call it, you know 10 15 years or whatever else and what kind of environment that we want want to bring your kid up
um
Thermo Says, how do you think the company?
Is handling the announcement of you joining and the transition
So this is wow, you have to do like a like a self job evaluation. Yeah, we should probably do a poll
A live poll to the company. It's like, hey Does what he say jive? Um, I think it's been good so far. Um
Again, the the things I appreciated about my last couple roles was um
you know Some level mentorship some level coaching and those are some of the things I want to bring in just the
Different perspectives from the outside. So, you know, I've been billed as a corporate person or whatever else
I'm not sure that there's a characterization that I would have on myself nor would that
Or would that be the managers that I have been reporting to over the last few years
Just because I think that's one of the things is like you're probably a little bit too loose and you probably need to be a
little bit more serious I think what I can do is bring in a different perspective and sort of challenge status quo internally. Um
So, yeah, is there probably some moments of discomfort from
The staff internally probably but I I think I try to make this as
Accessible and understandable as possible in terms of the directional pushing in I mean it at the beginning
he was mostly just to fly on the wall and it wasn't until
everything hit the fan um a few months ago that
he was kind of forced to Figure out how to
And like I mean honestly, no no offense intended
It it ended up following a little bit more on me to
Guide things for better or for worse because you were like fresh on the job and I think the media side of it was too new
And not to cut you off, but I think
If you come in and start making changes right away without understanding the problem
I think that undermines, you know, one's credibility
Right away just because I'm not going to pretend that I understand everything today. I'm still learning at this point in time
I think I've a I'm starting to form pains in terms of how things should be done or where there are gaps, but it's
It's been sort of lighter touch to some degree
For a reason just because um Before we do anything, you know
Good or stupid. No understand what the problem looks like first Valkyr og asks what is something from your childhood that you still hold true to this day?
Like whether it's like like a like a life lesson
Um Loyalty to friends. I think that's something that's um
That's very important making sure that know you uh associate with people that share similar values as you do
just because uh, those are going to be I guess the grinding points later on in your life. I don't lose perspective
in terms of where you came from
I think that my no, um, you know, because he was a
particularly difficult childhood or whatever, but um
No, we had to work for things as a kid really hard just because uh
being Why am I zero generation immigrant into canada?
Uh, I wasn't born here. So that's zero. So you were are you worried? I was not so that's first
I don't I don't know exactly how the rules work. I actually didn't know you weren't born here
I should know that I probably knew that at some point. I probably forgot. Yeah, so um, no making sure that you're
You're making peace and making friends. I think that was one tough thing and uh, just having I guess different expectations from family versus
I guess what you see externally if those were things that stuck with me, you know
What's your favorite LTT merch?
I mean, you're wearing the wan hoodie, but I'm wearing the wan hoodie. I really like the t-shirts
Um, that's a good finger feel
The technical term is hand feel but sure it has a good finger feel. That's uh, you know what we're gonna use that
Yeah, that's comes that's that's top down. That's top down. It's now finger feel for the entire company
I didn't deal. I didn't deal with garment the garment industry ever Uh, I'm proud of this. Yeah, neither did we well, we have people that have experience now
But like like nick and I don't come from that background
Um
Yeah, I'm gonna maybe not do that one jacob welsh asks do either of you regret anything you said at the roast
I get reminded about it, but I was like did I see that? Um
I was a hard to manage to the roast. I'm gonna be the first one to admit this
I think james was my point of contact at that point in time. I basically ghosted him for like
However long that took like I don't know when you guys first emailed me. I said, yeah, I'll do it
and then every every couple weeks or whatever it was is like
Hey, can I help you review your script? And then I think I was making him really nervous because I had
Absolutely nothing up until like the day before or whatever when I just
Sort of did pen to paper. It's like, well, these are the things that I'm going to talk about
What was sort of funny was uh the process in terms of what you do a roast
So I watched a few roasts before that just to kind of understand what was
permissible or whatever else and then it was like, oh, this is just opposition research
You just go pick the worst things about every single person and exaggerate to some degree and that seemed to have uh
You know hit some people the wrong way to put it mildly
But no it was fun Yeah, we won't we're not going to talk about who may or may not have had their feelings hurt. Um
I don't know. It's a roast, you know. Anyway, um to be clear. I knew none of those people except for Linus
So it's just like I didn't think that my words would hurt
So I'm I'm sorry Yeah, and apparently your your your b-face is more than just resting
Yeah um No key though the one and only time stamp guy
Submitted a question for us. Um, what's your favorite tech advancement? I assume kind of more recent
That has rebirthed your interest in the field
Recent tech and yeah, what are you excited about?
Um
I thought that vr was pretty cool um
See you can tell neither of us were cool, right? Sorry because we think vr is cool
you know, um, it's It was interesting. Uh, just in terms of just uh, I guess the gaming experience
So just you can get from it and some of the immersion stuff. I mean, it's
Someone feels a little bit a little bit, um
Contrived I don't know if everybody remembers way back in the day when you first got your cd rom and then it's like
Oh, look at all these all this Shareware shit that they give to you and then it's like, okay. Well, I could potentially see a use case of this
Is a lot more polished. Um But you sort of understood the direction they were sort of they were going in. Um, I would say that
vr is sort of like that where it's like, okay, this could be really cool if
the scope and the breadth was
More I don't know if aspirational is the right word, but it just it doesn't feel polished enough today
I think something like half like alex. That was really really cool. Um
Some of it was a little bit janky like how you moved or whatever about
Um, you could see where they would be sort of going
Yeah, there's um, there's a cool. Um, I forget the company
Shift something, uh, I can't remember but they have these cool new controllers
That you hold and then you just kind of flip back and they lock at the back
So you can like take a drink of water and like take a second and not be in vr for a minute
And then flip back so that it's easier to get in and out. That's is that the video where you look like star-lord
Uh, uh, yeah, that's adam actually. So his face is so obscured that he could be any generic white guy got it racist. Um
But yeah, super super cool. Uh, and I at stuff like that like one of the big things for me is the
Is the difficulty of social experiences with vr. We actually did. Um, we had a really fun games night a long time ago
uh, where we I Sometimes I get sort of too ambitious about things. Yeah
It's a problem I have so it was supposed to be a simple games night and it was like, oh, let's play Pictionary and I was like
Let's play Pictionary
With tilt brush
So, um by this point, I think we were already at the uh in the LMG office here, but maybe barely
And uh, I had a tv in a computer in my living room with vr already. Oh, yeah, yeah
No, we would have been here for sure because uh, it was with the vibe. Yeah, so it was set up. Yeah, so I was like
I need to get another open space So I lifted up the light fixture in my dining room and put another vr pc there
We put like some kind of barrier so that we could have a second vr headset there
And I put a tv in my dining room and then we had two teams
So the people on the chair watching you draw
Were on chairs or couches depending on which room they were in and then the tv was the vr view
and then the person in vr had like the
You know the wand and was and was drawing and it was super cool and it was really fun
But the changeover like I basically just had to be you know that guy at the vr arcade
Who helps people in and out of the headset and helps get me adjusted and stuff like that makes it
Really challenging Look, there's a couple things. Um
I still have a a quest one So it's a little bit heavy the the optics aren't super good. Uh just because you still have that
Was it the screen door effect or whatever? So those aren't ideal. So they're still I'm looking forward to those like current generation stuff to see how much that's improved
and the reason why I gave vr as an answer is sometimes I
I taper grounded How good technology has gotten so I appreciate all the refinement with stuff, but it's not necessarily
No transformative like I'm using earbuds. I'm most exclusive nowadays. I travel a lot of fly back and forth a lot
I used to have I still do a pair of like a boast over the ear noise cancelling
Headphones they were great battery life was good noise cancelling was awesome
I've gotten to earbuds because I can get as good of experience without all the extra bulk
Um, I have to carry around stuff and so I appreciate
The convenience attack a lot more. Um, I don't know. There's anything I don't know
So I think that In product management, um, you know, I like I still obviously kept
A lot of my excitement and passion for tech But I think there is a propensity to start to treat
every new skew as
A skew and start to see it that way a little bit
Um, and that's something that I definitely noticed during my time at ncix was like a new GPU
Yeah, it was exciting to me, but it was almost also exhausting because it was a lot of work
um So I take this stuff regretted now So I think having moved out from the manufacturer and where we're dealing with fears at least for my day to day
I have fewer skews I have to take a look at so I would say that I get pleasantly surprised
with Experiences now rather than say oh, this is completely magical, but it's like hey, this is a nice step up from where things were before
Yeah, okay. That seems fair um
Man the questions are kind of coming in pretty heavy now. Um
Broadstroke asks top gear 1224
Where do you see LMG in five years under your leadership? What long-term projects do you want to accomplish?
Quality life making sure that we are still producing top-notch content and next five years
figuring out where there are potential adjacencies So, you know to my point maybe this is a great lead-in
I take a lot of things for granted in tech nowadays. I think a lot of things are iterative at this point in time
Um, how do we continue to tell compelling stories in tech?
No, I think one of our greatest strengths at LMG is our ability to story tell does that transform into any other categories?
that's adjacent to Tech is it hand feel in terms of uh clothing or probably not probably not
But like, you know automotive has been an obvious one You know, we've dabbled other tech youtubers have have dabbled or made movements into that
One of the things that we had much earlier back at n6 was how do we grow up with our audience, right?
I think that's um something that every company tries to articulate and I think that's one of the
No strategic challenges that we have. Um Just in terms of where we go from a content direction standpoint
All-time favorite game asks rendis all-time favorite game
That's a hard one
How do we define that number of hours played or it's just like wow that was so
Awesome and transformative. How about first one then the other got him
One of this something most time in I don't know something is boring as civilization
That's just like I don't I don't know why I should be playing this but you know launching nukes
In the midst of played a little discussions is um, it's always sort of funny
Okay, that's good to know. Yeah, no, uh
I was really surprised with uh, Horizon zeroed on that was probably one of the games over the last two three years that I spent
A decent amount of time with I actually played not one completely through
I think was a freebie on playstation plus or
Whatever else during covet and it's like, uh, this seems to be a throwaway or whatever
Didn't expect a whole lot from it, but it's like this is actually quite fun. I actually really enjoyed it too
It's one of the few single-player games that I got absolutely sucked into I played it exclusive
I played it exclusively on the steam deck as part of my review of the steam deck
I I needed to pick a game. That was why I picked it up And it was like well reviewed and it was um, it was steam deck compatible
But like AAA and so, you know, I wanted to really kind of I wanted to have a game that really pushed it and was not
And it used the proton compatibility layer So these are all my reasons for choosing it, but the reason I finished it was because it was just really good
Um I don't know that I'd pick it as like all-time favorite game. I don't know. It's all-time favorite
That's one that sticks out all-time favorite game. I
Okay, how about I how about I'll help contextualize it a little bit
Relative to everything you had experienced up until that time
So like for me a really big standout is far cry Would I go back now and say all-time best game or anything like that? No, but it was uh, the the open levels and the visuals
um, we're very very Different at the time. I was super super overrated
Are the are dumb's fighting words? Um
If I was gonna say the most influential it'll probably be something like half-life too. Um, I talked about team fortress earlier
That's probably a boring answer. Yeah, it is a boring answer
I spent a lot of time with team fortress like we were talking about earlier just because I thought there was a ton of depth in the game
Um, it wasn't overwhelming in terms of the number of classes
You always had to make um trade-offs depending on how you wanted to you know, structure your offense versus defense or whatever else
That's something I hate about team fortress too Is if you are not like balls deep in the meta
You have no idea what like weird baseball bat
People have or like what stat boost they get from like this hat or whatever
And I I really I loved the game when you had the nine classes. Yep
And that was it you you understood exactly what you were up against by the very easily identifiable
Character avatar on the other side and yeah, I I could see I could have seen myself getting into team fortress classic
If I had really been a gamer at that time. Yeah, and also
also prioritize skill in the early days, um, because
I played with a bunch of people who Were super hardcore in terms of gaming. Um, so, you know, they would have
their own way files to help with no The timing of grenades so that you can no time your concussion drop properly
Or how you do multiple zones with multiple grenades and how you
Tile the stuff together. So the guys I was gaming with were super super hardcore at that point in time
So I really appreciated the skill that you had to have in terms of executing both
Some of the personal things they had to do as well as no driving your team together
So were you that good or were you more of a support class? Oh, it's pretty good. Oh, yeah
Oh, okay. Oh where I started falling apart is when bunny hopping was a thing
Oh, okay, and that's just like, okay. Well, this just totally breaks the game and this is just not that fun anymore
I never quite mastered the weird hand motion. So it never
Got it for me. Okay. That's fair
um
Chambers says would you be okay with diversifying into more regulated areas like food?
um
I'm not sure wherever we could be doing LMG burgers. I'll be honest with you
I don't know if we have a I don't know if we have a kind of value out there, right? Um
You know the the remunations on the previous question in terms of hey, why are our strengths? We're good at storytelling. We're good at no
packaging I guess Media together. So that seems like a little bit more of a stretch to get into
Adjacencies are kind of too far out from what we currently do
Uh, we've got it just a handful more. Um, what do you think of the Labs initiative?
Do you have any Labs projects that you look forward to being ready for use?
I think the way that we we are trying to structure
testing across Many different disciplines is going to be super interesting if we can get um
I guess all the mechanics in the background um together so
uh things like Automating like keyboard testing. I'm not revealing too much or is this stuff that you've already been talking about the Floatplane peeps
Whatever got it. Um, and then you know how we are building like as robotics to do like most testing or whatever else, right?
and not to sort of belittle what we're doing with like gpus or cpus or whatever but
um That stuff is The way that we can automate it. I think is super super cool
Uh, just to make sure there's not something that's just like can benchmark
uh, so there's a lot of things that are going on in the background that I think would add a ton of
value just in terms of the breadth of stuff that we can test in a
repeatable structured and scalable fashion. So I think it's
Sort of super cool because one of the things I was um getting on with Linus this morning about is I don't want
Snapshots in time for just any one sort of thing I think that goes for benchmarking as well
The way that we're setting things up allows us to take a much broader view in terms of
over data and testing yeah
Yep, I agree it's Been a long road and I think it will continue to be a long road
um There's just there's so much work to do and I I think that um, you know looking at CPU and GPU kind of going
Okay, you know fundamentally. I think the industry understands how to compare these things to each other pretty well. There are outliers
Like we actually had a pretty I don't know if I would call it intense or but it was like it was um, it was a
passionate debate Over how we can compare apple m silicon to to a pc
Knowing that none of the same software runs across these platforms, you know, do we just only run software that has
native Uh code that runs on both architectures and both operating systems
Do we run software that is native on one and requires a translation layer on the other?
Do we run Applications that are native for each but are completely different applications
Like do we run two completely different video encoding applications?
But that run native on each of them. Do we like do we just not compare them at all and and there was a lot
There's a lot of back and forth about you know, what's the best way to handle that and it's it's one of those things where
No answer is obviously and 100 percent the only way to do it
So you have to figure out what your philosophy is and given the early stages. It's it's it's hard
What's your favorite snack from the snack area
I'm a savory guy more than a sweet guy. So I have a thing for chips. So probably the Doritos
nice nice Gamer answer game game answer and I I don't know about you a lot Doritos at home, but
My son's gaming of football for whatever reason really. Yeah, and then so
Must be the the the formative years in america or something formative years in america
I was told I was racing in hooligan when he started chanting against la when we I took him to a hockey game a couple weeks ago
But it's sort of weird because there's an expectation that there's a football game
Especially the Niners are on tv every day. There's a football game and then when they're not my son just asks
Are they resting? I'm eating cheetos. I was like Or Doritos. He's like, are they resting? I'm eating Doritos. I was like, what makes you think they're eating Doritos?
It's like, that's how you get energy. He's like, oh
Son, we need son, we need to talk
Um, just completely random if you had to make a review video, what product would it be about?
Uh, that's a good question. I don't don't know. Um, is it tech related?
Yeah, I let's say. Yeah. Yeah Do I do?
Do I go with vr since that was the theme from earlier? Sure pick one. Yeah
vr the new uh, the new gargantuan thing from apple
Oh, yeah, okay vision vision pro. Yeah, I I don't know if I'm looking forward to working on that video
That one's probably going to fall to me. Um, uh adam and I might tag team it
But I'm just kind of I'm looking at it going. Um
Everything I say Is going to be looked at 10 years from now when we're on the apple vision pro 10 or vision sc or whatever, right pro max
And it's going to be like put under a magnifying glass, right? Like how how well can I can I theory craft what the future of this category looks like based on what
You know in apple's defense this makes sense, but what is essentially going to be a dev kit?
Right, like it's it's funny to me. Uh, the way that consumers not, um developers, uh, Dan, do you mind turning off my headphones?
There's a bit of an echo. Sorry. Thanks. Um, it's funny to me the way consumers will go and buy a first gen apple product
as if apple doesn't have this long history of
Bringing a dev kit to market and then promptly abandoning it like the ipad one
Got how many versions of iOS like three two? I can't remember but they they abandoned that thing
So fast. Um, they didn't even they didn't even give the first apple watch a proper designation
It gets referred to colloquially as like series zero. I think because they just kind of
Disowned it at some point. So this first vision product is going to be
You know apple will never admit it publicly, but it's going to be like
You know, yeah, that was a learning experience. Um, see you later
I think I think it's sort of cool because there's a convergence of a bunch of different technologies, right portable computing
So is this the next evolution of like a cell phone or a laptop or whatever?
It feels like they're trying to position this as more than an ipad or more than a phone
It should be almost like a PC in some ways. Yeah, like a visual computer visual computer. Then you have a super high res display
Uh, which which i'm pretty excited for which i'm pretty excited about Yeah, um, I don't know how well that works
Well, I can clean up a lot of my desk or if I start ripping out displays and
I just don't know if I can wear this thing for like eight 10 12 hours a day
I think that's gonna be tough based on some of the early previews from other media outlets
People are talking about it being kind of uncomfortable after like 20 minutes, which which is not as a vr person
Doesn't surprise me. Yeah big screen has a very forever alone, uh product developments
Um philosophy But one thing that they nailed is that the only way to make vr comfortable is to make it
Bespoke. Yeah Like yeah, we molded this thing to your face so that you can actually wear it for an extended period of time
Because everything else i've just struggled with you have a buddy at opal
Asked him his opinion basically is working on the headset in the background and then it was like
Comfort is one thing that the person highlighted and the second thing is there needs to be
The software experience To make this a success or for it to fall flat on its face. So I think it's a
And falling flat on your face when you're wearing a vr headset even more painful
Yeah Um, how often asks doe regard
Do you find insane things that I did as ceo that you have to immediately correct?
Every day is that a good answer or a bad answer? It's just like how do we
Somebody asked me Wasn't a similar question somebody asked me this uh, um, I guess c s and I don't think there should
Should surprise you we both worked at del before and then um, the question was
What's the most challenging thing and what's the biggest difference and then
The comment I made was everything was just There was a process for everything at del which you sort of appreciate because of
How structured things could be we were in a little more of an unstructured division within del
But you could see the rest of the company being uh, there would be an answer for everything and everybody
like if somebody if somebody disappeared
there'd be Replacements tend deep to be able to do that job because documentation is dended to and they're just an execution machine
And this person sort of cuts me off and I guess my side was well
It's really weird to go from a very process heavy environment to a process free or process light environment
Which is how I would sort of describe the first a few months here at LMG. It does some extent
And the person sort of cuts me off. It's like well What you don't understand is del is best in class at operations. It doesn't matter where else you go
Everything else will look shoddy can comparison. I was like, yeah, that's fair. So um, it's probably me being to uh
I'm in my nose in terms of some of the things that we're doing. That's fair. I don't know if it's anything. That's particularly insane. It's just like, hey
There are things that need to be more tightly managed I think that's probably my general theme that I've repeated in line as well as the rest of the management team
um, it's not like it's Anything was a super terrible decision. It's just it's not being managed tightly enough and I think that's part of the growing up
Um
I have one to two more for you sure the first one is or maybe the last question is
What would be a big piece of advice to someone that's starting a business and I'll be I'll be interested to hear your answer
actually um
I think you have to be all in to some extent. I think um, I think that's this is probably not a super popular answer. Um, but
I think the reasons why
Opportunities opened up to me within my career and like I know that I'm speaking from a position of privilege
It's both hard work as well as luck to some extent, but I think you have to make your own luck
I think in almost every single of my roles. I sort of went above and beyond what the job description was regardless of whether it was
time or networking or whatever else, um
I think it's really difficult to succeed
If the mentality is no strictly, I don't know nine to five. That's fair. So as an entrepreneur or somebody's starting a small business
I think you have to be Be prepared to make the sacrifices just because
not proud to say there's uh more than a few social things that I've
missed because um worked priority
And so no trying to maintain any sort of semblance of balance is difficult
Yeah, any kind of answer involving grind set is definitely going to be very unpopular these days. Um
But I mean all we can really speak to is how we got to where we were if you don't like the answer
Then you don't have to do it but I I think that grind set is a very sort of negative way of framing it right just because um
I tend to treat Work and jobs as sort of hobbies, right? I think I'm naturally
Curious about how things work and how things should work and that's what keeps me interested in my
Various roles and allows me to dig deep. So it doesn't
It doesn't necessarily always feel like work. Um, it probably looks that way from that side, especially from friends and family
But I don't necessarily think that that's um
Fair in terms of the way that that comes across I think the advice I would have is if it feels like a grind set then
You might be in the wrong career Yeah, or you're you're in the wrong company. You're in the wrong job or whatever else just because the wrong boss
You don't have the passion for it anymore, right? You have to have that passion
I I think to succeed in any sort of role or organization and if you don't then
You're doing yourself a disservice. I enjoyed NCIX. I talk a lot about the negative things. Um, but I uh
I loved the team that that was a huge difference maker for me
The fact that we were not all but a lot of us were gamers were actual enthusiasts
You know people would come in and give a You know presentation on some new GPU or some new CPU and we'd all be kind of sitting there politely at the table
Knowing way more about it than they did because we just had been following all the rumors and leaks leading up to the launch and stuff like it
Like do be digital Um, there's one more potential question you can kind of decide if you want to want to talk about it at all
Otherwise, I think we'll we'll cut it here
Um, I know that we've been quiet on this front. Um
I'll just say it. Um, there are a few important topics from the last year that never got answered including independent investigation
Um Well has something out I think uh in relatively short order
Um, in some ways, I think this uh, I don't know
I don't Having not been involved in or not having had to deal with directly on stuff like this before. Uh, I
I don't know what the length of time that I recently expected was
I think this is probably taking a bit longer than I would have preferred. Um, and probably for a good reason. Um, but
Uh, I think we'll be providing more clarity in short order just in terms of uh,
No lessons learned and just to give everybody a bit of background. Um in terms of
The allegations that were leveled against us um
I think I'll probably leave it at that. Um dimitar rtx. No, it is not prerecorded. Elijah has been grabbing questions for us and putting them in the dock
Um, because it was prerecorded then some of my answers that have been less cringy or a little bit more polished
Yeah, we might have edited it a bit. Yes um
So We'll take one last question Shubham asks
How are you going to handle potential employee burnout? Um, I know work life balance is a core value of LTT
Um, and it's you know coming back to the whole august thing
It's been indicated that some employees may have risk factors
And you know, how do you balance that with your own personal? I'm adding this last part
but how do you balance that with your own kind of personal philosophy that
um, you know to succeed you have to kind of embrace that work is a
fundamental part of your life for better or for worse
Um, I think there needs to be alignment. Uh, just in terms of again where passions are and what expectations are I guess from a
Work environment standpoint. Um, I don't think that there's been any period in my life where there aren't both
Periods where you have to sprint as well as where there's periods where it's a little bit more lax, right?
so the whole thing is To me grind set in some ways is
When you're expected for six or nine months or 10 months at a time to go into crunch mode. I don't think that's necessarily reasonable
um but I don't
There's also been no job where it's just where I can recall where
There hasn't been some expectation in terms of hey, this just really needs to get done because there's a real deadline that's coming up
so This might be you know, it's sort of a wishy-washy answer, but it's it's it's always balanced in perspective in my opinion
um I don't think that we necessarily have structural issues and again, I might be off base and I might get flamed for this but um, you know
We've added a lot of resources internally here over the last few years
So I think that from a management and leadership perspective
we're keenly cognizant of what we're asking for from people and
I think in general we are No compensating people
Well for a lot of better term so
I don't know that It's it's always difficult. I I don't I don't know that's a sufficient answer
But I think trying to give one one answer for all. I mean, we're not even a huge organization. We're only a hundred and something
um, and trying to give one answer for everybody is just gonna
Not go not work. So there has to be a little bit of um
tailoring yep Just like I'm gonna
Tailor this segue to the end of the stream. Thanks guys so much for tuning in. I'm really sorry that this took so long
I really did mean to do it a very long time ago and it's just been
um Just just keeps kind of getting kicked down the road as it's it's hard to
It's hard to balance all the different priorities, right? It's like the community wants
Higher quality the community wants us to you know, cultivate a work environment where people aren't
Being pushed The community wants us to do side projects and and do you know set aside time for leadership to do interviews
Community wants us to go do show coverage. It's like, uh, yeah
We're we're we're gonna do all those things and it's it's always a tension between different priorities
I think that's uh, maybe a better answer than I gave on just how do you balance the two, right?
Yeah, we know the broke pros and cons. How do how do we do something that's acceptable for both sides? Yeah
Hopefully it's acceptable if we cut it here and get some video shot today
Thanks guys. Thank you