Hong (@quan) and Jason (@JasonShen) talk about the realities of starting a company, how to set yourself apart, working in government, and discover a similarity between the experiences of Asian Americans. Topics include: the influence of Jason's athletic childhood on his entrepreneurial journey (1:28), getting into YCombinator (6:26), having his company fail (10:20), joining Presidential Innovation fellows (16:00), writing about Asian American experiences (18:15), Asian American role models in media (23:29), how to get others to feel aligned with you as an AsAm (26:00), and what Jason is up to now (29:17). Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2up_JEACdY
Hosted by Hong Quan (https://twitter.com/quan)
Produced by Van Nguyen (https://twitter.com/thegoleffect)
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- [Jason]: Oh, look at all these like hot sexy Asian guys. And it's like, Yeah, great. I wanna see that for sure. This is like my, brush with startup royalty. Now we were able to raise like $1.3 million. By the time the article actually came out in like late September like our company was like, in a total sort of like hail .
- Hinwin Media Productions
- Sponsored by: Startupology, Hire.Haus
- [intro sequence] Builders, Makers, Creators
- [Hong]: Hi, I'm Hong Quan, and this is the first episode of FundBMC. And we're lucky enough to have as our first guest, Jason shen. He came all the way from New York. I've known Jason for I guess almost a decade now. First kind of surfaced in the world Year in the Valley, with his blog, The Art of Ass-kicking. And Jason is a kick ass founder. So he started a bunch of companies. We can talk about all of that. He's gone through some you know pretty long journeys with those Companies, the first being Ridejoy. Second one is Headlight, which is in the recruiting space is my background. And then his current company is called Midgame. It's in the game industry, which I used to work in as well. So here's Jason.
- [Jason]: Hey, really excited to be on? I almost said, Have you but you're having me so . So yeah, I mean, where to begin, right?
- [Hong]: You can go as far back as you want.
- [Jason]: I started in gymnastics at the age of six. partly my mom was a gymnastics coach. And so there was like, an opportunity to kind of get free daycare as it were, we'll just throw you in a class. But the first couple years no good. Start to get good like, start competing at age eight, nine, 10 start getting better. And sort of like 10 was really a breakthrough year because when I was 11, I entered my first national competition. And that was like a big turning point for me. For me, it was a great experience. I knew I wanted to train for the highest level of sport. 2008 Olympics was a goal of mine and . I thought it would continue to grow in college, but I had a couple of injuries and setbacks and things that kind of held me back from being able to compete. There were some of smaller things then I had a big injury in my junior year in college. I blew up my knee, like total dislocation, multiple surgeries, multiple, like cadaver achilles, like reconstructions. And so that sort of dashed the possibility of, international competition representing United States. Because of my injury a stayed a fifth year. In that fifth year, I was voted as Captain by my teammates, and we did win the national championship in 2009. So that was like a really great way to kind of cap off that career.
- [Hong]: I mean, I think that says a lot about your leadership too, because you're co-captain selected by your teammates.
- [Jason]: Yeah.
- [Hong]: Right. But like for you like you were world class, I would say in a few things. And like, when we're funding founders, we're always looking for people who are world class. And I think people don't understand what world class means. Like you hold two world records, right?
- [Jason]: Yes.
- [Hong]: Like, why would you do that? Like, it's, I saw the videos. It looks super hard, you did like 50 Aztec pushups. I don't think I could do one.
- [Jason]: Yeah, I mean, the thing about. The story there is really just like, it's kind of like, fun to challenge myself and that sort of a mentality that. Every sort of like, downside gives you an upside. Like we won the national championship, but I re-injured my knee the week before the national championship. So I didn't get to compete. I was competing all season, but I didn't get to compete on the final day that we won, right? And I think that, like not be able to complete that, has driven a lot of my life. Like I've run a marathon. I've done these like, athletic endeavors to try to like prove to myself or others or whatever that like, I have something still. You know that I deserve to have been part of that ceremony where we won and then all that. There are three types of sports. There are individual performance sports, dual competition sports and team competition sports.
- [Hong]: Dual meaning like one on one?
- [Jason]: one on one. To sort of add some nuance to that, I think each of those types of sports, imbues a different kind of mentality into the person, right? And so individual sports really focuses on, it's all sort of in your control, right. Other people don't even really matter that much, like minor sort of elements. And so really, it's like you focus on your own training, on getting better learning. Because all of it sort of like it's just like, if you're good enough, you're good enough, and then you beat everybody else, right? Dual sports helps you understand that like, there are other dynamics at play, right? Like your opponent has weaknesses that you can sort of tap into, right? You can sort of study them, study their strategies, and then like, look for ways to overcome them. And competition matters a lot more. There's like these personal rivalries potentially with someone who's beaten you, but you want to beat them. And, and so it's like, it's not just what you are doing it is what they're doing. And they can kind of screw with you in the same way that you're trying to screw with them. So you're sort of like also on the defensive, trying to like Watch out for what they're trying to do to you. Then you've got the team sports, which has some of the same dynamics as the individual competitive, looking for weaknesses. But it's also about your own teams sort of dynamics, right? And like, are you on the same page? Do you have a coherent strategy? Do you trust your leader? Do you trust your coach? And like you can fall apart internally, outside of what the other team is doing, right? And so there's there can be like a broader collapse. So anyway, gymnastics was as an individual, like I had to, I think internalize and I've been trying to sort of, in some ways like now, is relearn out of those habits. I've just like pay focus on yourself, focus on what you do and what you're doing, because that's all that matters. When in reality, I think the world is much more of a like the team dynamic. Especially when you talk about companies they have founders. And I only know this because there was a book written about our batch of Y Combinators called the launch pad. It's called the Launch Pad. And it's by Randall Strauss, who is a professor at San Jose State, I think and also is like a business journalist. They take us in, they accept us, but they were in their notes. They were gonna pivot. We'll just back whatever they do next. That's basically what we learned. And we were like, "oh god, what are we doing? "We wanna pivot." And they were just like, "yeah, whatever this is," we knew this is gonna happen. So we end up with with long distance rides because we liked road trips we liked ride sharing, I mean, and it felt like something that was similar to Airbnb in that like, open ended space. This is before Lyft.
- [Hong]: Then I would say Ridejoy and Zimride were intra-city distances. And then Uber was fighting head to head with the taxis and black cars with inter city within New York City, within San Francisco. You guys were going like SF to LA.
- [Jason]: SF to LA, Portland, Seattle, those routes and so during the program, we basically said how do we get some initial traction? We launched a Rideshare site for Burning Man, has very targeted towards burning the people it got. These are like one of those fortuitous life events where it's like, does it happen does not happen. Some, the Burning Man Facebook page shared our site, burningmanrides.com, which then got, a ton of traffic to the site and a lot of usage and people posting and submitting. And so we had this chart that went up into the right, right? If that hadn't happened, I mean, I don't think we would have had the company to be honest right?
- [Hong]: So literally it could have only happened in San Francisco?
- [Jason]: Yeah, we were in the right place right time. That worked enough to kind of bring the, you know, we were able to raise like $1.3 million in a sort of see what back then was called. was solid seed round.
- [Hong]: It was the seed round. right?
- [Hong]: So you guys are I remember like some article. I forgot which magazine like Forbes or fortune, something. It's like the three of you its Jessica it was Paul.
- [Jason]: So it's Vanity Fair.
- [Hong]: Vanity Fair, oh my god, Vanity Fair!
- [Jason]: And so the story is, right? This goes back to the journalist. The journalist is in our cohort followed all the companies in the batch would like interview them and talk to them, and then wrote this book and the books first chapter is on like the first two sentences are "Nene checking Randy Calvin and me." The photo it takes place in South Park San Francisco. This is like
- [Hong]: There's a Tesla right?
- [Jason]: Yeah, this is like, yeah it's crazy that Teslas are already there back then. So there's like a Tesla. Their trunk is open the front trunk and like someone's sitting inside. Someone is sitting inside someone's like standing with the like trunk back like, propping it open someone sitting in the car kind like this. Calvin's sitting in the front with like a Roger T-shirt. And then I'm like leaning up against a tree. And on the other side of that tree is Drew Halston in a rush from Dropbox is barely Checked in though
- [Hong]: (sarcasm) I've never heard of those guys.
- [Jason]: Yeah, never heard of them. Because their name checked us like the success. And then it was Paul Graham, Jessica, and like the part of me. So we sort of like, this is like my, brush with startup royalty, right? Valley roads, it's like, Paul Graham and those folks sort of like the creative Y Combinator. The successful sort of like early, founders.
- [Hong]: So today was the most successful ?
- [Jason]: Yes, but early In the sense that they, they were already successful even then, right? And then they're like, upstart, the new crew.
- [Hong]: Up and coming Next Gen.
- [Jason]: You know, Next Gen. Yeah, so it's just like and that photo is framed in the YC halls, like, raise the money. We had this office you had, we have like, six, seven people. And we just launched the iPhone app and we do this photo shoot it's like really exciting. By the time the article actually came out in like, late September, like our company was like, in a total sort of like, tailspin because of what was going on with like, we had lost this huge source of traffic from Craigslist. And so by the time to like, paper came out, people were like, "Oh, I saw you in Vanity Fair. "That's like, so exciting." We're like, "Yeah, Yeah, super excited."
- [Jason]: And so we made the hard decision to let go of the staff that we had hired on, we gave them reasonably good severances, we gave them sort of, you know, recommendations into the YC Community into everyone we knew, And put them on their feet but it was it was a tough day, come in and there are tears and you know it's like very sad it felt very sudden but it's one of those things where it's like we didn't want it to drag on. We ultimately folded the business and returned some capital back to investors, which is very rare in the valley.
- [Hong]: And I mean, like, some companies and investors just go, "Yeah, don't worry about it." They don't want the money.
- [Jason]: they don't want the money back.
- [Hong]: It's sometimes more of a hassle.
- [Jason]: Right, and so what's sort of funny is that you get two perspectives on this right? You get people who hear that and they go, "that was responsible thing to do. "It must not have been easy, "but like that was like the right thing." And there are other people who might not say this to my face, but are thinking like, "you couldn't think of something "do with the money?" Like what kind of sort of like, it's almost like you weren't gutsy enough or you weren't bold enough to just like do something. And so those are two mentalities to have like what kind of steward do you wanna be with your investors money? Slash, what is the risk reward profile that you're actually pursuing? And do you understand what the venture game is about, right? And I think, I've been in all I've, that's a personal decision you have to make about how how you want to play it, right. And then in that case, we wanted to be stewards of our investors money and recognize that when this wasn't gonna work, this isn't going to work. And we're not going to try to like, just like, throw it on some, like crazy experiment that we had no belief was gonna work.
- [Hong]: So most companies don't make it. Almost every company even when they get funding and have all the money in the world. It's kind of hair on fire, right.
- [Jason]: That's right. And I think that's what shocks a lot of people who want to get into startups especially work for startups. Because they think on the outside it looks so good, and it's a shit show inside. This is maybe cynical or what but like, there is value even in a company that fails like the Fab guy, right Fab, flash sales raised so much money. He'd like, start another company, raise a tone money and also fail. And then he raised Fab, and like that was growing super fast and then it failed. And like, even when you hear about, we were right, people will be like, well, they still built an $8 billion company or $12 billion companies. Well, when you take $15 billion worth of money
- [Hong]: Better build something.
- [Jason]: And you $8 billion company, that's like, not that impressive. But at the end of the day, there is some. That person to be like, "we still created a lot of value, "we still had, 10s of thousands of like, "offices all over the world and blah, blah, blah." Like you can say the high level vanity numbers without the sort of investment required to do that. And, it still gives you credit. And so there's this like, perverse incentive to say like, Well, hey, I should raise money anyway. Because, I can sort of like, take credit for these things that I took other people's money to spend the bill. Even if I do it sort of shoddily and poorly. If the raw numbers still look good, right? It only looks bad when you're like wait, "it took you that much money to do it?" So that's like part of the downside, I think of the Valley is that it doesn't reward the bootstrapper as much, who's capital efficient? And then you got the handful of folks like, DHH and Jason Fried, and like and these other things. So there's been a counter push in that right? In like indie hackers. But there's no vested interest in celebrating that right? VCs have the money and media has the sort of like, people want to write about the things that are big and that are everywhere, right? And sort of the niche things don't have champions in the same way that the sort of big things do. So there's this weird world that sort of circulates around all of this.
- [Hong]: I think being in the VC game, like basically employed by VCs, right? When they raise money, when the startup raise money, the first thing they do is call me to go spend it. And that's spent millions if not hundreds of millions. Running recruiting programs are these big companies. So I understand the game. And I think most people, hopefully that are watching this know that, there's this, these expectations once you get on that fundraising treadmill. And if it doesn't go well, it becomes this VC death spiral. And we've seen it play over and over again. It's happened every decade since I've been here. And people always . But tell me about kind of like, going from that experience to I think you worked in government Presidential Innovation?
- [Jason]: In this tech fellowship called the Presidential Innovation Fellowship. It was started under the Obama administration to bring more entrepreneurs and tech folks inside the federal government. Just to gloss on the same, what was great about working in government was like, you could take all the best practices from Tech and not innovate. And just be like, "I know this will work. "I know sending emails to users, "segmented will work. "I know that adding like a progress bar on these like, "pages will work." You know, "I know that if we have these sorts of things "set up these incentives for like completing certain things. "It will work." Because you just like, that's like standard operating practice, right? And they're sort of a bit behind on some of those practices. And so you could just sort of run the standard playbook all day and just get wins, right? Which was kind of fun. But then you're kind of like, well I'm not learning anything now. Because I'm just sort of taking what worked, I was part of a class of 40 folks who had done that. I was like one on the young side alright, I was like 27. I was like, probably a third youngest person there. Everyone else is in their 30s 40s 50s. You know, in Silicon Valley, it's sort of like youth is so important and so valued and then in government is sort of like the reverse. They're like, what do you know? What are you gonna do? Someone said to my face in a meeting, in an introductory meeting, they're like, "I don't mean to sound agist, "but you don't look like you've graduated from college." Which is such an offensive thing to say,
- [Hong]: Did you say okay boomer?
- [Jason]: Yeah, I didn't have my clap back.
- [Hong]: You didn't have it?
- [Jason]: But, I mean, I think he was also a bit racially charged, because as Asian people, we can look younger. What is this? How is this relevant? Like, this is like an observation you wanna make for no reason. I think it came out of a sense of fear that You're not going to be responsible with this work that you're doing. And I'm that fear sort of emerged. You know, there's just like great leadership, Maxim that's like, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So I wrote this piece for box that was sort of saying, so Asian Americans, when you look at social psychology and research around how we evaluate groups of people, we typically value them on two dimensions. Competence and warmth. So competence is like how good you are like how capable you are achieving goals, right? Getting Things Done. And warmth is about like, how aligned are your goals and my goals? Do we share? Do I trust you, right? Like, do I trust you and are you capable? And so these two things are really important, because Asian Americans often fall into this sort of cold but competent model. And so basically, it's like I talked to this psychologist Professor Susan Fiske, who created this sort of framework at Princeton. And she was like, she said it like, I'll hire you to work at my company, but I don't want you to date my daughter. That was the sort of mentality, right? Which is like so apt in so many ways, right.
- [Hong]: Like, I can imagine somebody saying that, right? That's the world we live in today.
- [Jason]: So anyway, that aside, let's talk a little bit about this study. This was born out of a conversation I had with a friend of mine from high school Shinzou. He and I and a couple other guys were all sort of like the Asian group that hung out together. He went on to medical school, residency, and he was in his sort of residency program when he reflected on the fact that he'd gotten out of a relationship where he was sort of, kind of closet, like she was pretty introverted. And so then he kind of stayed home a lot and he's like a pretty social guy. Pretty funny, goofy, at least that's how I remember him and even in med school, he was like that. But in his residency program he kind of trunk in a little bit. And he'd realize that people were really seeing him as this sort of like Asian shell, like someone who doesn't talk just like does, not socializing. He was like, working one night and the attendee who is like the boss of the night, said something like, "Oh we need to, like, adjust the, "the dosage for this person." And he does the math in his head and he's like, "Oh, we need 325 milliliters." And she was like, "Wow, I can't believe you did that so fast." You know, "thank God, we have an Asian on our team." He was like, "really?" Like, that's what you wanna say. And if I and he was back on the dating scene, right? And he was on Tinder and swiping and he was just like, "I am not getting matches. "And I'm like, and I have a friend who is a doctor who is, "on a empirical basis, less good looking than I am but why? "And he's getting way more matches. "Just like what's going on?"
- [Hong]: It's the algorithm.
- [Jason]: Right is it though? Yeah, I mean, and so. So there's a lot to unpack there. But I think what we're interested in was like, understanding like, is this a common experience? Are other people having this experience? He wanted me to write about this type of stuff, I had sort of my own stories, and I was like, I don't know if I feel ready to write about it. Because I want to make sure that like, my experiences are valid, my experiences are valid, right? And that's one of the things I've learned. But at the time, I was very unsure and sort of afraid to step into this. So I was like, let's collect data, right? Like a .
- [Hong]: So you're talking about dating and race and like, it's a minefield, you don't wanna just walk in there.
- [Jason]: You don't want to just run in there, right? And so I put together a couple questions on a Google doc in a Google Form and add its things in other categories, like, family, like identity, stereotypes in general, and just threw it on social media. I was like, maybe I'll get 20, 30 people to take it, it'll help flush it out, right? And like it got shared like crazy. I knew I tapped into something very sort of like deep right? In that moment. And that's sort of like that was like the Burning Man rides movement . There's something here, there was someone who commented in the study saying, "one of the things that I felt "was that I never had a chance to be a young man, "as an Asian person. "I was either sort of a boy child, not fully, "like given credit for being an adult, "or I was an older guy. "there was never this moment where I was like, "a young man in my own right full of potential and promise, "and like someone to bet on. "I was like, "either like underdeveloped, "and seemed immature or I was like, "Oh, you're kind of old now."
- [Hong]: Wait did I say that?
- [Jason]: I don't think it was you.
- [Hong]: It feels very like I can relate to that.
- [Jason]: But you relate.
- [Hong]: Because I went to college when I was 16. So for me, it's like immediate.
- [Jason]: Wow, I didn't know that. That's crazy.
- [Hong]: It's like you, you were just like a kid in high school and trying to hang out and trying to be cool. Obviously, I wasn't cool, but like, trying to just be a regular kid, And then like, I remember that summer, I turned 16, I'm like, holy crap, like I started college,
- [Jason]: You know men, generally speaking, can struggle with like having those sort of more, emotionally vulnerable conversation, which is what you sort of need to do.
- [Hong]: I think it's really important. I think, obviously, as an immigrant kid growing up in New York, there weren't a ton of people that you could look up to like role models, like the old saying, you can't be what you can't see. So I took role models from other communities. So I'm a huge hip hop head, and again, that's why I like Menlo Park so much. But, in your study, I remember like there weren't any common role models that we could share. And I think part of this is the Asian community is so disparate, right? Like there's 25 different, cultures that could be quantified as Asian America in the US. We're not just one group.
- [Jason]: But Crazy Rich Asians is a very, you know, very exotic sort of like they're going to Asia, right? There's like two Asian Americans who go to Asia where it's like all these other Asians that are like so crazy. Like these people could basically be white. And it was just like if you just change your bits of the story, it would sort of.
- [Hong]: But to your point like movies have a huge impact, right? You have written an article about the new movie that just came out.
- [Jason]: Always be my Maybe.
- [Hong]: Always be my Maybe. So talk about that movie.
- [Jason]: For me, what was so remarkable was that this film actually portrays an Asian American guy as a lovable loser. Which honest face sounds negative?
- [Hong]: No, I like it, tell me. Obviously, I know where this is going. Because like I think in the startup world, at least, everybody's looking to fund these like Nick Young's right? And you have to match this like, crazy, like stereotype of what a founder is and then like the level of losers. The guy that everybody actually roots for.
- [Jason]: Right people talks about Crazy Rich Asians as, "Oh, look at all these like hot sexy Asian guys." And It's like, "Yeah, great, I want to see that for sure." But it's also like, all of these guys are super rich, and they're super ripped, and they're charming and like, classy and sophisticated and all these things. You know, it's easy to be the love interest when you're wealthy, good looking and, charming. The world often value specialists and there's this book, Range, which is all about why generalists can surpass specialists in many ways. And I think in general, specialists are more brittle. I mean, that's the human species, right? It's like we are so adaptable, right? Like we've adapted to all these climates, we go underwater, we're going to space, we're not the strongest or the sort of most hidebound, or like the sharpest claws but we've been able to adapt and improvise. And I think being a generalist means having a broader sort of expansive tools and knowledge and networks to kind of like, collect in and pull together what you need.
- [Jason]: When I was at various times, so I got married in April. And when I was talking to investors, prior to getting married, or like, right after getting married, I made sure to like talk about getting married a lot, right? Because I would be like, "Oh yeah, I'm like, a month out from getting married." And they'd be like, "oh, congratulations, It's so exciting." Like, tell me about your, fiance or wife. And that immediately started to humanize, right? I'm not just like another guy doing a pitch. I'm like, a guy was about to get married to the love of his life and celebrate this occasion Right?
- [Hong]: That's interesting, so the life story impacts your fundraising story.
- [Jason]: I would go out of my way to sort of introduce that. And like, as I'm saying this I'm thinking now I'm like, Man, I'm not doing enough of what I'm talking about in some of the more recent conversations I've had, right? Because like I, you know that that's over, right? Now when you type up my honeymoon, that's coming, right? But that was a decision that I made, right? To not just be like, "Oh, I'm gonna rattle off all the like successes I've had." Because I need you to care about me, because I know that you probably are more likely to see me as an other than you are to see me as one of us, you. And so, I mean, that's like a simple example.
- [Hong]: Well, that's really interesting, because I think on the flip side for me when I was fundraising last year and into this year, I would almost purposely avoid talking about family. And family for me is the most important thing. So it's hard to like not talk about, my wife or my kids or any of that stuff. Because in certain worlds that's a negative. "Oh, how can you be focusing your company, "If you also have to, be a dad?" And you actually wanna be a good dad versus like when these guys just have like, "resources available?" And I think I know for certain when I talk to female founders that they go out of their way to not talk about relationships, or pregnancies or anything.
- [Jason]: Yeah, it's a double bind, right? If you talk about these things, then it's like, "Oh, are you focused on the business?" But and especially, there's research that shows that. For women, it's sort of like you, you can't win in either case, right? If you don't talk about you seem too hard ass. And then if you do talk about that, it's like, "Oh, well, now." I made a video for Midgame that was like a promo of our product GA. So this is my shirt. Says Tails, Navi, Ghost, and GA.
- [Hong]: Alright, so give people a little background. Midgame is your latest startup.
- [Jason]: Yeah, Midgame is an AI companion for gamers. And it allows you to sort of access information in real time using your voice. So you don't have to all tap out of the game. You have to check your phone, you do all these things. Over time, we hope to allow you to even, transform your gaming experience through your voice and through other means that sort of like, it's sort of like, adds to that immersion and experience of playing video games, right? So GA is the name of our assistant, that's what you call it. And so a lot of this is, there's a lot of technology behind it. Sometimes implementation is hard to experience if you like, if you can't use the assistant yourself for this game, and you don't play this game where you don't. It's just very hard to understand. A big part of founder's jobs to paint a vision, and to help people like see what this could be, right? So, I mean, this came from a conversation with a friend who was like, "shouldn't you be making some kind of promo thing "that you can like help people," and I was like, "you're right of course I need to do that." So I went into keynote. And I like built out using the animations tool and iMovie, a whole sort of like Apple style like punchy like fast, 80 second, right? Like video that talks through like, it's like the problem. The solution like how it works and like where it goes, right? And I'm really proud of it and like we posted on Reddit, it got 650 of votes on Reddit, and people were like, "well, I really need this. "When will it be ready?" And I now like play that at the beginning of my a lot of my conversations, right? Because I'm just like, if you don't know anything, about what we're doing this video will help you understand. And it gets people fired up and people will be like, "that's a lot of what founders do, right?" You're you're selling your vision, you're persuading people. You're convincing their board to do this thing that doesn't exist yet. But could exist will exist might exist, with the right sort of ingredients.
- [Hong]: Well, I mean, I feel like in my role in recruiting the pitches, we have this great big vision, we're gonna build this huge thing. We can't build it without you.
- [Jason]: That's right.
- [Hong]: The reason we're starting this podcast and the reason we want to bring on people like you, it's not a simple story anymore. It's not this kind of like, five quotes that you get into an article, right? Like, this is real life. And a lot of us choose this life, for various reasons. But at the end of day, I think we all get measured upon what our impact is.
- [Jason]: We are all sort of like bound together in these ways. And I think whether you're influencing like a few people or 10s of people or 100s of people, right? That is the sort of ultimate legacy right? All code will be rewritten. How many all sort of like the like all these things, but sort of those those relationships are sort of what kind of like, connects it all together.
- [Hong]: Jason's new company's called Midgame. I don't know if the blog is still up. The Art of Ass Kicking?
- [Jason]: The Art of Ass Kicking is still up. It's just my name, jasonshen.com If you want to follow us, you can go to midgame.gg, GG stands for good games. GG, well played.
- [Jason]: Yeah, well played and then our Twitter handle's also midgamegg. On Twitter, you could follow me, I'm Jason Shen S-H-E-N. On most things I end up getting Jason Shen. So, yeah, we'd love to hear from you if you wanna learn more about what we're working on. The Asian Man Study is The asianamericanman.com So that's also pretty easy to find. And yeah, hit me up. Let me know if you want to collaborate, explore more about what we're doing with building this assistant for video games. And I'd love to chat.
- [Hong]: Awesome, thank you Jason for coming. This is the first episode of FundBMC and we'll hope to do a lot more of these with very interesting people like Jason
- [Hong]: Cool, I think we've covered a lot. This is awesome. I mean like, we haven't seen each other in years.
- [Jason]: Jump right in.
- [Hong]: I think you were just like, "hey, I'm in town, like let's get coffee and I was like, "cool Let's get coffee, but Let's record the whole thing." So thanks for being in game for this, I think was a lot of fun.
- [Jason]: It was a lot of fun. Thanks so much for having me on.