#814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking

Chatri Sityodtong (@yodchatri https://www.instagram.com/yodchatri/) is the founder and CEO of ONE Championship https://www.onefc.com/, one of the top-10 biggest sports-media properties in the world in terms of viewership and engagement (alongside the NBA, Formula One, Champions League, and Premier League), with a global broadcast reach to 195 countries. Sponsors: AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/Tim https://drinkag1.com/tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.) Helix Sleep https://helixsleep.com/tim premium mattresses: https://HelixSleep.com/Tim https://helixsleep.com/tim (20% off on all mattress orders) Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim high-yield cash account: https://Wealthfront.com/Tim https://wealthfront.com/Tim New clients get 3.30% base APY from program banks + additional 0.75% boost for 3 months on your uninvested cash (max $150k balance). Terms and conditions apply. The Cash Account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC (“WFB”) member FINRA/SIPC, not a bank. The base APY as of 1/30/26 is representative, can change, and requires no minimum. Tim Ferriss, a non-client, receives compensation from WFB for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of WFB, which creates a conflict of interest. Individual experiences and outcomes will differ. Instant withdrawals may be limited by your receiving firm and other factors. Investment advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Securities investments: not bank deposits, not bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value. Timestamps: [00:00:00] Start. [00:06:49] Chatri Trisiripisal vs. Yodchatri Sityodtong [00:08:35] My own experience with Muay Thai. [00:10:05] Chatri’s introduction to Muay Thai. [00:10:58] Chatri processes the strained relationship with his father. [00:17:28] Fight Porn and my introduction to ONE. [00:18:56] A pep talk in Japanese. [00:23:00] Chatri’s secret life in a Harvard dorm with his mother on $4 a day. [00:30:11] How Chatri made the money to fuel his martial arts ambitions. [00:35:19] Why wealth has never provided Chatri with a sense of security. [00:38:43] The moment Chatri began to fulfill one his mother’s prophecies. [00:41:08] “To unleash your greatness, you must be surrounded by greatness.” [00:44:56] Witnessing Yamato-damashii: the Japanese warrior spirit. [00:48:43] Moving to Singapore and starting Evolve. [00:51:59] Overcoming ONE’s initial financial challenges. [01:03:06] Building ONE with Bushido-grade excellence. [01:08:25] How ONE maintains quality and quantity fights and fighters. [01:16:05] Leveraging social media to bring compelling human stories to ONE’s forefront. [01:26:40] Chatri’s $100 million breakfast with Sequoia Capital. [01:41:42] Making deals with CAA’s Fabian Stechel. [01:45:13] A serendipitous meeting that resulted in investment from Qatar. [01:47:51] Changing lives and building relationships across generations with martial arts. [01:51:35] Recommended reading and admirable storytellers. [02:01:03] A gracious invitation. [02:02:39] Where in the world is ONE enjoyed most? [02:07:14] Dealing with AI development and deep fakes. [02:08:45] Global broadcasting business from behind the scenes. [02:16:31] Funds raised and the competitive benefits of being early in the game. [02:19:30] Fond regards for Renzo Gracie. [02:23:49] Legendary fighters we would love to witness in their prime. [02:26:27] High marks for Marcelo Garcia. [02:29:23] How I learned what Chatri calls “flawless” Japanese. [02:31:16] Chatri’s billboard and parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  All right, all right, all right. Good day, ladies and germs, boys and girls. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job, that's me, Tim, to deconstruct world-class performers in every interview to tease out the lessons learned, habits, routines, frameworks, anything at all, favorite books, who knows, that you can apply to your own lives. My interview today was so much fun. I just wrapped it. It was with none other than Chatri Siddhatong. Now, if you don't know that name, you will, and that is because Chatri is the founder and CEO of ONE. You might know it as ONE Championship, and if you don't know it, you're about to know it. It is one of the top 10 biggest sports media properties in the world in terms of viewership and

• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

  engagement, right alongside the NBA, Formula One, Champions League, and Premier League, with global broadcast reach to 195 countries. It is the largest sports media property in Asia. ONE is a celebration of Asia's great cultural treasure, martial arts, and the associated values that you might think of when you think of Asian martial arts: integrity, humility, honor, respect, courage, discipline, and compassion. So how does that translate? What it means is they produce one of the best spectator sport experiences I have ever seen in my life. I first came across it on Amazon Prime. Thank you to my friend Doug for making that recommendation, and it blew my mind for a million reasons that we'll

• 1:25Tim Ferriss?

  get into in this conversation with Chatri. But it features not just one type of martial art, but many different disciplines. So the best of submission fighting, the best of Muay Thai, the best of MMA, and they approach it very, very differently from what you may have seen before. And his story is incredible, from being dirt poor to ultimately cutting his teeth in various ways in business and ending up where he is. We talk about key decisions, key negotiations, lessons learned from failures, how he actually pulled himself up by his bootstraps and was able to attract and recruit the help of people internally.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  Externally, athletes, innovations across the board. It was a super, super fascinating conversation. I took a lot of notes. I think there are a lot of takeaways and you can find everything. One championship at one FC.com or one championship across all social media. And I believe, and this is a big statement, that they have one of the best social media teams in the world in any industry sector, discipline, you name it. They are spectacularly good and we'll get into how they used a very, very focused approach to become very large in a relatively short period of time.

• 2:53Tim Ferriss?

  And with that, I will let us get to the conversation. Right after a few words from the people who make this podcast possible, we will dive in with Chatri Siddhantam. Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to continuous improvement. You can see it in their coffee, try Glitch Coffee. You can see it in Giro Dreams of Sushi. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus on improving one thing, one product over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1. I met the founder way back in the day randomly in a coffee shop in Argentina.

• 3:34Tim Ferriss?

  It must've been between 2005, 2007 and ever since then, one product. They are now unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop, once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health. I love it for its great taste. I just mix it with cold water. It's easy and the way it helps fill nutritional gaps in my diet. It's my nutritional insurance. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. NSF conducts annual audits of AG1's manufacturing facilities, reviews ingredients for toxicology and ensures AG1's label claims.

• 4:20Tim Ferriss?

  are accurate. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3 K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit and five of the upgraded AG1 Travel Packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drinkag1.com/tim. As many of you know, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Midnight Luxe mattress from today's sponsor, Helix Sleep. I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. Kind of over the top, to be honest. I mean, they frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. What kind of mattresses?

• 5:05Tim Ferriss?

  And what do you do? What's the magic juju? It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom, which I sometimes sleep in, and I picked it for its very soft but supportive feel to help with some lower back pain that I've had. The Sunset Elite delivers exceptional comfort while putting the right support in the right spots. It is made with five tailored foam layers, including a base layer with full perimeter zoned lumbar support right where I need it, and middle layers with premium foam and micro coils that create a soft contouring feel, which also means if I feel like I want to sleep on my side, I can do that without worrying about other aches and pains I might create. And with a luxurious pillow top for pressure relief, I look forward to nestling into that

• 5:49Tim Ferriss?

  bed every night that I use it. The best part, of course, is that it helps me wake up feeling fully rested with a back that feels supple instead of stiff. That is the name of the game for me these days. Helix offers a 100-night sleep trial, fast free shipping and a 15-year warranty. So check it all out. And you, my dear listeners, can get between 20 and 27% off plus two free pillows on all mattress orders. So go to helixsleep.com/tim to check it out. That's helixsleep.com/tim. With Helix, better sleep starts now.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 6:49Tim Ferriss?

  Chatri, nice to see you. Thanks for making the time.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot, Tim. Glad to be on your show.

• 6:54Tim Ferriss?

  And greetings from the other side of the planet. Where are you right now? Where do we find you?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  I just landed back in Singapore where I live, but you know, I'm always on a plane every week in different parts of the world.

• 7:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you seem like a man of intensity and endurance, which we're going to get into in some measure. But let's begin at the very beginning. What is your birth name? And why is your current name seemingly different?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  My birth name is Chatri Trisiripisal on my passport. It's what my parents gave me, but I use my martial arts name, which my grandmaster Kuryotong Senan gave me. So in Thailand, when you train and compete for a given gym, the master of that gym will eventually bestow upon you your last name. And it's usually the fight name is the last name is the name of the gym. It's just a historical custom in Thailand. So my first name is Chatri, which is my birth name. And my last name in the martial arts world is Sit Yotong, which my grandmaster gave to me. Actually, he gave me the fight name of Yat Chatri Sit Yotong, which means extraordinary warrior.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  And Sit Yotong is student of Yatong. Long winded thing of just, I identify with maybe in part because of my complicated history with my own father that I feel so much closer to my grandmaster and use the name that he bestowed upon me. And it's just one of these things that kind of funny, but evolved, but it's, you know, but if you go ask any old school fighter from Thailand, all over the world, they're still using their fight name. This is part of the culture of Thailand.

• 8:35Tim Ferriss?

  The last name bestowing is something I imagine a lot of listeners will not be familiar with. But I remember ages and ages and ages ago, training at the Fairtex gym in San Francisco. And then actually going to Bangpli in Thailand to visit the Fairtex camp.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh my God, you are hardcore old school martial arts, man. That's amazing. That's amazing. So you must have known Boonkurt Fairtex in San Francisco and yeah.

• 9:06Tim Ferriss?

  And Fairtex, Jong Senan. And a number of people I remember at the time who were outside of Moitai were like, wow, what do they feed people in that family? And I was like, that's not really how it works, but.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. So the two biggest gyms, I guess, in history and longevity in Thailand have been Fairtex and Sit Yotong. And so, yeah, exactly, Bunghut, Fairtex, Jongshan, Fairtex. You know, everyone adopts the last name, or rather takes a gym name as your last name, as you well know now. I didn't realize you also did a lot of Muay Thai. Amazing.

• 9:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, that was my favorite striking art. Not that I was exceptionally good, but in part because coming from wrestling, I had effectively zero head movement. So I tried boxing. It was very, very hard for me to get accustomed to head movement. And in Muay Thai, certainly, there is head movement, but it's just a different species of head movement. And I was like, I think this is going to fit my programming a little bit better than other options. So we'll come back to that. But could you paint a picture for us of your childhood? And then also just describe what happened, if the internet research serves me correctly, in 1997 or so?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  I grew up in a well-to-do family in Thailand. So I was a bit an anomaly in that sense. You know, Muay Thai, as you probably know, Tim, is a very poor person's sport in Thailand. Yet, when I was about nine years old, my father took me to Loompinney Stadium, which is the mecca of Muay Thai. And I just got bit by the bug. And of course, you know, Muay Thai is on TV seven days a week in Thailand. And I got the bug early and I started training. And then one day, I, you know, asked my father, can you take you to Sit Yotong Camp, which was the number one gym at the time in the country? And that's where I began my training under Kryotong. And, you know, six hour days, and it was incredible training. But later in life, in the early 90s, my father started to, his business started to falter, and then he eventually went bankrupt,

• 11:04Speaker 02

  and he abandoned the family.

• 11:06Tim Ferriss?

  What was the business? What type of business was involved?

• 11:08Speaker 02

  He was in real estate. He was in real estate.

• 11:10Tim Ferriss?

  And what caused that collapse?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  I think real estate goes through cycles, and my father was caught on the wrong end of a cycle with a lot of debt. You know, he just over invested. And I never actually spoke to him about it. That's what I kind of surmise, put the pieces together to this day, because one minute, my father was doing well, and the next minute, you know, the bank repossessed the car, the house, and he had nothing, literally nothing. And then, um, when he abandoned the family,

• 11:36Speaker 02

  It was a really rough time and I had a lot of anger with, and I didn't see my father for, I don't know how many decades, but I eventually reached out to him, maybe around 10 years ago. I went to go find him. I found him in Pattaya, which is where I spent a lot of my childhood, in Thailand, and it was dirt, dirt poor. And of course, how you remember your father when you're younger versus, you know, he was frail and old and wasn't what I had imagined my reunion would be. I reached out to him because, you know, I carried so much anger with me for so long. And I really wanted to know why, after my father went bankrupt, why would he just throw his family away and just abandon, you know, basically disappear? I remember, I don't know if I've ever said this story before, but I remember that night when I saw

• 12:20Speaker 02

  him and we went to go out to eat dinner. And it was weird because he's so old and so frail. And I asked dad, you know, this first time I really asked him, you know, why would you just disappear? He was a man of very few words and in his own way explained that as a Thai man growing up, he felt so ashamed of himself that he could not, no longer provide food for his family. And it's just the way society works. Maybe it's Asian society, maybe it's Thai society, but in many ways, it was just easier for him to just, I guess, disappear rather than face every day looking at his kids and his wife. You know, I tried to be empathetic about it, you know, and I thought we had time to rekindle

• 13:05Speaker 02

  the relationship. But unfortunately, shortly after, a couple of years later, you know, he ended up, crazy story, he ended up getting a stroke about a year after that. And it's the worst kind of thing. I didn't even know this kind of thing existed, but he became completely paralyzed. Except his brain was a hundred percent working and his eyes were working. So he could hear you, he could see you, but I mean, it's like, I guess you're locked in your body. And that was very rough for me to see. And then about a year and a half after that, he passed away.

• 13:37Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. I mean, what timing? And I don't know if this is the right way to put it, but what luck that you reached out to him a year or a year and a half prior to have that conversation? Did having the conversation offer the catharsis that you had hoped for? Or contribute in a way that has really stuck with you?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  It took my anger away, or maybe my anger dissolved over time. It was bittersweet because I thought that I had this kind of like, I want to go find my father and we can talk it out and then we're going to be closer than ever and there's going to be a real relationship. So in that regard, it didn't happen that way. And then the crazy thing is, you know, at his funeral in Thailand, in Budan funeral, you cremate the body. I was, you know, obviously giving the eulogy to all family members. And, you know, again, I didn't have a lot of emotional attachment to my father because I hadn't seen him in so many years and very, very distant. I had memories of him, but we weren't close by any means. I ended up not being able to keep it together. I was bawling.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of weird things, you know, like in some weird way, I finally understood my father. So life came full circle. But in a weird way, you know, I wish I had looked for him earlier. When I had managed to bring the family out of poverty, you know, I could have easily, if I wasn't so angry, if I wasn't so stuck to my pride, you know, maybe I would have had had that quote unquote fairy tale ending. One thing I learned about life, man, Tim, is like, you never know what is good luck or bad luck until many years later, when you discover what the lessons were of that experience, right? So anyways, I'll add his eulogy, you know, we cremated his body. I guess maybe a typical Asian household or Thai household, my father was larger than life. And that's how I remembered him as a kid, because he was the one who introduced me to Muay Thai.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  He took me to Limpinee Stadium. He took me to Siyotong Camp. And when someone gets cremated, it's the, I've gone to funerals, of course, you know, when I lived in America where you bury people, other than my grandmaster, watching someone get cremated, and the next day, you actually come back and pick up the ashes and the bones. They asked me, what do you want to do with the bones and the ashes? And I thought, you know, I'm gonna go to the beach where my father brought me. I took a boat out and then we sprinkled ashes everywhere. But that's also kind of crazy because that's what you realize, you know, everything we have in life. At the end of the day, my father, like this great man, you know, when I was a kid, just ashes in the ocean. And that's what all of us are gonna end up. And I remember going back that night on the plane

• 16:10Speaker 02

  and thinking to myself, all the things that my father did wrong in life, and all the anger I had him. I started to write down the things that I was grateful for. He gave me my name, which crazy enough ended up being symbolic of what my life's work would end up being, right? He's a guy who introduced me to Muay Thai. He's a guy who took me to the beach for the first time. So many things. So I prefer to remember my father for the good, all the good that he did, than focus on the big mistakes he did in life. And I think that's something I learned from him, just through his life. Going through his life and watching it from afar and being a part of it, and in the end, the things that he did wrong, I don't want to live my life that way. But at the same time,

• 16:53Speaker 02

  I wouldn't be here, running the world's largest martial arts organization, if it weren't for him, taking me to Muay Thai.

• 17:01Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for that story. I have a complicated relationship with my father, to put it mildly. And that's actually very, very helpful for me to hear. So, once we're done recording, I'm gonna go back and listen to it again because I think it underscores perhaps some things that I need to do, frankly. So I really appreciate that a lot. And from here, I want to hop to your mom. We might come back to your dad, certainly. I recall very distinctly, well, let me back up and give you a little bit of context on how I got my first exposure to one. So I have a

• 17:42Tim Ferriss?

  Private group chat on my phone, as a lot of people do. Now, my friends created this and they named it Fight Porn. That's the name of the chat. And the reason it's called Fight Porn is that I'd say my four or five closest friends are all former competitive fighters. And effectively, this chat is video clips, discussions about fights, not really betting on fights, but kind of putting your reputation on the line to try to predict who's gonna win, who's gonna lose, what round, etc. And one of my friends, Doug, I'll give him credit, said, "Have you guys seen One?" And I was like, "What the hell is One?"

• 18:24Tim Ferriss?

  And he pointed me to One on Amazon Prime. And I thought to myself, "How on earth have I not seen this before?" And I have to say, it brought back so many memories of primetime, and hopefully you take this as a compliment, Pride, K1, all of these incredibly powerful memories, these nostalgic experiences that I had. And blew my mind, completely blew my mind. So I'm flashing forward a little bit, but that's a way of setting the table for a video that I watched, because I was tracking Takehara, I'm gonna say it with the kind of American pronunciation, Sagawa.

• 19:07Tim Ferriss?

  And at one point, I saw a video of you giving him a pep talk. It wasn't really a pep talk, it was more like a rallying support, not really a lecture, but like a pat on the back, a smack in the ass. And it wasn't in English. What language was that, that you were speaking?

• 19:26Speaker 02

  So I was speaking Japanese. My mother's Japanese, my father's Thai. And that was after he had gotten knocked out by Rotang. So that was the biggest fight of his career. That was March of this year in Tokyo, Saitama Super Arena. I mean, Tim, you are a fight expert for sure, you know, for you to go back. I mean, it was literally where Pride and K1, literally, you know, Saitama Super Arena, you know, the legendary stadium in Tokyo. And Takehara versus Rotang, arguably the two greatest pound-for-pound strikers on the planet. And Takehara got knocked out in the first round, I think in 80 seconds. And I went backstage. Congratulate the winners and et cetera. And I went to go see Takehiko and, you know, he was heartbroken and crying.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I went backstage and I gave him a pep talk. I said, hey, you know, these things happen. It doesn't take away from your legacy, your body of work. You know, split millisecond here, split millisecond there. And the outcome could have been very different. And I said, the only thing you can do is go back and review what you did wrong and level up. That's one thing I think amongst the fight committee, amongst, you know, our fighters. You know, I have a very close bond with our fighters because, you know, I'm a lifelong martial artist. I'm, you know, Muay Thai all of my life and Jiu Jitsu black belt. So when I gave these one-on-one talks or actually before every big event, I go backstage and have all the fighters who are going to compete that night

• 20:53Speaker 02

  and give them an inspirational talk about what this night means and how they can carve their legacy and unleash the greatness upon the world. So I feel very deeply when I see something like that. And Takehiko was crying. He was, man, broken, broken. His team happened to be there filming it. It wasn't our team. They, you know, they filmed and they put it out. Yeah. And it ended up going viral in Japan. I don't think people knew that I could speak Japanese. The Japanese fans know that I'm half Japanese, but I don't really use it that much.

• 21:22Tim Ferriss?

  This is a way to segue to your mom because, and I have to say, I have never been to Saitama Super Arena. Someday I hope to actually check it out. I was though in Japan about two weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. And I was at the All Japan Judo Championships at the Budokan, which was awesome, which was fantastic. You've never seen so many cauliflower ears in your entire life. It was just fantastic. So it was also my first time setting foot in Budokan, which was absolutely.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Legendary, historic.

• 21:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. Just absolutely iconic location in a beautiful, beautiful spot where, by the way, it's impossible to get any rideshare because you're right next to the Imperial Palace. So I realized that and ended up having some nice walks as a result. But coming back to your mom, it seems like your mom and your dad informed your life in very different ways. And your dad may have been in some respects like Hamen Kyoshi, right? Like he, he was like the opposite teacher. He's kind of you, you're like, I don't want to make some of those same mistakes. And then your mom was very-

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right, I forgot. You spent a year in Japan or something like that, right?

• 22:29Tim Ferriss?

  I did.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  That's why your accent is, I was like, what the? I was like, oh, man, Tim, Tim, it's, it's like, we're like kindred spirits here, you know?

• 22:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, you majored in East Asian Studies, that's what it was, right?

• 22:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of overlap. So it's like you came to the US to study, I went to Tokyo.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 22:50Tim Ferriss?

  And actually, I'm still very close with my host family. Went out to have dinner with them from when I was fifteen. So it's been thirty plus years.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Wow, crazy.

• 22:58Tim Ferriss?

  I'm still, I'm still close with them.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:00Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to paint a picture for folks and then you can fill in some of the gaps. But it seems like at some point, your mom was moved in with you in your dorm room?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:14Tim Ferriss?

  Could you explain what some of that journey looked like and how that happened?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  When my father abandoned us and went bankrupt, it was my mom's crazy idea. It's like, you know, Chacha, you're the oldest son, given that you live in Japan, the hierarchical nature of family structures in Asian society. And now that my father was gone, it was my duty to take care of my younger brother, my mother and, and their wellbeing. But we had, you know, literally no money and I had one suitcase and my mom had borrowed money from all the people who were remaining to be our friends. Cause obviously when, when something scandalous like that happens in, at the time in Thailand, you know, no one get divorced, no one ever went bankrupt, you know, it's just, these things didn't happen. But scrounged around about a thousand dollars and, you know, one suitcase, all, all of

• 24:03Speaker 02

  my life's belongings and I had to figure it out once I got to America. And it was her idea for me to, you know, apply and eventually immigrate. That was the game plan. It got so bad for her that she ended up moving in with me in my dorm. Obviously the school administration didn't know in college, actually in grad school. It was a tiny little single dorm room in Morris Hall at Harvard. You know, I slept on the floor and she slept on the bed and it was just barely enough room. And you know, you had one of these key cards where you open the dormitory door from the outside and in between classes, you know, just time it with her and give her my key card and, you know, living on $4 a day. And of course, you know, I didn't tell everybody this. Of course,

• 24:47Speaker 02

  my closest friends knew, but I was not proud of my family background or the fact that I was poor. You know, actually, I was deeply ashamed and I didn't want to talk about it. And so, you know, when people went to parties or people went out to dinners, I didn't do any of that stuff because I couldn't afford it. So, you know, I had to make some excuse every time. It's like, "Hey, Chatri, let's go out. You know, let's go to a club tonight. You know, there's gonna be, our friends are gonna be there." And I knew I can't go and afford a beer. I can't afford the entrance fee of a nightclub. So my mom was very, was very much a part of my graduate experience at Harvard. But amazingly, some of my best memories or most powerful memories, and obviously now today, they're more, I view them in a very positive light because of how

• 25:28Speaker 02

  we were very blessed in life. I remember lying there with my mom. I was, I'd be lying on the floor and my mom was on the bed. And, you know, she would ask me these crazy questions. We had no money. And she'd be like, "Chatri, one day, you know, I want us to go live in New York City." And, you know, just crazy things. And I'd be like, "Man, Mom." My stress was, how am I gonna get money for next month? And luckily, I was teaching Muay Thai. I taught, I was a tutor at Kaplan. I did all sorts of odd jobs. But my biggest worry was, you know, do I have enough money to even pay for the school tuition fees? So on an Excel spreadsheet, I budgeted $4 a day. If I went on the subway, that's a dollar. Like, man, you know, like, these are the things that

• 26:13Speaker 02

  consumed me when I was going through Harvard. I always say that without the love of my mother, I would never have been there in the first place. It was my mom who...

• 26:23Speaker 02

  When we had nothing, she really believed in me. And I think the saying is that, you know, when someone loves you, it gives you strength. When you love someone, it gives you courage. And I think that that's a very true statement when it comes to my relationship with my mother. She gave me both. I could feel her unconditional love and it gave me strength to do things when I was full of fear, doubts and insecurities. I wasn't some academically gifted guy or I wasn't. I remember I was that first week. I was dirt poor. I didn't feel like I belonged. I thought everyone was better than me, smarter than me. I didn't have money for the full ride, you know, I had to go find loans and, you know,

• 27:04Speaker 02

  it was just like a, a time of massive uncertainty in my life and I just, you know, I'd have to keep it to myself. But again, looking back on everything, the fact that I had my mother's love, that gave me strength every day to fight more. And I always say too, that, you know, if you're fighting for yourself, like you're fighting because you want a, a six-figure salary, you're fighting because you want to buy a nice car, it's very easy to quit. But when you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, it's impossible to quit. So in that moment, I was fighting for my family, fighting for my younger brother, fighting for my mother. Of course, you know, down the road as I, I was, again, been blessed with a lot of good luck in life. These are the things that I always remember is like, you know, when you're fighting for

• 27:48Speaker 02

  something much bigger than yourself, you become unbreakable. There's so many precious lessons that I learned from that journey. And crazy enough, when I made my first little bit of money, I think I was around thirty something, maybe thirty-one, I bought a condominium, you know, in New York City to surprise my mom because I remembered what she had told me in the dorm room. And brought her to New York and gave her the keys and it was overlooking the Hudson River. And it's one of my most favorite memories with my mom is, you know, surprising her with her own house because she had suffered for so long, for so long, that I would just be, to be able to see her face.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  And knowing that little crazy dream was, was born in the dark of midnight when we're going to sleep and she wanted to talk about our dreams. So in that sense, you know, she also gave me that. I'm, I'm a little bit of a crazy dreamer. My friends think of it a crazy guy and I think I got that from my mom.

• 28:50Tim Ferriss?

  Go mom. That's incredible.

• 28:56Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. It's a mess out there. The hyper complexities of the US economy, global economy can be very confusing and there's a lot of conflicting advice, but saving and investing doesn't have to be complicated. Here's something refreshingly simple to use and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4% APY, that's annual percentage yield, on your cash from partner banks with the Wealthfront cash account. That's nearly 10 times the national average, according to FDIC.gov. So, don't wait. Earn 4% APY on your cash today. Plus, it's eligible for up to 8 million in FDIC insurance through partner banks.

• 29:41Tim Ferriss?

  And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. There are already more than 1 million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more, and build long-term wealth. So, check it out. Visit wealthfront.com/tim to get started. One more time, that's wealthfront.com/tim. This is a paid endorsement of Wealthfront. Wealthfront brokerage isn't a bank. The APY is subject to change. For more information, see the episode description.

• 30:11Tim Ferriss?

  All right, well, we could spend an entire, like, the next two hours just unpacking what it was like to actually hand over the keys and how your mom responded. But I have a million questions I want to ask you. So, I would say, let me mention a few things and then we can add in any sort of seminal moments as needed. But my understanding is, you leave grad school, you try your hand in the world of startups, you do pretty well in the startup world, then end up going to finance and do pretty well on Wall Street. And my two questions are, I know that's a major, major condensation,

• 30:54Tim Ferriss?

  but number one, what was it like? And what was the moment? Because I remember for myself, the moment where you're like, "Oh, my God, I actually have some money." Right? Like, when was that moment? When you were like, "Oh, this is a little different. This is a lot different. I actually have some money." It doesn't need to be a lot of money, but like, what was that like? And then, why didn't you stay in finance? Why didn't you stay on Wall Street?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  So you know, it's kind of funny, like when I was a kid, there's a few things I was truly obsessed with, okay? I was obsessed with martial arts and that anyone from my childhood would tell you, Chacha, he's the martial arts guy, he's crazy about martial arts. But I was also crazy about, for Christmas, somebody gave me the book, One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. It's a great book. And I just got completely fascinated with, and I think I was like a teenager, but I was completely fascinated with, wow, people can actually make money doing that. And so I got obsessed with Warren Buffett and Ben Graham and Intelligent Investor. And this was like when I was, again, a teenager and I just voraciously consumed it. But I never thought I would ever, you know, ever do something along those lines, right? And it wasn't like I was investing or anything.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  It was just, it was just like a hobby curiosity, but it was almost borderline obsession. Cause I was reading, I mean, tons and tons of finance books and investing books just for like, for fun. So I always had kind of that in the back of my mind, you know? I don't know, it's like an external kind of stuff when you're, you're younger and as a kid. Oh, it'd be so glamorous to be, you know, a hedge fund manager on Wall Street, that kind of stuff. And so I think, you know, when I graduated from Harvard, I was dirt poor, dirt poor. I went to Silicon Valley and with my mom. You know, we slept in a tiny little apartment. I couldn't even afford beds or furniture. So we had two sleeping bags. And it's just, you know, we have, we talk about that all the time. We had two sleeping on the floor.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  And that was how I started my journey in Silicon Valley. Cause again, I just had this crazy dream, right? One of my classmates, Sun Lu, said, Chacha, let's, let's go to Silicon Valley. Let's, let's just try our luck. And, you know, both of us were poor and we had maybe a few months of cash left, you know, if at all. But by pure luck, we went to this angel investor day at Harvard. And this guy named Richard Armstrong, literally one hour meeting. He's like, okay, I'll cut you a $500,000 check.

• 33:15Tim Ferriss?

  It's a good meeting.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, we were like blown away. Soon and I were blown away. Out of that small little apartment where my mom and I slept on the floor, we started hiring people. And so I think at our peak, we had like six people or seven people in that little apartment.

• 33:31Tim Ferriss?

  And what was the business? Just in brief for folks?

• 33:33Speaker 02

  It was a company called Nextdoor Networks. Basically, it was enterprise resource software. It started off as a marketplace, but eventually morphed to enterprise optimization. So basically, Jiffy Lube was our largest customer at the time where you could come in with dynamic pricing and the software would, you know, how many bays there were, how many cars were coming in and, you know, what we see dynamic pricing today with airlines and stuff, right? Or hotels, that kind of software. But it was for the, it was more enterprise. We rode the internet boom all the way up and we came partially down and we're, we're lucky to have, you know, sold the company. We grew from like, you know, like six, seven people. And then within

• 34:12Speaker 02

  about a year, we'd raised $40 million and had like, I don't know, 200 people, you know, real offices and all that stuff. And it was just a crazy ride. This was in early 2000 or around 1999, 2000 timeframe. That was a crazy ride. And when I look through old photos, and it's kind of crazy. So soon, Lou, my classmate from Harvard, who started the company with me in Silicon Valley, he actually lives in Singapore now. So we hang out here and we, you know, we have obviously our collection of pictures and whatnot. And we go back and like, man, that was, that was some crazy times. And, and my mom would be there in front of the microwave because we would, we're so poor at the time, we would get a dollar, I remember dollar 25 microwave frozen food.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  And, you know, these little meals and that would be our lunch or dinner or whatever it is. And my mom would be in front of the microwave and, you know, we had photos of that and we're in our little startup and again, these crazy days. But, you know, after we sold the company, I said to myself, okay, I didn't make a ton where I could retire for life, but I had a good little bit of a nest egg. I thought deeply, you know, what do I want to do? And, you know, am I a software entrepreneur or what am I? You know, I started going into this kind of deep reflection.

• 35:19Tim Ferriss?

  If I could just interrupt for a second, I'm sorry. That initial nest egg, whether it was from savings, from salary or the eventual exit, was there a moment? And if not, that's totally fine. I'm just so curious, having been poor for so long and scrapped so hard and having to track everything in an Excel spreadsheet to make sure you don't exceed your $4 daily budget, et cetera, throughout school. Was there a time when it's like you went to the ATM to take out a little cash and you saw the balance and you're like, huh, okay, like, things might actually now start to be different?

• 35:57Speaker 02

  I grew up in a well-to-do home when I was a kid and saw it get wiped out. Like, I mean, it was like that, okay? That I, even to this day, I don't have that sense of, like, look at my bank account or look at what I have as a sense of like, security.

• 36:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  So I never had that moment of, ah, I could exhale.

• 36:20Tim Ferriss?

  Like exhaling, yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Exhaling, no. What we did, though, was we went with, I think, about like 13 or 14 employees and we rented two, um, you know, RV vans and we did a cross-country trip across America. And that took like, I forget, like a couple of weeks. That was me moving from Silicon Valley to New York. I didn't know at the time that I was going to move to New York and I was going to do the whole investing thing. That ride I remember. And I remember one night, it was in Albuquerque and we were in a RV park. And I went up to the roof, I was lying down on the roof of the RV and looking at the night sky, you know, it was completely beautiful stars and it was just clear sky.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  I mean, it was at night, but it was clear in the sense of all the stars. And that was the only moment I felt like, man, like, I can actually do anything from this point on. I don't have to scrape by or I don't have to, but it was just a momentary fleeing sensation of like, the universe is so big, I can do anything. You know, and it wasn't, I can do anything in an arrogant way. It was more like, whatever happened in the past, my family and my father, you know, I didn't have to be burdened by it or trapped by it. So it was a feeling of Not exhale, but a feeling of, you know, I'm not gonna be shackled by my past. But it's weird, you know, even to this day, I had this feeling of, man, life can throw you curveballs and all of a sudden I could be on the street.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  You know, it's crazy, it's crazy, but I still have this like fear or not fear. I don't know what it is. Or maybe what it is, is I never wanna be so poor again. Cause what really broke me, and this one I remember very poignantly. You know, I'd never seen my mother cry up until my father abandoned us. And it was one night and she tried to be this really strong, brave woman. And I saw her cry. That broke my heart in a million pieces. And then one other time I saw was in my dorm room, you know, at Harvard. And that was my fuel. I said to myself, I never wanna see my mother cry ever again. I'm gonna work my ass off. I'm gonna be rich.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  And so I naively thought genuinely that when I was poor, that man, if I just make a crap load of money, all my problems will be gone because like I will be able to provide for my mother. She'll have no more worries and this, that, the other. I didn't fully understand the meaning of life. I kind of like accepted society as you make a lot of money and that's just, you know, you buy things. It wasn't later in life until I was like, maybe my mid thirties, when I had my hedge fund. You know, we had a record year. I made a lot of money and of course you're very happy because you made a lot of money. But then I went down to the sushi restaurant down in the office building and I sat at the sushi bar for lunch. And I remember I was by myself and I remember all adrenaline and happy.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  But then over the course of that lunch, I don't know what happened. I just started thinking about, is this what life is about? Like, okay, so I'm gonna go now and buy more material things. I'm gonna go buy a house, another house or whatever. You know, it just hit me hard. Like, I'm like, man, what's gonna happen with my life is I'm gonna keep living this thing where, okay, yeah, I can make a lot of money. But I had a deep sense of emptiness. And yeah, my mom was taken care of. I was happy, of course, all that stuff. But it was almost just like, oh my gosh. And I remember a cold sweat thinking, I'm gonna roll forward another 50 years or whatever to the end of my life. And shit, all I have done really is buy and sell companies and short companies. My clients were all either multi-billion dollar institutions or multi-billionaire families.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  So then I'm like, what was I here on earth for? And what was I doing with my life? And I remember so well when I was five years old. But my mom would read this all the time throughout my elementary and middle school years and all that. She would always say, Chatri, you're going to grow up to help people. And you know, I was like, my mom is gibberish, you know, because she's like, you're so special, Chatri. And of course, I know every mother says that to their child, to their, you know? But it was weird when I was at that sushi restaurant. Those words came to me. It was like, Chatri, you're gonna help people when you grow up. And I was sitting there and I'm like, right now, I'm helping nobody. Because if I'm helping wealthy people get wealthier, okay, what is the point of that?

• 40:45Speaker 02

  And if I'm making multi-billion dollar institutions get wealthier, what is the point of that, right? And so I remember being very restless for several weeks. I couldn't sleep. Eventually I said, I have to do something. And it was again, pure luck, but also a lot of introspection. At the time, I was training at Henzo Gracie's school, Jitsu, training every day. And you know, it's crazy, this whole journey from being, you know, well-to-do family to being poor, to being, you know, escaping poverty and making it. I trained religiously, either Muay Thai or Jitsu, every single day. This is just part of my, my DNA. And actually, even to this day, you know, I just came back from training earlier today. It's my foundation to every single day.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  If I get my training, it's almost like, Tim, you know, you've competed as a wrestler and done San Shu and stuff like that. When you're in the moment of training or sparring, there is nothing else you could think of. You're in the moment, right?

• 41:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if you think of something else, you get reminded very quickly.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So it's almost like you can escape whatever, good or bad in your life, for those couple hours and not think about anything. If you go for a run, you'll still think about work, family, your relationship issues, your dad, whatever it is, you'll still think. Or if you go lift weights, okay? Your mind is still active on whatever, you haven't left your life. But you know, Tim, when you go train and you're sparring against someone who's really good. All that stuff evaporates. And so that's what I love. You know, I own a chain of martial arts schools here in Singapore. And I train every day with Muay Thai world champions. Is that Evolve? Yeah, Evolve, yes. Or Jiu Jitsu world champions.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  And I truly believe my grandmaster, Kurya Tong Sanan, used to always tell me, I never really understood it until much later in life. To unleash your greatness, you must be surrounded by greatness. And so every day I go to Evolve, these guys are the best in the world, what they do. You know, I'm a high level martial arts for sure, but not against the world champion, right? I mean, you train with Jong Sanan and Bunkert, you know how badass those guys are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Best in the world. There are levels, then there are levels. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Same thing for a black belt. I'm a black belt, but there are levels to being a Jiu Jitsu black belt. And for the most part, when I train with them, I get my ass kicked. But I relish that. Obviously, it's a two hour break from anything I'm dealing with in the world.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  But I love it because it's a daily and constant reminder of how I should live my life. You see, if I have ego, you know, I'm the owner. I walk in and this guy beats the crap out of me. In another world, if I didn't have martial arts my whole life, I'd be like, blah, blah, blah, you know, I'm the boss. But what I actually tell to my training partners, bro, whatever it is, don't go easy. Give me, if you can't submit me, you suck. You better submit me or you better hurt me. If we're sparring, you better get the best of me because you know, you're a world champion. Don't hold back because that's not what I want. I want you to help me improve.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  And so you have to, you know, let your ego completely disappear. In society, I'm a CEO, but when I'm in training, I'm a nobody. And these guys beat on me. But it levels me up. And it's a daily reminder to me that I'm here to learn, grow and evolve and be the very best martial arts I can be. And the only way to do it is by surrounding yourself with greatness. Because diamonds are created under heat and pressure. And that's how I think all of us, how we all can unleash our greatness in life is, it's kind of sad, but it's through love, pain and suffering. That combination can work magic in terms of unleashing human potential.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  You will discover things about yourself that you never even knew existed in you. When you go through a process of love, pain and suffering. And so that's something I do every day. Number one, I love it. It's my greatest obsession in life. But I do go through pain and I do go suffering every single day. Because it's a part of this warrior mindset. I mean, you spent time in Japan, you know, the whole bushido, the whole samurai spirit.

• 45:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yamato damashii.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, you nailed it. This is a, what Tim is talking about, guys, is this Japanese warrior spirit that every Japanese person has, you know, in their heart. Actually, that's why it's the birthplace of mixed martial arts. It's a birthplace of kickboxing. Obviously, the birthplace of karate and aikido and judo and kendo. It's a magical country. And I'm not saying that because I'm half Japanese, but the more I understand about Japan, the more I truly appreciate the culture. And so one of that is this sense of unbreakable warrior spirit. Japanese fighters are somewhat the toughest, and I don't mean technically. I mean, I'm talking about you cannot break a high level Japanese fighter. You just, you know, and if you went to the Budokan of Washington, the judo championships, these guys, they don't break. They don't break.

• 45:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, they'll go until they can't go. I still remember to this day, a fight way back in the day. So I was in Japan for this way back, which was Pancras. So Pancras had just launched. And it was a fight between Bas Rutten and Funaki. And Funaki got beaten into, he looked like a tomato that had been kicked around a room by 12 kids for an hour. I mean, he was so destroyed and he just kept getting up. And I mean, there's a point where I remember Bas was just like, what is this? What are we doing here?

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:26Tim Ferriss?

  And that I, to this day, from 15, I remember watching that and thinking, good lord, this is just a different species of experience. And just to come back to the mixed martial arts in Japan for a second. So when I was there, the way I initially got exposed to all this was through Shu To. So Sayama Satoru, the first generation tiger mask.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Yes, unbelievable. He was at the event in March in Satomoto.

• 46:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, really?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  He was my guest. He was my personal guest.

• 46:58Tim Ferriss?

  He is a tough. Tough, tough, tough human and a very, very tough coach. He used to take a shinai, like a bamboo kendo sword, cut off the tip. And then if his fighters were misbehaving or not doing what he wanted, he would hit them in the back of the legs, hit them on the back. He was tough and nasty fighter also. And from there then ended up wanting to figure out where to train. I went to this place called Kiguchi Dojo and Kiguchi was a sensei, was a former Olympic wrestler. And Rumina Sato and all these guys trained there.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Yes, Rumina's a friend, you know, and yeah, all these guys are telling me it's crazy. Cause I was literally just in Japan a couple of weeks ago with Sakamoto, who's the CEO of Shuto. I just was hanging out with the CEO of Pangraze and we're talking about all these old crazy stories. And again, yeah, yeah, Sam, my sensei, so everything you're saying is just crazy.

• 47:53Tim Ferriss?

  It's super small world. Yeah, super small world. And I'll give you two more small world. So I have a bone jutting out of the side of my ankle from Rumina, who put on the nastiest heel hook in practice. I'm still a little annoyed about that. It was so aggressive. But I ended up doing well after that. Probably should have tapped much earlier. Which also leads to NYC. We're going to talk more about Henzo. But I actually spent a little bit of time at Henzo's gym way, way back in the day. Only went a handful of times and it wasn't really his fault. It was an accident. But Rodrigo actually popped my right elbow and I'm getting surgery probably in the next few weeks. Cause I want to get back into training and the extensors have been torn for like 20 years.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, oh my god.

• 48:37Tim Ferriss?

  But that gym is phenomenal and it also ties into, just to loop a few things together. So from Wall Street, I have written down here, correct me if I get any of this wrong, but in 2008, you start Evolve.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I moved to Singapore in 2007. Yeah.

• 48:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Around there, yeah. But I'm still a hedge fund manager at that point. So it was crazy. So I get to Singapore to open up the Singapore office from a hedge fund. So we have offices in New York and Singapore. And there's no place to train because Singapore is not like a mech of martial arts. So I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna start a martial arts school. And it was really just selfishly for me to be able to train with, you know? And all my Sitthayatong brothers were in Thailand and it's a, you know, an hour and a half flight from Thailand. And they're all the baddest world champions on the planet. And that's how Evolve started. It was kind of like. Scratching your own edge. I don't wanna say a side hustle, it's my obsession. I mean martial arts is my obsession. So the fact that I didn't have any high level place to train when I was used to training at Henzo's,

• 49:39Speaker 02

  right when I was in New York, that was kind of the. Murderer's Row. The accidental birth. Yeah, so many good people there. Yeah, but that whole time period was when I'd reached Singapore was already after I had that lunch, that sushi lunch, you know? I'd already had this like sense of, you know, I have to do something bigger with my life. And it's not about making money. It's about helping others or making an impact. I think you had also said that's right, Tim, like when you retired from angel investing was like, angel investing was fun, but you didn't have that impact that you had when you came out with your books. And that's when you had, you know, millions of people reading your books and their lives changed by your lessons and learnings about life. When we work our asses off for something much bigger than ourselves and we know we're impacting,

• 50:24Speaker 02

  if you're lucky, your country and if you're even luckier, your continent and maybe the world, right? There's a sense of like, my life has meaning. And it's not about money. It's that somehow Tim Ferriss is on this planet and he's actually helping people, millions of people all over the planet through his books. Same thing I get now, the joy of one, that hearing about you having, you know, this WhatsApp group with your buddies. And all you guys are, you know, competitive former martial artists or fighters. And then you discover one and like that's, I get excited. Or like, you know, when I was in Japan and, you know, the entire stadium of Saitama completely sold out. Or when we were in the US in September in Denver, the Denver Nugget Stadium, completely sold out. And.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  You know, I was sitting there in Denver and I was just like, this is the Denver Nuggets. This is the NBA World Champion Stadium and it's completely sold out. And this company I started here in Singapore. And never in a million years did I think we would sell out. And then literally months later, we sold out in Thailand, Impact Arena, a massive stadium. And then in Qatar, Doha, the next month, also another massive stadium, and then Saitama Super Arena. So it was just like this last several months has just been a, just a reminder, you know, in some ways like as I travel around the world, this thing has just gone viral and you know, viewers are just massive, massive around the world. You see, that is the same, I feel whatever it about you, Tim, is you know, that same drive or that same sense of

• 51:51Speaker 02

  meaning in your life or purpose is the same thing. Well, I really get excited when someone's like, man, hey, I saw that fight where I was there or you know, or whatever.

• 51:59Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah, we're gonna definitely get back to this through line in a second, but vividly remember watching one for the first time and it brought back all of those memories from Japan because it's very elegantly produced in the sense that it's not like being trapped in a video game with a thousand distractions, which a lot of spectator sports have kind of turned into. It's like you have the lights on the fighters, the crowd is often darkened. And there's this, I'll paint with a broad brush here, but well, it depends on where the fights are, right? There's either in Japan, you know, the audience is very reverent and it's very quiet.

• 52:42Tim Ferriss?

  There might still be like a fight, oh, you know, like something like that. And they'll clap for certain things and shout for sure, but otherwise it's quiet. It's very different from the US. And then I've actually, so I've been to Lumpini before and I've been to Rajadamnon before.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 52:56Tim Ferriss?

  And that's like, ah, you know, it's like

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yes, high energy.

• 52:59Tim Ferriss?

  With the music and the betting and the, hey, hey, with every, every low kick or whatever is coming out. And as a viewer, as a spectator, it really allows you to kind of savor the main course without distraction, which is the fights. Let's hop to one. So it looks like around 2011, that's the birth of One Championship, was not an overnight success. And we're gonna get eventually, because I did not expect to find Mike Moritz and Doug Leoni in this story, which is

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, crazy.

• 53:33Tim Ferriss?

  Fucking wild. So I, we're definitely gonna come to that, because that seems like a really important moment. But before, I want to read one of my friend's questions. Because there have been different fight promotions in, say, Pan Asia before. For instance, in China, there's something called Sanda Wang, which is like King of Sanda, which actually has some great fights, but they never hopped, they never really hit the mainstream globally. And for the people who are wondering, Sanda is like shootboxing, it's like kickboxing plus throws. It's actually very, very entertaining to watch. But they never crossed the chasm, at least as far as I know. And my friend's question is this, you know, I want to know about the economics starting out.

• 54:18Tim Ferriss?

  What was the thesis about why they would succeed? And what did they learn from prior fight leagues, whether successes or failures? And then his other question, which is also one of my questions, is most importantly, how the fuck do they have such consistently high quality fights? Because I don't know what savant quant you have in the basement, who's money balled the matchups, but like, I'm accustomed to watching fight cards where it's like, yeah, okay, great, like two out of the six fights are good. And all of my friends have no idea, we've watched a lot of fights in every possible discipline, how you guys consistently

• 54:59Tim Ferriss?

  have such absurdly, but just starting out, I also want to know, what were the kind of original theses? And what did you learn from prior fight leagues as well?

• 55:10Speaker 02

  It's been over 13 years, and to be sitting where I'm sitting is honestly less than 1% of 1%, okay, odds. If you told me to do this again, I definitely would not have. I would have just rolled out a chain of martial arts academies, and I have had a few hundred locations by now. Why? The first three years, I really thought, you know, I love martial arts. Asia is the home of martial arts, 5,000 year history. There's 4 billion people here on the planet. Surely it's gonna be easy to create a global sports property. And naively, okay, I did this high level. I was like, well, you know, America has NFL, MLB, NASCAR. Europe has F1, Champions League, EPL, Bundesliga. These are all multi-billion dollar properties.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  You know, the market cap of NFL is, you know, north of 120 billion. NBA is 70 billion dollars and you know its valuation. And I thought, man, I'm a martial artist. I know martial arts. I'll be able to somehow aggregate four billion fans here and then export this around the world. And it'll be easy. The first three years, Tim, complete disaster. My buddy from Harvard and I, we made a little bit of money. So we invested thinking that, you know, within a year, we'd get institutional investors to back us, given our credentials and our expertise and the market opportunity. Zero. For first three years, we couldn't land. We met with 150 investor, institutional investors, zero.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Broadcasters across the continent, zero. Brands, forget about it. Governments, forget about it. Most governments banned martial arts content, actually on TV, live martial arts content.

• 56:48Tim Ferriss?

  Why?

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Because of the violent nature, okay? And first three years, literally like no fandom, no metrics. What's to speak of? Just losing money hand over fist.

• 56:59Tim Ferriss?

  What were the main objections of the investors or broadcasters? Maybe we focus on, let's just say, the investor's side. What were the most common patterns of objections or refutations?

• 57:14Speaker 02

  There was this billion dollar property and you're way too late. You're way too late.

• 57:19Tim Ferriss?

  Late to the game.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Late to the game. You want to create a global property? And I think at that time UFC was about a couple billion, right? And their metrics were already, you know, substantially larger than ours because we were just a startup. I remember when we first started our Facebook page, they had some like 20 million fans on Facebook or something like that. We started with zero. Today, and it's all organic, today we have 50 million. They have 50 million on Facebook as an example. But I'll tell you why, how we got very lucky. It was at the end of year three and I called my mom, my Japanese mom. Who was completely against me starting this, okay? Because in Japan, as you know, Tim, martial arts promotions, combat sports is run by Yakuza, the mafia in Japan. Mobbed up, yeah, it's super mobbed up.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  So my mom is this conservative, tiny little Japanese lady. And she's like, there's no way my son is gonna quit Wall Street. Become a mobster. She's the typical Japanese lady where she was like, my son went to Harvard and he's on Wall Street and he has his hedge fund. She loved the checkboxes, the checklist, you know, of credentials. As you know, Japanese culture is very much this way, Japanese society. You know, if you went to Tohodai in Japan, you're viewed as a god, right? Like, you know, it's very hierarchical. And I said, Mom, I'm, I wanna do what I love. And, you know, Mom, you told me as a young kid, I gotta go help people. And I wanna live my life with my greatest obsession and somehow help people, you know? Whether it's our athletes, our fans, et cetera. And you know what's crazy, Tim?

• 58:48Speaker 02

  In writing the business plan, there was no such line of like, we wanna have the biggest pay-per-view, we wanna have the best fights or this. It was literally the mission of the company over many, many, many days and weeks. Literally came and it's still true to this day is to unleash real-life superheroes. We connect the world with hope, strength, dreams, inspiration. And of course, we put on the best fights. I agree with your friends and I'll explain how we put on fights. But the first three years, complete disaster. There was no TAM. It was all theoretical, it was all this business school mumbo jumbo. Yeah. And nobody was interested. Total addressable market. Yeah, right? Exactly. And if I didn't love martial arts as much as I did, thousand percent I would quit. So I call my mom, Mom, end of year three, lost a crap load of my money, my friends'

• 59:33Speaker 02

  money, and I think we're done. We got no traction. And I thought my mom was gonna tell me I should stick with it because, you know, cha-cha since you're a kid, martial arts, blah, blah, blah, you love it. And she said, oh, great, why don't you just quit then?

• 59:48Tim Ferriss?

  Before you get double sleeves of tattoos and can't go to the on sun with me.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, great. And then the conversation ended shortly after that. And I remember thinking to myself, my mom just said, just quit. And then I said, okay, if I just quit, let's say I quit today. And then it goes back to like, well, why did I even start this thing in the first place? When you really put yourself to say, I'm gonna quit. You start to think about, why did I start this thing? And what is it? And I said, well, martial arts is my greatest obsession. If I want to make an impact on the world and have an opportunity to inspire, you know, millions and one day, hopefully billions of lives through our heroes, values and stories is what we call that. Those are the three pillars of what we call our formula of success at One Championship. Values, heroes and stories.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  If we can unleash these real life superheroes and tell their stories of overcoming adversity, tragedy, poverty, you know, impossible odds. Those stories are gonna be incredible. And of course, the values that we exhibit, which you know very well, is a true Bushido values of, you know, integrity, honor, respect, courage, discipline, compassion, et cetera, that martial arts teaches us. And I thought, there has to be a place in this world, one promotion, one promotion that has true, authentic martial arts at its core. And so from that day, I said, I will never quit. Come hell or high water, I'm gonna put everything into it. If I lose all my money, screw it. And you know, we got so lucky. Facebook, you know, so a big shout out to Mark Zuckerberg.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Facebook started taking off in Asia at that around that time, as smart mobile devices were as well. If you chart Facebook's user growth and just engagement levels, okay, in Asia with the history of One Championship, it is like mirror. So what happened was, we saw a couple of videos start going viral around the world when we posted. And we're again, we're small platform at the time, very small page. But we could see that something was happening. So we used that hockey stick data, even though it was small. We collected this data and we showed broadcasters. They took a look, this is something that's happening in your country. Numbers have just gone 10x. Yes, they're small, but they're gone 10x in the span of, you know, three months.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  And then I remember we had a few months left of cash and I bet the whole firm and I put everything into video. I said, we are going to be the world's best viral video makers along the lines of values, heroes and stories. But we want to ride the algo, not pollute it by bastardizing martial arts, but really showcasing the very best. So whether it's a knockout, that's great, spinning back kick, all that stuff. But in the context of, how can I say, I didn't want to cheapen martial arts. I didn't want to bastardize it and cheapen it, just and make it look like two thugs, you know, cussing each other out. That was something I didn't want, because that's not my experience in martial arts. My martial arts experience has been about love, pain and suffering, right? As a result of that, of thousands of hours of training, you inherit these incredible values. And something I'm sure you relate to, Tim.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  I mean, for you to get heel hooked by Rumenasato and then somebody else in hands of Rodrigo popping your arm. And you know, like, this is part of the journey, love, pain and suffering. And yet somehow you want to get back into it, right? So that to me is what martial arts is about. The unbreakable warrior spirit, the beauty of authentic martial arts. So anyways, long story cut short, the combination of us making the bet on Facebook literally saved the company. This is something that Facebook confirmed with us. And actually I ended up getting invited by Zuck to go to Facebook headquarters a couple of years ago. Because out of 5,000 sports properties on Facebook, the number one producer of organic video views in the world is One Championship.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  We produced 30 billion organic video views last year. And this year we're on pace already for 40 billion, 40 billion, not million. And I remember we went from how, how fast? We went from 100,000 organic video views for the whole year. And suddenly the next year it was like, you know, 5 million and the next year 100 million. It just went ballistic. And without that, I don't think we've been able to convince broadcasters and investors and brands and sponsors and athletes. And, and now, as you know, Tim, as a business expert, once you've built a platform business, you know, every global sports property is a platform business where. There are multiple stakeholders who derive economic benefit or social benefit or some level of benefit from the platform.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  And hence, the platform becomes quote-unquote monopolistic, right? NBA, there's no way you can break NBA. There's no way you can break NFL. It's truly a platform business. And so, we have achieved that status. And like I said, if you'd asked me to start this business again, no way. And it's less than 1% of 1% that we're standing here. And there are many, many inflection points of luck, just blessing. Yes, my team and I work our asses off and we made the right bets when it came. But if you told me 13 years later, you know, your top 10, according to Nielsen, top 10 largest global sports media property, there's no way I would have thought that would have happened. It's crazy.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  We're broadcast live in 190 countries every single week with the largest broadcasters, like it's Amazon on America, but it's Sky Sports in Europe, it's in Japan, it's Unex, and in Thailand, it's Channel 7, in Middle East, it's Bean Sports. It boggles my mind what has happened. And it's like a lot of hard work, a lot of love, pain and suffering, but I have to be 100% honest, it's a lot of luck, a lot of luck. But putting on great fights, like your friend said, is not luck. We have a chemistry lab, if you will, where we slice and dice qualitatively and quantitatively. It's a team of about 13 or 14 folks, and we slice quantitatively and qualitatively and, you know, and all that.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  And of course, one huge benefit is all of us on the matchmaking team, we're all martial artists. So it's like, you know, Matt Hume, you know, legendary Matt Hume. Yeah. Folks like Rich Franklin, you know, legendary martial arts himself. And so, got very lucky that happened to be all my friends, right? My martial arts buddies, and we're all working together and we get to cook up the best fights. And another advantage we have is because we're not only doing MMA, we're the world's largest martial arts organization, right? We showcase everything from kickboxing, Muay Thai, submission grappling, boxing, MMA, and everything. And the most important thing for us is signing the very best of the best athletes, the very best of the best martial artists. But very equally important is finishing ability.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  So this is something that's...

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  I don't know if other organizations look at it. I'm sure they look at it, collect it, but I don't know if they look at it when they sign athletes. One champion has a 70% finish rate. That means of all our fights, 70%

• 1:06:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's absurd. It's so odd.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  People get knocked out, or tapped out, or choked out. It's a global duopoly now, right? UFC dominates in the West, we dominate in the East. We're roughly the same size. They have a 38% finish rate. And why is that? Because in America, there's predominantly American wrestlers like yourself. And American wrestling is not necessarily geared towards finishing. It's an unbelievable martial art that controls. You can take the fighter down, pin him up against a cage, you can hold him, you can ground and pound him, but it's not necessarily a finishing finishing, right? Versus out here, we got a Rok Tang, or we get a, you know, it depends on the discipline, or we sign the Ruel Toldo brothers. Those guys are killers. So we look for the best of the best, but we try to find athletes

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  who come to kill. And again, I don't mean kill in a bad way. What I mean is the true origins of martial arts is self-defense. Self-defense is not about dancing for points. It's not about taking someone down and waiting and letting the judges score. It's about finishing a robber coming to your house, somebody coming to harm your family. Martial arts is about finishing a dangerous situation, right? So that you're, you live for another day. That spirit, that Bushido, that samurai warrior spirit, lives in one and lives in our athletes. And that's why we have a 70% finish rate.

• 1:07:48Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So I have so many more questions to ask about that, as we're going to come back to that. But I want to mention just a few things for folks. So initially, all that pushback, the 100-plus investors, the broadcasters, sorry, UFC has already taken this game and won it. You're too late. When I started this podcast in 2014, the vast majority of people I asked who were involved in the game told me I was too late.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  And now you're the number one in the world, yeah, number one business podcast in the world. Amazing.

• 1:08:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I just, and sometimes that's true, but it's not as true as often as people say it. And the, some of the things I wrote down here, which were like, God, these seem like really important things were, I mean, there are tons, right? But leaving finance, fight card construction, right? Matchmaking, how to get Amazon Prime and Sky Sports, we're going to get to that, like that kind of stuff. Sequoia, and then... Social media slash non-event engagement because I've watched what you guys have done on social very, very closely and correct me if I'm wrong, it also seems like by diversifying outside of MMA and having Muay Thai, having pure submission, the only way you make pure

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  submission, well, or I say like combat grappling, interesting is if you have people finish, right? So you have to prioritize that for a general audience. Muay Thai by itself is action-packed, right? Particularly if you incentivize fighters. And also, I'd be so interested to hear, like, what are some of the other ingredients that you consider for putting on good fights? So you talked about finish rate, but by the virtue of having these other disciplines like Muay Thai, also you increase the likelihood of having clips that will get shared a lot because, man, you add elbows in and then, oh, man, do things change? And a few things, and I might be misremembering, but I looked at it and I thought also in at

• 1:09:47Tim Ferriss?

  least a lot of the fights that I saw, okay, rounds are short. That's smart. It makes me think of K1 where people put it all on the line and they weren't trying to conserve energy for round 10, right? Or something like that. What are some of the other elements that go into constructing these fight cards? You mentioned the quantitative and the qualitative. So finishing rate would be one, and that's not just matchmaking, but actually signing fighters in the first place. What else goes into that? Because it is incredibly consistent. It is just, I've never seen anything like it.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Thank you, Tim. And, you know, I'm truly grateful because that you can see that because we try our best to have the, you'll see a typical one championship card. And tomorrow night, we have one Friday fights, right? That's every week. We have 12 fights. You'll see like eight, 10 of them will be finishes and all 12 will be barn burners. Okay? We don't have one championship where in other organizations, they may have a 12 fight card, but eight fights are a little bit of a snooze fest or decisions. And then, you know, the main co-main is amazing and it lights up the stadium. It's literally from the go, first fight all the 12 fight. It's as if they're fighting for their lives. So I think our scouts around the world scour 10,000 of the very best martial artists on the planet. We give out fifty offers a year and we have a criteria for what we look for, okay?

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  So let's say you're the best in the world, but you are a decision, a points person. It's very unlikely you'll be signed by one. Doesn't matter if you are like fifteen oh, like Floyd Mayweather. But if you're there to like play a game, score points, that's not real martial arts. And there's guys without a perfect record. And as you know, these, some of the Thai world champions have four hundred professional fights and they have lost a hundred times. That's real fighting. If you have fought four hundred times and your record is three hundred wins and one hundred losses, that is an average world championship record in Thailand, as an example of an elite fighter. Because there are no like padded records. Like, you know, if someone's fifty and oh, it's highly suspect that they were given easy opponents

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  or they chose their opponents at the right time or there's a little bit of this kind of manufacturing. And you see that a lot actually in the West, okay? In the West, there's a lot of twenty and oh, fifteen and oh, thirty and oh, like in different combat sports. It seems like the West really puts a priority. But the problem with that is, you know, the longer you go with an oh, the more defensive you become as a fighter because you're protecting that oh, right? So when we sign athletes, we look for the best of the best in the world. Doesn't matter what discipline, but we look for that killer instinct and the finishing rate. We really spend a lot of time looking at that. So that when you get two pit bulls who are there to finish and they're both the very best in the world. So that's one layer. You gotta get the ingredients right. But then, as you said, the incentives.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  So, you know, we pay the highest in the world for a fight versus, but the win first, but also the bonuses, especially knockout, you know, finish bonuses. That's the quantitative side of things. But then also backstage, again, before every big event, I line up the entire card and I literally give, and I think some of it's on social media already, some of my speeches. But I literally give like a two-minute Rocky Balboa type of speech. And I don't do it for drama. I do it because I really want to inspire every single athlete to give their very, very best performance. And so I talk about, or I ask them about, why are they here? They've spent typically ten, fifteen years training six hours a day, six days a week to reach the pinnacle of martial arts, the highest level in the world in one championship.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  And I ask them to think about all the sacrifices. All the heartbreaks they suffered through, the injuries they've gone through. How many birthdays did they miss? How many friends' parties? How many cousins or nephews or nieces' birthdays did they miss? How many times did they, you know, have to sacrifice to get to this point? And then I asked them, you know, is this your greatest love? Is this what you are put on the planet for? And I make them really go deep. And if you are able to tap into a person's why, the deepest why, and you're able to then also tap into everything they have to suffer. And I tell them, tonight, it's broadcast live to 190 countries around the world with the biggest broadcasters.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  Our last show in Tokyo at Saitama in March, our last big show, we broke viewership record. We did 2.3 billion organic video views on digital and social. Okay, 2.3 billion on single show. I didn't know at that time it was going to be that big at the time. And that's excluding our TV broadcast, right? Our TV broadcast around the world. Then we ended up trending on, you know, number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, but trending in US and UK and France and Australia, Thailand, Japan. It was just trending all over the world, China. And I tell them, how do you want the world to remember you tonight? You have a chance to unleash your greatness upon the world in a way that you will make magical memories for your fans. You will create something extraordinary.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  And, you know, I've had fighters cry in those huddles I have. And then I walk away. And the reason why I can give this kind of speech is because I have walked, I mean, maybe not at the elite level that they're at, but I have walked in their shoes in training and competing and injuries or whatever it is. So there's a real bond that I have with our athletes. And the fact that I train every day and I train with them. I mean, you know, doesn't matter, I don't want to name names, but I train with our athletes, you know, different athletes that come by and, you know, or I'm flying to Tokyo or I fight at Denver or I go wherever, you know, because I'm always training, no matter where I am, I always train.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  How do you produce a six sigma performance? It's not because you train and you're, you know, I'm gonna fight. No, it's, there has to be something bigger. You have to be fighting for something bigger. It's almost an emotion. It's almost an emotive state of this is it. This is my moment in time and I'm gonna deliver everything I can. I'm gonna be unbreakable. And what Chatri told me in that locker room, you know, all those sacrifices I went through, my parents going through, and if I win, of course, the purse is big and blah, blah, blah, all the other stuff. If you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, you're unbreakable. That is what I, at the end of the day, try to remind our athletes, that they are fighting for something much bigger than themselves.

• 1:16:04Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it certainly translates to a phenomenal viewer experience. For folks who have not seen one, check it out. You will not be disappointed. You can thank me later. I do want to double click on two things. So the first is pushing all your chips in on Facebook and social media. Because a lot of people, I'm just trying to time this out, maybe this is like 2014, 2015 was around there. Okay. So a lot of people were pushing their chips in on social, maybe not in as aggressive and all in fashion, but a lot of people were trying to make it work. And a lot of people didn't figure it out. Right?

• 1:16:49Tim Ferriss?

  So what I'm super curious about is like, what were the guiding tenets or the principles or the lessons learned where you zigged and zagged that allowed you to actually make it work? That's kind of question number one. And then I definitely have to get to this Sequoia meeting, because I want to know how the hell that happened and what happened in that meeting. I really was, did not expect to see this in my research and I'm so happy, I was surprised by it. But first, on the social media, because a lot of people to this day try to make it work and never figure it out. So what allowed you to translate pushing the chips in into success on social?

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Again, there's a lot of element of good luck. I don't want my team to rise to be so arrogant to think and to say and have the world believe that it was just hard work and our genius.

• 1:17:41Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'm gonna be an asshole. I'm sorry, I'm gonna jump in though. I want to give credit where credit is due also because when I first saw you guys on Amazon Prime, I was like, oh, this is really interesting. And then I followed you on social and then I was looking at the videos and I was like, okay, this is very smart. I was like, number one, they are not stingy with highlights. Like you share basically, as far as I can tell, all the best highlights, which doesn't mean you shouldn't watch the full fights. Like, I want to watch the full fights because it's like rock'em, sock'em robots the whole time. But you share highlights and you also tell really, really good stories. And I remember Stamp, Faratek, who doesn't hurt that she's pretty cute, does her dances and so on.

• 1:18:26Tim Ferriss?

  But what a killer.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  She's a beast.

• 1:18:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my god. Like when the opponent's backing away and she throws the liver kick. I mean, it's just brutal. But the way that you tell the story and also because you have such privileged access and focus on Muay Thai as well. And as you mentioned, poor person's sport, that's how a lot of people hope to get out of poverty. They start fighting when they're really young. And you have this incredible human interest story and you guys do a masterful job of combining that with spectacular fight footage. But yes, there's always some luck involved.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  So I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the controllable factors. So the controllable factors, obviously, you have to know what the combat sport fan wants, okay? But at the same time, if you're only appealing to the combat sports fan, it's a smaller market. If you're able to tell a story and make it more mainstream, again, about abject poverty or tragedy or adversity, or whatever it may be, that can transcend beyond a combat sports and go viral around the world to human interest stories. So of course, one is my team and I, and I was literally the first social media manager. And I understood that you have to crack the algorithm. But if you just blindly follow the algorithm, you'll put out junk because you're just chasing endlessly. You have to be very clear about who do you want to be?

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  What are you trying to communicate? And what are you trying to do by giving this video to your fans? We always say we want to evoke emotion, strong emotion. Laughter, sadness, inspiration, awe, something very like, oh, my God. Oh, wow. Something that's gonna surprise and delight you in your day. So you're gonna hang out with us and watch 10 times a day. You know, whenever you go TikToks, Instagram, wherever, you know, or doing Qiao Weibo in China, et cetera. But at the same time, you have to be true to, you know, why we started this company. You know, you have to be true to real martial arts, finishes, real Bushido, the warrior way, you know? Not bastardizing or cheapening into some sort of street fight thug by having your athletes

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  create fake drama about, you know, hating each other or whatever it is. That's just not what I think will transcend and become truly mainstream. I think at the end of the day, people want to watch all over the world, the very best of the best go at it. But they want to know the stories behind why this person is what they're doing and why he or she is where they're at and what are the stakes of this fight? And of course, we have to be very sharp about every single platform has a specific algorithm that it's looking for and marry that. So that's all the skilled aspect of what we can control. But what I mean by luck is you look at the mobile device, okay? Millennium Gen Zs, which make up 80% of our audience today. What do they do? Their first window of media consumption is their mobile device.

• 1:21:13Speaker 02

  They wake up in the morning, they look at TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is. They look at it 10, 20 times a day before they go to bed. That's the last point of media consumption. What does that mean? You need to dominate the mobile device. And that was what we did in 2014. We said to ourselves, we are going to dominate the mobile device. Why is this lucky? Because mobile devices took off, Facebook took off, all the social took off, but. The ping pong ball, the tennis ball, the soccer ball, the basketball, the football, you cannot see clearly on a mobile device. And I'll give you a great example. When Naomi Osaka won the US Open for the first time, and I remember, because she's half Japanese, right? So I was like, oh my God, half Japanese first one, like me, blah blah. So I looked at Facebook and I could see, you know, it was highlights of her match.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  And I looked at it and I couldn't see the ball. And I'm like, two seconds, I just scrolled past because I'm like, I couldn't consume it. That's what I mean by luck. Combat sports is the perfect content for mobile devices. And that's why you have the two giants, UFC and One, today dominating in that sphere and why we have Milena and Gen Z audience and why other sports are struggling and trying to catch up, but they have the wrong content genre for mobile device. Because you cannot see the soccer ball, the football, the ping pong ball, the tennis ball, you can barely see the basketball. It is very hard to consume and no one's going to watch a 200 lap car race on your mobile, right? You're just not. That's what I mean about luck. But yes, everything you described about our content and how we explain a stamped fair text or, you know, yes, she's the best in the world, but does she twerk? Does she dance? Does she sing? Is she cute?

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Is her personality larger than life? And that's her real personality. You know, that's another thing about us. Everything we do is about authenticity. There's no manufacturing. There's no like, oh, well, let that person be a bad guy, that person be a good guy. Let's create drama between them. They hate each other. Let's stage a camera backstage, they bump into each other. We don't do any of that. We just let them be who they really are. We tell their real stories. But the one important thread for all of our content and everything we do is that it's real martial arts.

• 1:23:13Tim Ferriss?

  I want to give you and your team some additional credit too. In addition to the human interest, in addition to the highlights, you guys also are very clever. You mentioned strong emotions, right? So laughter, I've seen quite a lot of funny stuff.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes, yes.

• 1:23:28Tim Ferriss?

  That is organic as a product of the personalities, sort of outtakes where like somebody's accidentally kicking their boyfriend in the head as trying to demonstrate a technique. It's like, oh shit. And then you see them doing damage control or whatever. That might make me sound like a bad person to find that funny, but it is pretty funny when you watch it. And also, I remember very specific segments where, for instance, you had some absolute Muay Thai heavies. And by heavies, I don't mean big. I just mean killers. Kicking a device, people may have seen these in arcades and so on, where you might punch what looks like a speedball and then it shows you your power output. And you had a number of them kicking a device that was similar, showing like pounds per square inch or kilograms per square inch of impact.

• 1:24:11Tim Ferriss?

  And I mean, that is pretty fight sports specific, but I'd never seen something like that done before. And I'm like, okay, that's very, very clever. Like, that is clever. I'm going to share that with my friends. And even though it might be within the fight porn WhatsApp channel, they'll share that with their five other friends who aren't on it. And it'll perpetuate it, right?

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I have to give credit, and I tell our team this, we have the very best social media team on the planet. Many of the, my teammates have been on this journey for a long time with me. But I do believe, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but it's the fact that I actually built the first page and I was actually a social media manager. Something about my personality is probably very similar to your, Tim, is like, when you do something, you're all in. Okay, so when I decided that Facebook was going to be it, I said to myself, I want to be the best Facebook manager on the planet. So I was obsessed, not about reading, I was obsessed about experimenting, learning every little trick. And, you know, of course I was reading and voracious, but I would look at all these other pages that were doing very well.

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  And, you know, and I would just steal ideas and think about concepts and just being completely consumed by it. And of course, it helped a lot that I myself, because I'm a lifelong martial artist, I know what the fight fan wants. I know, I know exactly, right? At the same time, I wanted to build a property that transcended. Fight fans. I want it to be truly mainstream, right? Again, that's something that NFL has done incredibly well in America that when it's Super Bowl, the entire country watches. And that is something that one day I do want, when we have a major world championship fight, that the whole world stops to watch, like Olympics. I think when there's a gold medal, like Olympic swimming final or 100 meter dash final,

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  I think there's something like a billion, billion five people watch, right? I can see that happening with one. I can genuinely see that having a billion, billion five concurrent viewers watching. Or World Cup soccer finals, I think that did a couple billion concurrent viewers. I can see one doing it because just this year, our numbers have, we've already broken our previous high by 300 or 400% in our last event. So can you imagine on this big numbers of 30 and 40 billion organic video views, we are still breaking our records on a single individual event by 3X. So we're just scratching the surface of what one can be, you know?

• 1:26:39Tim Ferriss?

  Let me take you back to the pain and suffering for a second. So you're struggling, struggling, mom, I want to quit. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. You should quit. And they're like, wait a fucking second. And it's not working, it's not working. Suddenly you have some graphs to show from social media. Hey broadcaster in country X, this is what's happening in your backyard. And yes, the numbers are small, but take a look at the growth rate. And so the tide starts to shift and then you seem to hit an inflection point. And I've had Rolif Bota on this show before from Sequoia.

• 1:27:19Tim Ferriss?

  How important or unimportant was that meeting that you had with Michael Moritz and Douglas Leonie? And for people who don't know who they are, these guys are kingmakers. I mean, they are the top of the top Wizard of Oz venture capitalists behind so many successes, we could spend the next 30 minutes listing them all off. I mean, these guys are absolute icons. Was that meeting important? And then assuming it was, how on earth did it happen? And what did you do in that meeting that made the impression it made?

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  I call it the $100 million breakfast because

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  Sequoia Asia orchestrated, they thought we were onto something very big. And they said, Mike Morris and Douglas Leona coming and we're only booking a handful of meetings for them because they're very busy schedule. What was the organization that helped book it for you? Sequoia Capital Asia. Oh, Sequoia Asia. Yeah, Sequoia Asia, run by Shailendra Singh and he was the managing partner. How did you connect with them in the first place? This is what I mean about serendipity. Long story cut short, it was around April of 2016. We had hired a small investment bank and we said, we want to now go raise institutional funding. And we didn't have any institutions at the time, still bootstrapping.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  But we think we had enough to go raise institutional funding. We had a slide with our metric, a couple of slides with our metrics, you know, hockey stick, all these big hockey stick charts. And that was like, I think four o'clock, the meeting ended with our bank. We walk out and now we didn't think anything of it. Two hours later, the investment banker calls us and says, Sequoia Asia wants to meet you. And we're like, how did you do what?

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  This investment banker, he walked in to the elevator and Shailendra Singh, the managing partner of Sequoia Asia, was in the elevator. He happened to be carrying the One Championship slides, the hockey stick charts. And Shailendra said to our investment bank, Ripple dot is the name of the thing, and our investment banker was named Atin Kukreja. He turns and says, what company is that? And all these, and he goes, oh, it's a sports company called One Championship. What is that? And on the elevator ride, Shailendra decided, I want a meeting with these guys. I'm going to fund them off of the metric. Okay, it's literally like, this is what happened. Bananas. So on Sunday, it was a Sunday because Sequoia Asia demanded to meet us, to meet me.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  So on Sunday, I had breakfast, me and my partner had breakfast with Sequoia. And they told us, I mean, as Shailendra said, we want you to drop the investment bank. We want you not to go on the road show. We will fund it. This is the first institutional funding, you know? And they funded and it was a small check. I think it was like 15 million. But about a year later, I think, is when Mike Moritz and Douglas Leon were in town, only for a couple of days, because they were doing a thing doing Asia wide tours, only a couple of days in Singapore. And Shalender said, hey, I want them to meet you. They want to meet you, whatever it is, we want to meet, you know? Of course, I know who they're, they're legendary.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  Mike Moritz is, as Tim said, Mike Moritz and Douglas Leon are probably the greatest investors in Silicon Valley has ever seen, you know, amongst the greatest. Sequoia Capital, obviously, one of the greatest, if not the greatest venture capital firm in history. I go to breakfast and it's Mike Moritz and it's Doug and Shalender. So it's the four of us and I'm sitting there and they're asking all sorts of questions and Mike Moritz is, you know, asking all these questions. And I will never forget it. At the end of the breakfast, Mike says, H R tree. There are founders who their entire reason for being born on this planet. And he named, I think it was like, you think he named Bill Gates or whatever it is, you know, for Microsoft. They were put on this earth for that one reason, to go after something gargantuan.

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  And you are that guy for this opportunity. And there is, most founders are there for a business opportunity. They see a pain point in the market and they solve the solution and they go IPOs or they sell the company and then they move on to the next thing. He just looked me in the eye and says, this is going to be a home run. No, they grilled me all these different kind of questions. So the funding actually came out, a hundred million dollar fund, it came out of Silicon Valley. So this is the first sports investment in the history of Sequoia in Silicon Valley. So it didn't even come out of the Asia fund, it came of the main fund to invest into one. And I think, or again, I might begin the years wrong, but around 2017. If my memory serves me right, I think that was a hundred million dollars for, at a billion dollar valuation, around there. I was in shock because after the breakfast, which I thought went okay, you know, it was an hour.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Literally two hours later, Shalender says, we want to cut you a check for a hundred million dollars. Two hours after the breakfast. So we had the breakfast in the morning. I remember 10, 11 in the morning, I'm walking and Shalender calls me and says, we want to put a check for a hundred million bucks. They think you're onto something special. And man, I'm eternally grateful to this day. I mean, eternally grateful to Mike Moritz and Douglas Nill. In that one hour, they sliced and diced in the business completely. And even me, as a person, I'm telling you, this whole journey have been moments of serendipity, moments of just good blessings for us to get this far. It's mind blowing to me. And I would never have done it if you told me, do it again. I would never, I, I, it's just this luck.

• 1:32:44Tim Ferriss?

  Diamond, of course, the elevator. I hope that investment banker gets a box of chocolates to every, uh, once in a while.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  No, attend, no, no, no, attend, attend Kukreja. I'm giving a shout out to attend Kukreja, Ripple Dot. It is the best TMT investment bank out here in Asia.

• 1:33:00Tim Ferriss?

  What is TMT?

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  Technology, media and telecom investment bank.

• 1:33:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Okay, got it. So you did have a lot of luck with that amazing encounter in the elevator. You also had to perform in the breakfast. And those can both be true, right? So there's definitely a skill element needed to capitalize on the luck. What I'd love to hear about, you mentioned them asking a lot of questions, slicing and dicing the business as well as you personally. I guess two things. What were some of, and it may be too long ago, but to whatever degree you recollect, even an impression, what types of questions made them different from perhaps other investors in other meetings? What types of questions

• 1:33:46Tim Ferriss?

  did they ask? And number two, what were the main pitch points from your perspective that you think made the difference?

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  It was very interesting because I remember Mike Moritz asking very qualitative human questions about me, about my motivation, about how I hire people. It was just very qualitative. And so I didn't think the breakfast would result in an investment. I thought it would just be another prolonged process. I'd have to go to Silicon Valley and da, da, da. It'd be just a long, prolonged process. And he quickly sussed out, very quickly. He said, this thing is so big, this project is so big, but it's going to require a founder with unbelievable resilience. And that's why you got to find the guy who, this is his life's calling. He said, it also requires a founder.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  Who can attract and retain the very best people on the planet? And not every business plan needs that, he said. But in this case, it requires a founder that can attract and retain the very best. And he just looked me in the eye, I guess, I think you're the guy. I think you're going to be able to convince broadcasters, athletes, investors, group presidents, chief commercial officers, internal and external stakeholders to build this whole thing. I'm like, in one hour, how could he have guessed that about me? And I didn't even have that impression of myself. I just thought, hey, I'm a guy who loves martial arts.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  And I'm a little bit crazy, so I have a high tolerance for risk. And I guess, even though I did almost quit in 2014, I guess I do have a little bit of resilience. But I didn't think of myself in the terms where Mike Mortz was saying. And Doug, his questions were about the business. And he educated me in that one hour that what I'm sitting on in a sports property is a platform business. He's the ultimate platform business, actually. He said, most tech companies, SaaS or platform, they can get broken. And he gave a great example, and I don't want to name names of a tech company, but it was a relatively well-known tech company. It is a relatively well-known tech name, but he gave that example and said, you know, three PhD engineers in Stanford, if they come up with the right solution, can dismantle this,

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  you know, at the time it was a $10 billion company. They can dismantle like that.

• 1:36:02Tim Ferriss?

  I think I know which one that is.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  He said, there are no three engineers in this world that can dismantle what you've created right up at this point. Because at that point, we maybe had a few billion organic video views. And at that point, maybe we were in 117, 120 countries broadcast. There was clearly momentum being built. And clearly we'd broken through a lot of barriers. Governments started getting interested in us. So it was just, he could see that different stakeholders were going to derive economic value from the platform we've built. But he could also, and he literally said this to me, and I remember it. He said, there's no engineering team in this world that can dismantle you. And that was very powerful. So, you know, most companies, tech companies, software companies, can be dismantled by a great team.

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  But does it better, faster, cheaper, or whatever, right? But no sports property, no global sports property can get dismantled in a heartbeat. We now have about 500 million fans, a little over 500 million fans, okay? Globally, if I left one and I said, you have to now compete with One Championship. I'm going to look at, One Championship is going to do about 40 billion organic video views this year. They have 500 million fans, they're in 190 countries broadcast live every single week. They have the best athletes across every single discipline. Where do I begin? Do I fly to Amazon and say, hey, it's Chachi, do you remember me? Or do I go to our world champions and say, hey, your contract's going to end? I would not be able to replicate this, or at least, you know,

• 1:37:30Speaker 02

  Tim, you'd have to give me, you know, you and I would have to go raise $10 billion together, and you have to give me at least another 10 years to gather that many fans, to put out that many videos. You know, we put out about 20,000 videos a year right now, all produced in-house.

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  So it's just this, and again, Douglas Lyon just nailed it. On one hand, Doug is this like business model genius that's slicing and dicing. On the other hand, Mike was slicing, dicing the human characteristics. If I was the right founder, if I was the right entrepreneur, did I have the right skills? And he really narrowed it down to the number one skill for this thing to work is a founder whose greatest strength is to attract and retain resources, or attract and retain talent, internal talent, the very best people, but the very best athletes, the very best governments, investors, and et cetera, et cetera. Again, I didn't think of myself in that way, and it's very humbling to think of that, right? But in the end, Mike and Doug both, and I don't know how they solve it, are dead right.

• 1:38:28Speaker 02

  If you ask me, what is the necessary skill required, even to this day, it would be exactly what Mike said, and it's exactly what Doug said about the business. In one hour, I don't know if they had prepared or planned, or I don't know, but they slice and dice, and then, and again, like two hours later, literally, Shalender calls me and says, we want to cut you a check for 100 million, and I think it was about a billion dollar valuation around there.

• 1:38:50Tim Ferriss?

  Did you give a presentation at the beginning of the breakfast? Or was it just conversation?

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  No, no, I just sat down. It was like breakfast with your uncles. It was so informal. It was so informal and so casual. And I had a presentation prepared. I have my laptop, you know, but it ended up just being like, you know, how do you like your eggs? And da, da, da, da, and like it just, it was very.

• 1:39:13Tim Ferriss?

  Float as a conversation.

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess, you know, they've, obviously they're legends in the business and, and they've earned their reputation that way. And their, the experience base must be so vast in sussing out business models and founders and, and entrepreneurs and whatnot. That they can, you know, it's pattern recognition.

• 1:39:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they have a very well-developed waterfield for.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:39:35Tim Ferriss?

  For these things. Was there anything that you learned in all of the hundred plus prior pitch meetings? That you brought to bear on that conversation in terms of knowing which points to hit? I imagine they also, by that point, were very much a warm audience in the sense that regional Sequoia had invested. They were probably pre-sold on the metrics or their analysts or associates at Sequoia had combed over all the numbers and everything ahead of time. But was there anything after all of your pitch meeting experiences that you felt you brought to bear on that meeting?

• 1:40:12Speaker 02

  I remember that breakfast, I can remember like yesterday. I just remember walking away feeling like everything was so laid back, almost disarming. And so, I don't know, maybe their line of questioning or how they did it, it's just like, there was no gamesmanship, there was nothing, I was just like plump. Whatever they asked, the way they asked it, I felt comfortable enough to just like, just give them the good, bad and ugly of the business. Versus in the earlier days, I might've tried to paint the most positive light possible, right? I'm sure that if it was my very, very first time meeting Sequoia and I was that way, it may not have worked, but I don't, I, I just went with the flow. And I remember that, that morning, I just went with the flow.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  And that's why after the breakfast, I thought, man, there's going to be a lot more meetings because there's no way there's going to invest. And actually, they didn't tell me that this meeting was one and done. I had no expectation. They just said, hey, come to breakfast. That was literally it. And they didn't tell me anything. And it was again, two hours later that they called and said, hey, we want to put a hundred million. And I was shocked, but Doug and Mike only met me for one hour. But they're legends for a reason, right? I don't know. They're a lot smarter than I am, so you know, what, what do I know?

• 1:41:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think you know a thing or two, it would seem. Or you're doing a great job of faking it. Either way, it seems to be working out for you.

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  I know a lot about martial arts, how about that? I know a lot about fighting. Doing every, all the time.

• 1:41:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, that's true. And I don't want you to over short sell yourself in some other departments. So let me ask you a little bit more about the business side.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:41:41Tim Ferriss?

  Whether it was before the Sequoia meeting or afterwards, what were the most important broadcaster slash platform deals? Of course, I'm based in the US, so Amazon Prime leaps to my mind. But maybe that wasn't the most important because sometimes, as you know, to grease the path for all of your future larger customers, you need one marquee customer. And maybe the marquee customer was not in the US. It was somewhere else that kind of de-risked the proposition for other folks like Amazon Prime. I have no idea. So I'm just curious what some of the most important initial dominoes were in that kind of broadcaster ecosystem and how they happen.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  I don't know where I read this, but I read this saying of like, go chase your dream and the path will appear and the people will appear. Something along that lines. I'm screwing up the quote, but when I started this thing, it is crazy how much luck, again, just like that breakfast, I said, right? But around that same time, a guy named Fabian Stetcho from CAA, which is CAA's, the second world's largest agency business. They do all the media rights for all the major sports properties. They have all the major Hollywood stars and you know, it's a

• 1:43:00Tim Ferriss?

  Huge, huge talent agency.

• 1:43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Very proud, but they do all the sports media rights properties. Literally in 2016, 2017, around that same time period, Fabian and I, we met over a video call because one of the divisions within CAA was looking and potentially investing in us. And Fabian and I just hit it off. And he's based in New York. What is his job or what was his job there? Oh, he's still there. He's a very senior person. He's basically in charge of selling media rights for properties for the biggest sports. So he did NASCAR. I forget which ones, but the very big ones, MLB, et cetera. And again, almost 10 years ago, he spotted us and the investment arm of CA was looking

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  to invest at an early stage company like ours. And Fabian was from the media rights side and Fabian had hit it off. And he actually was the one that helped orchestrate this Amazon deal. But that's what I mean, Tim. Along the way, so many incredible people appeared and just suddenly believed in what we were doing, believed that the world needed a major global sports property out of the continent of Asia. Because if you think about it, all the big sports properties around the world, global sports only came from the West. We're literally the first and only global sports property coming out of the East, sending content around the world. Okay. I don't know. Maybe they saw the address. Mark was huge. Maybe they saw the brand. You know, it's hard for me to know exactly.

• 1:44:29Speaker 02

  How did you initially connect with, was it Fabian? Yeah, CAA. Did you just get a cold email? So I might be getting the dates wrong, but I think when Sequoia announced they invested in us, that came with a lot of interest. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Mike Morris Douglas, he's own investing in one. And so CAA's division that invests contacted us and we did a call. But what transpired from there was a friendship with Fabian and many years. And again, he was instrumental in helping us crack the US market. And CAA was also instrumental in getting us Sky Sports in the UK. You know, that's the biggest sports broadcaster. It's the ESPN

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  of whatever it is, right? Of the UK of Europe. It's literally one thing after another. I'll give you a great example. I am on this panel for Milken Institute. It's a conference, a business conference. I'm on this sports panel and literally next to me is a name now, a very close brother, a friend named Hassan Al Tawari, who at the time was chairman of FIFA Qatar, the World Cup Qatar. And this was also like eight years ago. So we're sitting on a panel and then it's NBA and then it's F1. And they just sat us next to each other. And Hassan turns to me and says, Chacha, I want to meet you afterwards. And oh, yeah, of course.

• 1:45:52Speaker 02

  We had this meeting and he's like, Chatri, I've been doing Muay Thai for like five years. I love Demetrius Johnson. I love, you know, Rotang and da, da, da. And we had this one hour power and I'm like thinking this is the chairman of Qatar World Cup, which is going to be happening in, I think, I don't know, four or five years from now, right? And he's like, Chatri, hey, why don't you come to Qatar? Just, I want to show you around. Hassan. And we became very fast friends and I flew to Qatar for the first time during COVID in 2020. Everything was shut down. I got some special visa to leave the country, Singapore, and got some special visa to be allowed to enter Qatar. I go there, now I've been to Qatar and Qatar is literally like a second home to me now. Qatar Investment Authority, the government of Qatar invested in one. As a result of this, me sitting in Milken next to Hassan Al-Tawari,

• 1:46:37Speaker 02

  who, you know, is literally like a brother now, we're very close, who's a martial artist like you, Tim, okay?

• 1:46:42Tim Ferriss?

  Time wise, just to put it on the timeline, was that after or before the Sequoia investment?

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  That was after.

• 1:46:48Tim Ferriss?

  After?

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  Around the same time, maybe 2017, 2018. Sequoia was around 2017, so maybe a year after that. So what happened was after the word got out in Asia but around the world that Mike and Doug personally, or GGF, it's called the, I think the Sequoia Global Growth Fund, which is managed by them, by Doug and Mike, invested in one. That's when we got invited to speak at Milken, you know, World Economic Forum, like it just suddenly, all the pieces started coming together, but at each of these things was somebody who loved martial arts or saw the purity of what it was doing and how different it was from anything else that existed on the planet. It was one thing after another. And again, like, you know, when you, when you opened this talk, you said, hey, I have this WhatsApp group with my buddies who are all, your friend Doug introduced you to this one.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  That is literally how all the dots have connected is like somebody saw that and then you said, Chatri, I don't mean to offend you, but it reminds me of Pride in K1. And of course, I know your background, having lived in Japan. I'm sure we're going to end up training together, okay? Like, just these weird things, you know?

• 1:47:47Tim Ferriss?

  Just go easy, go easy on my right elbow.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  The weirdest coincidences, I'm telling you, man. And so this, I really believe that sometimes when you chase a dream that's aligned fully with your passion and your purpose on life. My purpose, my mom told me from when I was a five, that I'm gonna help, here to help the world or help people. And how do I help people today? You say, well, our athletes, we change our lives. And through the stories of our athletes, we inspire all of our fans to live their greatest life. Every week, we give magical memories to families with their fathers and sons and that, or daughters, watching in front of the TV, you know? Like, I'll give you something in Thailand, again, which you, you're very familiar with. In Thailand, One Championship is like as big, if not bigger than NFL or NBA is in America, okay?

• 1:48:33Speaker 02

  The number of fans have come up to me and said, you know, I spend time with my father more than I've ever spent because of One Championship. Because every Friday as a family, we sit down in front of the TV and we watch One Championship. Man, like, that is exactly how I got introduced to Muay Thai. My father took me to Loompinny Stadium, which you have been, when I was nine years old. And despite all the, you know, I had a complicated relationship with my father, didn't see him for decades. A lot of anger, a lot of hatred. But in the end, I'm full of gratitude for all the good he did for me. And without him, I would never have found my greatest love, which is martial arts, when I was nine years old.

• 1:49:16Speaker 02

  And the fact that that's my most poignant memory of my father to this day, and that magical memory is happening all over the country, there's 70 million people in Thailand, where I grew up. I just came back from Thailand, it still doesn't register, it's wild. I land in the country and it's like, imagine, Tim, if you had started NFL and it became popular in your lifetime, let's just say in America, and, and everyone knew, Tim started NFL. It's like that, it's like.

• 1:49:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's wild.

• 1:49:41Speaker 02

  It's the most surreal experience as a kid growing up in Thailand and, and to see what's happened now. But you see, but now I, I really do believe that my mom's words about helping others. Somehow it all feels almost like destiny, you know? My father named me Warrior. He took me to Muay Thai. I was so obsessed with it, and I am still obsessed with it, that it became my life. And I could have had a very comfortable life, you know, in the investment world as a hedge fund manager or entrepreneur, other business or whatever, you know? I could have done real estate or whatever it is. But somehow, it's weirdest thing. I just feel like my destiny is to be here, right here, right at this moment. And everything that came with it. And all the good, bad, and ugly that happened in my life somehow have led me to this moment.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  Sorry to be so a little bit cornball with you. You know, I'm a very philosophical guy. I think deeply about the meaning of life and I think deeply about what is it that I want to do? You know, what is it that I want to do? Meaning that, you know, I don't own a lot of fast cars. I have, I own a Toyota. I don't have any material desires. There's a G-Shock watch. I don't have many material things. I almost nothing. It's because I just learned a long time ago, being poor, that all that kind of stuff is attaching yourself to material things versus attaching yourself to a purpose or a meaning of life. I don't know, I found much more deeper fulfillment and happiness having found and aligned my passion, my purpose than I ever did buying anything material.

• 1:51:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I also imagine, given your background and experiences, that attaching yourself to material goods or just subconsciously becoming attached to them as you accumulate them and value them more and more highly feels like skating on very thin ice compared to purpose, which is much, much harder to take away. Just seems like psychologically, it makes all the sense in the world. And I'd love to ask, I have a lot of questions remaining. I am definitely going to ask you, I'll plant the seed about Henzo. I want to hear more about Henzo and his role in your life. Before we get to that, though, I want to ask a few specific questions. You mentioned philosophy.

• 1:51:52Tim Ferriss?

  I also recall the one up on Wall Street, the Lynch book. And I'm wondering if there are any books that you have either reread quite

• 1:52:02Tim Ferriss?

  A bit on your own or gifted to other people. And this comes to mind because you're attracting talent, right? You're cultivating talent and stakeholders. And I've been involved with quite a lot of companies since 2007, 2008. And I remember visiting the Shopify offices for the first time because I was their first advisor in like 2008 or nine.

• 1:52:25Speaker 02

  What an incredible story.

• 1:52:26Tim Ferriss?

  Great guys, and they have, at least at the time that I visited, they had, for instance, Andy Grove, High Output Management and a few other books that they would give to everyone when they became an employee or at least someone in a management position at Shopify. So for all these reasons, I'm just curious if there are any books that stand out to you that you've reread or that you've gifted or recommended to other people?

• 1:52:51Speaker 02

  I don't say that I have, you know, one book that I go to, but I would say a few books that I think are very interesting. One is a book that recently came out called 32 Principles by a friend of mine, Henner Gracie. So he's part of the Gracie family, the Jiu Jitsu family. And the 32 Principles relates to Jiu Jitsu, but it's a double meaning. Each principle is also relating to how to live life. And I found that to be a very powerful, almost like Bible of what martial arts has been for me, but also how I also, you know, have inherited from Jiu Jitsu, doing for about 20 years and all the life lessons that applies. You know, it's very simple things that in like in Jiu Jitsu, if you force something, it often doesn't come to you.

• 1:53:35Speaker 02

  If you align and connect and you go with the flow, you'll be able to catch that submission. You'll be able to, you know, choke someone out or get an armbar, whatever. But oftentimes when you go for something directly and you force it, it's a very good analogy for life. You know, certain things that you can't force passion or purpose. It's either that's your true self or you're faking it. If you're faking to yourself, you only get so far and you'll fake it to the world. So that's one book that I think I would recommend, you know, anybody to read. And whether you do Jiu Jitsu or not, there's a lot of powerful lessons in that. And so it's, you know, very martial arts because I'm always martial arts obsessed. Another person that I think books, and there's a lot of books on Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is someone.

• 1:54:17Speaker 02

  And people may not truly understand Bruce Lee was, yes, he was a world-class martial artist, but he was a very deep person in how he thought about life and meaning of life. And so, reading his philosophies, reading his, has always had a major impact. The Tao of Jid Kendo, his first martial arts book. But there's a lot of stuff on Bruce Lee about how he lived life and all that. And one quote that comes to mind is, he says, he said many, many, many years ago, right? When he was alive, "Don't pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a hard one." And the meaning of that, like, why would you want to do that? You know, you pray for the strength for a hard one because a hard life is often a meaningful life.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  Love, pain, suffering, you're going, because you're pursuing something, oftentimes bigger than yourself, that involves love, pain, and suffering, such that the path is going to be hard. Praying for an easy life means you wasted your potential as a human being. I have an easy life, meaning I never was given a challenge, I was in a lap of luxury my whole life, or whatever it is, I had food on my plate, I never went through any adversity. So Bruce Lee is someone, you know, I talk a lot about, quote a lot, but I also look at even modern-day heroes, including our athletes and their stories, in terms of, whenever, like, we'll have a company meeting, and it's completely unrelated to martial arts, but every month, we have a, an award called Be Like Nick.

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  Goes to the employees, our teammates, who go above and beyond the call of duty in their work and do the extraordinary. And we tell the story of it. And why is it called like Be Like Nick? Because it's about Nick Vojcek. So there's this motivational speaker who was born with no arms and no legs. I don't know if you know Nick Vojcek?

• 1:56:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think I've shared his videos in my, in my newsletter, actually, years ago. Yeah.

• 1:56:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think he's from Australia. He's born with no arms and legs, tried to commit suicide when he was nine by drowning himself in the bathtub because he was endlessly bullied and had no future and his mom saved him. Incredible life, incredible life story and incredible optimism and sense of if he can make it and become one of the world's greatest motivational speakers, he has a beautiful wife, I think he has three kids, incredible life. And so, and we started this Be Like Nick several years ago award. And those are my tools for how to teach because I just feel like sometimes for me as a leader, if you hand people books, they may or may not read them, but that's not how they learn. I find storytelling to be the most powerful way to live and exemplify the values of your company,

• 1:56:51Speaker 02

  of your organization by like Be Like Nick these stories, rather than say, everyone be good, you know, don't lie, don't cheat, or whatever it is the values, right? It's better to tell stories of real life heroes within your own company that exemplify your values, that exemplify what it means to do extraordinary things and hence Be Like Nick. So I know I'm not answering a question directly about books. I have so many books I would, you know, so if you want to know about investing.

• 1:57:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, bridging to the storytelling is great. I mean, it can be a physical book, but it's more a metaphor for teaching in this particular case, learning slash teaching. So I think the storytelling maps into that. Are there any people who you have looked up to or who you admire for their storytelling ability? It could be within the world of business. I remember one of my most nerve wracking interviews very, very early on that I had was with Ed Catmull, who at the time was president of Pixar. And he wrote a book called Creativity, Inc. And it talks about storytelling quite a lot. The reason that was so nerve wracking is the first person I did not know who I interviewed on the podcast. I was really, really nervous. But are there any folks

• 1:58:00Tim Ferriss?

  you look up to as storytellers in the way you describe it or otherwise?

• 1:58:08Speaker 02

  Outside of my family, my greatest role model is Kru Yotong Senan, who, you know, is a founder of Yotong Camp, Yotong Gym, which is where I cut my teeth for Muay Thai. He was a very philosophical man and he died penniless. But he didn't die penniless because he was materialistic or he wasted money or, you know, he was into gambling or anything. No. He died penniless because all of his money, all the time, every year, was given to those less fortunate. His whole mission in life was, when he built Sichuan Gym, it was the number one in the entire world at one point in Muay Thai, producing most number one champions and most fierce fighting gym in the world.

• 1:58:50Speaker 02

  And his whole philosophy was giving to orphans and underprivileged kids. And he wanted to share the art of Muay Thai and he would, you know, fund their food, their education and et cetera. And a few years before he died, I think five or six years before he died, he won fifty-six million baht, which is about a million, almost two million dollars in the lottery. In the lottery? Yes, okay. Yeah, and he, the crazy thing, he got the money. The next day, literally, he announced on, in the media, anyone who wants me to give you money, just come to the gym, tell me your story and I'll give you what I believe is appropriate. And I'm not kidding, thousands of people showed up, thousands.

• 1:59:34Speaker 02

  And people would say, you know, my mom is dying of cancer and he would give ten thousand dollars, whatever, until it's all gone. This is a true story. You can even Google it and it's there. And he was somebody, again, had the most big impact in my life and he was an incredible storyteller. He would tell us stories of legendary fighters and why they became great and how they lived their life. You know, he was someone, never smoked, never drank. And he did a whole bunch of other tenants. And to this day, you know, his words are in my, in my head. His, his lessons are in my head. So, a powerful storyteller for me is someone who tells a story but embedded is a deep lesson because that's how I think.

• 2:00:18Speaker 02

  Knowledge and experience gets passed on. So I don't have anybody in the modern era. I'm just thinking about who tells good stories. I mean, of course, I have friends who tell good stories, funny stories. There's nobody I look up to per se. But storytelling is definitely a very big part of my leadership as it is a very big part of the One Championship brand. In terms of, if you look at our broadcast on Amazon, you'll see these storytelling videos before they fight, right? It's why are they fighting? What is at stake? Is it because a mom is dying of cancer? They gotta pay the hospital bills? Is it because they want to be the greatest in the world? And the belt is everything, you know, they've ever dreamed of? What is at stake and what is a story? Because that's what we believe. Oh, yes, there's gonna be a fantastic knockout. And you and your buddies will appreciate it because it's martial arts at the highest levels.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  By the way, Tim, we haven't announced it yet. We have a big, a major event in Tokyo later this year.

• 2:01:08Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, man.

• 2:01:09Speaker 02

  I haven't announced it, so this is coming. But I won't give the date yet. But I would like to invite you as my personal guest to come to Tokyo. We sit cage side together, okay? And Sayama sensei will be there.

• 2:01:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, man.

• 2:01:20Speaker 02

  Just because your background. And I'm telling you.

• 2:01:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  That.

• 2:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you.

• 2:01:23Speaker 02

  When you sit there and you watch all the videos, all the life stories, you'll walk away, Tim Ferriss, with a magical memory and some powerful lesson. Okay, and of course, you're, you're in the incredible seat of meeting so many different incredible human beings. And you have extraordinary memories through your whole career that it might not be that special. But I promise you, given your background of loving Japan, speaking Japanese, loving martial arts and being who you are, just you will love sitting there. And then I'll take you backstage. You'll see the speech. You go meet the guys. That, for me, is storytelling. You will walk away with some powerful memories and lessons. And I'm inviting you for real.

• 2:01:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, I would absolutely love to do that. So you can let me know the dates on the bat phone. That sounds amazing. And, you know, I think I actually bumped into Sayama Satoru once when I was like 15 or 16 because I saved up all my money and I went to one shuto match. And then the announcers were like, you know. Sayama Satoru, Shodai Tiger Mask. And then he came out and did the whole thing. And I just remember being so in awe also of the guy's thighs, the size of his legs and his head kicks, just unbelievable. But that sounds like an amazing experience. So, thank you for the invitation. I would, I would love to talk about that.

• 2:02:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:02:39Tim Ferriss?

  So Chachi, I'd love to ask you just some real quick, kind of paint by the numbers, one questions. On a broadcast and online level, from a distribution perspective, what are your biggest countries?

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  You mean in terms of viewership or in terms of revenue?

• 2:03:00Tim Ferriss?

  In terms of viewership.

• 2:03:02Speaker 02

  Well, obviously, the content of Asia for us is quite large.

• 2:03:07Tim Ferriss?

  If you thin slice it within Asia, are there any? For instance, when I'm looking at the podcast, I can go into Spotify or whatever the platform analytics might be and say, okay, looks like, you know, US, within the US, these particular states or cities, then you have this, this, this, this, this.

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  So, one way to think about it is, you know, when we throw events, and it doesn't matter what time of day we throw events, where do we trend around the world? Is also a very important metric we look at because, you know, yeah, I can list our top 10 countries, but surprisingly, they don't always correlate. So for example, in March, when we're in Tokyo, is Asia primetime show on a Sunday. We trended number two or three in America. America is not a large market for us, but we have a rabid fan base and a very growing fan base. Actually, you know, we're only second, only to UFC, and we're not even on ground in America, right? In terms of the actual metrics. And there's obviously a lot of local promotions in the US.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  But for sure, Asia, like, you know, countries like China, Japan, Thailand, these are obviously big countries, you know, India. But what I say to the team is, you know, our 500 million fans are scattered all around the world. So in any given one country, it might be small, right? It may be a million fans, but in another country, okay, like I tip out, if you think it's like Thailand, definitely one of our top markets, 70 million people, population, 70 million people are fans. And like, there's no question, right? So that might be one country that over indexes. But Philippines is the same way. Philippines, we're Top two or top three sports property.

• 2:04:43Tim Ferriss?

  I have an assistant in the Philippines who went to one of your shows live in Manila, actually.

• 2:04:47Speaker 02

  And there's also, it depends on who's world champion at the time. So this is another funny thing is when we have a world champion from XYZ country. Okay, I'll give you an example. Actually, it's on my Instagram, although I'm not very social media. It's funny, as a social media expert, I'm not very social media.

• 2:05:02Tim Ferriss?

  Engaged.

• 2:05:02Speaker 02

  I'm not, yeah, engaged on my platform, on my own personal ones, because I just find it to be very laborious and I'd rather focus on the business, you know? But I do have one clip up there where when China won its first world champion, okay, Tang Kai, first MMA world champion. CTV5, which is the central government of China, came out on TV and online and on print. Jia you, which means yay.

• 2:05:26Tim Ferriss?

  Jia you, yeah.

• 2:05:28Speaker 02

  China won its first world championship in one championship, okay? It was all over. He came back home and this is the clip. To 10,000 people, the government threw a thing at 10,000 fans and they're all holding their phones. His welcome home was crazy. We did like a billion organic video views on that single fight. It's not that big, given that China is a billion three. But the point is that this blob of 500 million is growing. But what we have seen is that the pockets of popularity depends on who's the world champion, who's the most popular world champions at the time? Where are they fighting? What country, right? So like recently in Japan, our numbers just blew up in March, as I mentioned, because of the Saitama event.

• 2:06:09Speaker 02

  But previously to that, it wasn't, you know, Takehiko had fought, but he blew up the, because unfortunately got knocked out in the first round. I mean, the best way to think about it is it's a blob and the blob around the world ebbs and flows based on where the events are, what time zones, because sometimes we have US primetime events, sometimes it's Asia primetime. And sometimes we're in throwing events in like in Denver and sometimes we're in Doha, Qatar. So I think that's the best way to describe it. But every metric we look at, again, it's depending on country. I think almost every country I look at, because I get these stats, you know, across the world, 2X, 3X, 4X, if it's 4X, you know, obviously usually a small base. These are the kind of numbers. We have hockey stick charts like almost every week. I don't know of a country that is down. I just off the top of my head.

• 2:06:53Speaker 02

  You know, from prior time, because it's just combat sports is growing so fast. So that's a long-winded answer, I know, but it's because I, I'm telling you like last year, 100% it was Thailand was our number one, but this year, not necessarily, like, you know, it depends on the year. On what is popular, right? Four years ago, it was China for sure, or three years ago.

• 2:07:14Tim Ferriss?

  A few follow up questions, actually a comment then follow up questions. The comment is, and I started thinking this around 2020, 2021 during COVID. But particularly, I'm tracking, I invest in some of these companies too, but I'm tracking AI development really, really closely and recently dealt with a deep fake video of me promoting stocks and some scam, which was 99% convincing. I mean, this is fake video. Background, clothing, facial hair, everything, except for a few glitches was convincing. And I think as more and more is CGI or AI produced, that man, oh, man, one of the

• 2:07:56Tim Ferriss?

  last places of refuge for pure authenticity is going to be live sports. So I think the growth, I'd be shocked if the growth doesn't continue and if it might even accelerate as people are looking for some type of oasis where they can separate fact from fiction.

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  That's a very fascinating thing. I've had deep fake videos of me done as well, and it's kind of disturbing, actually, you know? And this deep fake video, it was just last week, my social media team took it down, it was me promoting gambling. You know, I don't gamble, but we're moving more and more into a world where you don't know what is real news and what's fake news. You know, there's so much manipulation of the media and then on top of it, now you have AI. It's a scary world that we're going to be living in, you know, in the next few years.

• 2:08:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's pretty spooky. Let me follow up on the offices where you have important broadcast relationships, because I'd love to hear more about that. Because I guess as an outsider who knows nothing about the broadcast world, I think, well, once you sign the deal, or maybe if like Fabian helps put together a deal and you agree on the X year term, and when things are going to be broadcast, like what is there to do with an office on the ground? I mean, is it just taking people out to nice lunches and making sure they're happy? What is actually going on?

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  When we did our first broadcast deals, you know, many years ago, I thought that, oh, you just signed the contract and it's done. But actually, what happens is every broadcaster has tons of content. In Amazon's case, it's they have NFL, they have NASCAR, they have WNBA. And of course, there's one. And of course, there's a program and a schedule, but humans are humans. Like if you are, you know, we have these teams. And I'll give a great example. Let's say our Japanese broadcaster. We have weekly meetings with cross departmental. So programming, marketing, sales, blah, blah, blah, blah. Check in every single week in Japan on ground. And it's to make sure that the broadcaster and the content is at the right hour, the right number of promos,

• 2:10:04Speaker 02

  the highlights, what else can we be doing to grow the viewership? So you're always actually, there's a lot of work that goes behind the scenes to make sure it's a rating success and that it continues. The types of athletes, I'll give you examples. So our broadcast partner in Japan, Unex, asked me to sign some Japanese superstars as an example. So having a deep and strong partnership is very, very important. But also, it's usually we have a team, of course, with broadcast partnership, but we'll have a team of social media experts as well and athlete ecosystem scouts. Okay, so there's kind of three pillars that once you establish a very strong partnership with a broadcast partner, you have a broadcast team that manages everything from marketing

• 2:10:48Speaker 02

  and sponsorship sales and promos and highlights and da, da, da, da, and different time slots and shoulder content. And then, of course, social media, you want to make sure you're blowing up social media so that you're culturally relevant in that country with, you know, the athletes. And there's content you're always making. And of course, the athletes are competing, so you can also do that. And then, you know, the third leg is obviously athlete ecosystem. So we're, I'd say those are the three pillars, you know, whether it's China or the US or Japan or Thailand or whatever, or Philippines, where we have folks. It's usually those three pillars that are at work.

• 2:11:21Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love to just draw up a quick comparison of, say, physical retailers, because I've been learning a lot more about this outside of books. I learned about it within the realm of books and book distribution. But have learned more and more about truly mass retail, which I mean, it's just wild how much of an impact mass retail has. Online, yes, like Amazon is a big deal, but predominantly physical retails is still just enormous. Also, just for food security in the US, which is kind of wild to think about. But the reason I'm bringing it up is that I'm wondering, and different broadcasters must vary widely, but in the, say, retail space, you go into a large retailer in the US, it's like, okay, if you want an end cap instead of placement

• 2:12:05Tim Ferriss?

  down at the knee, then chances are you might have to pay for it. You want better placement, or you want them to sell internally to store managers or people who make buying decisions, well, you may have to pay for that, like co-op advertising fees and so on. They're also going to want to know, in many cases, what you're doing to drive consumers to them as a retailer slash distributor. And I'm wondering if there are similar types of asks of one from broadcasters.

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  In the media industry, you're either the it content or you're not. If you look at the history, the 13 years of one, there were partnerships in the early days where I just had to give the content for free. I'm like, hey, here are the metrics on social, please put it on TV. And Asia at the time was predominantly still free to air TV. It's slowly transitioned to digital, but the vast majority, I'd say like maybe two thirds of the continent is still free to air TV. But as we became more and more popular, and you know, like you're going to champion in China or wherever, and the popularity rises, and of course, the ecosystem, whether it's B to B, B to G.

• 2:13:11Tim Ferriss?

  What's B to G? I haven't heard that before. What is that?

• 2:13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, government, government.

• 2:13:16Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, got it.

• 2:13:16Speaker 02

  Governments, yeah, governments, yeah. Because, you know, just like F1, we're traveling circus, and our events in different countries are funded by governments because they want to attract the eyeballs and the tourism, right?

• 2:13:29Tim Ferriss?

  Interesting. Okay, so it's like, it's like hosting the World Expo or something.

• 2:13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:33Tim Ferriss?

  For the local economy.

• 2:13:34Speaker 02

  A great example is Qatar. They did World Cup and what was the after? F1, they have a few big global sports properties that the tourism bodies have funded, right? So we're different countries. So in Qatar's case, World Cup was their big bet in terms of introducing themselves to the world, but also building economic and political bridges for Qatar's economic and political system. But also, again, an introduction, here's Qatar, right? What better way to do it than with the Qatar World Cup where, you know, a few billion people watch? And for the whole World Cup, it ended up being the best World Cup in history, right? It was in terms of games and viewership or not.

• 2:14:15Speaker 02

  But how many CEOs flew in and politicians and how many deals were done? How many, you know? And it has been a major catalyst for Qatar's economy and political landscape. It just has. And since then, there's been momentum been built with Qatar. Sports has that power because sports properties, when done right, win the hearts and minds of an entire country or entire region, or in Olympic's case, the entire world, right? And that is what I mean about you're either it or you're not. So some sports properties, and I don't want to name names, but they just are never gonna be it. They're in a genre that the sport is a snooze fest

• 2:14:58Speaker 02

  or the sport is long form or it's just uncool or production value is bad, whatever, right?

• 2:15:03Tim Ferriss?

  And not being the it thing means you don't have leverage.

• 2:15:07Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 2:15:07Tim Ferriss?

  You're not in a good position.

• 2:15:08Speaker 02

  Right. And then in the case of one, again, it's shades of gray, just as it is for NBA. NBA is very strong in America, very strong in Philippines. But Thailand, no one cares about basketball. So every sports, global sports property has this like shades of gray and zones where they're very, very popular and they're it. And you can command a very big price for media rights. So it's exactly like retail. If you have a hot it product that regularly sells out with a very, very fast inventory turns, the shelf space they're gonna give you is premium and the retailer will probably give you a rebate back because it's such a great product and it pulls consumers into the stores. Same thing.

• 2:15:51Speaker 02

  So a broadcaster will have 30 different types of programming, news, sports, this, that, da, da, da, da, da. But of course. The crown jewels is where they, the ones that drive viewership, drive cultural relevance. These are the ones that broadcasters will pay premium dollars for, right? So it really, really depends on market by market, what the economics are. But in the early days of one, literally, we gave the content for free to everybody. We just want to be on air. And then they would be on air on a delayed basis at two in the morning. Then we slowly would persuade them to do it 11pm, you know? And eventually live and the numbers would blow up. And then they're like, oh, this is a hit. And then they start investing in the property and then. How much funding have you guys raised at this point in total?

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  We've raised a little over $600 million. But the beauty of the sports business, even NBA, NBA has about 1,000 employees globally, total, full stop. It's a $70 billion property because it's an asset light business. That's a platform business that at the end of the day rests on the brand and the media rights. Okay, of course athletes, but it's not like you have to build to scale globally. Okay, again, we're broadcasting 190 countries around the world every week. Okay, live. It's not like we have to build a factory in 190 countries. We don't need to raise $10 billion. We don't need 20,000 people.

• 2:17:20Speaker 02

  I think if I'm not mistaken, like, you know, very mature sports properties might have 2,000 people maximum. Like a WWE, I think has, that's not sports, but it's, you know, pseudo sports. It's about 2,000 employees. It's around there and that's the beauty of this business. So $600 million is a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money. When you think about the viewership that we have, the, you know, how big we are, right? How popular we are on the world. When you think about our status as a top 10 global sports property. I think that's also why people love software companies. Although I would argue that for what Doug Leone was saying, you know, sports properties are far more enduring. Than a typical SaaS company is or typical tech startup is.

• 2:18:04Tim Ferriss?

  No, exactly. I mean, it's like I've been involved with companies and seen companies that have raised multiple billions of dollars in their seed series or their series A. And yes, on one hand, you have the potential for a hundred X return, or if you're lucky, a thousand X return. Like that is possible, but also a few PhDs in a lab could design something that completely destroys that company. And there's a certain rapid escape velocity that can be achieved if you're the 1% of the 1%. But very, very hard to defend typically, right? To develop a moat, whereas your business has been on a lot of levels like a motherfucker to build.

• 2:18:47Tim Ferriss?

  But once you've hit that critical mass, now you have a beautiful thing to defend.

• 2:18:53Speaker 02

  That's why I said, you know, it's less than 1% of 1% that I'm actually standing here with my team. That once I've actually survived the 13 years. And the fact that our metrics are just continue to explode is mind boggling to me. But we've hit that point now, like any competitor to one would have to invest a minimum, minimum. I think of a few billion dollars and at least a decade to be able to catch up with us. But by then our own metrics will be multiples of what it is today. Right?

• 2:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if people are looking for business opportunities, they'll choose something else. Rather than try to scale Everest backwards.

• 2:19:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:19:29Tim Ferriss?

  We didn't get to say much about Henzo Gracie, but I want to at least give a shout out to Henzo.

• 2:19:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:19:35Tim Ferriss?

  Because I've only met him very briefly, but what a sweet guy, also an incredible technician and teacher. And I still remember also some of his finishes from back in the day, like Oleg Taktarov. Oh my God, like from the back heel to the face, basically kip up to run across the ring. And it's just incredible.

• 2:19:55Speaker 02

  You're right. It's Oleg Taktarov. He was called the Russian bear was his nickname. And Henzo was on his back and he was kicking and then Oleg came in and then he got up, kick, boom, he falls down. Henzo gets stands up and throws a right hook and knocks him out. I mean, I'll tell you, Henzo is someone who has had a profound influence. Not only, you know, did I train under the Henzo Gracie banner and he gave me my black belt. But we joke, we're brother from another mother. We're always talking at different time zones, you know, all hours of the night. I always say he is the candle that lights up all other candles around the world. Like the number of students like myself that he has all over the world that are carrying the torch of Henzo Gracie Jiu Jitsu.

• 2:20:41Speaker 02

  But equally important, carrying his values as a human being of he's genuinely the most generous person I've ever met. Ever met in my whole life. Generous of his time, of his heart, anything he can do. He's just genuinely. He and I have been close friends for, you know, 20 years plus now. Or almost 20 years, rather. Actually, he came to the very first One Championship show. He flew from New York all the way here just to attend the first one. And at that time, we were just a startup, a tiny little show. But that's the kind of guy he is. And I don't know if you know, he had his last professional MMA fight in One Championship.

• 2:21:21Speaker 02

  He was 52 years old, came back and fought pride legend Yuki Kondo in Philippines, 20,000 people stadium, it was crazy. And he wins by the most unbelievable, beautiful submission. And then um, he's on, he's cornering his shoulders and he's out there and the fans go crazy and that's Henzo. I mean, and he gave this incredible speech about age is just a number. And you know, whatever you set your mind and your dreams are, you know, go it and live your dreams and have the guts to be who you really are. And that's his last fight.

• 2:21:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I did not know that. That's incredible. Wow.

• 2:21:57Speaker 02

  He gave that to me as a gift. I mean, I'm telling you, like, of course, we paid him, but I'm saying he did not have to fight at 52 years old. Cause I said, hey, Henzo, can you fight? I'd love you to have your last fight in one. And again, he's 50, but just epic. And he did it because he wanted to help grow One Championship. He wanted to grow our popularity. He knew that if he fought in it, he'd bring the Gracie family name with it, you know? And, and people be intrigued about this is his last fight of his career, right? So it's a lot of epic stories. He was actually in Qatar in February, you know, at our show. He was uh, in Abu Dhabi for some, for something, but then he came over to Qatar. But yeah, and he's given me so much about Jiu Jitsu knowledge, but he's given much more about how to live life.

• 2:22:42Speaker 02

  And it goes back to what my mother said. You have to help others and that's Henzo's to the core. He's yes, he is legendary. He's, in my opinion, the most complete Gracie out of the Gracie family. And that's saying a lot because there are a lot of monsters and killers from the Gracie family. Legendary life, legendary career, left Brazil, nothing but the shirt on his back, came to America, went to New York City, got cheated by his first partner who took his passport. Incredible story. And then now built the most successful jiu-jitsu academies in America and fought in Pride, fought in One, fought in all the epic promotions. And what a life, you know, what a life. And, and, but people don't know this about him. He's like, he is the nicest,

• 2:23:26Speaker 02

  the most generous, the most loving human being. And that's why I said he's the candle that lights up the world.

• 2:23:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he's a one of a kind. So Deepao de Henzo, and for people who want to look him up, Henzo, that is Brazilian Portuguese with an R, R E N Z O, Gracie.

• 2:23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm actually wearing his shirt to represent, represent.

• 2:23:46Tim Ferriss?

  I can see that. Yeah, I recognized it. So if you could bring back in their prime, a few fighters from the olden days, and these have to be professional competitors. So not Bruce Lee, but Sakuraba, fair game, you know, Ernesto Houst, fair game. Like you can pick from any time, really, you know, Senchai, whatever you want to pick. But if you were to bring people back in their prime to fight in One in any discipline, who would you bring back?

• 2:24:17Speaker 02

  So for MMA, I would get a prime Fedor Emelinenko.

• 2:24:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 2:24:22Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, he's definitely has to go down as one of the greatest in history. I'd bring a prime Henzo Gracie and maybe even against each other because Henzo would often give 50 pounds of weight. He'd be fighting at 170 and his opponents would be at 220. I would love to have Ramon Decker.

• 2:24:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, so good.

• 2:24:38Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:24:39Tim Ferriss?

  The rainbow shorts.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And his left hook.

• 2:24:43Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'm sorry. You know what? I was thinking of a different Dutchman. No, I was thinking of a different guy, Ramon Decker.

• 2:24:48Speaker 02

  No, no, Rob, Rob Kaman, Rob Kaman, Rob Kaman.

• 2:24:50Tim Ferriss?

  Kaman is who I was thinking of. Yeah, Ramon Decker.

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  Is a left hook. Yes.

• 2:24:54Tim Ferriss?

  He had, what was it, like seven or eight fights against Koban?

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my God, you crazy. Tip, I had no idea that you you knew martial arts this deeply. It's a wonder that we have not met before. I'm telling you, I know everybody in martial arts. You know it cold, man. You're an expert. It's crazy. But yeah, so I would bring back the greats like Roman Decker and Rob Kamau, who are the two first foreigners. Went to Thailand, went to the fight in the toughest arenas and fought the best ties. And at time, this was when I was training, it'd been eighties and and nineties where, you know, there were very few foreigners who could even hold a candle to an average tie, right? Today, it's become a global, truly global sport. You have the likes of Jonathan Haggerty or Liam Harrison, or, you know, from all over the world, you know, the greats, right?

• 2:25:42Speaker 02

  Even now, there's a sensation in Japan, Nataka, who's broken all records already at the ladder weight divisions. He's killer, he just joined one, actually, two days ago. But I'd love to being a prime Mike Tyson and a prime Muhammad Ali and do a boxing fight in one championship. That would have been unbelievable. I'd bring back a prime, who else? Vanderlei Silva was somebody who was an absolute killer.

• 2:26:06Tim Ferriss?

  Axe murderer from back in the day.

• 2:26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Rampage Jackson and Vanderlei Silva.

• 2:26:12Tim Ferriss?

  I was just gonna say Quentin Rampage Jackson.

• 2:26:13Speaker 02

  When they fought in Pride.

• 2:26:15Tim Ferriss?

  In Pride, yeah.

• 2:26:16Speaker 02

  That, to me, was one of the, I mean, these guys, ugh.

• 2:26:19Tim Ferriss?

  Just the guard slams alone from Rampage Jackson.

• 2:26:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:26:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God. Come out with the chains. That was so fun.

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  Even grappling, I want to do, one of the greatest of all time arguably is Marcelo Garcia.

• 2:26:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, my friend co-founded this school with him in New York City, Josh Waitzkin. Yeah.

• 2:26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Marcelo's signed to one, you know, he had his debut in January. He wants to fight Ty Ruel Tolo, the current welterweight champion.

• 2:26:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Ruel Tolo brothers are nuts to watch.

• 2:26:48Speaker 02

  Nuts. So getting those two guys, Marcelo versus Ty, I think, would probably be the biggest.

• 2:26:53Tim Ferriss?

  How old is Marcelo now?

• 2:26:54Speaker 02

  Forty-one, around there, but he's in prime, prime condition. Of course, the last couple of years, he's battling cancer, but he's cancer-free now. And that's why he wanted one last big run and then. If he wins a world title in one, he will retire as arguably the greatest of all time.

• 2:27:12Tim Ferriss?

  Can I just say a quick thing about Marcelo? So people can look up Marcelo. He's famous for the Marcelotene, as he calls it, a variation of the guillotine, where he kind of levers up one of his arm on the shoulder of a person in his guard. But Marcelo, number one, absolutely one of the sweetest human beings I've ever met in my life.

• 2:27:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:27:31Tim Ferriss?

  So soft spoken and just a deeply, deeply kind human. Secondly, as my friend described it, is able to turn himself on and off better than almost any athlete I've seen, where he would literally, they'd have to find him before his world championship bout, let's just say in a tournament or a finals match for the world championships, because he would be taking a nap under a bleacher. And they would be like, Marcelo, you're up, you're up. And he'd go, okay, wake up, kind of like shake his head and then just go from zero to 10 and get out there. And similarly would compete against folks. And I guess this is true in like ADCU absolute division and it's true in all Japan Judo Championships.

• 2:28:13Tim Ferriss?

  But he'd compete against guys who were like 50, 80, 100 pounds heavier than he was.

• 2:28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Just an incredible athlete.

• 2:28:21Speaker 02

  So Marcelo will be competing again in one later this year, but his debut was in January in Thailand. And he was very nervous backstage because it's a huge production and obviously, you know, it was a major event and he was fighting Imanari, you know, the leg lock specialist from Japan, legendary leg lock specialist. And because Marcelo had not competed in 13 years, but also went through cancer the last few years, he didn't know how he was going to come back. And he just put on a flawless, unbelievable, just crushed Imanari, made him look like, honestly, like a blue belt. And that's no disrespect to Imanari. Imanari is a high level, world-class black belt, unbelievable leg lock specialist. But Marcelo, just, there are levels, right? And Marcelo's just on another level.

• 2:29:06Speaker 02

  So I do want to do Marcelo Garcia versus Tyrell Tullman. I think that will be the most watched jiu-jitsu match in history because of the epic storylines.

• 2:29:16Tim Ferriss?

  Stylistically so different, too.

• 2:29:18Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 2:29:20Tim Ferriss?

  Couldn't be more different.

• 2:29:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Man, this has been such a fun interview because I've said a lot of things or told a lot of different stories or just unexpectedly because of the way the flow has been. And at the same time, Had no idea how deep, deep you are because obviously, you know, I did my work on you and I knew you did martial arts, but I didn't know how deep. But that's crazy. It's crazy how much you know and all the little nuances too. I mean, down to Henzo's upkick on Oleg Taktarov. I think that event was called Extreme Fighting Championship or something like that.

• 2:29:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was an oldie. This is way back in the day. This is way back in the day. When I just come back from Japan, it's probably a few years after I came back from Japan. And in Japan, I would always go to the bookstore after school, after judo practice. I did judo. And I would try to find Kakto Gitsushi, which was this magazine that was all martial arts, to see the latest K-1 photos and so on, to see what had happened. And that's basically how I forced myself to learn to read was judo textbooks and Kakto Gitsushi.

• 2:30:21Speaker 02

  Wow, wow. How long did you study? Because your accent is flawless. It's like literally a Japanese accent.

• 2:30:28Tim Ferriss?

  I was there for 11 months. I studied for maybe five months before I got there. And lived with the Japanese host family, went to a Japanese school, wore the like Seifuku uniform every day and did basically next to no English for the entire almost year that I was there. Then I came back and I studied a bit more, went to Middlebury Language School. But really it was that 11 months and just going like 100% Gadi Bing, like get the

• 2:30:57Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 2:30:58Tim Ferriss?

  Get the Kanji in a poster and it's like, I don't care how tired you are. If your senpai made you drink or clean the judo floor until you were dizzy. Like you have to do 20 characters. Like it doesn't matter what condition. You have to do 20 characters a day and that was the deal.

• 2:31:14Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 2:31:15Tim Ferriss?

  So people can find all things One Championship at 1fc.com. Is that the best place to point people?

• 2:31:21Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 2:31:22Tim Ferriss?

  Great. And then for socials or anywhere in particular, you'd like to point people? Just so they can see the master works that you guys put up?

• 2:31:30Speaker 02

  It's a hashtag is just One Championship on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, whatever, you know, the usual, the Youtubes.

• 2:31:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, the usual. All right, guys, check it out. You won't be disappointed. The highlights are ridiculous, as are the stories and everything else that we've discussed. Very last question. If you could put anything on a billboard, could be anything, just to get a message out to, metaphorically speaking, many millions or billions of people, could be a quote, could be anything at all. I was thinking about the love, pain, suffering. Of course, the Bruce Lee quote comes to mind, but it could be anything. Is there anything that you would put up?

• 2:32:06Speaker 02

  Suffering is a path to our greatness. And I say this to all my friends, my relatives, and I truly believe this from the bottom of my heart, that suffering is a path to greatness, that oftentimes, God or the universe puts us on a path where we, when we're going through it, we suffer. But in hindsight, when you look back on it, it's probably the most beautiful part of the journey. I'm sure, for example, Tim, when you were in Japan, not being able to speak English, it was suffering for quite a bit.

• 2:32:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, six of the 11 months were brutal. Absolute brutality. Yeah.

• 2:32:40Speaker 02

  But yeah, so that's what I would say is, suffering is a path to our greatness because it brings out the best in us. And it's just, it's a hard thing to understand when you haven't suffered, but when you do suffer, be grateful for the suffering. That's what I always say to myself. When I'm suffering anything, it's because as long as I have a very powerful reason or why, then you can almost suffer through anything. But I think suffering is a path to greatness.

• 2:33:07Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Excellent place to wrap up. Chatri, thank you so much for the time. This has been so much fun for me. I've really looked forward to this. Can't wait to get back in front of a screen or in front of an actual ring to engage with one. So let's definitely keep in touch. And I really appreciate you making the time today for a very, very wide-ranging and super-rich conversation for me. I took a ton of notes, so I deeply appreciate it.

• 2:33:35Speaker 02

  Thank you so much too, Tim. You know, I had a wonderful time, incredible questions, incredible conversation, and I look forward to seeing you in Japan together.

• 2:33:43Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'll be there. I'll be there. And for everybody listening,

• 2:33:45Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 2:33:46Tim Ferriss?

  We'll link to everything in the show notes, as usual, at tim.blog/podcast. Just search Chatri or One Championship, and it will pop right up. And until next time, remember, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And as always, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1.5 and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday

• 2:34:30Tim Ferriss?

  to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

• 2:35:15Tim Ferriss?

  As many of you know, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Midnight Luxe mattress from today's sponsor, Helix Sleep. I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. Kind of over the top, to be honest. I mean, they frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. What kind of mattress is it? What do you do? What's the magic juju? It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom, which I sometimes sleep in, and I picked it for its very soft but supportive feel to help with some lower back pain that I've had. The Sunset Elite delivers exceptional comfort while putting the right support in the right spots. It is made with five tailored foam layers, including a base layer with full-perimeter zoned lumbar support,

• 2:36:00Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:36:42Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:37:26Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:38:09Tim Ferriss?

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