Mike Ovis is the co-founder and CEO of a new online gaming company. He says he spent six months trying to come up with an idea that would work for high school gamers in New York City. The only way you can build a big company there, he says, is to have relationship with publisher. Rigid rules prevent companies like this from running their own events or even competing against each other at pro level - so they're unlikely to work with them....
0:42 Jason intros PlayVS CEO & Founder Delane Parnell
2:59 What is PlayVS, how do they make money & how fast are they growing?
5:37 Attracting investors, leveraging an exclusive contract to scale across US high schools & average hours spent on the platform by players
13:26 Delane shares his backstory, from flipping shoes to owning cell phone stores in high school to getting tickets to the LAUNCH Festival in SF
26:38 How Delane turned LAUNCH Festival networking to deal flow & a job in venture capital
32:52 Meeting Peter Pham at SXSW, moving to LA to start PlayVS
38:16 Delane on his relationship with Michael Ovitz
40:20 PlayVS' go-to-market strategy & relationship with game publishers
45:51 PlayVS being co-ed & giving female gamers a safe environment to play in
51:08 Race in tech & Delane's advice on breaking into the industry as an outsider
55:57 Not taking any checks from firms who hadn't previously backed black founders
59:05 Does Darnell's intentionality about diversity create a talent advantage for PlayVS?
1:06:06 Relief of hiring high-level operators
1:11:41 LA restaurant scene discussion
1:13:39 Bird vs. Lime vs. Uber, pricing model discussion, thought on Travis Kalanick
1:23:10 Top 5 Tech entrepreneurs of all-time
1:33:40 What's going on at Airbnb?