Excited to share that
@VoidpetGame
has won a Best of 2023 award 🤠
Especially sentimental to announce just 24 hours after Forbes Under 30.
I’m moved to reflect on some ~personal growth~ of my own, especially since the Forbes summit in 2018 that inspired me to start a company :)
Feeling grateful for
@ycombinator
today, even though they rejected me 7 times 🤭
YC was my american dream since 18/yo, and it’s because of them that I never gave up on being a founder for the first 7 years of my journey.
Key takeaways from each idea I applied with:🧵👇🏼
No 🧢 review: SPEEDRUN was a legitimately life changing experience. One of the most fun and helpful things I’ve ever gotten to do.
Met/worked with multiple people who are now some of my best friends, and deeply developed my vision on what I’m building thanks to all the
Fun update:
Today we're open for applications on SPEEDRUN 2024, the second run of our accelerator for Games x Tech, with $75M from the a16z games fund to find the next amazing pre-seed startups.
Applications are now open for SPEEDRUN 2024:
Reasons why you should NOT do speedrun: 🚨😬🚨🚩🚩🚩
1) You can’t complain about being a broke indie dev anymore because with $750k in the bank it’s a bit insensitive to do so 🤨
2) LA weather is so incomprehensibly perfect, you may bemoan your life when you get back home and
📣 Calling All Founders 📣
SPEEDRUN is coming to Los Angeles this summer.
SPEEDRUN is
@a16zGames
accelerator for startups building at the intersection of tech x games, and we invest $750k in each selected company 👀
Applications for SR003 will be open from April 1st to May
In the
@VoidpetGame
anime we’re working on, all the human character designs are inspired by the emotions they use in battle.
The Voidpets bond with their humans and give them signature abilities.
Greed is a Voidpet that gets stronger if you have lots of money…💰💵🤑
Excited to announce that I’ll be speaking about
@VoidpetGame
at this year’s Industry Track at VidCon Anaheim, June 21 – 24, 2023!! 🥳 Make sure you grab your tickets here: .
#VidCon
#VidConAN23
Never thought my first thumbnail was going to be my face photoshopped over an image of flaming Korean BBQ, but then again, how was I ever supposed to think that…?
Finally posted my first horizontal vlog😄
Some motivational math:
1 - (0.99^100) = 0.63
If u have a 99% chance to fail and try 100x, the chance that u succeed = over 60% 🎉
Some Voidpets have a 1/1,310,720 chance to spawn, yet many have them after playing for a yr 🤭
With enough reps, the odds are usually in ur favor
Voidpet anime = “Pokemon meets Jujutsu Kaisen, but in America 🇺🇸”
1) You fight with magical energy spawned from emotions.
2) Energy manifests as cute collectible pets that you can train and evolve.
3) You travel across the land eating fast food + engaging in capitalism
For the
@VoidpetGame
anime, we’re working on showcasing all the different forms our emotion monsters can take.
- They can exist as ethereal shadowy matter, and hide when dormant 👻
- They can fuse with their humans’ bodies, and lend them supernatural features 🦹
- They can
Finally reached 100k on TikTok! (
@beaconsai
hehe)
All I wanted was to post cute trends and lip-sync, but all anyone wants to see is ads for
@VoidpetGame
🙄
Join 42k on Discord at 😝
It always makes my day to see people enjoying
@VoidpetGame
, but this review really struck a chord in my heart!
Sometimes, I forget we’ve been building on the same world & character designs for over 3 years now.
A huge honor to be described as a modern masterpiece 🥹❤️
Have you ever wondered why so many pop culture icons feature human animal pairings? 🤔
Think Ash and Pikachu, Game of Thrones, and every Disney princess 👑
Yes, it’s a cute creative choice, but also, here’s what it does psychologically, and why it’s valuable in your game IP:
Announcing SPEEDRUN demo day on 6/8 at
#LATechWeek
! Apply here
33 startups chosen from 1600+ apps, ranging from AI, games, tools, & more! See unicorn founders, veterans of Discord, Riot, Blizzard, Epic & Nintendo, makers of 100K+ DAU apps
👇📸 & more
(3) You should just become an influencer.
After one conversation, YC suggested that maybe I would have more users if I were more famous.
They were correct. After that, I found my first 200k followers on TikTok, and 300k users 😃
Even as an outsider, I have only good things to say about YC and how much I’ve learned from them over the years.
I get nostalgia looking through my old YC apps like diary entries, and consider their semi-annual app to be one of the most fulfilling rituals of my early career.
Someday, Skibidi Toilet shall be critically acclaimed as a 21st century homage to surrealism that stands on the shoulders of masterpieces like Magritte’s Son of Man.
Today, it is ridiculed as the anthem of iPad kids; an emblem of Gen Alpha and the chronically online.
But the
Games = good for public mental health
Any use of time that keeps u away from the endless brainrot of social media is comparatively 10xing ur mental health and ability to connect with others
Water is healthier than juice, but
juice is healthier than bleach
BIG NEWS:
i'm investing $30M in the next 45 days via the a16z SPEEDRUN program 😎
Yes, $750k per startup that joins the SPEEDRUN program plus obv it'll be a great way to work together on something. So come work with me at a16z's SPEEDRUN program -- we'll invest, work with you,
(4) Change your idea if it’s bad.
After interview 4, YC kindly said our idea was bad, and asked if we wanted to change it. We refused.
A few months later, we decided to pivot to what they said, which more than 10xed our revenue 😲
(5) Sometimes, the universe has other plans.
In 2023, after submitting my 8th (and best) YC app, we ended up passing on the interview and choosing
@speedrun
001 - which was started at just the right time, and too perfect of fit for us for anything else to be an option.
Still…
Something I learned from
@beaconsai
:
In the future, your product won’t just take off because you made a link that links to other links.
Instead, the inverse: you’ll stunt your own virality if you build a product that creators *cannot* happily rep in their bios.
To all my heartbroken simp friends: if you’re hung up on someone special who let you go, just remember my ex sold all his Bitcoin when it hit $200.
Some people just don’t know the value of what they have. It’s their loss.
Hehehe 👁👄👁
Also was recently made aware that our verification bot broke, so 26k people couldn’t get in…
Anyone got advice on how to take care of a growing discord community? 😅
Thanks to
@beaconsai
for helping to drive both 42k Discord signups and 70k signups up 🥳
A good link in bio makes the difference between having direct contact with your community vs. being at the mercy of algorithms.
Really had to hit rock bottom before going viral on TikTok 😭
Making a pokemon-like game where monsters are based on emotions, inspired by my clinical depression:
Discipline as an act of self love seems more effective than discipline as an act of self hatred.
Ironically, the negative self talk that’s shaming you for not doing something is making it more difficult for you to actually go do the thing
Voidpet is so fun :)
I love My Anger, Benjamin.
Art of the different voidpets doing some attacks! (As you can see I tried my best to replicate the attacks.)
1: Crossfire
2: Ice slash
3: Flip out
Voidpet by
@ligmachad
Consuming content is just outsourcing the will to live. The love of humor, of food, beauty, hustle, and life - that’s the stuff that keeps us going, and that’s the joy we seek from what we read and watch. Dopamine keeps existential dread at bay.
Woke up to $250 drained out of my Twilio account, 7500 signups on and my TikTok video being taken down after being up for 4 hours….
Good problems I guess? 😪
This is Tilde and her beloved Anger Voidpet, “Angy”.
Despite a disability that leaves her unable to walk, she must brave monsters and mayhem alongside her peers to earn the marks to graduate.
Unfortunately, as a Fire user, she’s constantly compared to the richest kid in school,
(1) Progress is priceless.
I filmed my very first YC app in a port-a-potty (because I was at a loud conference), and wrote “we’re the f*cking BEST” as the answer to our qualifications.
We didn’t get an interview that time, but did for the batch immediately after 😇
In favor of the notion that mental health is not always “soft.” Anger, confrontation, defiance, etc. can be essential to healing/growth, depending on one’s circumstances.
For this reason, we have enemies and battles in our self care app :)
You won't hear this in therapy culture, but something men have known for millennia is that an accusation of cowardice, in the right context, can be a truly empowering act of kindness.
It immediately moves someone out of contraction (fear) into expansion (anger), which they can
A more sappy SPEEDRUN post: When we joined the accelerator, we were 10 days away from our launch at
@TalofaGames
. I almost didn’t want to join the kickoff or programmed events since it felt poorly timed with the final days of launch.
I jumped on last minute calls with
@Chen
and
Dropped a new self care kit in
@VoidpetGame
.
I like to think of my work as entertainment, but often forget how much knowledge I now take for granted that was completely foreign to me as a kid.
Funny how we memorize all US presidents before a single cognitive bias in CBT 🤓
(2) Being good at writing is good.
When COVID hit, my friend and I eagerly applied to YC with a travel startup, thinking that in-person experiences would be booming again in a few years.
I’m not sure why they corresponded with us that time, but I appreciated it 😍
Had a cool dream today that contained an interesting puzzle:
🚇The subway was full of holes, on the both ceiling and on the floor. There was no gravity. The mission was to figure out how to get home.
💙⬆️Putting your head through a ceiling hole would take you a blue dimension
Guess
#3
: Posture and gait 🚶♀️
I think Americans tend to walk with fast, long, strides, and a gaze that rest at eye level. We’re taught to hold our heads up high and take up more space, which is a habit that is especially noticeable in crowds.
@ligmachad
I made a new idea for a Voidpet I hope you like it!
It’s called Entrancement and it evolves into a stringray-like creature with tentacles and it is a form of high excitement.
Entrancement Two is a bit deformed lol. Can you consider adding this in the future thanks!
Dropped waitlist and got hit with with 4k signups before the first hour and now my Twilio is bugging out.
Happy to have a problem I have dreamed of my whole life, but also now tweaking and cannot sleep.
With eyes the color of dollar bills and hair as dark as the black market, Pecunia has lived a picture perfect life of carefree luxury.
That’s not entirely true, but she just prefers to think of it that way.
Just got back from a trip to Japan 🤗
Took note of some handy phrases for any friends who are planning to visit soon!
Let me know if you have things to add/edit
I’ve never considered myself an artist.
Drawing has been a hobby, sure, and sometimes I design/illustrate things as part of being a generalist founder -
But I’ve never considered art to be my main craft.
Lately, however…
Building a product without knowing your customer is like making your man a sandwich and then realizing you have no man: both great because now you have a working product and 8 sandwiches for just you and your friends.
6. When you pull up to the 100 Thieves afterparty and there’s an entire arcade AND MUSEUM EXHIBIT on the history of gaming that includes your face on the wall by
@DougMcCracken
and
@Chen
🫢
10 yrs ago I thought of a story but never started it
3 days ago I decided to bring it to life… and made an animatic music video of episode 1 🎥
my toy for
@_buildspace
Since the thrill of my first million likes in 2021, it's been an ongoing challenge to balance content creation with the slow and steady grind of building a business.
Here's are some learnings over the past three years:
@BonoNikolic
Also because incentive to be early in a new community (irrespective of legitimacy) probably outweighs incentive to join/stay in something already established 😅
4. When you’re just trying to have a ~chill goofy practice pitch~ 🤪except it’s in front of the entire a16z games investment team and you’re saying stuff like “we fail a lot” to
@andrewchen
and
@Tocelot
☝🏼Big things start with small ideas.
✌🏼You have to be bad, or at the very least, mid, before you get good.
👌Creation and progress are core aspects of humanity worth celebrating, regardless of relative results.
🖖🏼 Even so, you’ll probably get results if you just keep going :)
Fast forward to 2023, and you’ll see the imaginary cast of creatures and characters that helped me come to life in Voidpet - now my first thriving company with a growing team and user base.
Thank you
@benawad
,
@GooglePlay
,
@ForbesUnder30
, and
@a16zGames
for a fantastic year ❤️
5. When you get blessed with a beautiful embroidered hoodie and never want to wear anything else again even though it’s 105 degrees where you live
@supercultureio
💖
Ever had a dream where you were on a date with someone amazing and then you realized they were just an array of product ids in javascript? Happened to me last night.
Having struggled with a long history of self loathing and harmful thoughts, I discovered entrepreneurship as an unexpected outlet for healing: building gave me long term goals that made my efforts feel meaningful, and became a surprising north star towards self love.
Huge culture shock last night upon realizing the world outside of crypto twitter apparently does not like NFTs.
Planning to spend some time researching fraud prevention, impact to the environment, etc. before I make any crowdfunding decisions.
Lmk if you’re curious to read!
It was around then that my childhood imagination began to kick back into overdrive. I started seeing my imaginary friend again, but this time, he was grown up, much better looking (because why not), and determined to fight for my mental wellbeing so he could experience the world.
I spent that first week of October 2018 in a manic frenzy, making new friends all over Boston thanks to the Forbes conference that happened to be in town. In all the excitement, I applied to Y Combinator from inside a port-a-potty, and submitted my drop out forms to the dean. 🦅
Guess
#1
: Smile/eye contact 😀
Americans smile belligerently on autopilot, and are trained to stare deeply into the souls of strangers. There’s a mixed energy of trying to be friendly + asserting dominance that shows in our facial expressions, and maybe even muscle definition.
Fallacy
#1
: Other people’s emotions are valid. Therefore, you need to respond to all of them 🤦🏻♀️
Fallacy
#2
: You cannot ameliorate everyone’s emotions. Therefore, all frustration towards you is idiotic 💁🏻♀️
Building stuff for others is a long term exercise in being at peace with