From Teen Prodigy to $40M Startup – Brian Wong

I think every founder has these crazy moments like you know at keep we had multiple near death and it can't even perform and Siri even today with apple intelligence is still a trash product so it's like there's still ways to go hello everyone on this episode of emerging founders with manav we have Brian Wong Brian is the founder of keep a mobile advertising platform that focuses on rewarding users during achievement moments in mobile apps at the age of 18 Brian graduated from college and he skipped four grades that means he went to college at the age of 14 Brian has attracted major clients like kilog McDonald's Coca-Cola while he was working at PE and over the years he also authored a book called the cheat code where he did real all these secrets uh in his book for other entrepreneurs he's also had a venture called the next stage where he teaches people about public speaking and the reason I got Brian on the part today because I am really tunnel vision focused on mobile apps right now and then when I was searching other entrepreneurs in mobile apps I came across Brian and I was like oh I I have to talk to [Music] Brian so I'm uh really excited to have you on the Pod Brian how you doing today do great thanks for having me on awesome yeah I want to I kind of want to start from like the Inception of keep uh I know you started the company when you were like 18 or 19 but yeah like what was the Inception of the idea and then what exactly was the thing that you build yeah I mean keep was one of the types of companies you would think about now was not even a question mark on whether or not it should exist which was this idea of rewarding people in mobile apps for interacting with Brands right um you know today the idea of being rewarded by a brand for watching a video for interacting with an ad for completing a task um for buying a product I mean rewards is so innate now in day-to-day interactions with Brands and mobile at the time when we started the company we're just beginning to start getting traction you know this was 2010 tools would be built for a very wide ecosystem of apps and Android and iOS we were the first to do that uh obviously in monetization uh beyond the basic uh tools like ad mob and other AD platforms that were just translating banner ads into mobile apps and so you know my whole thinking was as well it was very linear thinking to move a banner to a smaller screen by making the banner smaller right but then when you think about new platforms we believe that there was a way to evolve ads so that it wasn't just a linear thing like the obvious answer was make it smaller but what if we could make it at another dimension which was rewarding them and so we ultimately came with the idea of rewarding people so that idea of rewarding people in an ad kind of just blossomed into an entirely new category and that's where keep came from um and that's how we started the company cool so I want to talk about a little bit about like how were you able to find fund raise at that or age like you know like um at the age of 19 or 20 like how are you able to fundraise for this app yeah I mean the the environment has Chang the town right so I'm sure your viewers and listeners will know that we since sold the company it's now owned by in Market I now have a VC fund of my own um the VC environment that we raised in 2010 very different right you have you know few very well-known VCS like Kleiner Birkins tooa index kayot all in the Bay area in South Bay on meno in Meno Park on San Hill Road the lore of like the old school VC was very much so in play back in 2010 when it first started so is frankly a little easier meaning you had only a few key people to talk to and if you got in you got in and this was the big criticism of the early days Adventure that being in my opinion still technically early days because people would argue the '90s were early days when like the microchip companies were being funded but we're talking software and SAS would be uh late 90s mid 2000s and then 2010 I would say is like the web 2 uh of Revolution and kind of the the funding rounds if you remember all the main companies you use today every day were all funded around the 2010 Mark so think Airbnb around that time Uber Pinterest Spotify all the software that you use today came during that that that era the the early 2010s so long story short Venture funding was again just that small group of of VC that came into those companies you know the fact that they were betting on a young founder and that was you know the only other data point they had for that was was Zuckerberg and so they thought there was that Dynamic coming into it so obviously the perspective on these types of things have changed a lot since then I mean we've gone through what three more cycle since 2010 right and you have 2018 you have 2021 you have now right so you have four Cycles The View on companies and the ones that are funded today very very different than back then I want to dive a little deeper into that so for a little bit of context for people watching and listening this is year 2010 when Brian launched this company and I want to understand from the uh from the mindset of the brand like how can I plug and play um this reward program into the app and how how did you guys make sure like it was more targeted towards the right for Consumer yeah so the way we did it was through the type of app you were using uh for the longest time it was all about the individual it was always about uh like okay we're targeting you by the fact that you are manav you are uh living in a certain place and you are of this age group and you like these things for us it was like the moment mattered more than the person so let's say you were using a fitness app the fact that you're in a fitness app and you're working out if you just ate lunch it doesn't matter if I'm giving you a completely free burger from McDonald's because you're not hungry anymore so we realize that timing mattered a ton and then also in the app when you were finishing a level in a game or finishing a workout then you're receptive to messaging you could be in the middle of a workout and be in the middle of playing game and you can show any AD I could even show you um a free again like I said a free it could be a free dinner and people wouldn't care because it matters when you're actually uh interacting with the brand and and in that flow that you're in that sequence that you're in with the with the apps they using let's talk about the Cycles I wanted to double click on the Cycles cuz it's good to know the past predict the future so 2008 iPhone comes and the mobile app Bubble app but not the bubble but it was like a thing that was heavily invested into then we have web 3 and now we're seeing Ai and I think what I predict the next thing would be like humanoid robot so how do you predict like the next wave and are you like involved in AI are you are you curious about AI agents like are you funding those are you investing in those or do you feel like every company is just a GP rapper like how do you feel think about that this wave that's going on right now yeah so you kind of skipped over a couple more vectors of growth which I know you were you do we don't have L time to talk about them but obviously there was like you said there was there was mob laps there was the sharing economy if you recall with the Ubers the lifts the airbnbs that yeah exactly AI wave as well back then too it was like some of these chat Bots uh things started to come out from there then you had web 3 right you had crypto and and nfts and and that wave so a bunch of different one of these these hype Cycles basically I'm not speaking of all of them in sequence but but you get what I mean and then AI the way I like to remind folks and just like I said there was a mini AI boom before ai ai been a boom multiple times like it's not like this the first time people are like oh my God AI is amazing and I think the thing that finally brought AI to the hype level that it is today is chat gbt because there was something that your mom could use and understand and it was actually intelligent enough to get us there but I have to remind people it was only not so long ago that you could barely ask Siri for the weather and it can't even perform and Siri even today with apple intelligence is still a trash product so it's like there's still ways to go in terms of Chachi perplexity anthropic all these hyped up companies today okay so three things that I'm seeing right now is one is AI and AI agents are making the companies leaner more and more leaner uh number two is uh we're seeing the higher education like Hardware NB not being able to find a job and number three we're seeing like entrepreneurs being more confused about what to work on because I feel like every idea has already been done before and people are more and more confused so uh as an investor like what do you look to f f w basically like catches your attention in a second when you're like oh my God this is what I want to fund this is what I'm excited about this is going to be like massive yeah so the three things you mentioned before just kind of like a collection of things that you've observed that are important to you that I think is helpful and kind of your heris of explaining the world like MB are finding it hard to get a job and ideas are dime a dozen and everything's been done before but it's not like that was the same sentiment 10 years ago 15 years ago as well right like you come up with an idea every VC is like well can't Google just build this or they've already built this or whatever it was again it was always the same and then you know 10 years ago MBA had problems getting jobs too because of the internet I mean you kind of NB will always have problem finding jobs frankly because it's the wrong way to go to be honest like if you need to go find a adult babysitting situation then then NBA is a great place to go but if you want to find a job NBA is not the way to go you want to find a job you should make your own job and that's why being a Founder is great or at least finding companies with gaps and actually practically going in there and solving a problem than just generally solving your own problem which was you didn't know what you were going to do with your life in the first place I do want to talk about failure as well uh what was a failure that felt that set you off for later success but it felt like a failure in the in that moment it could be some story from your company or it could be something from your personal life but uh I do I feel like it would uh people would relate with hearing about your failures as well not only your successes yeah I think every founder has these crazy moments like you know at keep we had multiple near-death experiences where we were months away from running out of money you know we had lawsuits I mean we a lot of things happen that you know I can only tell you nothing is ever as terrible as it seems and nothing is ever As Good As It Seems and that's the lesson walking away from that that in the moment you're always going to make a big deal out of it because you care I think the biggest takeaway for me is like be as stoic as Brian and uh for people like watching I where can they go find you I know you're on LinkedIn you have your own website can you please guide people in the right direction on how to find you it's easy this Brian wong. you can apply for the program for the next stage through there you can reach out to me through there just Brian wong. not doom.com is another Brian Wong so just uh he's cool too I do know the guy but Brian won he's gonna give me his domain one day anyway uh thank you everyone for watching uh that's another episode of emerging Founders and Brian thank you for coming on the show I had a lot of fun talking to you