Adam Torres and Marco Mereu discuss gaming and the Esports industry.
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Show Notes:
What does the future of esports as a business look like? In this episode, Adam Torres and Marco Mereu, CEO of M80, explore Marco’s journey as an entrepreneur and his latest venture, M80.
About Marco Mereu
Marco Mereu has worked in a variety of roles throughout their career. Marco started as an attorney in Mereu Law Offices, where they specialized in intellectual property management, licensing, and general corporate matters. Later, they joined uCool as VP of Business Development and General Counsel for browser-based social and casual MMO games and was part of the executive team for Evony: Age I and II strategy games. Additionally, they served as CEO of Gameblyr, VP of Communications for Digisocial, and Founder and CEO of Roostr, a performance-based marketing platform for mobile games, which was acquired by Chartboost. Later, they served as General Manager Roostr Division at Chartboost and built the Framerate social video network for gaming and esports, serving as its CEO until the acquisition by Super League Gaming. Finally, they co-founded XSET, one of the fastest-growing esports and gaming brands in North America, where they served as COO and oversaw day-to-day corporate operations, financial and sales efforts, built competitive professional esports and gaming teams, managed financial forecasting and budgeting, and oversaw all sales and marketing efforts driving revenue and securing brand deals and sponsorships.
Marco Mereu obtained a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Criminology from Northeastern University in 1996. Following this, they enrolled at Suffolk University Law School where they obtained their Juris Doctorate degree in Law in 2000. Additionally, they obtained certifications for both their BA and Juris Doctor degrees from Northeastern and Suffolk Law School respectively.
About M80
M80 represents the next generation of organization built for today’s esports and gaming fans. A commitment to winning, empowering their fans and building teams people can be proud of. 2023 is their year.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today our guest is Marco Maru, and he’s CEO of M 80. Marco, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I appreciate the invite. All right, Marco. So we got a lot to talk about today. So we’re going to get into the eSports industry gaming really the evolution. I mean, I know you’ve been you’ve been part of the of the scene for a while now with different exits in the gaming industry.
So we’ll get into that as well. But I guess just to get us kicked off, like, where did it all begin for you? Like, where did this start in entrepreneurship and gaming? Like, how did that come about? Yeah, so, , for me, a little background, had a very traditional path at 1st. I went to undergraduate and law school in Boston.
, took the bar exam, passed it. Thankfully, it’s been about 9 years practicing law here and in the Boston area. And then, , back in 2009, I just showed up in my office 1 day and I just realized I was bored and it’s not what I want to do anymore. And I had a passion for the gaming industry had always had an interest in moving to that sector.
So I decided to, to shut my practice down that day. I was going to move into the video game industry, , come hell or high water. And hold on just for, for some context 2009. So the whole world is going down the toilet 2008, right? Like all the markets. And now this is the best time to shut your practice.
This down where you’re known and everything else and go into gaming, right? Like I got, we gotta get the picture on that one, man. What was everybody saying around you? Like, yeah, my wife was like, yeah, my wife was like, are you sure you want to do this? But wow,
you, you only have a certain amount of time to do these things. So I shut my practice down and I moved into the gaming fairly quickly. I went to go. To work for a company called Ebony out of China, and we were running one of the biggest browser based games in the world. This is probably right before mobile really became big.
I think the first iPhone had just come out right around then. Most games were, were still browser based flash games not mobile games at this point. And we had probably the most widely played browser based flash game in the world. I ran that game and the U. S. I ran that game for about four years into 2013.
And then decided, you know, this is a good time to start my own company at this point. I guess you have to cancel this is, but you know, I’m just a cog here and I really want to build something from scratch. So I started a company in 2013 called Gambler and Gambler was really the first independent mobile game publishing platform.
At the time where we would work with really high quality, independent game developers to bring their titles to market and the role of a publisher. And in a matter of two years, we did eight titles. We got seven featured by Apple. I think two of those are still top 100, you know, best mobile games of all time with Apple and iOS and you know, very successful business, enjoyable business, you know, working with game development, but, you know, 2015, the mobile boom was, was very strong.
And , the cost of acquiring users on mobile began to really skyrocket. And it became a real problem for a lot of small developers and smaller publishers. And, you know, a few of my investors at the time asked me to kind of try to solve that problem. So 2015, I sat back and I started work on a platform called Rooster.
Rooster was at the time the first place you could do performance based Influencer marketing with YouTubers, in this case with gaming YouTubers, and mobile games. So we, I built a platform that allowed mobile publishers to put up their games along with the CPI offer to make promotional content, and then YouTubers could browse that platform, pick out whatever games they like to play, get a link, make a video, and get paid.
And it worked exceedingly well. And within 30 days, we had every mobile game publisher in the sun on that platform using it and YouTubers you know, driving 150 CPMs and having a lot of successors. Well, on that company scaled very quickly and we sold it and exited to chartboost within a year.
We had a truck booster about a year left and then started another company called Framerate in 2018. Framerate was a content play and this is where we started to get closer to esports, where we really allowed gamers to take their highlights that they made every day for free and sell those highlights to add to brand partners as ad units.
And it worked really well for two reasons. One, there was zero production costs, right, because gamers make highlights every day for free. You they don’t cost anything, and two, it’s also the most engaging kind of content you can put in front of this audience you know, this consumer gaming audience and have the best engagement, right?
So brands like that. So, within about 18 months, we were getting about 50 million views a month. We scaled it up and we ended up selling that company to simply gaming. Out of Santa Monica and exiting to those guys bringing that product into their, kind of marketing and money making revenue streams, whatever there is a year per year as an SPV of content to help them work on that business.
And then, you know, that brought me to 2020. I could see the rapid growth of e sports. If you love sports and you love gaming. You generally end up at the crossroads of e sports at some point, e sports is really, for those that are not familiar with it, it is for 30 and under it’s the number one most watched, most viewed sporting category in the world.
So if you’re a viewer, that’s generally where you’re watching, if you’re a brand or Business trying to get in front of, , 18 to 24 year old males and to this day, much more exceedingly female as well. But if you’re trying to get in front of that 30 vendor audience, gaming is really the best way to do it and the best way to build a sizable brand.
So, I took my hat, I moved into the world of eSports. Started building teams, building rosters, found out that I was actually particularly pretty good at this type of work and also hiring people that really kind of enabled us to be successful and you know, built, built a number of rosters that competed for global championships.
Really a fraction of the cost , and valuation of the competitors that we were competing against, but we were able to really with our ability to recruit and develop talent really kind of tier one e sport teams. So, right around the same time, we started to see the advent and growth of blockchain and Web3 a couple of years ago.
And, me being in gaming for so long, I recognize that. Blockchain technology is clearly a really critical and important part of the future of gaming. Digital asset ownership, digital collectibles, these are all things that are inherent in gaming are coming. Right? And I think it was just a matter of.
How do we bring the world of Web 2 into Web 3? Like, how do you bring traditional gamers on chain and get them to open wallets and get them to understand the value of working in that environment? And you know, for a while, it was really hard. A lot of pump and dumps, a lot of bad deals, a lot of bad opportunities, very difficult to open a wallet and, get on chain, maybe even as recently as, 12 to 18 months ago.
And, we really felt that,, with M80, if we could build a company, a gaming company that could build brand first and build a really big audience, which we did in the first, year and a half, we built up about a following of about 15 million across all of our social accounts.
We could really build a bridge from Web 2 into Web 3, and we could, bring the 3 billion gamers that play video games every day onto blockchain gaming, where you generally have about 1 million gamers every day, a fraction and really develop that audience and That was what we committed to doing with M80 when we launched it, and here we are about 18 months, a year and a half later, and we’re realizing the milestones that we set for ourselves around our eSports and our development of players, and now we’re realizing the milestones around moving those players on chain and getting them to experience Web 3.
one thing I noticed about your journey is that , you’re always kind of pushing to see what’s next, like you have a very linear description of what took place going from flash to mobile to like to eat and a couple things in between and then e sports and now thinking about how that relates to Web 3, Web 2, Web 3 how do you go about making , your decisions on what’s next and what you want to pursue?
Like, how do you go about making those decisions? Yeah, so for me, almost every startup that I’ve started has always started with a problem, right? And trying to find out a creative solution to solve that problem. And, with Rooster, it was how do we do performance based YouTube marketing, which we solved.
With frame rate, it was you know, how, how can we create revenue for gamers by selling highlights? And, , also winning with brands with e sports, you know, with e sports, it was, can we build a better mousetrap? Can we do this more efficiently? More scalable leaner , and bring a different business model and blueprint to success in eSports versus some of these teams that had burned a tremendous amount of capital and not had any success.
And we’ve been able to do that. And for me talking to a lot of the people that I worked with in mobile gaming 10 years ago, they’re all on blockchain games now. They’ve made that transition , and I see a lot of the similarities from early mobile. And problems and challenges that people face are the same problems and challenges that people face in blockchain right now.
And that’s, for the most part, when it comes to gaming, a lack of players. You need more players. And, you know, I just began to think about, okay, if we can build that bridge and we can build a mechanic to drive users and drive players, real players on chain that would not be a benefit just for us and for our company.
That would be a benefit for anyone in the gaming ecosystem of Web3. , so that was really kind of what got us excited. It wasn’t just about how many trophies can we win, although we’d love to win trophies, of course, It was about, can we look back on maybe 5 to 10 years from now and say, we were 1 of the conduits, right?
To really kind of create that mass adoption and scale at this level because everybody recognizes that gaming. It’s going to be, and is currently, the biggest on ramp to get people in Web3 environment. You know, gaming is the biggest consumer market in the world. It’s bigger than film and music put together.
It’s recession proof. I’ve never seen a time where people weren’t spending money on video games. Even when there was a recession, there’d always be a line at the mall at GameStop for kids that wanted to buy the newest game that was coming out for their PlayStation or their Xbox. Or a parent is always going out and buying the newest controller or product.
Gaming is just recession proof. It is the biggest moneymaker and consumer behavior today. And it’s one of the reasons you see so many brands and so many partners trying to position themselves in the gaming industry because it’s a great audience, very loyal. Spend money and they’re they’re growing right eSports and gaming is not getting smaller.
It’s just getting bigger every year Yeah, so with me I try to stay ahead of the curve and I want to build now for what I think is happening 12 to 18 months From now versus trying to play catch up once all the big players are there and they’ve already established market presence so for me, it’s about , betting on ourselves and betting on our ability to the finish line, I think, put a really good user experience in front of people before other people do.
How do you make that determination kind of on timing? Like some of the statements you said, like gaming is huge. Gaming is you know, like back, we could have said that in a long time ago, we could say that in the future, I would argue you know, it’s going to keep growing, like you said, like that for sure.
I agree with that. Like how do you kind of gauge your timing? Like just as an entrepreneur, where you want to place that bet, like, how does that work for you? I think for one , I’m also partially a target consumer, right? I’m a gamer and I know is working with not working, but you live it, you live it as well, not just as an entrepreneur.
Like you’re living it. I got it. I live it every day. Right. With my players. It keeps me young. I’m going to be 52 this year, and I can’t, sometimes I can’t believe my players think I’m in my early 30s, right? Yeah, that’s awesome. You don’t need theorems, you need gaming. There you go. Boom. Go for it. No, I think, you know, two things.
One, I think sticking to areas that, you know, You know, and you feel comfortable with and that you can see that there’s going to be a, you know, a crossroads of innovation. And when that’s going to again, things have to be right. You know, timing is everything. It doesn’t matter. How did your, you can, you can build a great business, but if you build it and the market is not right, or the time is not right for it can and probably will fail.
Right? I mean, a year ago, We couldn’t do what we’re doing right now because getting on chain and opening a wallet you have 98 percent of the people at the final. It’s just too hard. Now, opening up a wallet is like opening up a Gmail account. It’s super easy. You barely even know you’ve done it. And , we can tear that we can kind of bring those barriers down for gamers and have them understand the benefits of the technology.
So. You know, for me, it’s just about sticking to what you’re passionate about, sticking to, you know, I’ve always been very focused on running linear businesses as well and being very focused on generating revenue. A lot of people ask you when you’re pitching a startup, Hey, what’s your exit strategy?
You know, what are you going to exit and who are you going to exit to? To be honest with you, there’s only one thing I think about when I start a company, and that’s how quickly can we get to breakeven or cash flow positive, and that’s the big finish line for me, because once you reach that point as a startup, and with M80, we’re just about there once you reach that point, now you’re a whole different company, and it’s a whole different equation, because now, You don’t need to raise money anymore.
You don’t need other people to make your business successful anymore. Your business is now growing and people are, it’s going to become a lot more passive inbound interest in being a part of what you’re building. Right? Because you’ve done it. So for us, that’s just the way we approach business building. And and this industry. Yeah. we’re all entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this show as well. Let’s just dream for a moment or two. Like, , , what is the future of M80 look like and its relationship to e sports? Like, like what’s next for you?
Yeah, you know, we are doing some really interesting things in the collegiate e sports space. College e sports right now is blowing up hundreds, I mean, probably every single major university that a listener of this podcast attended or graduated from, more likely than not, they have an e sports program with scholarships at that university now, and facilities too.
Wow. So, so we are starting to work with universities on developing. Player programs, player talent, e sports programs, and really with M80, one of the things that we’re really excited about is our ability to do, to develop talent and work with players is really true, similar to traditional sports.
And, you know, we’re very excited about. Some of the things that we’re working on around you know, performance development and really kind of , building something very akin to like an ING Academy, if you will, for sports, we’re doing it for eSports, we’re really developing a pipeline and ecosystem where kids can , really commit to this, take it very seriously and, really kind of scale their their careers.
Right. So again, if you believe eSports is getting smaller and going away, well, then you’re probably not agreeing with what we’re doing, but you also probably wouldn’t be lined up with reality and the facts. Right. So so for us, it’s really about, again, like, , we want to build the Dallas Cowboys or New York Yankees of eSports now.
And so that, , 10 to 15 years from now, like our, our players and , our brand will be sizable. So, and , when I have this conversation kind of often, it’s more so related to not always directly e sports, but more so related to the current, like,, what people are talking about, about AI replacing jobs and otherwise.
And I always kind of look back in history and I say, well, think about like. Every different displacement, we used to all be farmers. I mean, like we are all farmers and the cities were going to ruin everything. And then this was going to change. And this is going to change. And people found there were new jobs and new industries that That came about that provided new opportunities for people to work that hadn’t even been invented yet.
And so when I look at some of the advancements, and I hear you talking about this, this is what it reminds me of. It’s like, Right now we could say, okay, well, you, you play football. That’s going to teach you things like leadership or this or that, or whatever. And that will, and just the traditional football, let’s say , and that’s going to teach you all these things that can help you in business later and how to be on a team and how to do all this.
So now when you think about e sports and this, it may teach you some of those skills, which we could say are hard or soft skills, however you want to say it. But then it may also teach you some tactical, like fundamental things that maybe you don’t become a professional. In that field, but maybe that’s going to be some tech or advancement or something else that helps you in your career along the way that we don’t even know what it’s going to be yet what that job is or job description, but it prepared you perfectly.
I’m very hopeful about it. I see the crossover it’s skills. Yeah, no, no, it’s I mean, you know, our matches are e sports events. they get hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers, right? You can fill multiple NFL stadiums with the audience that’s watching one of our matches. And the beauty of e sports is.
one of the few industries I’ve worked in where if you want to see the future, you can do it. It’s not hard. Europe is generally, I would say, four to five years ahead of North America in terms of the business of esports in Europe. Teams are building three to five thousand seat stadiums, they’re selling gate, they’re selling food and beverage, they’re selling meteorites.
It is traditional esports in Europe. And if you want to go even farther in the future, you want to go eight to ten years into the future, you want Go to China. If you go to China right now, eSports stars are the biggest stars in the country. They have the biggest billboards, they make the most money, they drive the biggest viewership, they have the biggest endorsement deal.
eSports is the number one sport in all of China. So, I think for us, In North America, just being able to have that as a guiding light and learn lessons from that you know, is very inspiring and exciting. And we’re definitely trying to integrate a lot of those lessons into what we’re building here with M 80.
Marco, it’s been great having you on the show today. And thanks for sharing your story , and background and really evolution , through up to now to East Bay. MAD, that being said, if somebody’s listening to this or watching this, and if they want to follow the MAD journey, learn more about the company, learn more about , what you’re up to, , how do they do that?
Yeah, probably the best place to follow us is Twitter. Twitter is probably the biggest audience for gamers. So you can always follow us at MADGG. And you can also find us at our website, which is also MAD. GG as well. And we’ll, you know, I’ll be speaking at eSports next conference in Chicago next week on eSports.
And I’m happy to also connect with anybody on LinkedIn while I’m up there. So if you’re interested in talking more, you can always send me a message and I’m happy to connect with you. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put the links to the website and all that good stuff in Twitter and in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters, this is a daily show. Each and every day, we’re bringing you new entrepreneurs, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along in your journey as well. , if that sounds interesting, don’t forget, hit that subscribe or follow button because guess what’s going to happen tomorrow, new episode.
And we want you to get that notification. So hit that subscribe or follow and Marco again, thank you so much for making time for us over at mission matters. Appreciate you coming on. Okay. Thank you, sir. Take care.