YouSaid · the spoken record

Chatri Sityodtong

lines on the record: 159
first: 2025-06-04
most recent: 2025-06-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“40 billion, not million. And I remember we went from 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, 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 now, as you know, Tim, as a business expert, once you've built a platform business, 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. 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 had asked me to start this business again, no way. And it's less than 1%.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That of thousands of hours of training, you inherit these incredible values. And something I'm sure you relate to, Tim. I mean, for you to get heel hooked by Ruminasato and then somebody else in 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 and do 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 end up getting invited by Zuck to go to Facebook headquarters a couple 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. We produce 30 billion organic video views last year and this year we're on pace already for 40 billion.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we could see that something was happening. So we used that hockey stick data, even though it's small, we collect this data and we show broadcasters. They took a look. This is something that's happening in your country. Numbers of jobs gone 10x. Yes, they're small, but they're gone 10x in the span of, you know, three months. 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 value series 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, you call that stuff, but in the context of how can I say, I do want to cheap in. 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Values that we exhibit, which you know very well, is a true Bushido values of 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 going to put everything into it. If I lose all my money, screw it. And we got so lucky. Facebook, you know, so a big shout out to Mark Zuckerberg. 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 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 put posted. And again, we're small platform at the time, very small page.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 saying, I'm going to quit, you start to think about why did I start this thing and what is it? And I said, well, martial arts, my greatest obsession. If I want to make an impact on the world and I have an opportunity to inspire millions and one day, hopefully billions of lives through our heroes, values, and stories is what we call it. Those are the three pillars of what we call our formula of success at One Championship. Values here.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And if I didn't love martial arts as much as I did, a thousand percent of the quit. So I call my mom, mom, end of year three, lost a crapload of my money and my friend's money. And I think we're done. We got no traction. And I thought my mom was going to tell me I should stick with it because, you know, Chachari, 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”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Days and weeks literally came and it's still true to this day is to unleash real life superheroes who connect the world with hope strength dreams and 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 and nobody was interested.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's super mobbed up. So, my mom is this conservative tiny little Japanese lady, and she's like, there's no way my son is going to 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 this hedge fund. She loved the check boxes, the checklists, you know, of credentials. As you know, Japanese culture is very much this way. Japanese society. You know, if you went to Todai in Japan, you're viewed as a god, right? Like, you know, it's very hierarchical. And I said, mom, I want to do what I love. And, you know, mom, you told me as a young kid, I got to go help people. And I want to 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, it's crazy, Tim, in writing the business plan, there's no such line of like, we want to have the biggest pay-per-view. We want to have the best fights or this. It was literally the mission of the company over many, many, many.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way too 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 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 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because of the violent nature, okay. And first three years, literally, like no fandom, no metrics whatsoever, just losing money hand over fist.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm 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 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 get institutional investors to back us given our credentials and our expertise and the market opportunity, zero. First three years, we couldn't land. We met with 150 investors, institution investors, zero. 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been over 13 years. And to be sitting where I'm sitting is honestly less than 1% of 1%, 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 academy and 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 going to 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. You know, the market cap of NFLs, you know, north of 120 billion. NBA is 70 billion dollars. And its valuation. And I thought, man.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As I travel around the world, this thing has just gone viral, and our viewership numbers 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 meaning in your life or purpose is the same thing. I really get excited when someone says, man, hey, I saw that fight or I was there or, you know, or whatever.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Same thing I get now the joy of one hearing about you having this WhatsApp group with your buddies and all you guys are competitive former martial arts 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 Saitan I've completely sold out or when we were in the US in September in Denver the Denver nugget stadium completely sold out And 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 at Massive Stadium, and then in Qatar, Doha the next month, also another massive stadium. And then Saitama Suparina. So it was just like this last several months has just been just a reminder, you know, in some ways.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a sense of like my life has meaning. And it's not about money, it's that somehow Tim Ferris is on this planet and he's actually helping people, millions of people all over the planet through his books.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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 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, if you're lucky, your country and if you're even luckier, your continent and maybe the world, right?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would almost say a side hustle, it's my obsession. I mean, martial's my obsession. So the fact that I didn't have any high level place to train when I was used to training at Henzos, right, when I was in New York, that was kind of the.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 going to start a martial arts school and it was really just selfishly for me to be able to train with, you know, and all my sityatung brothers were in Thailand. And it's 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, Rumen is a friend. All these guys are telling me it's crazy because I was literally just in Japan a couple weeks ago with Sakamoto, who's the CEO of Shuto. I just was hanging out with the CEO of Pancraz and we were talking about all these old crazy stories. And again, yeah, Sam Masensei. So everything you're saying is just crazy.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Warrior spirit that every Japanese person has 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 tendo. 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 Unbreakable warrior spirit. Japanese fighters are some of the toughest. And I don't mean technically. I mean, I'm talking about you cannot break a high-level Japanese fighter. And if you went to the Buddha, Washington, the Judo Championships, these guys, they don't break. They don't break.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. You will discover things about yourself that you never even knew existed in you when you grow 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 spend time in Japan, you know, the whole bushido, the whole summurai spirit. Yes, yes, you nailed it. This is what Tim is talking about, guys. Is this Japanese?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm the owner. I walk in and this guy beats the crap out of me. In another world, if I didn't have martials my whole life, I'd be like, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm the but what I actually tell to my training partners, bro, whatever it is, don't go easy. Give me sure. 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 bad because that's not what I want. I want you to help me improve. 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 for me that I'm here to learn, grow and evolve and be the very best martial artist I can be. And the only way to do it is by”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Same thing for a black belt. I'm a black belt, but there are levels to being a Jujitsu 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. 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, evolve, yes. Or jiu-jitsu world champions. And I truly believe my grandmaster Kuya Tong Senan 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 Bunker. You know how badass those guys are, best in the world. There are levels and there are levels.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 well-to-do family to being poor to being escaping poverty and making it, I trained religiously, either Muay Thai or Jutsu every single day. This is just part of my DNA. And actually, even to this day, I just came back from training earlier today. It's my foundation to every single day. If I get my training, it's almost like Tim, you know, you've competitors 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 can think of. You're in the moment, right?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 treat 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 I also thought my mom was gibberish, you know, because she was 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, Chhatri, you're going to 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? And if I'm making multi-billion dollar institutions get wealthier, what is the point of that, right?”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 going to go now and buy more material things. I'm going to go buy a house, another house, or whatever. It just hit me hard. Like I'm like, man, what's going to happen with my life is I'm going to keep living this thing where, okay, yeah, I make a lot of money, but I had a deep sense of emptiness. And yeah, my mom was taking 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 going to 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-billion families.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That man, if I just make a crap load of money, all my problems will be gone because 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 accepted society as you make a lot of money and that's just you buy things. It wasn't later in life until I was like maybe my mid-30s 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, but I was by myself. And I remember all adrenaline and happy. But then...”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 want to see my mother cry ever again. I'm going to work my ass off. I'm going to be rich. And so I naively thought, genuinely, that When I was poor, I”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In an arrogant way. It was more like whatever happened in the past with my family and my father, 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 going to 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. 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 want to be so poor again because what really broke me and this”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exhaling. No. What we did, though, was we went with, I think about like 13 or 14. Employees and we rented two RV vans and we did a cross country trip across America. And that took like, I forget like a couple 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 an 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 and it was completely beautiful stars and it was just clear sky. 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, 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. And it wasn't I can do anything.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 some crazy times. 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 $1.25 microwave frozen food and 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 we had photos of that and we were 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 right, but I had a good little bit of a nest egg. I thought deeply, you know, what do I want to do? Am I a software entrepreneur or what am I? You know, I started going into this kind of deep intro.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a company called Nextdoor Networks. Basically, it was enterprise resource software. It started off also 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 lucky to have sold the company. We grew from like, you know, like six, seven people. And then within about a year, we'd raised $40 million and had like, I don't know, 200 people, real offices and all this stuff. And it was just a crazy ride. This was in early 2000 or yeah, around 1999, 2000 time frame. That was a crazy.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we would 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 all the time. We had two sleeping bags on the floor. And that was how I started my journey in Silicon Valley. Because again, I just had this crazy dream, right? One of my classmates, Sue and Liu, said, let's go to Silicon Valley. Let's just try our luck. And both of us were poor. We had maybe a few months of cash left. 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 catch you a $500,000 check.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 do something along those lines, right? And it wasn't like I was investing or anything. It was just like a hobby curiosity, but it was almost borderline obsession because 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 younger 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 with my mom. You know, we slept in a tiny little apartment.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, it's kind of funny. Like, when I was a kid, there's a few things I was truly obsessed with. I was obsessed with martial arts and that anyone from my child would tell you, that 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and brought her 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 surprising her own house because she had suffered for so long, for so long that I would just be able to see her face. And knowing that little crazy dream 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 a little bit of a crazy dreamer. My friends think I'm a bit of a crazy guy. And I think I got that from my mom.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These are the things that I always remember is like, you know, when you're fighting for 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 30 something, maybe 31. I bought a condominium in New York City to surprise my month because I remembered what she told me in the dorm room.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Money for the full ride. I had to go find loans. And, you know, it was just like a time of massive uncertainty in my life. And I just, you know, and I had 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 six-figure salary or you're fighting because you want to buy a nice car. It's very easy to quit. 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 was, again, been blessed with a lot of good luck in life.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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, 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'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 she 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.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go and afford a beer. I can't afford the entrance fee of a nightclub. So my mom 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 we're very blessed in life. I remember lying there with my mom. I'll be lying on the floor and my mom was on the bed. you know, she would ask me these crazy questions. We had no money. And she'd be like, Chhatri. 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 going to get money for next month? And luckily I was teaching more Thai. I taught I was a tutored caplan. 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 Excel spreadsheet.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She ended up moving in with me in my dorm. Obviously, the school administration didn't know in college. I was 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 had one of these key cars where you opened the dormitory door from the outside and in between classes, just time it with her and give her my keycard and living on four dollars a day. And of course, you know, I didn't tell everybody this. Of course, 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, Chachri, let's go out. You know, let's go to a club tonight. You know, there's going to be our friends gonna be there. And I knew I can't.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My father abandoned us and went bankrupt. It was my mom's crazy idea to like, you know, Chachra, you're the oldest son, given that you lived 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 their well-being. But we had 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 because obviously when something scandalous like that happens and at the time in Thailand, no one get divorced. No one ever went bankrupt. It's just these things didn't happen. But scrounged around about $1,000. And one suitcase all of 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”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exchange program. That's why your accent is. I was like, I was like, oh man, Tim, Tim, it's like we're like kindred spirits here, you know Yeah, you majored in East Asian studies. That's what it was, right”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 comedian, amongst our fighters, have a very close bond with our fighters because my lifelong martial artist, I'm Muay Thai all of my life and jujitsu black belt. So when I gave these one-on-one talks or actually before every big event, I go back to Asia and have all the fighters who are going to compete that night 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 in Neotica was crying. He was, man, broken, broken. His team happened to be there filming it. It wasn't our team. They filmed and they put it out and ended up going viral in Japan. I don't think people knew that.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Superina. I mean, Tim, you are a fight expert for sure, you know, for you to go back. I mean, it was literally where Pride in K1, literally, Saitama Superina, the legendary stadium in Tokyo. And Takeheru versus Rotang argued two greatest pound for pound strikers on the planet. And Takeru got knocked out on the first round, I think in 80 seconds. And I went backstage to congratulate the winners and et cetera. And I went to go see Tekeru and, you know, he was heartbroken and crying. Yeah, I went backstage and I gave him a pep talk. I said, hey, these things happen. It doesn't take away from your legacy, your body of work, you know, split millisecond here, split millisecond there.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being right, he's a guy that interests me in 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 washing 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, I wouldn't be here running the world's largest martial arts organization if it weren't for him taking me to Muay Thai.”
2025-06-04 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT