YouSaid · the spoken record

Chieh Huang

lines on the record: 148
first: 2021-02-22
most recent: 2021-02-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Exactly virtual currency is what we sold. And, you know, could you imagine trying to explain at Thanksgiving or a family gathering back in 2010 that you sell virtual currency on a smartphone?”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was free. It was one of those earlier freemium games where you basically downloaded the game for free, but if you wanted to buy more points or buy the special desk, you'd pay like $3.99 or $4.99 or $99. So it was one of the early freemium games.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I literally ran into my sophomore college sweet mate on the streets of New York and told him that story. And you could tell in his eyes it was like cool story, bro. Like, he definitely got fired from the law firm. You know, it's a bad recession, but come on, just own it, get back on your feet. What are you doing? You're like a grown man making video games.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much credit because that's exactly what the plan was. We're going to throw it up there and people all around the world were going to play it, you know? So we drum upside. I mean, I'm thinking if I went to Johns Hopkins with you and then I knew you and I knew you went to this law firm and I ran into you in New York and I was like, hey, what's going on, Chay? And you're like, yeah, we're making this mobile game where you open up emails. And I quit my job as a firm. I'd be like, oh, that's awesome. But in my mind, I'd be thinking, this guy's nuts. He's totally nuts. This is the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh god, you give me too much credit, or you give us too much credit because that's exactly what the plan was. We're gonna throw it up there. And people all around the world were going to play it, you know? So we drum up some interest from friends and family, try to get a few hits on gaming sites. But beyond that, it was just hopes and dreams, basically.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Will was programming, he was like coding this thing. Chris was designing it. He was kind of saying, okay, let's put a window there like a sleek desk here. And it sounds like you were kind of doing the business side of things.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Luckily at the time it was so nascent that just using open source software you could do it and the story with us was that Will was an excellent coder Chris he was in finance at the time when he quit but he actually had a really good knack for art and so he would make the most beautiful spreadsheets in the firm he said and so he actually visually designed the whole game and all the assets single-handedly”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's the ultimate irony. The game was called Office Heroes. And so it was this tongue-in-cheek build and decorate game. So you basically, you do menial tasks, like you click on check email and you come back in two hours and you collect your money from that or you make coffee and in 15 minutes you come back. So instead of like growing crops like you would in Farmville, you would do menial kind of like office tasks. And then you can buy like, you know, instead of Starbucks coffee, you'd buy five bucks coffee. And so it's a real tongue-in-cheek about kind of working in an office.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, at that time, it was both the App Store and also you just released it on iTunes, the App Store had just launched. So a lot of people, you just threw your app onto iTunes.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And not much because buying a powerful iMac that you can kind of build off of it's like a few grand right off the top. And so I remember, you know, it's like lawn chairs in his mom's basement. And then we graduated to the attic. This in New Jersey. In Jersey, yeah, in Jersey, right in the town where I grew up. So it's kind of like, you know, you're at this big law firm. Life was on a great trajectory. And suddenly you find yourself having to take your shoes off as you go into your friend's mom's house so you can go into the attic and build a video game. It's like, oh gosh, like I feel like my life has been twisted in reverse.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's so hard because no one really even had an iPhone back then, you know, and so it was like telling them that they should buy a $900 phone just to be able to play a game you guys were trying to make. It was like it was just so weird. People just didn't really get it. I think the closest thing that would resonate with folks was that, you know, hey, there's all these games on Facebook, but these phones that we have are going to get more and more powerful so you can probably play those similar connected games on your mobile phone one day. And we think that day is now.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They would have me. So you knew you could maybe do that. Okay. And when you told people who didn't quite know what you were doing, which would have been most people in 2010, hey, we're making mobile games. How would you describe what you guys were doing?”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So supportive, just so supportive. I also think being kind of young and without kids, like that also helps quite a bit in kind of your risk profile. And also I think the key was that a lot of entrepreneurs don't think about is your personal runway. And so you talk, you know, everyone talks about their company runway, how much money they're going to raise, et cetera. But the early days, you're probably not paying yourself anything, or if anything, just a very minimal salary. And so I had saved enough money from the law firm to live my current lifestyle at that time. I didn't have to vacate my apartment for a good 12 months. So I felt like if I gave it a try and it didn't work out, at least I gave it a real try over 12 months and I would go with my tail between my legs back to the law firm if they would have me.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My gosh, I mean, you gotta remember these are the same parents that thought like I shouldn't come home if I got a C on my report card. So they couldn't have been prouder of me going to Hopkins and then going to law school and going to this big law firm. It was all that my mom, I felt like could have ever hoped for. And then to tell her I'm going to quit cold turkey in the middle of the Great Recession to go and make video games with high school friends. You know, I feel like I'm might as well have kind of torched the house that I grew up in. It was like an absurd kind of a decision.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the beginning, I think they were just too cheap to hire an attorney. And so they were just, you know, we reconnected like, you know, if a friend was going through this, what would you tell them? And I'm like, dude, what are you talking about, man? You guys need to call an attorney. And so I agreed to just help them with some business stuff on the side as they were starting up. And then as the game got to about launch time, they asked if I wanted to join full time to run the company. And I did.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. So two friends of mine, ironically, that I reconnected with via Facebook started up a social gaming studio after quitting their jobs cold turkey.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just an opportunity somewhere. I wish I could say, you know, I was really into it, but I wasn't. But around that time, I remember purchasing the original iPhone. The iPhone 2, it was 2G, had the metal back plagued, and a few friends from middle school and high school also bought the iPhone. And at that time was starting a social gaming company building Facebook type games, aka social games for this thing called the iPhone. And I thought it was a pretty good idea.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh man, no one's ever asked me that question. So, what ideas did I have in my head before? Probably the one that I felt like maybe I was decently passionate about that I thought there was an opportunity in was fine chocolates. I've never told anyone that in my life, but I just didn't know. I felt like as the middle class around the world started booming, perhaps there would be a big spending spree on these treats that are fine chocolates and that most middle class families can afford once in a while.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. So I was like a junior corporate associate, which means I was a document jockey, basically. So it would be 2 a.m. at night. You know, I would always stay an extra 30 minutes. I wouldn't build a clients, but I would say and just read and research the history of the businesses that we were working with and that we were representing just to get a flavor of their story and how they made it. I felt like it was big risk takers, but I didn't feel like anyone was really like a bona fide genius, you know, of like, oh man, that's something no human can do. And so that gave me some hope that maybe I should try my hand at that.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, you're at your desk. And yeah, not seeing much daylight. And remember saying, thinking, wow, I make a decent amount of money now, but I don't have any time to spend it. And I feel like I learned pretty early that I probably wasn't built for that long 10, 15, 20 year partnership run. Just wasn't for me.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, literally about nine to 12 hours after Lehman Brothers filed for one of the largest bankruptcies in the history of humankind, started at a law firm one block away from them.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so here I was wearing my new suit that my mom bought me new briefcase, new shoes, getting out of the subway, looking up and just being like Times Square, I've made it. And then out of the corner of my eyes seeing thousands of people flowing out of Lehman Brothers with bankers' boxes just crying on the street.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2008. Probably that date means nothing to a lot of folks, but to some folks they'll remember that was about 12 hours after Lehman Brothers collapse, who was also located in Times Square, kicking off one of the worst recessions the country had ever seen.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you were a summer associate. I mean, it was wild, but I graduated school and started the beginning of my professional life September 15th.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my gosh. I mean 07 was the year that I was a second year and you did your big summer internship, summer associateship. So I went to work at a firm called Praskauer. They're like a big sports law firm right in Times Square. And in 07 it was like boom times. Boom times. I mean they've rented, I remember they've rented Madison Square Garden for us to play pickup basketball as an event”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, as much as I joke about it, there is a checklist for most children of immigrants. It's just like, number one, as we were joking about before, it's like, you know, doctor, nope. Engineer, nope. And then last one was like law school. And I was like, yeah, I feel like I can do well on the LSAT and took the LSAT and got into law school.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we met when she transferred into the school I was teaching at. You know, by that time, it was like the middle to end of my first year in Japan. So I was pretty comfortable. And so I was wearing like sweat. I probably looked more like the gym teacher than anything else I was wearing sweatpants. And I remember I was like, oh, man, someone just transferred in our school. I'm like, oh, who's that? And why am I dressed a bum here? And luckily we hit it off and we began to date.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably at least 50% didn't see that side of me. Being Asian American, it's kind of an insecurity that probably a lot of Asian Americans growing up have because you go back to Asia and people don't exactly see you as 100% Asian, you're here in the States and oftentimes Asian Americans just aren't seen as pure American. That sense of belonging is something I know that many Asian Americans struggle with in terms of truly fitting in and where's home for me and us.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't. And probably most people. And that's not who I was. You know, I kind of want to say no, like, I watched the Bulls growing up, you know, Bulls versus Knicks. X Men on Saturday morning, you know, right. But I would imagine if you pulled all the people I interacted with.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I was this like curiosity, and I remember I had to go to the supermarket later and later at night because, you know, as soon as the kids would see me there, they would follow me and report back on like what I bought and what I like to eat. But that's what I did for two years in my life.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was assigned to several schools, all within the same town. So this was a, I would say a middle class town, public schools, about 200 kids in enrollment, all following me around the neighborhood, every chance they could get.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you start going, and you're like, 30 minutes out, you're like, eh, not bad. You know, I can take a 30 minute ride to Tokyo. And then once you're an hour out, you're like, okay, what did I do? And then they drop you off where I got dropped off. It was, you know, I remember sitting or lying on a Tatami in my apartment staring at the ceiling just. Questioning my decisions in life because I was like, what happened? They're sending you out into the sticks for the most part. And I got sent out to the proper sticks middle of a rice paddy in western Japan.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you're like, yeah, man, this is what I signed up for. This is going to be a rocket year. And then you get on this bullet train the next day. It goes further and further at a really rapid speed outside of Tokyo.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The funny thing is on that application, I think they do this to this day. They ask you, where do you want to go? And so any newbie to Japan, you're just like, oh, number one, Tokyo. Number two, you know, Kyoto, exactly. Maybe Osaka, we'll throw in a Yokohama, you know, round at the top five. And then I'm sure the other end, they're like, ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. And they send you to the countryside. So, you know, your orientation for the program, you're in downtown Shinjiku. You're in the middle of the Tokyo that you always dreamed of and you saw on TV”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was at the Career Center, which at that time was a little shack on campus. I remember walking in and looking for the room where there was some consulting firm that was holding an info session. And then there was one lady that was standing at the door of this thing called the Jet Program. And I was like, what is a jet program? And she said, you basically move out into Japan. It's a cultural exchange and you get paid for it and you learn the language if you want. But we put you in Japan in a public school and you really kind of teach them the language and the culture. Want to learn more? And I was like, that sounds not so bad. And I remember sitting in on that info session instead and ended up applying”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't have a plan. My plan was to kind of realize this dream that my parents had a generation before they thought we could realize it. So my plan was again to Hopkins. And once I got in, I had no plan after that. And I'm sorry for the people listening to this from Hopkins. Like all the folks at Hopkins who don't have a plan, you end up majoring in economics. And that's what I did. And, you know, at Hopkins, at least when I was there, you had the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences. But then everyone from the engineering school would call it the School of Arts and Crafts. And so I was an econ major in the School of Arts and Crafts at Hopkins.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a bit of a homecoming for all of us because I remember my mom one time she told me that maybe your kids one day will be able to go to this awesome school called the Johns Hopkins University. And that kind of stuck with me. It's one of those probably fleeting comments that parents don't ever remember saying later in life, but it stuck with me. And so when time came, that was the goal that I had. So I remember when I told my dad, I got in. It was one of the few moments. And to this day, one of the few moments in my life that I've ever seen my dad emotional. And then, you know, my mom was super happy. And my mom didn't really lose it until I feel like we were in the dorm. And then, you know, it was a healthy cry that my mom kind of underwent. So everything, I felt like all that hard work. And I even think for my parents, all that risk.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then, if I get Guess when it came time to go to college, you went to Johns Hopkins, you got into Johns Hopkins. Yeah. I mean. I mean, it's a great school, but particularly, I guess, sort of special for your parents because your mom had worked at a Chinese takeout restaurant right next to Johns Hopkins when she first came to the U.S.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unbelievably so. When you think about immigrants that move to the States, they only know what they know. And that's if you get an education, work hard, you should be able to move up this ladder. And so I always like to joke, but I'm only half joking when I say, you know, it's like B is like basically an F. And then if I get a C and just like C later, don't come home. So that was very true in our household and they drove me pretty hard.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say decently outgoing, but a kid of the 80s and 90s, you know, Saturday morning cartoons. A lot of the Looney Tunes that was on some of the X Men NBA on NBC back in the day watching the Knicks versus the Bulls going out to play basketball, rollerblading around the neighborhood. So that was basically my childhood in Edison, New Jersey.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we moved to New Jersey, and my dad actually started a sporting goods company. And so he was always rather entrepreneurial, and he started a sporting goods company selling paddle balls and platform tennis rackets and a rather niche sport. But definitely, I would say by the time I graduated high school, we were firmly in the middle class, which was a far departure from where we started off life in Baltimore.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and so we lived apart for one or two years, I believe, where my mom lived up in Jersey. And every weekend she would come down here or we would go up there.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember when we first came to the States because the language barrier was a very real thing for my parents, we had a really rough start to our stay in this country, meaning that my dad didn't have steady employment. And then my mom found her first white-collar job as an admin up in New Jersey”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it's just like if America could write a brochure to all immigrants, you know, even without writing it, it would say, come to America, study, kids become a doctor, you live in a McMansion, and life is good, right? It's like, that should be the brochure. I'm sure everyone read it.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Original plan. His immigrant parents wanted him to pursue a stable, safe, prestigious career, so Che, as you will hear, chose to become a lawyer, which, of course, didn't last long. Che was born in Taiwan in the early nineteen eighties. His parents moved the family to the US when Che and his older sister were young, and they settled in Baltimore.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the second was that you could create an efficient, profitable e-commerce retailer by focusing on a narrow band of products. And so boxed only sells the most commonly purchased items, things like paper towels and Oreo cookies and lysol and cheesets and cheerios. You get the idea. And unlike Walmart, where a typical superstore carries 120,000 items, boxed only sells about 2,500 products, which allows the company to negotiate lower prices on those items. The idea for boxed came from Chase's previous venture. It was a mobile gaming company called Astro Ape. And at the time, it was still early days for mobile gaming, but Che realized that mobile phones would increasingly come to dominate all parts of our lives. But building a business, any business, wasn't in chase.”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember I was driving home from a meeting in New York, and one of the folks that quit his six figure paying job to join the dream and sit in my garage called and said, Dude, I refreshed the page over and over, it's not broken. We got zero orders today. Oh, wow. This dropped down a zero two days in a row. And he was like, dude, I risk my livelihood to do this. Are you sure this is still going to work?”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2021-02-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Boxed: Chieh Huang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT