YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Ruder

lines on the record: 81
first: 2023-06-19
most recent: 2023-06-19
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

“Yeah, yeah, and I kind of had a feeling like even if we wanted to get into stores. I just didn't think we would be able to. It's a weird looking trampoline. It's kind of complicated to explain how you play. And, you know, I still had that sort of dot-com buzz from San Francisco and kind of this, in general, I love challenging the status quo. And I feel like the normal way a company would launch would be, yeah, the first thing you do is you call dick exporting goods and you try to get in there. And I'm like, you know what? We're going to actually do our own thing. Let's do spikeball.com and see if we can do it our own way.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, we took it to them and we said, we've got some ideas on how we want to make it better, make it stronger, change design, et cetera. But that was the prototype or sort of the base. Were nice, but you know, as you can imagine, a company like that is used to making quantities, I would assume, 20, 30 million units of something. And I think our first order was 1,000 units.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I remember talking to Tim Kennedy, and at the time he worked at Ronald McDonald's house, which is the nonprofit arm of McDonald's. And Tim knew somebody that worked for the company that makes all those little plastic toys that go in happy mails. You know, with McDonald's being at Chicago company, of course, nearly all of their suppliers have offices in the area as well. So we got a meeting with those guys, and they wound up being our first manufacturer.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, absolutely side job. And I remember talking with my brother, I don't know if it was 08, 09, whatever, but I remember saying if this thing is success to me is if this thing one day could pay for a family vacation for me, me and my family, you know, quitting my day job and going full time, because by that time I had been in the corporate world for, I don't know, seven, eight years or something, making pretty good money, you know, benefits, all that. And I'm like, there's no way this little rinky spike ball thing could come close to that. My brother was like, yeah, wouldn't it be cool if maybe one day, like in 20 years, the company's big enough to maybe one of our kids could work there, meaning like there would be one full-time employee at the company, it would be one of our children.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Advertising sales. So it's kind of a cool job, the product that there were advertisements that actually showed up inside the game.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I wouldn't blame them, right? Like, not only have I not run a business, not that into sports. I have a degree in photojournalism. I talked my way out of anything close to finance in college. So, you know, just looking at it on paper, like I should be the last one running this. So those that said, no, I do not blame them one bit. But I think those that said yes saw the passion that I had. And I think they also thought it'd be a fun project. And like, you know what? Maybe they weren't in love with their day jobs either. And like, huh, this will be fun. Like, do it with some friends and let's, you know, roll the dice and see what happens.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was roughly 10, 15,000 dollars ahead. And yeah, I remember we met at this bar called Casey's Tavern in South Loop in Chicago. And that was sort of our quote first official gathering and where kind of everybody said, yes, I'm in or I'm out. And yeah, once we had that, then, yeah, everybody kind of started doing some research to see, okay, how can we actually make this thing happen?”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually didn't set a number. We kind of just said invest whatever you're comfortable losing because chances are very good that you're going to lose it. Now we're going to have fun doing this, but I don't recall like, you know, because at that time, I had no idea how much it was going to cost to manufacture. I had no idea how much to make a website. You know, back then, all websites were hand-coded, so they were really expensive to make. Packaging, marketing, et cetera. So we wound up raising, I think, a little over $100,000.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were in, and we did cast a bit of a wider net to other friends, etc. And, you know, vast majority, they were cool about it, but it was kind of a thanks but no thanks.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I called him, explained myself, said, Chris Rutter, thinking about bringing Spikeball back to life. I see you own spikeball.com. And I was kind of playing dumb. I was like, oh, do you like the game or whatever? And he's like, I don't even know it was a game. I just thought it was a cool word. I thought my kids might want to make a website one day. And I'm like, oh, all right. Well, is there any chance you'd be interested in selling it? And he says, yeah, sure. How much are you thinking? And I said, I don't know, hundred bucks? He says, sure. So we got spikeball.com for $100.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So before we pull the money, once we knew we had a pretty strong chance at getting the trademark I learned that somebody else owned the URL spikeball.com. And I remember thinking, okay, if we can't get the URL, then we need to come up with an entirely different name because that is going to be absolutely critical. And I thought that the person that owned this that owned the URL was one of those domain companies that hold some hostage and you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the name. And so I spent a couple months.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And, you know, not that I do many podcasts or interviews or if I'm talking to a college class or whatever, I almost open every single one with I did not invent Spikeball. Brought it back to life, and I am crystal clear about that.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially back then, I did not know how the toy and game industry worked. When I did reach out, I genuinely believed there was a decent chance we were going to launch this thing together. It's unfortunate that Jeff feels that way. I get it. I don't agree with it. And do believe that. I did the right thing by reaching out. And he did email us saying, Hey, see that you guys went ahead and launched You seem to be taking the route that we probably should have, which is creating it as a legitimate sport and going after high school and college age, et cetera. And Metameta tournament a few years after that, from what I understand, he's running a tournament of zone and he's sponsoring some players today. So still trying to help grow the sport.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I didn't quite know. What sort of the truth was, or what was going on, but I think we maybe spoke on the phone once, maybe twice. We swapped emails a few more times over a few months. And I think he said, look, if we were to do something, there's some other guys that would need to be involved. And these people would need to get, I don't know, like a royalty or something, but it was getting murkier and murkier. And I was kind of like, I don't understand a lot of what I'm hearing”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so if I remember right, I think I sent the email saying, you know, absolutely love the game. Me and my buddies do. We'd love to consider bringing it back to life. We'd love to chat. And I think his response was something along the lines of, hey, glad you love it. Got good news and bad news. Good news is it's coming back and it's most likely going to be in a bunch of stores next year. But Dad said, you know, bad news, Chris, is rights have been sold. So I guess you guys can't do it. The attorney had told me nobody owns anything, so you guys can do what you want per the attorney's advice. Legally, we didn't need to reach out to Jeff. I felt he had invented it and I wanted to like, you know, yeah, maybe we can launch this thing together. So that's why I reached out and you wanted to do the right thing.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's not like we were having formal meetings on this and saying, okay, guy, guys, here's the plan. I think I said something along the lines of guys, we've been talking about this for quite some time. Going to reach out to an attorney and see what options we have, if any.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think their main retailer was Toys R Us, if I remember right. And you need not great hand-eye coordination, but I'd say probably age 11 or 12 and up is probably what's appropriate. And, you know, there's not many teens or people in their early 20s, or at least there weren't shopping at Toys R Us back then”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I looked it up and reached out to an attorney friend and he looked it up and he's like, yeah, there never was a patent on the product. So the design itself is kind of open. And the trademark, which protects the name Spikeball, has been expired like 10 years or something like that.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Company got in some trouble with the SEC. I think maybe an exec or two went to jail and it became a pretty toxic environment. And kind of, I don't know if that was what wound up pushing me to say, you know what? I'm actually going to do some research and see if we can actually do this. I'd imagine if I were able to go back in time and interview myself, that probably was a factor. And yeah, when I started researching it, it wasn't like, oh my God, this would be amazing. We can make so much money, but it was this would be a fun side project.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And yes, we would get together, you know, me, Matt, Tim, Pat, and other friends and would occasionally talk about Spike Ball and, you know, somebody would casually mention like, yeah, it would be, you know, wouldn't it be cool if, and that happened every once in a while, but nothing ever really took root. While I'm not certain, I do believe I remember my first couple years at Monster were great. I loved it. But the last couple years, culture went kind of toxic.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we did start talking, huh? I wonder if we could bring this thing back to life. And we'd talk about it for four or five minutes, but that was about it. Really never did anything.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so sports is never really been my thing. It was my brother's thing. And, you know, when he and I were kids, we were not all that close. And I remember when we were playing spikeball and it was he and I on a team together, it felt great. And I was like, wow, this is, you know, I love the game. I love that it's bringing my brother and I closer together. I'm having a blast doing this. There's strangers walking by asking us about this game. So seemingly they're into it as well. And I think it was more of that social side, bringing people together side that I found so attractive. It wasn't necessarily I want to be the best player. I want to absolutely win. Like, of course, I want to, but that wasn't really my driver.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. You can play two on two rather than hitting a volleyball over the net with spike ball, you hit the ball onto the net. Three hits, essentially a bump set spike motion. And yeah.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A game is Spikeball. They had purchased one years ago, so this was 2003. I believe Spikeball was launched in 1989. So 14 at the time. You know, I was kind of that annoying brother, so I wasn't really allowed to play with him, but I'd kind of watch from afar. And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of cool and didn't really play much until that trip in Hawaii. And they had this beat up set that was probably 10 plus years old, you know, had duct tape on it. It had a different ball, you know, not the same one. It was kind of falling apart. It worked”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we went to we, meaning me, my brother, my now wife, childhood friends, Tim and Pat Kennedy. And I knew I was going to propose. I knew we had this trip coming up. And I was like, you know what? I think this would be a perfect place to do it. My wife and I snuck away for the afternoon and landed at this little waterfall and had a little lunch and then went swimming and I dropped to a knee and the rest is history”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Exactly. And so that never sat right with me. It was just one little thing. So, yes, I absolutely wanted to run my own thing, but I didn't have an idea. I didn't know what it was. And I remember having this conversation with this guy in Cincinnati. I stumbled on some article about how broken windshields. I guess they take up a massive amount of space in landfills. And somebody had created this like huge piece of machinery to figure out how to recycle windshields. And I must have spent two hours on a call with this guy. Like I read the article, looked him up, called him, and he was selling the machinery. And I was like, hmm, can you actually make money selling that, those raw materials? And I wasn't convinced I could, so I didn't move forward with it. But I remember getting really excited about that for maybe a few weeks, a month, but then, like a lot of other things.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I always wanted to. My dad was an entrepreneur. My grandfather was both my grandfathers were. My brother runs his own business. And I saw the freedom that they had. And I didn't have that at any of my jobs. And that really bothered me. And I don't know why, but it really bothered me when I'd have to ask for vacation days. Know if I'm doing your job well and everything and you're going to make sure things are covered well, you're out, you know, the default answer should be yes and maybe it's just”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so when I took that job, that was right after sort of the dot bomb implosion in 02 and moved to Cincinnati for that job.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Without trying to overdo it, I think intoxicating is the word I'd use. I was there from'98 to 02, and the city was just exploding. You know, the amount of money people were raising, the new businesses were starting. And another thing I liked about it, like nobody was really from there. Everybody was kind of in search of something better, myself included. And yeah, the whole city was just on fire back then.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, didn't set a number. We kind of just said invest whatever you're comfortable losing because chances are very good that you're going to lose it.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That time, I had no idea how much it was going to cost to manufacture. I had no idea how much to make a website. Back then, all websites were hand-coded, so they were really expensive to make. Packaging, marketing, et cetera.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT