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SPEAKER_03: 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. Back then, all websites were hand coded, so they were really expensive to make. Packaging, marketing, etc.
SPEAKER_02: What did you think you needed? How much money did you think you needed to raise?
SPEAKER_03: 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.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how a game with four players, one ball, and a circular net was almost forgotten, until Chris Ruder revived it and turned it into a thriving brand. Spikeball.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes products or ideas come out too early. General Motors built an electric car in 1996, but there wasn't a whole lot of interest, so they killed the program three years later. Today, GM is once again in the electric car business, but now frantically trying to catch up. In around 2000, Microsoft released a tablet computer. Bill Gates even said it would outsell personal computers within a few years. Except it didn't, and Microsoft shelved it, until many years later, after the iPad started selling like crazy. Anyway, today's story is also about an idea way ahead of its time. It's a game, actually, you've probably seen people playing it on a beach or at a park. It's called spikeball, and it looks like a cross between volleyball and foursquare, but instead of hitting the ball over a net or bouncing it on the ground, you bounce it on what looks like a mini trampoline. And over the past few years, spikeball has grown. A lot. But the game actually dates back to the late 1980s. For a couple of years, you could buy spikeball sets at places like Toys R Us, but alas, it never took off and eventually was discontinued. That is, until Chris Ruder and a few friends decided to revive it and try and turn it into a competitive sport. And to say that it was a grind, or at least initially a quixotic business idea, well, that would be an understatement. For starters, Chris had to contact the inventor of the original spikeball and deal with the delicate matter of who actually had the rights to the game. Then, for six years, he ran the business all by himself while simultaneously holding down a full-time job to provide for his family. And at times, he struggled with sales. But he noticed an interesting trend among a few particular groups of people that would actually help get spikeball on a different trajectory. And one of those groups? The Amish. But we'll get there. When Chris was growing up, about an hour south of Chicago, he wasn't that interested in sports. He actually dreamed about being a photojournalist, like for National Geographic or something. And in his early 20s, he moved to San Francisco to try to make it in the world of journalism. But instead, he found himself working in advertising sales in the midst of the dot-com explosion.
SPEAKER_03: 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. The amount of money people were raising, the new businesses were starting. And another thing I liked about it, 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. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: All right. So, I mean, you're basically in San Francisco surrounded by all these people working in this tech startup world. But you were in a different environment, a different community of people, right? I mean, because you were getting jobs in enterprise sales. And eventually, I think you went to go work for Monster.com, which is a big job site, and you did enterprise, also enterprise sales there.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And 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.
SPEAKER_02: So, you leave San Francisco and you move to Cincinnati. And did you have... I mean, this is like early 2000s, around 2002, 2003-ish. Did you have any ambitions at the time to start a business? Or were you thinking, yeah, I've got a good job, I've got benefits, and I'll just kind of climb up the ladder as much as possible?
SPEAKER_03: I think I always wanted to. My dad is 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. Yeah. You know, if you're doing your job well and everything, and you're going to make sure things are covered while you're out, the default answer should be yes. And maybe...
SPEAKER_02: Or it should just be like, hey, tell me when you want to take vacation days.
SPEAKER_03: Exactly. Right. Yeah. 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 huge piece of machinery to figure out how to recycle windshields. And I must have spent two hours on a call with this guy. 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 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, I just kind of fell by the wayside and inertia took over and I went back to my day job.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So, all right. So you were working in Monster. Meantime, there's a sort of a side story in your life, which is in 2003, you go on vacation to Kauai with some friends and family. And I guess this was ostensibly to propose to your now wife, right? Is that what the trip was originally for?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. So we went to, we meaning me, my brother, my now wife, childhood friends, Tim and Pat Kennedy. Yeah. 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. So my wife and I snuck away for the afternoon and landed at this like little waterfall and had a little lunch and then went swimming and I dropped to a knee and the rest is history. Wow.
SPEAKER_02: All right. So you engaged. You're on vacation. And these are like childhood friends who lived in your block, right? Yeah. Pat and Tim Kennedy. Yeah. And on this trip, they bring a game with them, which is what was the game they brought?
SPEAKER_03: The game is Spikeball. They had purchased one years ago. So this was 2003. I believe Spikeball was launched in 1989. So I was 14 at the time. You know, I was kind of that annoying brother, so I wasn't really allowed to play with them, 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, had duct tape on it. It had a different ball, not the same one. It was kind of falling apart, but it worked. And I guess we should explain here how Spikeball works a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, because the rules are, I think a little like volleyball, except the net is on the ground and it's round. It's like a mini trampoline sort of. And basically it's two teams playing against each other, two on two, right? And so like volleyball, you can hit the ball up to your other teammates three times in the air, up to three times. But on the third hit, it has to be spiked at the net, right? And then the other team has to either spike it back on the net or hit it to another teammate. And when the other team misses it, you get a point. And if you can't catch the ball, that's like traveling in basketball, right? You can't catch it.
SPEAKER_03: Exactly. So you play two on two, rather than hitting a volleyball over the net with Spikeball, you hit the ball onto the net. Three hits, essentially a bump set spike motion and yeah. All right.
SPEAKER_02: So you guys are playing this game. You guys have fun with it and that's it. You go back to Cincinnati. Yeah. So side note, we moved to Chicago in January of three.
SPEAKER_03: Right. Okay.
SPEAKER_02: So you go back to Chicago after this trip to Kauai and that's it. That's the end of the story, really. But there was something about playing that game that stuck in your head. Tell me what it was. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, sports has 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. And we did start talking like, huh, I wonder if we could like bring this thing back to life and, you know, we'd talk about it for four or five minutes, but that was about it. You know, really never did anything. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: I remember I had this dream in 1994 to bring Blow Pops, you know, Charms Blow Pops to England because I was studying abroad there and everyone loved them. And I really thought I could do this, but I realized I couldn't do it because you had to have a lot of money to do it. But so people have these ideas. You're like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if this is a conversation that's happening right now, like a hundred thousand people around the world are having this. Wouldn't it be cool if we did this and like ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine of those conversations don't go anywhere. Right.
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely. And yes, like 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, you know, that happened every once in a while, but nothing ever really took root. While I'm not certain, I do believe I remember the my first couple of years at Monster were great. I loved it. But the last couple of years, culture went kind of toxic. 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.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And as you mentioned, Spike Ball had been around for a while. Like it had been around for for about 15 years, I think, when you guys played it in Hawaii. So I mean, when you really sort of look into this, I would I would imagine that the first thing you would have done would be to go to Google and type in Spike Ball like or owner or something like that. Is that how it started? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: 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 Spike Ball has been expired like 10 years or something like that. So wait, hold on.
SPEAKER_02: Let me let me just clarify something. I think I mean, this is a game that was actually introduced in 1989. And it was invented by this guy named Jeff Knurek. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Yep. And he he I guess he was working for like some small company and they they worked with Tomi, the Japanese toy college. It was Japanese toy company. I remember Tomi when I was a kid, Tomi Toys and watching, you know, GI Joe cartoons on Saturday, you always see Tomi Toys. And they actually put it out and marketed it as this is it was it was a net with the ball and it was game right. And but it went nowhere. Like it was that was it. And then they just stopped making it after like 1991.
SPEAKER_03: 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. So there's no patent on this product.
SPEAKER_02: This is a trademark on the name that expired 10 years earlier in 1995. And this is now 2005. OK, so that's kind of interesting. So you're probably thinking, huh, OK. So what did you do next?
SPEAKER_03: I don't remember the time frame, but, you know, through Googling and research, we did learn that Jeff had invented it.
SPEAKER_02: And we say we was you and your brother and the Kennedy brothers.
SPEAKER_03: Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's not like we were having formal meetings on this and saying, OK, guys, here's the plan. I think I think I said something along the lines of guys, we've been talking about this for quite some time. Yeah. And we're going to reach out to an attorney and see what options we have, if any. Right.
SPEAKER_02: And you located Jeff Knirk. You found out where he lived.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Yeah. I think we found his email address somewhere.
SPEAKER_02: And you reached out and you were like, hey, can we talk? And then what happened?
SPEAKER_03: 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. You know, 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. Yeah. But that said, you know, bad news, Chris, is, you know, rights have been sold. So I guess you guys can't do it. But the you know, 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. You know, I felt, you know, 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 want to do the right thing. But the news you got was, hey, sorry, we're already moving on and working with somebody
SPEAKER_02: else.
SPEAKER_03: 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. 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, yeah, I don't understand a lot of what I'm hearing. Hmm.
SPEAKER_02: All right. So I want to pause here for a second and kind of drill down into this a bit more because Jeff Kniorek, the guy who invented the game, we did reach out to him to find out, you know, his story. And what he told us was that the way it worked in the toy business was that trademarks and patents were expensive and most game designers and inventors didn't pursue them because they couldn't, you know, they couldn't afford to do that. And what they would normally do is they'd find a manufacturer that would buy the rights to the game and then they would get a royalty agreement. And then the manufacturer would bear the expense of patenting or trademarking the game, which clearly Tomy never did. Right. And so he says in his view, even though, you know, it's perfectly legal and this is going to be, I'm going to just say this caveat this year. It might be a little bit painful for you to hear it, but I just want to say what he said to us was that he still believes that it was unethical, that it's not the way things are done in the toy and game industry. And he may not be, I don't, I'm not saying he's right, but that's how he feels.
SPEAKER_03: So especially back then, I did not know how the toy and game industry worked. And 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, you know, 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, you know, creating it as a legitimate sport and, you know, going after high school and college age, etc., you know. And met him at a tournament a few years after that. From what I understand, he's still, he's running a tournament of his own and he's sponsoring some players today. So still trying to help grow the sport.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I wonder if, I mean, to me, it seems like sometimes these kinds of tricky, uncomfortable situations are often resolved in a very simple way, which is just people just want to be acknowledged, you know. And if you go to the Wikipedia entry, it says Jeff Knurek, you know, he inspired the game.
SPEAKER_03: 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 spike ball. Yeah. I brought it back to life and I'm crystal clear about that.
SPEAKER_02: Okay. So now once you knew that you could get the trademark, you could get this name and you could manufacture this product because there's no patent on it, how did you actually decide to pursue this? Like it was you, your brother Matt and what, like a couple other guys, like who, did you find people and say, hey, let's pull our money? Like how did you, what'd you do?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. So before we pulled 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. Right. 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 like domain companies that, you know, like kind of hold some hostage and you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the name. And so I spent a couple months trying to come up with a better name and I came up with nothing. Eventually tracked down the owner of spikeball.com and you know, did a, I think it's a who is search so you can see who owns what domains. And I called him, explained myself, said, you know, Chris Ruder thinking about, you know, bringing spikeball back to life. You know, 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, uh, I didn'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 you thinking? And I said, I don't know, a hundred bucks. He says, sure. Um, so we got spikeball.com for a hundred dollars.
SPEAKER_02: Wow. When we come back, how Chris builds a following for spikeball, literally one person, one email at a time until he discovers the power of PE teachers and Christian youth groups. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to how I built this.
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SPEAKER_03: They were in and we did cast a bit of a wider net to other friends, et cetera. And a vast majority, they were cool about it, but it was kind of a thanks, but no thanks.
SPEAKER_02: How much money did you think you needed to raise?
SPEAKER_03: 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, 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. Back then all websites were hand coded, so they're really expensive to make. Packaging, marketing, et cetera. So we wound up raising, I think a little over $100,000. So it was roughly $10,000, $15,000 a head. 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?
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, this is 2007 and just kind of a gut check. I imagine that there were some people who might've been a little skeptical of this who were like, Chris, you've got a good job and do you think this is really going to work? And by the way, you've never run a business before. What do you know about starting a business?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I wouldn't blame them, right? 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 just looking at it on paper, 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 roll the dice and see what happens.
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, I think around this time you get a new job working for, I think for Xbox, for Microsoft Xbox. Yes. And doing like biz dev kind of stuff, business development?
SPEAKER_03: Advertising sales. So it's kind of a cool job, the product that there were advertisements that actually showed up inside the game. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02: I got you. All right. So that's your job. And this is a new job that you got to focus on. In the meantime, you've got this side thing, but really did you think that the spike ball thing, did you see it initially as a side hustle, just as a side fun project or did you have a bigger vision for it?
SPEAKER_03: 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, you know, success to me is if this thing one day could like pay for a family vacation for me, me and my family. You know, quitting my day job and going full time. You know, because by that time I had been in the corporate world for, I don't know, seven, eight years or something, you know, making pretty good money, you know, benefits, all that. And I'm like, there's no way this little rinky dink spike ball thing could come close to that. My brother was like, yeah, wouldn't it be cool if like 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 would be one of our children.
SPEAKER_02: All right. So you've got this new job at Microsoft, Xbox, and also kind of, you know, the side project and with a hundred thousand, roughly a hundred thousand dollars, where did you start? Like who did you go to to manufacture the spike ball sets?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I remember talking to Tim Kennedy and at the time he worked at Ronald McDonald House, which is, you know, 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 Meals. You know, with McDonald's being a 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. So you basically brought it to this manufacturer, their office in Chicago, and you're like,
SPEAKER_02: well, this is it. We want to make these. And they're like, yeah, we can do that.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And we said, we've got some ideas on how we want to make it better, make it stronger, change the design, et cetera. But that was the prototype or sort of the base. And they were nice, but, you know, as you can imagine, a company like that is used to making quantities of, I would assume, 20, 30 million units of something. And I think our first order was 1000 units. And they agreed to make them for you. They did. And if I remember right, I think it was about 40,000, maybe $50,000 for those first 1000 sets.
SPEAKER_02: All right. So you get the first 1000 prototypes made. And meantime, you're doing your day job. But the idea was, and this is 2007, maybe 2008 by the time you get them made, e-commerce is still not really, I mean, it's still a couple years before it starts to take off. But the idea was to sell it through a website, spikeball.com. That was the idea.
SPEAKER_03: 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. Like 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's Sporting Goods and you try to get in there. And I'm like, you know what, we're gonna actually do our own thing. Let's do spikeball.com and see if we can do it our own way.
SPEAKER_02: So the idea was we're gonna sell through a website. Yep. And the site goes live in June of 2008. The spikeball sets are available. You got 1000 for sale. They're 50 bucks, 49.99. Meantime, tell me how the operation is working, right? Because it's you, you've got your day job, your partners have their day job. And how did you guys divide and conquer? Who did what?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that was never very clear in hindsight. So we did a conference call, I believe every other week. And on that conference call, each person would sort of identify what work they were gonna do during those next two weeks. And I remember at times it felt like my role would kind of be like, you know, just nagging, just like, hey, this work didn't get done. What's going on? And like, it got fairly frustrating. And I remember talking to my brother a month or two later. And he said something along the lines of Chris, I think what we're learning is most of us, I think, want to be silent partners. We want to be involved. We're pumped that we invested, but the day to day work isn't really of interest. So we came up with a plan that said, okay, guys, I'm going to essentially going to do all the work, but I need to somehow be compensated for that. But the company really doesn't have any money to pay me. So I came up with, I think it was like a three year plan where if I hit certain sales numbers, I would earn stock from them. If I didn't hit the number, then I don't get anything. And some of the guys were cool with that. Some were not. But, you know, I spoke with a couple of them and I'm like, guys, look, I'm not trying to be greedy here, but if I'm staying up till two in the morning working and you're asleep in bed or going to a movie or hanging out with friends, then there needs to be we somehow need to reconcile that. And eventually everybody was on board and I thankfully hit all three years of the sales numbers and it wound up working out for everybody.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: All right. So the site goes live June 2008, spikeball.com. And you know, you're not I mean, it's just you and these guys like your buddies in Chicago. It's not like you've got a big marketing budget. How did you even, who was going to find out about this? How were you going to even get any of these sold? What did you do to create awareness?
SPEAKER_03: Grassroots marketing is what it's officially called. But in our world, what that meant was going down to North Avenue Beach in Chicago. And yeah, we had like a Thursday night league that we'd play. So I like just started emailing a bunch of friends that lived in the area. And yeah, like in any time I'd see somebody like stop their bike or stop running and just kind of look at us, I'd like walk up to him, introduce myself. Oh, I'm Chris Ruder just started this company and we got a league here. If I can get your email address, you know, would love to add you to the newsletter. And I literally had a clipboard and a pencil and that's how our email lists began. Other times I'd see people playing volleyball and I'd walk up to them with this weird trampoline looking thing and ask people if they wanted to play. And yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Did they catch on? Were they like, oh, this is awesome. Or were they like, oh yeah, you know, not so much.
SPEAKER_03: Walking up to them, I thought I'm like, you know, because the rules of the games are nearly identical. So walking up to these players, I was pretty confident they're going to love it. And they played and like anybody that plays those first five to 10 minutes, it's kind of awkward. You don't know how far the ball is going to go. You don't know if you should have a flat hand or kind of cup it a little bit. And you know, these were also two on two volleyball players. So you got to be a pretty good athlete to play two on two. So they were used to being at the top of their game. They were used to looking pretty good when they play their sport and they looked like absolute fools when they were using a spike ball.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Because it's not a game that you can necessarily catch right away, right? It takes a couple of tries.
SPEAKER_03: Right. So if you have that first rally or that first spike, you're hooked. And that's where, you know, you can literally see the light bulb go off and that person like smiles a little bit more. Maybe they start talking some trash to their friends, but as long as they're willing to play for five to 10 minutes, they'll get it. But if they give up before then, our chances of keeping them are pretty low. All right.
SPEAKER_02: So you launch and how are sales in that first few weeks?
SPEAKER_03: If I remember right, in the month of June, we did about $4,000. All right. So you know, not bad. Yeah. I thought it was pretty good. And then I think in July, I think we did like $700. I was like, oh my God, what's happening? Right, because most of those sales in the first month were probably people who knew
SPEAKER_03: you. Yeah. I consider nearly all of those pity sales, you know, people that didn't necessarily want the product. They're like, oh, Chris and these guys are starting this new company. We'll support them. Yeah. And you know, I see all the orders come in and I knew nearly every single name in that month of June. But we finished that year at, I believe, $10,882. $10,882.
SPEAKER_02: So that's, you're selling what, about over 200 that year. And that means you're left with a little less than 800 to go in your inventory. But you had a day job. I mean, you were working for Microsoft. So I have to assume you weren't super stressed out about that.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And actually, I didn't know if $10,882 was good or bad. It was $10,882 more than we had the year prior, right? So we hadn't even launched. But I was like- But that wasn't going to cover your costs.
SPEAKER_02: I mean-
SPEAKER_03: Right. But again, if the lens I'm looking at this through is it's a fun side job. And okay, if we did $10,000 this year, if we can do, I don't know, $15,000 next year, that'd be amazing. Yeah. And so, and yes, even if sales went to zero, I still got the day job.
SPEAKER_02: So really, what was the plan? I mean, you do a little over $10,000 in year one. And then I think a year or two, you did a little better, $18,000. Yep. But what were you relying on? I mean, how are people going to find out about it? I mean, you had your launch party, you had your Thursday night Spikeball meetups in Chicago. But aside from that, what were you doing to create awareness? What resources did you even have to do that?
SPEAKER_03: I had been gathering the email addresses. So I do like an email newsletter. I don't remember if it was once a week or two a week or something like that. Yeah. That was part of it. It's interesting to hear you say, what was the plan? Like I remember Googling how to write a business plan. And I found a format and it was like, I don't know, a 20 page document or something. And you could just basically start filling in the blanks. And I think I made it to page three before I gave up. And I remember thinking like, am I really going to get value from this? I should do it because business plans, that's what like real businesses do. And I hope Spikeball one day would become that. But I was almost doing it almost as if I feel like obligated, like that's what you're supposed to do. Not because I was going to really get value from it. And I think, yeah, by the time I got to page three, I'm like, no, I actually need to work on a Facebook post or an email newsletter or trying to find some content rather than, you know, I'll get back to this document.
SPEAKER_03: And I never did. To this day, you know, we don't have a formal business plan, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But even with the, I mean, your newsletter was going to people who'd already bought one. So how did new orders come in? What do you know about where people were finding out about it from?
SPEAKER_03: So nearly every customer that bought at Spikeball.com would get a personal email from me. It was not automated. Let's say it was somebody that lived in San Francisco, guy named Mike. And the order came through. I would send Mike an email saying, Hey, Mike, thanks for the order. I'm actually going to head to the post office tonight and drop your box off. So it should arrive there. I don't know, Thursday. See you live in San Francisco. I used to live there. What an absolutely beautiful city. If you don't mind me asking, how did you hear about Spikeball? That was the general format. And I wanted people to know that there's an actual human behind this business. And it wasn't this just kind of nameless faceless thing. I think people, when they got that email, they were kind of confused. Like wait, the CEO is emailing me saying that he's going to personally drive this box to the post office. Like what is going on here? But I think a lot of people were intrigued by it.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious about one order that you received, I think fairly early into this, you know, maybe two years in. And it was from somebody just outside of Nashville.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was Eve. And she works at Young Life.
SPEAKER_02: Which is, I think, one of the largest Christian youth groups in the US, maybe in the world.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's massive. And I had never heard of it. But yeah, I asked the question, how did you hear about it? And she said something along the lines of, oh yeah, I work with Young Life and it's becoming very popular with our kids. And so I Googled Young Life and yeah, like, I think there's like literally millions of high school kids that are a part of this all over the world. She explained to me that, I don't know if it's every week or every couple weeks, the kids get together at somebody's house. So there may be like 50 kids in somebody's living room. And I believe it's like a two hour meeting. The first hour, I believe they're talking about their faith. And then the second hour is some sort of group activity. And the preferred activity, at least in suburban Nashville, was spike ball.
SPEAKER_02: Once you start to kind of hear about that, because that's, I mean, you're talking about Christian youth group, you're potentially able to expose this product to hundreds of thousands, millions of kids. So once you found out about this, did you immediately think, okay, this is a huge opportunity or not quite yet?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I thought I was onto something and I, you know, back then I was also reading a lot of Seth Godin books. And I remember him talking about how you need to give away a ton of your product for free. And if the product can't really travel on its own, it can't market itself, then you might not have that great of a product. So as I'm talking with Eve, I was like, oh, do you have any other Young Life friends that you think may be into some free sets? And she'd give me some names and I'd ship them. And I then stumbled on, went to the Young Life website and saw that there was a directory of like, I think they call them Young Life leaders, like a global directory open to the
SPEAKER_02: public. And when you would send these out to some of these folks around Nashville and some of these Christian youth leaders, did that, did you start to see an impact? Like would you see sales spike from Nashville on your website or the Nashville area?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'd see that. And then, yeah, I was like, you know, again, it was only available on spikeball.com. So I'd see the emails come in and I'd start seeing more email addresses that ended with at Young Life. And I was like, okay, this is starting to, the fire is growing.
SPEAKER_02: You also started to hear from Ultimate Frisbee players, which is interesting. Because that's also kind of a niche game, right? There is a group of people who play Ultimate Frisbee.
SPEAKER_03: Yep. And they would call it Ultimate. I learned that. I used to think it was called Ultimate Frisbee, but they corrected me. And I think they were attracted to this sort of odd slash alternative slash niche nature of spikeball. And yeah.
SPEAKER_02: And then PE teachers too, which makes sense to me because you've got mixed gender groups and different levels of athleticism. But this was a game that you could basically put a bunch of kids in. And volleyball can be hard, especially for short kids. I remember being when I was a little short. But you could get boys and girls around the net and yeah, that makes sense. And so you started to hear from PE teachers.
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely. Yeah, they'd tell us like, we're always looking for cool new innovative games. One thing we did hear from them, which I loved, they're like of a group of let's say a class of 25 kids, there's usually three to four that are pretty difficult to engage. They may not want to participate and do what everybody else is doing. But when we bring out the spikeball nets, those are the kids that are most wanting to engage and they're most into it. So that was one draw of it. We've heard from teachers that have students in wheelchairs and stuff. And I've seen countless videos of four kids in wheelchairs playing and they absolutely love it. There's one story I read about another, because you had, I mean, initially the subcultures
SPEAKER_02: were like PE teachers and ultimate players and Christian youth groups, but apparently also Amish and Mennonite communities. Did you know about this, that it was like super popular among Mennonites and the Amish?
SPEAKER_03: I did not initially. I knew it was very popular in central Pennsylvania, especially Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And we got an email from a reporter at the Wall Street Journal saying, Chris, I'd love to interview you about the Amish and Mennonite influence or participation and spikeball. And I was like, holy smokes. What a dream to get a note like that from the Wall Street Journal, but not in a million years did I think that would be the topic. And I had seen some pictures on social media before of people in what I would consider traditional Amish clothing or Mennonite clothing playing. And yeah, we wound up getting a front page story on the Wall Street Journal on that topic.
SPEAKER_02: Amazing. I mean, you had, I think year three, you're doing about $45,000 in revenue for that whole year, which is obviously promising still, a small, not a whole lot of money, but was that also financing the, I mean, how are you manufacturing more product with such little revenue coming in?
SPEAKER_03: I believe the initial raise we did to start the company was maybe a hundred, right around a hundred thousand. And then I think it was in year three, I think we raised another 20,000 from the same guys. And that is what got us through. You weren't making a salary at all. Yeah. I had, I was getting literally zero and we were spending next to nothing on advertising. So yeah, manufacturing the sets was by far the biggest expense we had.
SPEAKER_02: Right. All right. So was it still manageable? I mean, cause it was still just you, you didn't have anybody helping you out?
SPEAKER_03: Still just me. And I forget what year that we kind of outgrew my basement, but got a larger self storage unit in my hometown in Kankakee about an hour away. So whenever my basement would start running low on inventory, I'd drive down there, bring those back to my house in Chicago, put them in the basement. That inventory may last a couple of weeks and then depending on the time of year, go back to Kankakee, reload the car, et cetera. And yeah.
SPEAKER_02: So I think it's around 2013, like five or six years after you launch the business, that you hit a big milestone, a million dollars in revenue. And you, at this point you still had your day job. I guess you'd moved on from Microsoft at this point. You were working for Live Nation. But anyway, I mean, at this point, I guess you decide you can quit, right? You can quit your day job to focus on spike ball for like full time, right?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. So we had a million dollars with zero full-time employees in 2013. And that's when my wife and I agreed it was safe to quit the day job.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe hire somebody to help.
SPEAKER_03: Yep. Yep. That's when Scott Palmer, our current COO joined. And yeah, it was about a year later that when Dick's Sporting Goods actually reached out to us and said, hey, we'd love to carry your product. They reached out to you. Yeah. How did they find out about you?
SPEAKER_03: I was floored. I was like, wait, what? I'm not sure how. People were playing in very high visible areas. So Harvard was one of the first colleges to really take off with this. And they're playing in Harvard Yard where tons of tourists, international tourists, Sheep's Meadow in Central Park, tons of people playing. So I would imagine some employee at Dick's kind of stumbled on it and is like, huh, this is kind of cool. Let's take a peek.
SPEAKER_02: And when they called you, did they say we're going to put you in every Dick's store and or were they going to start it just a couple locations at the beginning?
SPEAKER_03: They emailed us. And when I saw it, I was shocked. I was like, wow, I thought if we were ever to go into Dick's Sporting Goods, we'd have to call them and beg and plead. But I remember my initial response was, I didn't say this to them, but I remember thinking like, I'm not sure I really want to go into Dick's Sporting Goods because that's a big box store and we're Spikeball. We're this like cool cult underground brand where we're kind of too cool for that sort of thing. And I remember talking to a friend of mine and I said this to him and he kind of smirked and I forget exactly what he said, but he essentially said, Chris, get over yourself. This is Dick's Sporting Goods. Like, are you kidding me? You know, that's exactly what I needed to hear. So Dick's did want to go in all stores. I was nervous because I was like, wait, if we go into all stores and we fail, they're not going to give us a second shot. So I said, all right, how about this, guys? Let's start with maybe 25 or 50 stores. And if we do well, maybe we add another 100 or 200, but we'll eventually get to all stores. But the risk to go in all of them on day one, that's just too much for me. And they said, yeah, we'll go whatever speed you want to, Chris. So that's how we got in.
SPEAKER_02: So once you got into Dick's, I mean, that doesn't necessarily guarantee success, right? I mean, there are thousands of products in a Sporting Goods store like that. You still, you know, people still have to notice it. Did that change the equation for you guys quickly? Did it make a difference?
SPEAKER_03: It did. I remember, I think the product had been on the store shelf for literally four or five days or something like that. And Dick's reached out and said, guys, sales data is off the charts, we're ready to go all in when you are, but we'll go at whatever pace you want. So they, you know, the first couple of days were incredible. And then we eventually added, I think maybe another 50 and then 100. And I think they have north of 700 stores now or 800, something like that. And the tricky part though, was wildly different cash cycle when selling to Dick's Sporting Goods than selling on Spikeball.com. You know, when you sell on Spikeball.com, you literally get that money in your bank 24 to 48 hours after the person buys it.
SPEAKER_03: When you're dealing with a retailer, especially the larger ones, you don't get paid sometimes two, three months after you ship it or sometimes after when they receive it.
SPEAKER_03: And I almost got in some trouble in the early days, not recognizing that I was a member of this group called the Hoonto Institute. It was like an entrepreneurial group. And we all had to show up with our finances, balance sheet, P and L et cetera, cash flow forecasts. And I remember showing it to the instructor and he said, Chris, you realize you're going to go out of business and run out of cash here in a couple months. And I was like, you're crazy. We're growing like crazy. We just got Dick's Sporting Goods. Like what are you talking about? And he said, Chris, sometimes companies die from growing too fast. You know, I think the line is you die from indigestion, not necessarily starvation. And what he showed me in very clear terms was, yeah, Chris, you're shifting from this e-commerce business where you get your money in one to two days to a wholesale one where you're going to have to wait a couple months and you're going to need to figure out how to do that transition. It terrified me.
SPEAKER_02: Why don't we come back in just a moment? Why Chris walks away from a half million dollar deal he's offered on Shark Tank and why he decides to embrace the idea that Spikeball needs a new name. Stay with us. I'm Chris
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SPEAKER_02: Hey welcome back to How I Built This. So it's around 2013 and Chris manages to avert a big potential cash flow problem by taking out a line of credit at the bank. Meanwhile around the same time, he decides he could raise even more money by applying to be on Shark Tank.
SPEAKER_03: So yeah the way it works is you of course fill out an application like a paper application but then they want you to send in a video and it's super low budget. Just a selfie video of you telling your story and you send in version one and then the producers give you some tips and they say okay like why don't you tighten this up or tell us more about this or maybe go outside where you've got better lighting and I felt like I went through maybe three or four versions of each video becoming better and better and yeah eventually made it to the point where they said all right Chris here's the dates we're gonna film so come on out.
SPEAKER_02: So all right I've heard we've had some of the sharks on the show as guests and it's interesting because in every case they're very nice Mark Cuban's been on the show a few times and he's really nice and on the show he can be a real jerk too and what I've realized is that they are acting. They're sort of you know caricatures of themselves in some way and part of that is because that gives him more air time like if there's a zinger like a one-liner they get more air time yeah and I've seen your appearance on Shark Tank and was your experience actually in the studio similar to what viewers ultimately saw when it was cut down and edited?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah the sharks were all super nice and I do think when whether it's Mark Cuban or the other sharks I think if you see them taking some jabs at the entrepreneur I think it's usually because the entrepreneur didn't come prepared or one thing that I also have noticed when watching the show is if they get a feeling that the person is there just to get exposure and they don't want actually want to get a deal they really don't like that. And you wanted a deal you were really looking for a deal.
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: And you did get an offer from Daymond John for half a million dollars for 20% of the company which you agreed to. But the deal actually fell through because they need to actually negotiate it after off air. What happened? Why didn't it go through?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah so we filmed in I think it was September of 2014 and I think I spoke with him maybe like a month or two after we filmed. That was the first time I spoke with him since filming and he was nice he said look Chris we can do the deal at what we agreed to on the show or we can throw that deal out and if you want to do something different I'm open to that. And when we talked about sort of what direction it would be or what do we want to do his main interest lied in licensing. So I think he said something along the lines of you know Chris I've got friends at Marvel Comics let's maybe explore like a Spider-Man branded set or something along those lines. And while that sounds kind of cool it kind of felt like we're treating it like it was a toy and you know I consider ourselves like a sporting goods business I want this to become a legitimate sport and that didn't quite align with how I wanted to take the business. And when I expressed some discomfort with that he said okay how about we license it you know he's like I got some friends at the NHL let's make some NHL team sets. And I was like licensing in general at least at this stage for our business doesn't feel right I want to build our own brand. Yeah. Yeah you know we never officially called the deal off but as some relationships go you just kind of stop calling each other. Yeah. And that's kind of how it went.
SPEAKER_02: All right that's filmed in the fall of 2014 and it's aired in May of 2015. What did that do to sales did it have I have to assume it had a significant impact because millions of people are going to watch that episode.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah it was it was massive. It was the final segment of the season finale. So yeah we had a massive party at our office. Huge sales on Spikeball dot com that weekend and in the weeks to follow. But the real lift was we started getting tons of inbound requests from retailers primarily like smaller mom and pop sporting goods stores toy stores etc. And the thing I didn't plan for think about was reruns. So we got that initial pop which was amazing. And also is a big pop but a lot of people also DVR it. So they'd watch it a few weeks later and reruns are still running to this day. So it's this gift that just keeps giving.
SPEAKER_02: All right now you've been on national TV. And by the way I mean Spikeball is so so we're talking about this game called Spikeball or this but Spikeball is a brand and it's very intentionally a brand because you made a conscious decision to decouple Spikeball from the game and to encourage people to use the name Roundnet. Can you explain the reasoning behind that?
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely so Spikeball is a company that makes equipment for the sport of Roundnet. And I got to know a woman named Mary Horwath. She's the former chief marketing officer of Rollerblade. And she was there back in the 90s when it absolutely exploded. Yeah. And back then people were using the name Rollerblade. A lot of people were using it in a generic fashion. Let's go play Rollerblade hockey. Let's go rollerblading etc. And she realized that if people kept using it that way that they could potentially lose their trademark and Rollerblade would become a generic term. So she is the one that coined that phrase or the term inline skates. So that's why at the X Games there is no competition or rollerblade competition there's an inline skating competition.
SPEAKER_03: And she saw how we were using the name Spikeball as the name of the sport and in you know sometimes in a generic fashion. And she and some other folks I spoke with said yeah you need a name for the actual sport similar to baseball, basketball, football. You know those are all generic terms that nobody owns the rights to. And I remember thinking like okay what what makes our product unique? Well the biggest thing I believe is it's a round net. Like I can't think of a single other sport that has a round net in it. It's a super boring word when you think about it round net. But if you take away everything you know about the name basketball or football or baseball those are all pretty boring names as well. But what you know about the sport all the brands the athletes etc. That's why you get excited when you hear those names. And you know when I did come up with the word round net part of me I'd say 10 percent of me was like don't do it because I of course want the whole world saying the word Spikeball. But 90 percent of me was like look if you are that controlling this thing will probably never get the sport definitely will not get to the size that I think it can be.
SPEAKER_02: And so you you basically decided to create this like a like a governing body for a sport called round net.
SPEAKER_03: I came up with the name round net. But as tournaments started becoming more and more of a thing different leaders within the community started speaking up saying hey I like this rule or I don't like that one. And yeah it sort of emerged that governing bodies started coming around and it's pretty well developed right now you know there's the International Round Net Federation. That's sort of the global governing body. And then I think it's 37 countries also have governing bodies and they all report up and into the IRF.
SPEAKER_02: We've seen this with pickleball. I mean pickleball has been around since I think the 60s but now it just exploded in the last like five years. It's absolutely everywhere and I wouldn't be surprised if it was an Olympic sport in 10 years. But tell me about your ambitions with round net. What do you imagine round net to be in like 20 years from now? An Olympic sport? I mean professional leagues. Tell me what do you think?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah I absolutely think we will be recognized by the Olympics. I think there will be professional round net players and we will be considered a legitimate sport. The one thing that is a bit unique about us is that this is all being driven by the players by the community. So you know I didn't sit in a conference room with some other spikeball employees and say huh we should start doing tournaments. Groups of friends were getting together with like a clipboard and drawing up some brackets and the competitive juices were flowing. Same with the Olympic recognition. The IRF formed and their tagline is bathing the pathway to the Olympics. They are the ones studying what is needed, what's required and I think you need I don't know 60 or 70 countries to have governing bodies. We've already got 37. That's a pretty darn good start.
SPEAKER_02: And do you go to, are you planning on going to any of these international tournaments or competitions?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah I was at first ever world championship in Belgium last fall. And I was just having this like out of body experience like I can't believe I'm standing in a field in Belgium watching a group of Japanese people play a group of Mexican people round that. You know nothing more gratifying than to see that this is what millions of people are choosing to do.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. All right. So now you've created this name round net and there are tournaments around the world. And let me ask you about the marketplace for round net because if you go to Amazon and you type in spike ball, understandably there's going to be a bunch of competitors. And they look pretty similar you know and there some of them are you know significantly less expensive. But that's they're allowed to do that right. This is not a patented product. Anybody can make it.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. I mean we do have got some patents that have been filed for some that have been accepted but yeah the general concept yeah is not protected. And I remember when I think the first one showed up in 2014 or 15.
SPEAKER_02: Who was that who did it.
SPEAKER_03: Franklin Sports I believe it was Spiderball.
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow. That's a big company. And it was exactly like what you guys were doing.
SPEAKER_03: Lower end. You know the same shape in general. Same concept. Yeah. And I was at the Toy Fair in New York when I first saw it. So I was absolutely terrified. I'm like there's absolutely no way we can compete. Yeah. I was like I can't. I've got three kids at home. My 100 percent of my income now is from spike ball and I cannot believe I just quit a cushy corporate job. I'm toast. Yeah. And then a year or so went by and didn't really feel anything. We kept growing. And then another one showed up and then another one and I think there's like over 40 now or something like that.
SPEAKER_02: Right. But when you go to like the USA round net website or the international round net website it's it's fairly clear everybody's playing on spike ball net. So I mean you have managed to position this strongly but essentially at these international round net tournaments spike ball tends to be the main sponsor.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And even if we're not the sponsor they are choosing our product.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. The the last numbers I saw were from 2021 where you report about over 20 million dollars in revenue and probably by now higher than that. But I want to ask you about the I mean the business is still growing. Obviously you've had an impact. I mean you see spike ball. I see them every time I go to a beach or a park everywhere. But I have to imagine that from a business perspective you have to think about diversification strategy. Right. Because the tournaments are definitely going to promote the sport and more people will buy the product. But generally people are going to buy the spike ball set once twice and that's it. Right. And so tell me about because I know you guys acquired this software company called Flango back in 2021 and I have to mention that that's part of your strategy to grow. Tell me about what that does and how that will grow the business.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. I'm very very excited about Flango. Flango is a platform that makes running tournaments much much easier. So created for round net and this gentleman Alex Tuzel he was running round net tournaments and I think he like most others I think it was like a Google doc or something that they were using to run the event and it was very clunky. So he designed it and started using it and then other tournament directors started asking him about it and he's like yeah you can use it go ahead and everybody fell in love with it and we became friends with Alex and said hey Alex would you be up for selling your business like we'll buy it and you join us as a full time employee but you keep doing what you've been doing. We need to have some more resources and the exciting part we've been seeing the last few months is there's fairly significant interest from the pickleball world. We are hearing from pickleball tournament directors saying this is a heck of a lot better than what we've got and it makes life a lot easier and yeah I see tremendous potential there and we've seen people using it for like board game tournaments, volleyball tournaments, lacrosse tournaments. So very excited about its potential and it's still very very early.
SPEAKER_02: So how I mean how much in terms of like looking at the future of the business what percentage of the business do you hope FUANGO to be in 10 years from now versus the product line?
SPEAKER_03: I think it can become a significant profit driver. If you think of consumer products where you're making a physical product margins aren't that great right? You have to make a thing, you have to ship it and there's all sorts of stuff involved. If you think of software businesses you make the thing once and if a million people use it you don't have to make it a million more times. So yeah I'd love to see it and I don't think it'll be able to be you know with round that the sport being the size it is today it's not going to be a major moneymaker. So in order for FUANGO to become a significant driver to our bottom line it needs to become a player in some other sports and you know if it's pickleball it happens to say yeah we like this then okay we're going to start working on some features so if you like it today you're going to love it tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: When you I mean you know when you think about the journey you took and here you are and you've got you know a great sustainable business and it's growing you know how much of where you are do you think has to do with the work you put in and the time and the effort and how much do you think has to do with just luck and the serendipity of this game catching on?
SPEAKER_03: I think I'd probably put serendipity at number one you know had the Kennedy's never purchased that set years ago I never would have seen it. Luck is right up there as well and I think another one is you know actually took that first step so I'm grateful that I did take that first step and had a group of friends and family that took that step with me and completely recognized that I'm very privileged in that you know had friends and family that were able to write sizable checks and not everybody has that.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah I've just you're you're pretty good at the game now.
SPEAKER_03: I used to be now if I stumble on some rookies on the beach like maybe they're 22 years old and you know in general way better athletes than me but if this is the first time they've been playing yes I will beat them but if I go to a tournament I get absolutely smoked. Yeah it's depressing.
SPEAKER_02: That's Chris Ruder of Spikeball. By the way Jeff Knurek the original inventor of Spikeball turns out he's now the cartoonist and co-creator behind Jumble the word puzzle that's syndicated in hundreds of newspapers around the world and he still sponsors Spikeball teams and promotes a sport through his own club and website called Club Spike. Hey thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show and it's totally free. This episode was produced by Chris Messini and edited by Neva Grant with music composed by Ramtin Arobloui. Our production team also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Liz Metzger, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This. Hey Prime members you can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. If you want to show your support for our show be sure to get your How I Built This merch and gear at WonderyShop.com. Before you go tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Hey it's Guy here and while we're on a little break I want to tell you about a recent episode of How I Built This Lab that we released. It's about the company TerraCycle and how they're working to make recycling and waste reduction more accessible. The founder Tom Zaki originally launched TerraCycle as a worm poop fertilizer company. He did this from his college dorm room. Basically the worms would eat trash and then they would turn it into plant fertilizer. Now his company has since pivoted from that and they recycle everything from shampoo bottles and makeup containers to snack wrappers and even cigarette butts. And in the episode you'll hear Tom talk about his new initiative to develop packaging that is actually reusable in hopes of phasing out single-use products entirely and making recycling and TerraCycle obsolete. You can hear this episode by following How I Built This and scrolling back a little bit to the episode Making Garbage Useful with Tom Zaki of TerraCycle or by searching TerraCycle that's T-E-R-R-A-C-Y-C-L-E wherever you listen to podcasts.
