Fourth game just got released. It got to be in the top 10 of sales right away. And he said, "The first three are still in the top 10." And I said, "What does that even mean?" And he's like, "This is what it means." And he slid a check across the table for $4.5 million. That's how I made my first million.
Tony, can we show you something really quick just so you understand how real this is all about to be?
So, we're business nerds, but at least one of us has grown up watching you. And I'm going to show you why I like talking to you. This is me skating. Can you see this video?
So, I'm... Is that 360 flip recent?
Yeah, I'm 37 years old.
So, look, there's a six stair.
I'm jealous. That's amazing.
Was that... Was that the Riverside Park right there?
Riverside skatepark. I moved right by just and I go every Saturday and Sunday.
Sick. I'll meet you there so you can teach me how to relearn 360 flips.
Yeah, right. Have you skated there a bunch?
I can't do them on flat anymore. I can only do them on banks.
Well, that's more impressive. But I grew up watching you forever and so it's pretty cool that we've intersected at this strange place called My First Million where we talk about business and stuff. But I'm so excited to talk to you. I know Sean is too.
Yeah, actually Sam, I have a funny story. So, I met Tony once many years ago now, like 10 years ago. We went on a trip to Ethiopia with Charity Water.
Yeah, that's... I was like, I know that face.
Yeah. So, we're in the middle of nowhere. It's like there's no service, there's nothing. There's no water, right? That's why we're there. There's no water in these villages and we're on the side of a mountain kind of doing a hike. And this guy's like, "Tony Hawk." And he recognized Tony Hawk on the side of a mountain in Ethiopia, a place where they didn't even have anything. It was incredible. And the funny thing was the whole trip was like a bunch of who's who, like, "Oh, this guy created Spotify. This guy created this." Nobody knew anyone except for Tony Hawk. He got recognized on the side of a mountain. I thought that was unbelievable.
That was a fun trip. I had never experienced anything so remote for sure, but also with the whole mission of life-changing water, it was insane. We got to fix wells. That was wild. We got to see the water come out for the first time in a village when the geyser blasts and stuff like that. It was amazing.
How'd you get looped into that, Tony?
I was a big donor to Charity Water and I had actually sponsored a well in the name of my daughter who was very young at the time. She's now in college, but we got to go visit the actual well and people were thanking me on my daughter's behalf and it was really cool.
That's one of the amazing things Charity Water did. And this is really not about charity. It's kind of a business lesson. You know, when Scott started Charity Water, he had no background in charity. But he just asked himself the question, why don't I give to charity more? And he's like, well, I think the main thing is you don't know where the money goes. You kind of give it. It's a black box. You just sort of hope something good's happening, but you never really feel the impact, see the impact. And so what he was doing was, you know, if you donated, you get like a GPS tracker of exactly where in the world your thing was going. You would see the flow meter of how much water is coming from your well once it comes online. And then for people like Tony who were doing a full well, he would do these once-in-a-lifetime type of things. You could go see it, go see the place and go talk to the people who are the beneficiaries of this. And I just think that was such an unlock for him and one of the reasons Charity Water was able to do so well as a nonprofit compared to the standard operating procedures of nonprofits.
Yeah, I agree. Well, also, coming from having my own foundation, I see how more engaging it is to know where your money goes. Like there's money that goes to research and that's hard to track and it obviously has value, but when we do skate parks, you have literal concrete proof of where your money goes. And here it is and you can go skate it.
What year did you start doing that?
Okay. And how many have you built?
Oh wow. It's getting close to a thousand that we have contributed to. Yeah.
Can you actually talk about that? Because I'm at this point in life where I've always had in my head, oh yeah, I'd love to give. I'm a good person. I'm going to give. But then when I was younger, it was like, well, I'll give later, right? Like not now. Let me first get mine, then I'm going to give. And I realized pretty recently like man, the get-mine never stops. You probably just have to start giving even maybe before it feels totally comfortable to do so and get going. Back in 2002 when you said you did that, had you kind of made it? Or is there never a made it? You know, what's the right way to think about that?
I think it has to start with a passion of what affected you in your life or how did you overcome something or what did you see a void of? In my case, the skatepark that I grew up near was my salvation. Like that was the place where I felt like I belonged. It was obviously the place where I honed my skills, but more importantly, I found my crew there. And skating wasn't cool in the early 80s and we were a bunch of misfits, outcasts. Like you know, it was cliche jocks putting you in trash cans and stuff like that and like it's all true. But we found our friends there and our support system and it was just a safe place and you know, not just for skating but to hang out. And so when I found myself having this crazy success, I could see there was obviously a lack of skateparks because cities and even parents hadn't really accepted skateboarding as valid yet. And I just thought the best thing I can do is provide these facilities for kids who feel disenfranchised, for underserved areas. That was it. That was the idea. We had no idea what we were doing. My brother, actually my brother and my sister and I just sort of started it on a whim and started figuring out projects that already had some legs or where there were seeds planted for a skate park and they were up against a lot of opposition from the city or from the community and we could give them at the very least an endorsement and a validation. So, the early grants were $10,000, $5,000, but that was enough to give them some sort of incentive and acknowledgement and usually that pushed it through to an approval process. And we learned as we went along and we ended up getting more big donations from corporations and any contracts that I entered into in terms of endorsements at the time, I made sure that 10 to 20% went straight to the foundation or that they were able to give even more. I mean now I'm sure you guys know this, skateparks are everywhere. You're living near one.
It's wild. Like 20 years ago, New York City skatepark. What?
Yeah. And now there's a bunch of them. And skateboarding is very cyclical. I don't know where we are in the cycle right now, but it doesn't feel like it's down. That's for sure.
Well, I think that most of the skate parks 20, 30 years ago were temporary structures. We're now building them into communities, into the landscape, out of concrete. I feel like they're more here to stay than ever.
In those early days, you're talking about when you were a kid, go to skatepark, you found your crew. Was it obvious that you were good? I mean, you became the Michael Jordan of your sport. I just kind of want to know about that. Like, would anybody have known? Could anybody have seen that when they saw you at those early days?
Probably not in the first couple years. I was pretty bad. I was just kind of flailing. I didn't understand what style was or how to create it in my skating. All I cared about was tricks. And so whatever it takes to do tricks, the body mechanics of that aren't pretty, you know what I mean? How do you spin your board around? How do you turn this way? How do you go that way? And that's all I cared about because it was just like that was fascinating to me that there were things that hadn't been done yet that were possible and that I could do them at an early age. It wasn't until probably my third real year of skating that I started to get some recognition. Everything then was competition based. So your value, your ranking, that was the only way people were going to notice you. And I started moving up the ranks. In fact, when I finally got sponsored by the Bones Brigade, I was an amateur. I won the amateur series that year. And I owe a lot to Stacy Peralta because he recognized something in me that maybe I didn't even see. He saw me doing some innovative tricks. They weren't big, but they were interesting to him. But I guess what he saw in me was that I was always frustrated. And he saw that I was determined and that I had the tenacity to keep at something until I get it. And even against my own safety.
We talk a bunch. Charlie Munger, one of the best investors, he has this line where he's like, take something serious that most people don't and that's like a really good way to get outsized returns. And it definitely, I mean that's obvious, that's what you did. Skateboarding was not popular at all and it seems like you took it serious. But did you have any mental attributes that you think stood out amongst the other good guys at the time?
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I think I was just relentlessly determined. I just never gave up. And you know, through repetition, through failure, I had to figure these things out. And I didn't know that was such an attribute at the time, it just felt like more of an obsession. And even just doing things I wanted to do when I was a kid. Like my mom would say or her friends would say like, "Your kid's a nightmare. He won't give up." And she's like, "Well, he's just very determined." And so she saw it as a positive. That is what kept me afloat or at least motivated even through success because there's a mindset especially in skateboarding where you want to make it right. You want to get on the cover of Thrasher or you want to have a good video part or you want to win a contest and if you get to that goal you might lose your incentives. I didn't care so much about those accolades. I cared about learning new tricks. So the day after a contest, like a big one, maybe even if I had won, I'm back on the ramp trying some new trick. Like I'm on to the next one.
Sean, there's this word that skaters use a lot. People use the word progression. Like you really progressed.
I thought you were going to say like a skater slang. You just like a skater phrase we use. Progression.
Well, I got much stranger ones, but go ahead. But you would think of like a punk rock kid being like, progression, man. That's right. You just you progress. And the idea of skating is interesting because like let's say you ollie down a two stair. It's like you very easily can be like, "All right, I can do two. Let's see if I can do three. Okay, I can do three. Let's see if I can do four." And in skating there's very much this incremental progress that's very measurable and it's really exciting. And so like when I was skating as a kid, that's one thing I remember was like progression. And I remember I wasn't great. I was fine. But I remember what separated me from someone who's amazing and then there's a whole other category which is you Tony of like these people who are never satisfied with where they progress to. It was always like now what? Now what? Now what? And it kept going.
And those are the ones, I mean those are the ones that have the longevity and those are the ones that kids look to because they're not just basking in their glory.
Right? You know, we often will talk about the upside of greatness, the outcome of greatness, what it's like to do all the great things, but very rarely do you get to understand the price of greatness. So, I want to ask you about the price of greatness. You know, there's a guy who went to the same high school as I did. He made it to the NBA for one year. You don't even know his name. Joe Alexander. Probably never heard of this guy, you know, had just a little vacation in the league. But he goes on TikTok and he says here's what my life looked like from the age of nine. And he said every day this was my schedule. This is what I did. These were my rules I had for myself. And he's like this is what it took plus I had a growth spurt and got to 6'8". So plus the natural gifts. Here's all the work that it took to get to the level I got to. I just want people to understand that. I really love these videos because for those who enjoy the work, it's like oh here's a blueprint I can follow. Here's a frame breaker. Maybe I'm capable of doing more. And for others who don't want to do the work, it's like don't even dream about that stuff because this is what it takes. If I asked you what's your version of that? What was the price of greatness when you were sort of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old? What did your life look like?
As soon as the bell rang, I figured out a way to get to the skate park. That was it. I was at the skate park until either my mom got off work, which was usually late because she worked at a night school, community college, or until they closed and I was able to get a ride home from someone that was 16. That was it. I was there all day and I mean a lot of times I would forget to eat. I wasn't trying to be skinny but it was like eating was just a distraction. That was time away from the pool.
Right? I think the difference is when you're working towards something like the NBA, you know that there's this goal and there is professional, there's income, there's fans, whatever it is. To reach the top of skateboarding at the time I did it, it meant that you got your picture in a magazine. That was it. I mean, you truly like first place for a competition was $100 and I wasn't pro. So like I'm just trying to get free gear. That's the goal.
When you're... I know I mean you were making some money when you were 16, 17, 18. I want to ask about that.
Sure. I mean that did eventually come and I got to ride the wave of skateboarding's growth and popularity which was incredible and was you know something that I never dreamed of because that's I guess that's the point is when you were a kid in those days skateboarding you couldn't dream of being rich or famous because no one was.
So what did you think you'd be doing at like age 40? Were you like I gotta just have fun now and maybe I'll teach?
You think about it. Oh, yeah, I mean my ultimate... I guess what I saw for myself, I was always really good at mathematics. I thought I'd be a math teacher because I always helped my friends with homework. That was it. Like I wasn't aspiring to some professional level. It was just more like, oh, I'm good at this and that will probably be my career trajectory. And then once I was 16, money started to come in through royalties and suddenly realized that I was making more than my mom at age 17.
I've noticed this trend and this is actually something that has always surprised me. We had this guy named David Rubenstein on the other day. He's like a billionaire guy. He started a really successful company and we've had a bunch of incredibly successful people on and I've asked this question many times like where did you think it was going to go and almost every time the answer has been like magnitude smaller than where they ended up. I think there's this famous scene with Jeff Bezos and he was pitching his first investor when he was starting Amazon and he was like, you know, guy, if we really nail it I think this company can make $100 million a year. I really think it can do it. Or if you look at Uber's early pitch deck, it's like if this goes well and the number was like 30 or 40 or $50 million a year or something like that. And it's so interesting to see that when you have these huge outsized great results, very rarely is the person who's doing it prediction even remotely in that stratosphere.
Oh, no. Please. I mean, my first year as a professional skateboarder, I had $640 in the bank from my contest earnings, and I went out and bought myself a Honda scooter so that I could get to the skatepark by myself and not have to rely on my parents for rides because their hours were not in tune with how much I wanted to skate during that grind period.
I've heard, I've read somewhere like you had like a sort of $5 a day budget like for...
Well, that came later. So I went through this first wave of success which I like to credit to Back to the Future. Like when Back to the Future came out in '85, kids wanted skateboards. I mean Marty McFly invented the skateboard and a lot of kids that was their first glimpse of what's possible. So there was this sort of wave of popularity that happened like '86 to '90ish. And I was by then a young adult. I suddenly owned two houses. I had a motor ramp set up and then things dropped off very quickly in '91. My income was dropping by half every month.
And what were you like, 19?
What were you making leading up to that? And then what did it have to...
Oh wow. I would say probably in my best year was in the hundred thousands-ish, you know, in the mid 80s, late 80s. That was like lawyer salaries sort of thing. And I had no vision of saving for the future. So, I was like taking all my friends on vacation and buying the newest car and then flipping that one and buying another one. Not flipping it. I mean, paying depreciation and then buying another one and going on shopping sprees at Sharper Image and, you know, I had the invincibility of youth on my side and then all of a sudden it went down. I mean, I guess if I had to give you an example, I was making about $1,500 a month from my shoe sponsor, Airwalk. They would call me every month or so and say, "Oh, you know, we really got to cut you down a little bit." So then that went to a thousand and then two months later that went to 500 and eventually ended up at 300 within the same year time span.
And as that's happening, what are you...
As that's happening? I'm struggling to pay my mortgage. I'm taking every odd job I can. And by that I mean, well, okay, so this is 1990. I'm 22. I am officially too old to be a featured skateboarder like in commercials because they thought it was just a kid thing. But because they knew my name, I would get hired as a Hollywood consultant. So I remember this one shoot vividly. They asked me to build a launch ramp so that the skater could go through the frame of this thing they wanted. And then they were going to I think drop glitter or something down as he did it. And so they gave me $500 for two days of work. And they gave me $100 to build a launch ramp. I built a launch ramp in my driveway. I borrowed someone's truck, drove it to Hollywood, set it up in this park, set it up exactly where they wanted, and then they said, "Okay, can you jump through the frame a couple times so we can see what it looks like?" Okay. So, I do the trick that eventually this younger kid's going to do. And he does it and I drive the ramp home and pay my mortgage.
There's this crazy story where you bought a house when you were 17 and you're like that. I mean that was insane because you were a senior in high school and had a house. But what's crazier is that your father supported it. I think you said it was maybe even his idea or he was like...
It was his idea. No, it was his idea.
Because he saw that I was careless with my income. I wasn't saving for taxes either.
Well, and that's what I wanted to ask about your dad because like Sean and I are young parents and like I think your dad was like he founded the National Skateboard Association. He encouraged you to get a house. Like that sounds like the most supportive dad ever. What have you learned anything about parenting from him on like how to encourage your kids to do what they love?
Oh, of course. I mean, well, he was the shining example of supporting your kids even though they're doing something that isn't necessarily going to be a career, but to support them in their passions. My older sister was a singer in high school and he would carry like he was their roadie, you know, he was a Navy pilot from World War II, a child of the depression. Had a really rough childhood of him on his own. So he went all in when he had kids and he was obviously very frugal with his money. I mean, my mom had to raise four kids on a Navy salary while he was away. But yeah, I learned that, you know, just jump in and try to connect. I mean, you know, my kids, they all skate, but they're all into different stuff and like my daughter is into theater and I would take her to New York and go to all the shows with her. I don't want to go to Broadway shows, you know what I mean? Like that wasn't something that was like my first choice going to New York, but I want to experience it with her and I want to understand it. And now she's at USC studying theater. So, it's that kind of thing. And I definitely learned it by example from my father. When I was 17, there was a new development of homes going up of duplexes near where my parents lived. And my dad said, "I think that it would be a good idea to try to get one of these homes and I can cosign for you because you're not 18." And I mean, all I heard was, "You're going to get your own place." You know what I mean? Like it wasn't about the financial future. It was more like oh my god I have a place to party and you know you're a senior in high school with your own place. You're the popular one now.
Yeah. Nobody's putting you in a trash can. And then so when you were in this kind of the downslide of it though, you said you're 22. You're doing these kind of odd jobs just to pay the mortgage. I mean did you consider quitting at this point or you just like I don't know. What was your mindset then? And what did you tell yourself to get kind of through that period?
Well I never considered quitting skating because I never started skating for money. So even if I had to find a quote real job at the time, I was going to find time to skate. That was just, you know, that was ingrained in me. That was my zen. That was my escape. So what I told myself was you better start learning other skills. And I did. I learned how to edit video. I actually had a kind of primitive video editing system, but I could do video effects and stuff, so I took some odd jobs doing that as well. I actually, ironically, edited a commercial for NEC TurboGrafx, which was a video game system at the time because my friend worked for them, and said, "Hey, Tony could do this for a tenth of the cost that you're going to pay." And I did it. And so, it was just stuff like that. Like I just was trying to hustle and make ends meet. I mean I by then I had a child I knew I had to provide for so it just forced me into gear. But all along I kept skating.
Have you ever... and I know I'm harping on this but there's you and then there's this guy named Rodney Mullen. Sean, have you heard that name Rodney Mullen?
He's another... there's him and Tony are on the Mount Rushmore with two other guys but it's definitely him and Tony on the Mount Rushmore of skating. He's like Tony but was for flat ground. So he I think maybe the kickflip he invented but he invented so many more things and there's this talk where he gives and you could see it's I think it's on TED and you could see how obsessed he is where he talks about being I think he was raised in the Midwest somewhere with all flat ground and he...
He grew up on a farm in Florida.
Yeah. And that's what I was going to... like you guys are very similar and I'm always fascinated by this obsession and this like because you see it in everyone who's great. You have to have a combination of talent, luck and this like obsession. Have you ever like analyzed that personality type about what makes you or someone like Rodney tick and how it's different from the average person?
I haven't. Other people have tried. I recognize it like I've seen it in younger skaters where I know that, oh, they're going to make it.
What are the tells? Because you're not there with them every day. So how do you pick up on that?
There's a... They can't quench their desire and they do some of the craziest stuff. They do some of the hardest things and they just have this look of intensity, not joy. It doesn't look joyous. That's what it is. You know, Rodney like he created the flat ground ollie. He created the kickflip, the 360 flip, the impossible, and he did it and he was on to the next one.
It's so funny you're talking about that not feeling joy because you're like a very happy, nice guy. But then in '99, I think when you did the 900, one of my favorite clips is not actually the 900, but you see I'm always fascinated by this like lock-in moment. You see you on top of the ramp and you look like a different person. You do not seem joyful. You are just totally in the zone and I was always curious what allows you or what do you feel like when you truly lock in and you have to perform. I think it was on live TV. I remember watching it but I don't remember if it was live or not but you have all these people there. Like I'm always curious what you tell yourself before you have to do something great with all this pressure on in order to lock in because it seems like you change to a different person.
I think what do I tell myself? I tell myself this is the one every time and I am way past testing this. And if I feel like I mean there's so many elements especially to that trick there's so many elements it's just like you got to have the right amount of speed. You got to have the right snap. You got to have the right trajectory. You need enough height to be able to see your landing zone. But at some point you take all those things for granted and you know you were going to commit to it. Even if one of those things isn't right, which I did obviously in that moment several times or a dozen times and you look at it, are you fearful? You don't see failure. That's what it is. I do not see when I'm doing that, I don't consider consequence. I don't consider that I might be too tired and give up. I don't consider that I might seriously injure myself because once those thoughts enter your head, they can spiral out or that that will be the actual outcome of this. I knew in that moment that I'm either going to make this trick or you're going to carry me unconscious out of this arena.
What were the odds of success of that trick?
Well, for me, the odds up to that point in my life, the odds were 100% that I'm going to get hurt if I try to make this because every other time that I tried to make it, I got hurt.
So, you had never done it before that moment.
In practice, nothing. Never.
No. No one had made it completely and ridden away. But I knew I mean the last time that I fully committed to it was a few years before that and I broke my rib on a ramp in a warehouse at around 2 p.m. on a weekday and I had to go pick up my oldest son. He was little then at preschool barely able to breathe because I had broken my rib and he's waiting for me so I had to go get him. Like that was the sort of state of things in 1994. And then fast forward and no one's watching. Like I just did it because I wanted to make it. And then fast forward five years and it's on this huge stage on live ESPN. Like it just made no sense. But I blocked all that out because it was like I'm finally at the threshold of doing this thing that has plagued me for 10 years and I have the support of my peers which I mean I think what people saw in that moment that is much bigger than what I did is they saw that there's this pursuit, the sport that yes it's competitive but there's so much camaraderie in it and the progression of it is dependent on a collective effort. And so what they saw was like, wow, this seems cool. I feel like a lot of kids saw that. Like this seems cool. Like you skate with your friends, you compete against them, but they cheer you on and you can do stuff that no one's ever done. I don't know. I hope that that was the bigger takeaway from that moment.
Well, this is crazy to me. So I'm not obviously I'm not like Sam. I'm not a skater. I didn't... But I paid attention to this just because everybody did at that moment. It was cool. I had always assumed just because I didn't really look that much into it to be honest, but I just always assumed that I knew nobody had ever done it kind of like in competition or visibly. I didn't know you had never done it in practice. Not even like not even close. So the gap between like kind of the expected objective result which would have been you break your rib or worse and then like the glory of actually pulling it off in this moment. That doesn't even make sense to me. That blows my mind that you even tried it. Like what was the thought process?
Oh, the reason I tried it. Well, I'll tell you the reason I tried it is because it was a best trick event. We had 20 minutes. My best trick at the time was a varial 720, which means that your body does a double spin 720 and your board does a 900. That's what the varial means. I had made that once in my life. And so I was like, "That's my best trick, right?" I did it halfway into the event. I didn't expect to be able to make it even possibly. So the fact that I did it, I didn't really have anywhere to go. And if I remember correctly, the on-site announcer, not the on-air announcer, but the on-site announcer, Dave Duncan, who has been announcing skate competitions since the 80s, he called me out. He's like, "Let's see one of those 900 attempts, Tony." And I was like, "Dude, like what the hell? All the things really, you know, I can't do it. You know, I never haven't done it." But I thought, yeah, why not? That is the next stage of what I want to do. And I tried. My first couple were just for the crowd. It was just more like here's this is what it looks like to spin two and a half times around because I can bail out of them safely. It's when I really start to commit to them is when they start getting dangerous. And I would say within my probably like fifth attempt something clicked that every attempt was consistent. Usually we're skating on these rickety ramps. They're, you know, one wall is kind of vert, one wall is over vert. They're not that wide. Like, you know, this was state-of-the-art halfpipe that we had never really been able to ride in those years. And I felt like, wow, my speed is consistent, my spin is consistent. Like before, I would get maybe one good try out of five, and I had to commit to that one good try. And now all the tries were good. So, I guess I can commit again. I thought, you know, somewhere around the sixth attempt, I thought, "All right, I'm going to commit to these landings and see how it goes." I knew that the time was up. I thought we were off air because they said, "You have 20 minutes." So, I figured, okay, that's the live feed, right? But that wasn't the incentive for this. The incentive for this was to finally get past this milestone or this hurdle that had plagued me for so long. So when I finally made it, you know, I knew that it wasn't part of the competition. I didn't think it was on air to live TV. It was just finally this relief. That's what you saw. It was just like, oh, and my first thought was, I never have to do this again.
I'm free. I'm free from this burden.
I'm free of this. Little did I know, watch what you wish for. Because little did I know, everywhere I went, that's all they wanted.
And the following years, people were like, "Do a 900."
Wait, so were you able to just do 900s from then on? Like you now...
I couldn't do them occasionally, but they always took several tries and they didn't always work out. Sometimes I would just get exhausted and it didn't work or the ramp was too slippery or whatever.
Dude, Sean, you should see it now. Now there's kids that would do like back-to-back like is it what's after 900? 1080.
Yeah. They do 900. They do back-to-back 900s.
One kid did a kickflip body varial 900.
You know he's got a kickflip in the middle of the 900.
Is this like a Roger Bannister now they know it's possible or like is the gear better?
I mean that's what it was always and but that is the through line of skateboarding. We keep building upon what we saw. Which is exactly what I did. But the era that I grew up in, a 360 was the most you could spin. And then Mike McGill did the 540. And then I did a 720. And then 14 years passed in between that and a 900.
So I discovered you through your video game. I used to play it every day after school on the Dreamcast. I loved that thing. That game was incredible. Can you tell the story about the video game? And as I understand it, there was like a, you know, because this is a business podcast, there was like a moment where they tried to buy you out or like bought your royalties out. Can you just tell the video game story of the Tony Hawk first game?
Well, I mean, you're talking about My First...
First Million. That's where it came from.
Without question. Well, the story of the game, it started actually more around 1997. I got a call from a video game designer — I would say more like a coder — who said, 'I want to, you know, I worked on this engine for skateboarding. I want to see if you would go pitch it with me as a game to publishers and console manufacturers.' And I was all in. I mean, I loved, you know, I was an arcade kid. There was an arcade at the skatepark, and the last game that had been released up to that moment was Skate or Die for Commodore 64. So we're years past that. We're coming into home consoles more now. And this, what he had, it was on a laptop. It was keyboard controls. It was like this skater just kind of carving around bowls. It wasn't great, but it was something. And the graphics looked better than anything that had been previously released. So I went with him to meetings. We met Nintendo. We met a few software publishers, and just no takers. I mean, it was almost embarrassing the conversations that we were having with these people, because it was like, I remember one guy said, 'Skateboarding isn't even popular. Why would a skateboarding video game be popular?'
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like 97ish. And I didn't have a good answer to that. And this guy that I was working with got really frustrated and he just said, 'Look, I got to find a job. Like, I don't think this is it. I don't think this is what's happening.' And I kind of agreed with him, like, I don't really want to go to these pitch meetings either because they're just kind of degrading. And he said, but I do remember one, the last thing he said to me. He said, 'I feel like your name is now planted in the video game world as someone who would like to work on a game or do a game, and if someone does one, they'll probably call you.' And I was like, 'Sure.' And about a year later, I got a call from Activision and they said, 'We heard you're working on a game.' And I was like, 'I'm not, but I want to.' And they said, 'Well, we are working on a game that is skateboarding and we would like you to come see it and see if you want to be involved.' And I went up to Activision. They had just released, what was it called, Apocalypse with Bruce Willis. Like literally featuring the likeness and voice of Bruce Willis, which was kind of a new thing.
No, the company, Activision.
Activision. No, now they're huge. I mean, their biggest hit before that was Pitfall.
Okay. But was it like dozens or hundreds of employees?
