Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Chatri Sityodtong (@yodchatri), the founder and CEO of ONE (you might know it as ONE Championship), one of the top-10 biggest sports-media properties in the world in terms of viewership and engagement (alongside the NBA, Formula One, Champions League, and Premier League), with a global broadcast reach to 195 countries.
The largest sports-media property in Asia, ONE is also a celebration of Asia's great cultural treasure martial arts. Chatri himself has more than 40 years of martial arts experience. He is a certified senior Muay Thai instructor under the legendary Kru Yodtong Senanan, and he holds a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Master Renzo Gracie. In 2019, he was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame. Chatri holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Tufts University.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
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Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and The Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking
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Tim Ferriss: Chatri, nice to see you. Thanks for making the time.
Chatri Sityodtong: Thanks a lot, Tim. Glad to be on your show.
Tim Ferriss: And greetings from the other side of the planet. Where are you right now? Where do we find you?
Chatri Sityodtong: I just landed back in Singapore, where I live, but I'm always on a plane every week in different parts of the world.
All right, so let's begin at the very beginning. What is your birth name and why is your current name seemingly different?
Chatri Sityodtong: My birth name is Chatri Trisiripisal on my passport, it's what my parents gave me, but I use my martial arts name, which my grandmaster, Kru Yodtong Senanan, gave me. In Thailand, when you train and compete for a given gym, the master of that gym will eventually bestow upon you your last name, and usually, the fight name, the last name, is the name of the gym. It's just a historical custom in Thailand. My first name is Chatri, which is my birth name, and my last name in the martial arts world is Sityodtong, which my grandmaster gave to me. Actually, he gave me the fight name of Yodchatri Sityodtong, which means “Extraordinary warrior” and Sityodtong is “Student of Yodtong.” Long-winded thing of just — I identify with — maybe in part because of my complicated history with my own father that I feel so much closer to my grandmaster and use the name that he bestowed upon me.
It's just one of these things that's funny, but evolved. If you go ask any old school fighter from Thailand all over the world, they're still using their fighting name. It's just part of the culture of Thailand.
Tim Ferriss: The last name bestowing is something I imagine a lot of listeners will not be familiar with, but I remember ages and ages and ages ago training at the Fairtex Gym in San Francisco, and then actually going to Bang Phli in Thailand to visit the Fairtex Camp.
Chatri Sityodtong: Oh, my God, you are a hardcore old school martial arts man. That's amazing. That's amazing. So you must have known Bunkerd Fairtex in San Francisco.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: Anh Fairtex, Jongsanan. And a number of people, I remember, at the time who were outside of Muay Thai were like, “Wow, what do they feed people in that family?” And I was like, “That's not really how it works.”
Chatri Sityodtong: Exactly. The two biggest gyms, I guess, in history, in longevity in Thailand, have been Fairtex and Sityodtong. And so yeah, exactly, Bunkerd Fairtex, Jongsanan Fairtex, everyone adopts the last name, or rather takes the gym name as your last name, as you well know now. I didn't realize you also did a lot of Muay Thai. Amazing.
Tim Ferriss: That was my favorite striking art. Not that I was exceptionally good, but in part because coming from wrestling, I had effectively zero head movement. So I tried boxing. It was very, very hard for me to get accustomed to head movement. And in Muay Thai, certainly there is head movement, but it's just a different species of head movement. And I was like, “I think this is going to fit my programming a little bit better than other options.”
So we'll come back to that, but could you paint a picture for us of your childhood? And then, also just describe what happened if the internet research serves me correctly in 1997 or so.
Chatri Sityodtong: I grew up in a well-to-do family in Thailand, so I was a bit an anomaly in that sense. Muay Thai, as you probably know, Tim, is a very poor person sport in Thailand. But yet, when I was about nine years old, my father took me to Lumpinee Stadium, which is a Mecca of Muay Thai. And I just got bit by the bug. And of course, Muay Thai is on TV seven days a week in Thailand. And I got the bug early and I started training. And then one day, I asked my father, “Can you take me to Sityodtong Camp?” which was the number one gym at the time in the country. And that's where I began my training under Kru Yodtong six-hour days. And it is incredible training. But later in life, in the early '90s, my father started his business, started to falter, and then eventually went bankrupt. And he abandoned the family.
Tim Ferriss: What was the business? What type of business he was involved in?
Chatri Sityodtong: He was in real estate. He was in real estate.
Tim Ferriss: And what caused that collapse?
Chatri Sityodtong: I mean, I think real estate goes through cycles. And my father was caught on the wrong end of a cycle with a lot of debt, and he just over invested. And I never actually spoke to him about it. That's what I surmised, put the pieces together to this day because one minute my father was doing well, and the next minute, the bank repossessed that car, the house, and he was just literally nothing. And then when he abandoned the family, it was a really rough time and I had a lot of anger with, and I didn't see my father for, I don't know how many decades, but I eventually reached out to him maybe around 10 years ago. I went to go find him and I found him in Pattaya, which is where I spent a lot of my childhood in Thailand. And he was dirt, dirt, poor. And of course, how you remember your father when you're younger versus he was frail and old and wasn't what I had imagined my reunion to be.
And I reached out to him because I carried so much anger with me for so long, and I really wanted to know why, after my father went back, why would he just throw his family away and just abandoned, basically disappear. And I remember, I don't know if I've ever said this story before, but I remember that night when I saw him and we went to go out, eat dinner, and it was weird, because he's so old and so frail. And I asked Dad, this is the first time I would ask him, “Why would you just disappear?” He was a man of very few words, and in his own way explained that as a Thai man growing up, he felt so ashamed of himself that he could no longer provide food for his family. And it's just the way society works. Maybe it's Asian society, maybe it's Thai society, but in many ways, it was just easier for him to just, I guess, disappear rather than face every day looking at his kids and his wife.
I try to be empathetic about it and I thought we had time to rekindle the relationship. But unfortunately, shortly after, a couple of years later, he ended up, crazy story, he ended up getting a stroke about a year after that, and it's the worst kind of thing. I didn't even know this kind of thing existed, but he became completely paralyzed except his brain was 100 percent working and his eyes were working so he could hear you, he could see you, but I mean, it's like, I guess you're locked in your body. And that was very rough for me to see. And then about a year and a half after that, he passed away.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. I mean, what timing, and I don't know if this is the right way to put it, but what luck that you reached out to him a year or a year and a half prior to have that conversation. Did having the conversation offer the catharsis that you had hoped for or contribute in a way that has really stuck with you?
Chatri Sityodtong: It took my anger away, or maybe my anger dissolved over time, but it was bittersweet because I thought that I had this kind of like, “I'm going to go find my father. We can talk it out, and then we're going to be closer than ever. There's going to be a real relationship.” So in that regard, it didn't happen that way. Another crazy thing is at his funeral in Thailand, [Buddhist] funeral, you cremate the body. And I was, obviously, given the eulogy to all family members, and again, I didn't have a lot of emotional attachment to my father. I hadn't seen him in so many years and very, very distant. I had memories of him, but we weren't close by any means. But I ended up not being able to keep it together. I was bawling.
And so there's a lot of weird things. In some weird way, I finally understood my father. So life came full circle. But in a weird way, I wish I had looked for him earlier when I had managed to bring the family out of poverty, I could have easily, if I wasn't so angry, if I wasn't so stuck to my pride, maybe I would've had had that, quote, unquote, “fairytale ending,” One thing I learned about life, man, Tim, is you never know what is good luck or bad luck until many years later, when you discover what the lessons were of that experience.
So anyways, at his eulogy, we cremated his body. And I guess, maybe the typical Asian household or Thai household, my father was larger than life, and that's how I remembered him as a kid. He was the one who introduced me to Muay Thai. He took me to Lumpinee Stadium, he took me to Sityodtong Camp. And when someone gets cremated, I've gone to funerals, of course, when I lived in America where you bury people. But this is the first time I actually, other than my grandmaster, watching someone get cremated. And the next day, you actually come back and pick up the ashes and the bones. And I ended up, they asked me, “What do you want to do with the bones and the ashes?” And I thought, I'm going to go to the beach where my father brought me, and took a boat out, and then we sprinkled his ashes everywhere.
But that's also kind of crazy because that's what you realize, everything we have in life, at the end of the day, my father, like this great man when I was a kid, just ashes in the ocean. And that's what all of us are going to end up. And I remember going back that night on the plane and thinking to myself all the things that my father did wrong in life, and all the anger I had to him, I started to write down the things that I was grateful for. He gave me my name, which crazy enough ended up being symbolic of what my life's work would end up being, right? He's the guy who introduced me to Muay Thai. He's the guy who took me to the beach for the first time. So many things. So I prefer to remember my father for the good, all the good that he did, than focus on the big mistakes he did in life.
And I think that's something I learned from him just through his life, going through his life and watching it from afar and being a part of it, and in the end, the things that he did wrong, I don't want to live my life that way. But at the same time, I wouldn't be here running the world's largest martial arts organization if it weren't for him taking me to Muay Thai.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you for that story. I have a complicated relationship with my father, to put it mildly. And that's actually very, very helpful for me to hear. So I had done recording, I'm going to go back and listen to it again because I think it underscores perhaps some things that I need to do, frankly. So I really appreciate that a lot.
And from here, I want to hop to your mom. We might come back to your dad, certainly. I recall very distinctly, well, let me back up and give you a little bit of context on how I got my first exposure to ONE. So I have a private group chat on my phone, as a lot of people do. Now, my friends created this, and they named it Fight Porn, that's the name of the chat. And the reason it's called Fight Porn is that I'd say my four or five closest friends are all former competitive fighters. And effectively, this chat is video clips, discussions about fights, not really betting on fights, but kind of putting your reputation on the line to try to predict who's going to win, who's going to lose, what round, et cetera. And one of my friends, Doug, I'll give him credit, said, “Have you guys seen ONE?” And I was like, “What the hell is ONE?” And he pointed me to ONE on Amazon Prime. And I thought to myself, “How on Earth have I not seen this before?”
And I have to say, it brought back so many memories of prime time, and hopefully, you take this as a compliment, Pride, K-1, all of these incredibly powerful memories, these nostalgic experiences that I had and blew my mind, completely blew my mind. So I'm flashing forward a little bit, but that's a way of setting the table for a video that I watched because I was tracking Takeru, I'm going to say it with the kind of American pronunciation, Segawa. And at one point, I saw a video of you giving him a pep talk. It wasn't really a pep talk, it was more like a rallying support, not really a lecture, but like a pat on the back, a smack in the ass. And it wasn't in English. What language was that that you were speaking?
Chatri Sityodtong: So I was speaking Japanese because my mother's Japanese, my father's Thai, and that was after he had gotten knocked out by Rodtang. So that was the biggest fight of his career. That was March of this year in Tokyo, Saitama Super Arena. I mean, it was literally where Pride and K-1 in Saitama Super Arena, the legendary stadium in Tokyo. And Takeru versus Rodtang, arguably the two greatest pound for pound strikers on the planet. And Takeru got knocked out on the first round, I think in 80 seconds. And I went backstage to congratulate the winners and et cetera, and I went to go see Takeru and he was heartbroken and crying. And yeah, I went backstage and I gave him a pep talk. I said, “Hey, these things happen. It doesn't take away from your legacy, your body of work, split millisecond here, split millisecond there. And the outcome could have been very different.” And I said, “The only thing you can do is go back and review what you did wrong and level up.”
That's one thing I think I have, amongst the fight committee, amongst our fighters, have a very close bond with our fighters, because I'm a lifelong martial artist, Muay Thai all of my life and Jiu Jitsu black belt. So when I gave these one-on-one talks, or actually before every big event, I go backstage and have all the fighters who are going to compete that night and give them an inspirational talk about what this night means and how they can carve their legacy and unleash the greatness upon the world. So I feel very deeply when I see something like that. Takeru was crying, he was, man, broken, broken. Is team happened to be there filming it. It wasn't our team. They filmed and they put it out and it ended up going viral in Japan. I don't think people knew that I could speak Japanese. I mean, the Japanese fans know that I'm half Japanese, but I don't really use it that much.
Tim Ferriss: So this is a way to segue to your mom. And I have to say, I have never been to Saitama Super Arena. Someday, I hope to actually check it out. I was, though, in Japan about two or three weeks ago, and I was at the All-Japan Judo Championships at the Budokan, which is awesome, which was fantastic. You've never seen so many cauliflower ears in your entire life. It was just fantastic. So it was also my first time setting foot in Budokan, which was absolutely spectacular.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah, a legendary historic —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, just absolutely iconic location in a beautiful, beautiful spot where, by the way, it's impossible to get any rideshare because you're right next to the Imperial Palace. So I realized that, ended up having some nice walks as a result. But coming back to your mom, it seems like your mom and your dad informed your life in very different ways. And your dad may have been, in some respects, Hanmen Kyōshi, right? He was like the opposite teacher. You're like, “I don't want to make some of those same mistakes.” And then your mom was very —
Chatri Sityodtong: Sorry, I forgot you spent a year in Japan or something like that, right? Or exchange program?
Tim Ferriss: I did.
Chatri Sityodtong: That's why the accent is, I was like, “What the — ” I was like, oh, man, Tim, Tim, this is like we're kindred spirits here. Yeah, you majored in East Asian studies. That's what it was, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of overlap. So it's like you came to the US to study, I went to Tokyo. And actually, I'm still very close with my host family. I went out to have dinner with them from when I was 15. So it's been 30-plus years. I'm still close with them. So I want to paint a picture for folks, and then you can fill in some of the gaps. But it seems like at some point, your mom was moved in with you in your dorm room?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Could you explain what some of that journey looked like and how that happened?
Chatri Sityodtong: When my father abandoned us and went bankrupt, I mean, it was my mom's crazy idea. It's like, “Chatri, you're the oldest son,” and given that you live in Japan, the hierarchical nature of family structures in Asian society, and now that my father was gone, it was my duty to take care of my younger brother, my mother, and their wellbeing. But we had literally no money. And I had one suitcase and my mom had borrowed money from all the people who were remaining to be our friends, because obviously when something scandalous like that happens, and at the time in Thailand, no one get divorced. No one ever went bankrupt. Just these things didn't happen.
But scrounged around about $1,000 and one suitcase, all of my life's belongings, and I had to figure it out once I got to America. And it was her idea for me to apply and eventually immigrate. That was the game plan. And it got so bad for her that she ended up moving in with me in my dorm. Obviously, the school administration didn't know, in college, actually in grad school. It was a tiny little single dorm room in Morris Hall at Harvard. And I slept on the floor and she slept on the bed, and it was just barely enough room. And you had one of these key cards where you open the dormitory door from the outside and in between classes, just time it with her and give her my key card and living on $4 a day. And of course, I didn't tell everybody this, of course, my closest friends knew.
I was not proud of my family background or the fact that I was poor, actually, I was deeply ashamed and I didn't want to talk about it. And so when people went to parties or people went out to dinners, I didn't do any of that stuff because I couldn't afford it. So I had to make some excuse every time. It's like, “Hey, Chatri, let's go out. Let's go to a club tonight. There's going to be — our friends can be there.” And I knew I can't go and afford a beer. I can't afford the entrance fee of a nightclub. So my mom was very much a part of my graduate experience at Harvard. But amazingly, some of my best memories or most powerful memories, and obviously, now today, they're more, I view them in a very positive light because of how circumstances, we were very blessed in life.
And I remember lying there with my mom, I would be lying on the floor and my mom was on the bed, and she would ask these crazy questions. We had no money. And she'd be like, “Chatri, one day, I want us to go live in New York City.” And I'd be like, “Man, Mom,” my stress was how am I going to get money for next month. And luckily, I was teaching Muay Thai, I was a tutor at Kaplan. I did all sorts of odd jobs. But my biggest worry was, do I have enough money to even pay for the school tuition fees? And on an Excel spreadsheet, I budgeted $4 a day. And so if I went on the subway, that's a dollar, like, man. So these are the things that consumed me when I was going through Harvard.
But I always say that without the love of my mother, I would never have been there in the first place. It was my mom who, when we had nothing, she really believed in me. And I think the saying is that, “When someone loves you, it gives you strength. When you love someone, it gives you courage.” And I think that's a very true statement when it comes to my relationship with my mother. She gave me both in that she love, I could feel her unconditional love, hence, it gave me strength to do things when I was full of fear, doubts, and insecurities. I wasn't some academically gifted guy. I remember that first week, first month, I felt almost like I was dirt poor. I didn't feel like I belonged. I thought everyone was better than me, smarter than me. And I didn't have money for the full ride. I had to go find loans. It was just like a time of massive uncertainty in my life, and I had to keep it to myself. I couldn't entered a new school.
But again, looking back on everything, the fact that I had my mother's love, that gave me strength every day to fight more. And I always say too, that if you're fighting for yourself — you're fighting because you want a six-figure salary, you're fighting because you want to buy a nice car — it's very easy to quit. But when you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, it's impossible to quit. So in that moment, I was fighting for my family, fighting for my younger brother, fighting for my mother, of course, down the road as I was, again, been blessed with a lot of good luck in life. These are the things that I always remember. It's like when you're fighting for something much bigger than yourself, you become unbreakable. There's so many precious lessons that I learned from that journey.
And crazy enough, when I made my first little bit of money, I think I was around 30 something, maybe 31, I bought a condominium in New York City to surprise my mom because I remembered what she told me in the dorm room. And brought her to New York and gave her the keys. And it was overlooking the Hudson River. And it is one of my most favorite memories with my mom, is surprising her with her own house. And because she had suffered for so long, for so long, that I would just to be able to see her face and knowing that little crazy dream was born in the dark of midnight when we're going to sleep, and she wanted to talk about our dreams. So in that sense, she also gave me that. I'm a little bit of a crazy dreamer. My friends think I'm a bit of a crazy guy. And I think I got that from my mom.
Tim Ferriss: Go, Mom, that's incredible.
All right, well, we could spend the next two hours just unpacking what it was like to actually hand over the keys and how your mom responded. But I have a million questions I want to ask you. So I would say, let me mention a few things and then we can add in any sort of seminal moments as needed. But my understanding is you leave grad school, you try your hand in the world of startups, you do pretty well in the startup world, then end up going to finance and do pretty well on Wall Street. My two questions are, I know that's a major, major condensation, but number one, what was it like and what was the moment, I remember for myself, the moment where you're like, “Oh, my God, I actually have some money.” When was that moment when you were like, “Oh, this is a little different. This is a lot different. I actually have some money.” It doesn't need to be a lot of money. But what was that like? And then why didn't you stay in finance? Why didn't you stay on Wall Street?
Chatri Sityodtong: So it's kind of funny. When I was a kid, there's a few things I was truly obsessed with. I was obsessed with martial arts and that anyone from my childhood would tell you, “Chatri, he's the martial arts guy. He's crazy about martial arts.” But I was also crazy about, for Christmas, somebody gave me the book One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch.
Tim Ferriss: That's a great book.
Chatri Sityodtong: And I just got completely fascinated with, and I think I was a teenager, but I was completely fascinated with, “Wow, people can actually make money doing that.” And so I got obsessed with Warren Buffett, and Ben Graham, and Intelligent Investor. And this was when I was, again, a teenager and I just voraciously consumed it. But I never thought I would ever do something along those lines. And it wasn't like I was investing or anything, it was just like a hobby, curiosity but it was almost borderline obsession. I was reading tons and tons of finance books and investing books just for fun.
And so I always had that, in the back of my mind. I don't know, it's like an external stuff when you're younger as a kid, “oh, it'd be so glamorous to be a hedge fund manager on Wall Street,” that kind of stuff. And so I think as I was, when I graduated from Harvard, I was dirt poor, dirt poor. I went to Silicon Valley with my mom. We slept in a tiny little apartment and I couldn't even afford beds or furniture. So we had two sleeping bags. And we talk about that all the time. We had two sleeping bags on the floor. And that was how I started my journey in Silicon Valley, because again, I just had this crazy dream.
One of my classmates, Soon Loo, said, “Chatri, let's go to Silicon Valley. Let's just try our luck.” And both of us were poor, and we had maybe a few months of cash left, if at all. But by pure luck, we went to this Angel Investor Day at Harvard, and this guy named Richard Armstrong, literally one-hour meeting, he's like, “Okay, I'll cut you a $500,000 check.”
Tim Ferriss: Good meeting.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah, we were blown away. Soon and I were blown away. Out of that small little apartment where my mom and I slept on the floor, we started hiring people. And so I think at our peak, we had six people or seven people in that little apartment.
Tim Ferriss: And what was the business, just in brief for folks?
Chatri Sityodtong: It was a company called NextDoor Networks. Basically it was enterprise resource software. It started off as a marketplace, but eventually morphed to enterprise optimization. So basically, Jiffy Lube was our largest customer at the time where you could come in with dynamic pricing and the software would, how many bays there were, how many cars were coming in. What we see, dynamic pricing today with airlines and stuff, or hotels, that kind of software. But it was more enterprise. We rode the internet boom all the way up and we came partially down and we were lucky to have sold the company.
We grew from six, seven people, and then within about a year we'd raised $40 million and had, I don't know, 200 people, real offices and all that stuff. And it was just a crazy ride. This was in the early 2000 or around 1999, 2000 timeframe. And that was a crazy ride. And when I look through old photos, and it's kind of crazy, so Soon Loo, my classmate from Harvard who started the company with me in Silicon Valley, he actually lives in Singapore now. So we hang out here and we have, obviously, our collection of pictures and whatnot, and we'd go back and be like, “Man, that was some crazy times.” And my mom would be there in front of the microwave because we were so poor at the time. We would get $1, I remember $1.25 microwave frozen food and these little meals, and that would be our lunch or dinner or whatever. And my mom would be in front of the microwave, and we have photos of that. And we're in our little startup. Again, these crazy days. After we sold the company, I said to myself, “Okay. I didn't make a ton where I could retire for life, but I had a good little bit of a nest egg.” I thought deeply, “What do I want to do? Am I a software entrepreneur, or what am I?” I started going into this deep reflection and actually —
Tim Ferriss: If I could just interrupt for a second, I'm sorry. Just that initial nest egg, whether it was from savings, from salary or the eventual exit, what was it? Was there a moment? If not, that's totally fine. I'm just so curious.
Having been poor for so long, and scrapped so hard. Having to track everything in an Excel spreadsheet to make sure you don't exceed your $4 daily budget, et cetera, throughout school. Was there a time when it's like you went to the ATM to take out a little cash, and you saw the balance and you're like, “Huh. Okay. Things might actually now start to be different.”
Chatri Sityodtong: I grew up in a well-to-do home when I was a kid, and saw it get wiped out. I mean, it was like that. Okay? That I, even to this day, I don't have that sense of “Look at my bank account, or “Look at what I have” as a sense of security in that. I never had that moment of “Ah, I can exhale.”
Tim Ferriss: Like exhaling.
Chatri Sityodtong: Exhaling. No. What we did though, was we went with I think about 13 or 14 employees. We rented two RV vans and we did a cross-country trip across America. That took, I forget, a couple of weeks. That was me moving from Silicon Valley to New York. I didn't know at the time that I was going to move to New York, and I was going to do the whole investing thing. That ride I remember.
I remember one night, it was in Albuquerque, and we were in an RV park. I went up to the roof. I was lying down on the roof of the RV, and looking at the night sky. It was completely beautiful stars, and it was just clear sky. I mean, it was at night, but it was clear in the sense of all of the stars.
That was the only moment that I felt like, “Man. I can actually do anything from this point on. I don't have to scrape by. I don't have to — ” It was just a momentary fleeting sensation of, “The universe is so big, I can do anything.”
It wasn't “I can do anything” in an arrogant way. It was more like whatever happened in the past with my family and my father, I didn't have to be burdened by it or trapped by it. So it was a feeling of not exhale, but a feeling of I'm not going to be shackled by my past.
It's weird, Tim. Even to this day, I don't have this feeling of like, “Ah.” I have this feeling of “Man, life can throw you curveballs, and all of a sudden I could be on the street.” It's crazy. It's crazy, but I still have this fear. Or not fear. I don't know what it is.
Maybe what it is is I never want to be so poor again. Because what really broke me, and this one I remember very poignantly, I'd never seen my mother cry up until my father abandoned us. It was one night. She tried to be this really strong, brave woman, and I saw her cry, and that broke my heart in a million pieces.
Then one other time I saw was in my dorm room at Harvard, and that was my fuel. I said to myself, “I never want to see my mother cry ever again. I'm going to work my ass off. I'm going to be rich.”
So I naively thought, genuinely, that when I was poor, that, man, if I just make a crap load of money, all of my problems would be gone because I will be able to provide for my mother. She'll have no more worries, and this, that and the other.
I didn't fully understand the meaning of life. I accepted society as you make a lot of money, and you buy things. It wasn't later in life until I was like maybe my mid-thirties when I had my hedge fund. We had a record year. I made a lot of money.
Of course, you're very happy because you made a lot of money. Then I went down to the sushi bar, sushi restaurant down in the office building, and I sat at the sushi bar for lunch. I was by myself, and I remember all adrenaline and happy. Then over the course of that lunch, I don't know what happened. I just started thinking about, “Is this what life is about? Okay. So I'm going to go now and buy more material things? I'm going to go buy a house? Another house or whatever?” It just hit me hard.
I'm like, “Man, what's going to happen with my life is I'm going to keep just living this thing where, okay, yeah, I've got to make a lot of money.” I had a deep sense of emptiness. Yeah. My mom was taken care of. I was happy, of course. All that stuff. It was almost just like, “Oh, my gosh.”
I remember a cold sweat thinking, “I'm going to roll forward another 50 years or whatever, to the end of my life. Shit, all I have done, really, is buy and sell companies, and short companies. My clients were all either multibillion dollar institutions or multibillion dollar families.” Then I'm like, “What was I here on Earth for, and what was I doing with my life?”
I remember so well when I was five years old, but my mom would repeat this all of the time throughout my elementary and middle school years, and all of that. She would always say, “Chatri, you're going to grow up to help people.” I always thought my mom was [speaking] gibberish because she's like, “You're so special, Chatri.” Of course, I know every mother says that to their child.
It was weird. When I was at that sushi restaurant, those words came to me. It was like, “Chatri, you're going to help people when you grow up.” I was sitting there and I'm like, “Right now I'm helping nobody, because if I'm helping wealthy people get wealthier, okay, what is the point of that? If I'm making multibillion dollar institutions get wealthier, what's the point of that,” right?
So I remember being very restless for several weeks. I couldn't sleep. Eventually I said, “I have to do something.” It was again, pure luck, but also a lot of introspection. At the time I was training at Renzo Gracie's School, jiu-jitsu, training every day.
You know what's crazy? This whole journey from being a well-to-do family to being poor to escaping poverty and making it, I trained religiously either Muay Thai or jiu-jitsu every single day. This is just part of my DNA.
Actually, even to this day, I just came back from training earlier today. It's my foundation to every single day. If I get my training, it's almost like, Tim, you've competed as a wrestler, and done Sanchou, and stuff like that. When you're in the moment of training or sparring, there is nothing else you could think of. You're in the moment, right?
Tim Ferriss: You think of something else, you get reminded very quickly.
Chatri Sityodtong: Very quickly. Exactly. Exactly. It's almost like you can escape whatever good or bad in your life for those couple of hours, and not think about anything. If you go for a run, you'll still think about work. Family. Your relationship issues. Your dad. Whatever it is, you'll still think. Or if you go lift weights, your mind is still active on whatever. You haven't left your life.
You know, Tim, when you go train and you're sparring on someone who's really good, just all that stuff evaporates. So that's what I love. I own a chain of martial arts schools here in Singapore, and I train every day with Muay Thai world champions or jiu-jitsu world champs.
Tim Ferriss: Is that Evolve?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. Evolve. Yes. Or jiu-jitsu world champions. I truly believe my grandmaster, Kru Yodtong Senanan, who used to always tell me — I never really understood it until much later in life — “To unleash your greatness, you must be surrounded by greatness.”
So every day I go to Evolve. These guys are the best in the world at what they do. I'm a high-level martial arts for sure, but not against a world champion, right? I mean, you train with Jongsanan and Bunkerd. You know how badass those guys are.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: Those guys are the best in the world.
Tim Ferriss: There are levels, and then there are levels. Yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: Exactly. Exactly. Same thing for a black belt. I'm a black belt, but there are levels to being a jiu-jitsu black belt. For the most part, when I train with them I get my ass kicked, but I relish that.
Obviously, it's a two-hour break from anything I'm dealing with in the world. I love it because it's a daily and constant reminder of how I should live my life. You see, if I have ego, I'm the owner. I walk in, and this guy beats the crap out of me.
In another world, if I didn't have martial arts my whole life, I'd be like, “Blah. Blah. Blah. I'm the boss.” What I actually tell to my training partners, “Bro, whatever it is, don't go easy. If you can't submit me, you suck. You better submit me or you better hurt me. If we're sparring, you better get the best of me because you're a world champion. Don't hold back because that's not what I want. I want you to help me improve.”
So you have to let your ego completely disappear. In society I'm a CEO, but when I'm in training, I'm a nobody. These guys beat on me, but it levels me up. It's a daily reminder to me that I'm here to learn, grow, and evolve, and be the very best martial artist I can be.
The only way to do it is by surrounding yourself with greatness, because diamonds are created under heat and pressure. That's how I think all of us, how we all can unleash our greatness in life. It's sad, but it's through love, pain, and suffering. That combination can work magic in terms of unleashing human potential.
You will discover things about yourself that you never even knew existed in you, when you go through a process of love, pain, and suffering. So that's something I do every day. Number one, I love it. It's my greatest obsession in life. I do go through pain and I do go suffering every single day because it's a part of this warrior mindset. I mean, you spent time in Japan. The whole Bushido, the whole Samurai spirit.
Tim Ferriss: Yamato-damashii.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes. Yes. You nailed it. What Tim is talking about, guys, is this Japanese warrior spirit that every Japanese person has in their heart. That makes Japan, actually, that's why it's the birthplace of mixed martial arts. It's the birthplace of kickboxing. Obviously, the birthplace of karate, and aikido, and judo, and kendo.
It's a magical country. I'm not saying that because I'm half Japanese. The more I understand about Japan, the more I truly appreciate their culture. So one of that is this sense of unbreakable warrior spirit.
Japanese fighters are somewhat the toughest. I don't mean technically. I mean, I'm talking about you cannot break a high-level Japanese fighter. If you went to the Budokan watching the judo championships, these guys, they don't break. They don't break.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. They'll go until they can't go. I still remember to this day, a fight way back in the day. I was in Japan for this way back, which was Pancrase. So Pancrase had just launched, and it was a fight between Bas Rutten and Funaki.
Funaki got beaten into — he looked like a tomato that had been kicked around a room by 12 kids for an hour. I mean, he was so destroyed, and he just kept getting up. I mean, there's a point where I remember Bas was just like, “What is this? What are we doing here?”
To this day, from 15, I remember watching that and thinking, good Lord. This is just a different species of experience. Just to come back to the mixed martial arts in Japan for a second. So when I was there, the way I initially got exposed to all of this was through Shooto. So Sayama Satoru.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, so it's Sayama Sensei.
Tim Ferriss: So it's the first-generation tiger mask.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes. Unbelievable. He was at the event in March in Saitama.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, really?
Chatri Sityodtong: He was my guest.
Tim Ferriss: That guy.
Chatri Sityodtong: He was my personal guest.
Tim Ferriss: He is a tough, tough, tough, tough human, and a very, very tough coach.
Chatri Sityodtong: A legend. Yes.
Tim Ferriss: He used to take a shinai, like a bamboo kendo sword. Cut off the tip. Then if his fighters were misbehaving or not doing what he wanted, he would hit them in the back of the legs. Hit them on the back. He was tough, and a nasty fighter also.
From there then ended up wanting to figure out where to train. I went to this place called Kiguchi Dojo. Kiguchi Sensei was a former Olympic wrestler, and Rumina Sato and all of these guys trained there.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes. Rumina is a friend. Yeah. All these guys are telling me, it's crazy because I was literally just in Japan a couple of weeks ago with Sakamoto, who's the CEO of Shooto. I just was hanging out with the CEO of Pancrase, and we're talking about all of these old, crazy stories.
Tim Ferriss: They're wild.
Chatri Sityodtong: Again, yeah, Sayama Sensei. So everything you're saying, it's crazy.
Tim Ferriss: It's a super small world. Yeah. A super small world. I'll give you two more small worlds. So I have a bone jutting out of the side of my ankle from Rumina who put on the nastiest heel hook in practice. I'm still a little annoyed about that. It was so aggressive.
I ended up doing well after that. I probably should have tapped much earlier, which also leads to NYC. We're going to talk more about Renzo. I actually spent a little bit of time at Renzo's gym way, way back in the day. I only went a handful of times.
It wasn't really his fault. It was an accident. Rodrigo actually popped my right elbow. I'm getting surgery probably in the next few weeks because I want to get back into training, and the extensors have been torn for 20 years.
Chatri Sityodtong: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: That gym is phenomenal. It also ties into, actually, just to loop a few things together, so from Wall Street. At least I have written down here. Correct me if I get any of this wrong. In 2008 you start Evolve, right?
Chatri Sityodtong: I moved to Singapore in 2007. Yeah. Around there. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So you start this.
Chatri Sityodtong: I'm still a hedge fund manager at that point. It was crazy. I get to Singapore to open up the Singapore office for my hedge fund. So we have offices in New York and Singapore. There's no place to train because Singapore is not a mecca of martial arts. I'm like, “You know what? I'm going to start a martial arts school.” It was really just selfishly for me to be able to train.
All my Sityodtong brothers were in Thailand, and it's an hour-and-a-half flight from Thailand. They're all the baddest world champions on the planet, and that's how Evolve started. It was like, I don't want to say a side hustle. It's my obsession. I mean, martial arts is my obsession. So the fact that I didn't have any high-level place to train when I was used to training at Renzo's when I was in New York, that was the accidental —
Tim Ferriss: That it was real. Yeah. So many good people there.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. That whole time period was because when I reached Singapore was already after I had that sushi lunch. I'd already had this sense of I have to do something bigger with my life. It's not about making money. It's about helping others or making an impact.
I think you had also said that's right, Tim. When you retired from angel investing, was like, angel investing was fun, but you didn't have that impact that you had when you came out with your books. That's when you had millions of people reading your books, and their lives changed by your lessons and learnings about life.
When we work our asses off for something much bigger than ourselves, we know we're impacting, if you're lucky, your country. If you're even luckier, your continent and maybe the world, right? There's a sense of like, oh, my life has meaning. It's not about money. It's that somehow Tim Ferriss is on this planet, and he's actually helping millions of people all over the planet through his books.
Same thing I get now, the joy of one, hearing about you having this WhatsApp group with your buddies. All of you guys are competitive, former martial arts or fighters, and then you discover one. That to me, that I get excited. When I was in Japan and the entire stadium of Saitama completely sold out.
When we're in the US in September in Denver, the Denver Nuggets stadium completely sold out. I was sitting there in Denver and I was just like, “This is the Denver Nuggets. This is the NBA World Champion Stadium, and it's completely sold out.”
This company I started here in Singapore, and never in a million years did I think we would sell out. Then literally months later, we sold out in Thailand at Impact Arena, a massive stadium. Then in Qatar, Doha the next month, also another massive stadium, and then Saitama super arena.
It was just like this last several months has just been a reminder in some ways. As I travel around the world, this thing has just gone viral. Our viewership members are just massive around the world.
You see, that is the same. I feel I know what I've read about you, Tim, is that same drive or that same sense of meaning in your life or purpose. It's the same thing. Well, I really get excited when someone's like, “Man, hey, I saw that fight,” or, “I was there.” Or whatever.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah. I still, we're going to definitely get back to this through line in a second. Vividly remember watching ONE for the first time. It brought back all of those memories from Japan. Because it's very elegantly produced. In the sense that it's not being trapped in a video game with a thousand distractions, which a lot of spectator sports have turned into. It's like you have the lights on the fighters. The crowd is often darkened.
I'll paint with a broad brush here. It depends on where the fights are. In Japan the audience is very reverent and it's very quiet. There might still be a, “Faito!” Something like that. They'll clap for certain things, and shout for sure, but otherwise it's quiet. It's very different from the US.
So I've been to Lumpini before and I've been to Rajadamnern before. That's like the high energy, with the music and the betting and the, “Hey. Hey.” With every low kick or whatever is coming out. As a viewer, as a spectator, it really allows you to savor the main course without distraction, which is the fights.
Let's hop to ONE. So it looks like around 2011, that's the birth of ONE Championship, was not an overnight success. We're going to get eventually, because I did not expect to find Mike Moritz and Doug Leone in this story, which is fucking wild. So we're definitely going to come to that because that seems like a really important moment.
Before, I want to read one of my friend's questions. Because there have been different fight promotions in, say, Pan-Asia before, right? For instance, in China there's something called Sanda Wang, which is King of Sanda. Which actually has some great fights, but they never hopped. They never really hit the mainstream globally.
For the people who are wondering, Sanda, it's like shoot boxing. It's like kickboxing plus throws. It's actually very entertaining to watch. They never crossed the chasm, at least as far as I know.
My friend's question is this. “I want to know about the economics starting out. What was the thesis about why they would succeed? And what did they learn from prior fight leagues, whether successes or failures?”
Then his other question, which is also one of my questions is, “Most importantly, how the fuck do they have such consistently high-quality fights?” Because I don't know what savant quant you have in the basement who's moneyballed the matchups. I'm accustomed to watching fight cards where it's like, “Yeah. Okay. Great. Two out of the six fights are good, and all of my friends have no idea.”
We've watched a lot of fights in every possible discipline. How you guys consistently have such absurdly good fights. Just starting out, I also want to know, what were the original theses and what did you learn from prior fight leagues as well? Yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: It's been over 13 years. To be sitting where I'm sitting is honestly less than one percent of one percent odds. If you told me to do this again, I definitely would not have. I would've just rolled out a chain of martial arts academies, and I'd have a few hundred locations by now.
Why? The first three years I literally thought, I love martial arts. Asia is the home of martial arts. A 5,000-year history. There's four billion people here on the planet. Surely, it's going to be easy to create a global sports property.
Naively, I did this high level. I was like, “Well, America has NFL. MLB. NASCAR. Europe has F1. Champions League. EPL. Bundesliga. These are all multi-billion dollar properties. The market cap of NFL is north of 120 billion. NBA is $70 billion in its valuation.
I thought, man, I'm a martial artist. I know martial arts. I'll be able to somehow aggregate four billion fans here, and then export this around the world, and it'll be easy. The first three years, Tim, a complete disaster.
My buddy from Harvard and I, we'd made a little bit of money, so we invested. Thinking that within a year we'd get institutional investors to back us given our credentials, and our expertise, and the market opportunity. Zero.
The first three years we couldn't land. We met with 150 institutional investors. Zero. Broadcasters across the content. Zero. Brands, forget about it. Governments, forget about it. Most governments banned martial arts content actually on TV. Live martial arts content.
Tim Ferriss: Why?
Chatri Sityodtong: Because of the violent nature. Okay. The first three years, literally no fandom. No metrics what to speak of. Just losing money hand over fist.
Tim Ferriss: What were the main objections of the investors or broadcasters? Maybe we focus on, let's just say, the investor side. What were their main, the most common patterns of objections, or refutations?
Chatri Sityodtong: There was this billion dollar property and you're way too late. You're way too late.
Tim Ferriss: Late to the game.
Chatri Sityodtong: Late to the game. You want to create a global property? I think at that time, UFC was about a couple billion, right? Their metrics were already substantially larger than ours because we were just a startup.
I remember when we first started our Facebook page, they had something like 20 million fans on Facebook or something like that. We started with zero. It's all organic. Today we have 50 million, and they have 50 million on Facebook, as an example.
I'll tell you how we got very lucky. It was at the end of year three, and I call my Japanese mom, and who was completely against me starting this. Because in Japan, as you know, Tim, martial arts promotions, combat sports, is run by Yakuza, the mafia in Japan.
Tim Ferriss: It's mobbed up. Yeah. It's super mobbed up.
Chatri Sityodtong: My mom is this conservative, tiny little Japanese lady, and she's like, “There's no way my son is going to quit Wall Street.”
Tim Ferriss: Become a mobster.
Chatri Sityodtong: No. She's the typical Japanese lady where she was like, “My son went to Harvard, and he's on Wall Street, and he has his hedge fund.” She loved the checked boxes, the checklists of credentials. As you know, Japanese culture is very much this way. Japanese society. If you went to Todai in Japan, you're viewed as a God, right? It's very hierarchical.
I said, “Mom, I want to do what I love. Mom, you told me as a young kid I've got to go help people. I want to live my life with my greatest obsession and somehow help people, whether it's our athletes or fans, et cetera.”
You know what's crazy, Tim, in writing the business plan, there was no such line of we want to have the biggest pay-per-view. We want to have the best fights. It was literally the mission of the company over many, many, many days and weeks thinking that literally came, and it's still true to this day. Is to unleash real life superheroes who connect the world with hope, strength, dreams, and inspiration.
Of course, we put on the best fights. I agree with your friends, and I'll explain how we put on fights. The first three years, a complete disaster. There was no TAM. It was all theoretical. It was all of this business school mumbo jumbo, and nobody was interested.
Tim Ferriss: Total addressable market. Right?
Chatri Sityodtong: Exactly. Yeah. If I didn't love martial arts as much as I did, a thousand percent I'd quit. So I called my mom. “Mom, I'm at the end of year three. Lost a crap load of my money and my friend's money, and I think we're done. We've got no traction.”
I thought my mom was going to tell me I should stick with it because, “Chatri, since you were a kid, martial arts. Blah. Blah. Blah. You love it.” She said, “Oh, great. Why don't you just quit then?”
Tim Ferriss: Before you get double sleeves of tattoos, and can't go to the onsen with me.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. She did. Then the conversation ended shortly after that. I remember thinking to myself, my mom just said, “Just quit.” Then I said, “Okay. If I just quit, let's just say I quit today.” Then it goes back to like, “Well, why did I even start this thing in the first place?” When you really put yourself to say, “I'm going to quit,” you start to think about “why did I start this thing, and what is it?”
I said, “Well, martial arts is my greatest obsession. If I want to make an impact on the world, and I have the opportunity to inspire millions, and one day, hopefully billions of lives through our heroes, values, and stories — those are the three pillars of what we call our formula of success at ONE Championship: values, heroes, and stories — if we can unleash these real-life superheroes and tell their stories of overcoming adversity. Tragedy. Poverty. Impossible odds. Those stories are going to be incredible. Of course, the values that we exhibit, which you know very well, are the true Bushido values of integrity, honor. respect, courage, discipline, compassion, etc. that martial arts teaches us.
I thought there has to be a place in this world. ONE promotion, that has true authentic martial arts at its core. So from that day I said, “I will never quit. I will, come hell or high water, I'm going to put everything into it. If I lose all my money, screw it.”
We got so lucky. So a big shout-out to Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook started taking off in Asia at around that time as smart mobile devices were as well. If you chart Facebook's user growth, and just engagement levels in Asia with the history of ONE Championship, it is like a mirror.
So what happened was we saw a couple of videos start going viral around the world when we posted. Again, we're a small platform at the time. A very small page, but we could see that something was happening.
So we used that hockey-stick data. Even though it was small, we collected this data and we showed broadcasters, “Hey, take a look. Hey, take a look. This is something that's happening in your country.” Numbers have just gone 10X. Yes, they're small, but they've gone 10X in the span of three months.”
Then I remember we had a few months left of cash, and I bet the whole firm, and I put everything into video. I said, “We are going to be the world's best viral video makers along the lines of values, heroes, and stories, but we want to ride the algo. Not pollute it by bastardizing martial arts, but really showcasing the very best.
So whether it's a knockout, that's great. Spinning back kick, all that stuff, but in the context of, how can I say? I didn't want to cheapen martial arts. I didn't want to bastardize it and cheapen it, and make it look like two thugs cussing each other out. That was something I didn't want, because that's not my experience in martial arts. My martial arts experience has been about love, pain, and suffering. And then as a result of that, of thousands of hours of training, you inherit these incredible values. And something I'm sure you relate to Tim. For you to get heel hooked by Rumina Sato and then somebody else, Rodrigo popping your arm. This is part of the journey. Love, pain, and suffering. And yet somehow you want to get back and do it right. So that, to me, is what martial arts is about, the unbreakable warrior spirit; the beauty of authentic martial arts. So anyways, long story cut short, the combination of us making the bet on Facebook literally saved the company. This is something that Facebook confirmed with us, and actually I ended up getting invited by Zuck to go to Facebook headquarters a couple years ago.
Because out of 5,000 sports properties on Facebook, the number one producer of organic video views in the world is ONE Championship. So we produced 30 billion organic video views last year, and this year we're on pace already for 40 billion. 40 billion, not million. And I remember we went from — how fast we went from 100,000 organic video views for the whole year, and suddenly the next year it was five million and the next year of a 100 million, it just went ballistic. And without that, I don't think we would've been able to convince broadcasters and investors and brands and sponsors and athletes. And now as you know, Tim, as a business expert, once you've built a platform business, every global sports property is a platform business where there are multiple stakeholders who derive economic benefit or social benefit or some level of benefit from the platform. And hence the platform becomes quote-unquote monopolistic. NBA, there's no way you can break NBA. There's no way you can break NFL, it's truly a platform business. And so we have achieved that status.
And like I said, if you'd ask me to start this business again, no way. And it's less than one percent of one percent that we're standing here. And there are many, many inflection points of luck, just blessing. Yes, my team and I work our asses off and we made the right bets when it came. But if you told me 13 years later you're a top 10, according to Nielsen, top 10 largest global sports media property. There's no way I would have thought that it would have happened — it's crazy.
We're broadcast live in 190 countries every single week with the largest broadcasters. It's Amazon in America, but it's Sky Sports in Europe. In Japan, it's U-NEXT. And in Thailand it's Channel 7, in Middle East it's beIN Sports. It boggles my mind what has happened. And it's a lot of hard work, a lot of love, pain, and suffering. But I have to be 100 percent honest, it's a lot of luck. A lot of luck. But —
Chatri Sityodtong: — putting on great fights, like your friend said, is not luck. We have a chemistry lab, if you will, where we slice and dice qualitatively and quantitatively. It's a team of about 13 or 14 folks and we slice quantitatively and qualitatively and all that stuff. And of course, one huge benefit is all of us on the matchmaking team, we're all martial artists. So it's like, you know Matt Hume, you know legendary Matt Hume. Folks like Rich Franklin, legendary martial artist himself. And so I got very lucky that these happen to be all my friends, my martial arts buddies, and we're all working together and we get to cook up the best fights. And another advantage we have is because we're not only doing MMA, we're the world's largest martial arts organization. We showcase everything from kickboxing, Muay Thai submission, grappling, boxing, MMA, and everything.
And the most important thing for us is signing the very best of the best athletes, the very best of the best martial artists. But very equally important is finishing ability. So this is something that's — I don't know if other organizations look at it, I'm sure they look at it collected but I don't know if they look at it from a — when they sign athletes. ONE Championship has a 70 percent finish rate. That means all of all our fights 70 percent —
Tim Ferriss: It's absurd, it's absurd. That's so high.
Chatri Sityodtong: — get knocked out or tapped out or choked out. It's a global duopoly now, right? UFC dominates in the West, we dominate in the East, we're roughly the same size. They have a 38 percent finish rate. And why is that? Because in America, there's predominantly American wrestlers like yourself. And American wrestling is not necessarily geared towards finishing. It's an unbelievable martial art that controls; you can take the fighter down, pin them up against the cage, you can hold them, you can ground and pound them but it's not necessarily a finishing, finishing. Versus out here we got a Rod Tang or we get a — it depends on the discipline or we signed the Ruotolo brothers — those guys are killers.
Chatri Sityodtong: So we look for the best of the best, but we try to find athletes who come to kill. And again, I don't mean kill in a bad way. What I mean is the true origins of martial arts is self-defense. Self-defense is not about dancing for points, it's not about taking someone down and waiting and letting the judges score. It's about finishing a robber coming to your house, somebody coming to harm your family. Martial arts is about finishing a dangerous situation so that you live for another day. That spirit, that Bushido, that samurai warrior spirit lives in ONE and lives in our athletes. And that's why we have a 70 percent finish rate.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So I have so many more questions to ask about that as we're going to come back to that, but I want to mention just a few things for folks. So initially all that pushback, the 100 plus investors, the broadcasters, “Sorry, UFC has already taken this game and won it. You're too late.” When I started this podcast in 2014, the vast majority of people I asked who were involved in the game told me I was too late. In 2014.
Chatri Sityodtong: And now you're like the number one business podcast in the world. Amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, and sometimes that's true, but it's not as true as often as people say it. And some of the things I wrote down here, which were like, “Oh, God, these seem really important things,” Were — there are tons, right? But leaving finance, fight card construction, matchmaking, how to get Amazon Prime and Sky Sports, we're going to get to that. That kind of stuff. Sequoia and then social media / non-event engagement. Because I've watched what you guys have done on social very, very closely. And correct me if I'm wrong, it also seems like by diversifying outside of MMA and having Muay Thai, having pure submission, the only way you make pure submission, well, I say, like, combat grappling interesting is if you have people finish. So you have to prioritize that for a general audience.
Muay Thai by itself is action-packed, right? Particularly if you incentivize fighters. And also I'd just be so interested to hear what are some of the other ingredients that you consider for putting on good fights? So you talked about finish rate but by the virtue of having these other disciplines like Muay Thai also, you increase the likelihood of having clips that will get shared a lot, right? Because, man, you had elbows in and, oh, man, do things change. And there's a few things, and I might be misremembering, but I looked at it and I thought also in at least a lot of the fights that I saw. Okay, rounds are short. That's smart. It makes me think of K1 where people put it all on the line and they weren't trying to conserve energy for round 10 or something like that.
What are some of the other elements that go into constructing these fight cards? You mentioned the quantitative and the qualitative. So finishing rate would be one. And that's not just matchmaking, but actually signing fighters in the first place. What else goes into that? Because it is incredibly consistent. It is just — I've never seen anything like it.
Chatri Sityodtong: Thank you, Tim. I'm truly grateful that you can see that because we try our best to have the — you'll see a typical ONE Championship card in tomorrow night, we have ONE Friday fights every week. We have 12 fights. You'll see eight, 10 of them will be finishes and all 12 will be barn burners. We don't have, at ONE Championship, where, in other organizations they may have a 12-fight card, but eight fights are a little bit of a snooze fest or decisions. And then the main [inaudible] is amazing, it lights up the stadium. It's literally from the go, first fight all the way to the 12th fight, it's as if they're fighting for their lives. So I think our scouts around the world scour 10,000 of the very best martial artists on the planet. We give out 50 offers a year, and we have a criteria for what we look for.
So let's say you're the best in the world, but you are a decision, a points person. It's very unlikely you'll be signed by ONE. It doesn't matter if you are, like, 50-0 like Floyd Mayweather. But if you're there to play a game, score points, that's not real martial arts. And there's guys without a perfect record. And as you know, some of the Thai world champions have 400 professional fights and they have lost a hundred times. That's real fighting. If you have fought 400 times and your record is 300 wins and 100 losses, that is an average world championship record in Thailand as an example of an elite fighter. Because there are no padded records. If someone's 50-0, it's highly suspect that they were given easy opponents or they chose their opponents at the right time, or there's a little bit of this kind of manufacturing. And you see that a lot actually in the west. In the west there's a lot of 20-0, 15-0, 30-0, whether it's in different combat sports.
It seems like the West really puts a priority — but the problem with that is the longer you go with an 0, the more defensive you become as a fighter because you're protecting that goal. So when we sign athletes, we look for the best of the best in the world. It doesn't matter what discipline, but we look for that killer instinct and the finishing rate. And we really spend a lot of time looking at that. So that when you get two pitbulls who are there to finish, and they're both the very best in the world. So that's one layer. You got to get the ingredients right but then as you said, the incentives. So we pay the highest in the world for fight purses, the win purse, but also the bonuses. Especially knockout finish bonuses. And so that's a quantitative side of things. But then also backstage, again, before every big event I line up all the entire card and I literally give — and I think some of it's on social media already, some of my speeches. But I literally give a two-minute Rocky Balboa type of speech.
And I don't do it for drama. I do it because I really want to inspire every single athlete to give their very, very best performance. So I talk about or I ask them about why are they here? They spent typically 10-15 years training six hours a day, six days a week to reach the pinnacle of martial arts, the highest level in the world in ONE Championship. And I ask him to think about all the sacrifices, all the heartbreaks they suffered through. The injuries they've gone through, how many birthdays did they miss? How many friends' parties, how many cousins' or nephews' or nieces' birthdays did they miss? How many times they did they have to sacrifice to get to this point? And then I ask them, “Is this your greatest love? Is this what you are put on the planet for?” And I make them really go deep. And if you are able to tap into a person's why, the deepest why, and you're able to then also tap into everything they have to suffer.
And I tell them, “Tonight, it's broadcast live to 190 countries around the world with the biggest broadcasters.” Our last show in Tokyo at Saitama in March, our last big show, we broke viewership record. We did 2.3 billion organic video views on digital and social. 2.3 billion on a single show. I didn't know at that time it was going to be that big at the time — and that's excluding our TV broadcast. So our TV broadcasts around the world. And then we ended up trending and number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. But trending in US, and UK, and France, and Australia, Thailand, Japan. It was just trending all over the world. China. And I tell them, “How do you want the world to remember you tonight? You have a chance to unleash your greatness upon the world in a way that you will make magical memories for your fans. You will create something extraordinary.”
And I've had fighters cry in those huddles I have, and then I walk away. And the reason why I can give this kind of speech is because I have walked it, maybe not at the elite level that they're at, but I have walked in their shoes in training and competing and injuries or whatever it is. So there's a real bond that I have with our athletes and the fact that I train every day and I train with them. I don't want to name names, but I train with our athletes, different athletes that come by or I'm flying to Tokyo or I fly to Denver or I go wherever because I'm always training. No matter where I am, I always train. But that element — how do you produce a six sigma performance? It's not because you train and you're, “I'm going to fight.” No, there has to be something bigger. You have to be fighting for something bigger.
It's almost an emotion, it's almost an emotive state of, “This is it. This is my moment in time and I'm going to deliver everything I can and there's — I'm going to be unbreakable. And what Chatri told me in that locker room, all those sacrifices I went through, my parents going through. And if I win — ” Of course the purse is big and blah, blah, blah, all the other stuff. If you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, you're unbreakable. And so that is what I at the end of the day, try to remind our athletes. That they are fighting for something much bigger than themselves.
Tim Ferriss: Well, it certainly translates to a phenomenal viewer experience. For folks who have not seen ONE, check it out. You will not be disappointed, you can thank me later. I do want to double-click on two things. So the first is pushing all your chips in on Facebook and social media because a lot of people — I'm just trying to time this out, maybe this is like 2014-2015. Somewhere around there.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah, around there.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, so a lot of people were pushing their chips in on social, maybe not in as aggressive and all-in fashion. But a lot of people were trying to make it work and a lot of people didn't figure it out. So what I'm super curious about is what were the guiding tenets or the principles, or the lessons learned where you zigged and zagged that allowed you to actually make it work? That's question number one. And then I definitely have to get to this Sequoia meeting because I want to know how all that happened and what happened in that meeting. I really did not expect to see this in my research and I'm so happy I was surprised by it. But first on the social media, because a lot of people to this day try to make it work and never figure it out. So what allowed you to translate pushing the chips in to success on social?
Chatri Sityodtong: Again, there's a lot of element of good luck and I don't want my team and I to be so arrogant to think and to say and have the world believe that it was just hard work in our genius.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you know what? I'm going to be an asshole, I'm sorry. I'm going to jump in though. I want to give credit where credit is due also, because when I first saw you guys on Amazon Prime, I was like, “Oh, this is really interesting.” And then I followed you on social. And then I was looking at the videos and I was like, “Okay, this is very smart.” I was like, “Number one, they are not stingy with highlights.” You share basically, as far as I can tell, all the best highlights. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't watch the full fights. I want to watch the full fights because it's like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots the whole time. But you share highlights and you also tell really, really good stories. And I remember Stamp Fairtex, who — it doesn't hurt that she's pretty cute and does her dances and so on — but what a killer also.
Chatri Sityodtong: She's a beast. She's a beast.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God. Her backing away and she throws the liver kick, it's just brutal. But the way that you tell the story, and also because you have such privileged access and focus on Muay Thai as well. And as you mentioned, poor person sport, that's how a lot of people hope to get out of poverty. They start fighting when they're really young and you have this incredible human interest story, and you guys do a masterful job of combining that with spectacular fight footage. But yes, there's always some luck involved but —
Chatri Sityodtong: Okay. Right, right. So I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the controllable factors. So the controllable factors, obviously, you have to know what the combat sport fan wants. But at the same time, if you're only appealing to the combat sports fan, it's a smaller market. But if you start — if you're able to tell a story and make it more mainstream, again, about abject poverty or tragedy or adversity or whatever it may be; that can transcend beyond a combat sports fan and go viral around the world to human interest stories. So of course, one is my team and I — I was literally the first social media manager and I understood that you have to crack the algorithm. But if you just blindly follow out the algorithm, you'll put out junk because you're just chasing endlessly. You have to be very clear about who do you want to be, what are you trying to communicate and what are you trying to do by giving this video to your fans.
We always say we want to evoke emotion, strong emotion. Laughter, sadness, inspiration, awe. Something very like, “Oh, my God. Oh, wow.” Something that's going to surprise and delight you in your day. So you're going to hang out with us and watch 10 times a day. You know whenever you go TikTok, Instagram, wherever or Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo in China, etc. But at the same time, you have to be true to why we started this company. You have to be true to real martial arts, finishes, real Bushido with the warrior way. Not bastardizing or cheapening it into some sort of street fight thug by having your athletes create fake drama about hating each other or whatever it is. That's just not what I think will transcend and become truly mainstream. I think at the end of the day, people want to watch, all of the world, the very best of the best go at it. But they want to know the stories behind why this person is what they're doing and why he or she is where they're at, and what are the stakes of this fight.
And of course we have to be very sharp about every single platform has a specific algorithm that it's looking for and marry that. So all that, that's all the skill aspect of what we can control. But what by luck is you look at the mobile device, okay, millennial Gen Zs, which make up 80 percent of our audience today. What do they do? Their first window of media consumption is their mobile device. They wake up in the morning, they look at TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is. They look at it 10-20 times a day before they go to bed, that's the last point of media consumption. What does that mean? You need to dominate the mobile device. And that was what we did in 2014. We said to ourselves, “We are going to dominate the mobile device.” And guess what? Why is this lucky? Because mobile device took off, Facebook took off, all the social took off. But the ping-pong ball, the tennis ball, the soccer ball, the basketball, the football, you cannot see clearly on a mobile device.
And I'll give you a great example. When Naomi Osaka won the US Open for the first time, and I remember because she's half Japanese. So I was like, “Oh, my God, a half-Japanese person won. Like me.” Blah, blah. So I looked at Facebook and I could see there were highlights of her match. And I looked at it, I couldn't see the ball. And I'm like, two seconds I just scrolled past because I couldn't enjoy, I couldn't consume it. That's what I mean by luck. Combat sports is the perfect content for mobile devices and that's why you have the two giants, UFC and ONE, today dominating in that sphere and why we have Millennial and Gen Z audience. And why other sports are struggling and trying to catch up, but they have the wrong content genre for mobile device. Because you cannot see the soccer ball, the football, the ping-pong ball, the tennis ball, you can barely see the basketball. It is very hard to consume. And no one's going to watch a 200-lap car race on your mobile, right? You're just not. That's what I mean about luck.
But yes, everything you described about our content and how we explain a Stamp Fairtex or, yes, she's the best in the world, but does she twerk? Does she dance? Does she sing? Is she cute? Is her personality larger than life? And that's her real personality. That's another thing about us, everything we do is about authenticity. There's no manufacturing, there's no, “Oh, well, let that person be a bad guy. That person be a good guy. Let's create drama between them, they hate each other. Let's stage a camera backstage so they bump into each other.” We don't do any of that. We just let them be who they really are, we tell their real stories. And again, but the one important thread for all of our content and everything we do is that it's real martial arts.
Tim Ferriss: I want to give you and your team some additional credit too, in addition to the human interest in addition to the highlights, you guys also are very clever. You mentioned strong emotions. So laughter, I've seen quite a lot of funny stuff that is organic as a product of the personalities. Outtakes where somebody's accidentally kicking their boyfriend in the head as trying to demonstrate a technique. It's like, “Oh, shit.” And then you see them doing damage control or whatever. And might make me sound like a bad person to find that funny, but it is pretty funny when you watch it. And also I remember very specific set segments where for instance, you had some absolute Muay Thai heavies — and by heavies, I don't mean big, I just mean killers — kicking a device. People may have seen these in arcades and so on where you might punch what looks like a speedball and then it shows you your power output. And you had a number of them kicking a device that was similar showing pounds per square inch or kilograms per square inch of impact.
That is pretty fight sports specific, but I'd never seen something like that done before. And I'm like, “Okay, that's very, very clever. That is clever, I'm going to share that with my friends.” And even though it might be within the Fight Porn WhatsApp channel, they're probably going to share that. They'll share that with their five other friends who aren't on it and it'll perpetuate it, right?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. So I have to give credit, and I tell our team this, we have the very best social media team on the planet. Many of my teammates have been on this journey for a long time with me. But I do believe — I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but it's the fact that I actually built the first page and I was actually a social media manager. And something about my personality — it's probably very similar to you, Tim, is like when you do something, you're all in. So when I decided that Facebook was going to be it, I said to myself, “I want to be the best Facebook manager on the planet.” So I was obsessed — not about reading — I was obsessed about experimenting, learning every little trick. And of course, I was reading and voracious, but I would look at all these other pages that were doing very well, and I would just steal ideas and think about concepts and just being completely consumed by it.
And of course, it helped a lot that I, myself, because I'm a lifelong martial artist, I know what the fight fan wants. I know, I know exactly. At the same time, I wanted to build a property that transcended fight fans. I wanted it to be truly mainstream. Again, that's something that NFL has done incredibly well in America. When it's Super Bowl, the entire country watches. And that is something that one day I do want. When we have a major world championship fight, that the whole world stops to watch like Olympics. I think when there's a gold medal Olympic swimming final or a 100-meter dash final, I think it's something like 1.5 billion people watch. I can see that happening with ONE. I can genuinely see that, having one billion-1.5 billion concurrent viewers watching. Or World Cup soccer finals, I think that did a couple billion concurrent viewership viewers.
I just can see ONE doing it because we've already broken our previous high by 300 or 400 percent in our last event. So can you imagine on these big numbers of 30 and 40 billion organic video views, we are still breaking our records on a single individual event by 3X. So we're just scratching the surface of what ONE can be.
Tim Ferriss: Let me take you back to the pain and suffering for a second. So you're struggling, struggling. “Mom, I want to quit.” “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. You should quit.” And you're like, “Wait a fucking second.” And it's not working, it's not working. Suddenly you have some graphs to show from social media, “Hey, broadcaster in Country X, this is what's happening in your backyard. And yes, these numbers are small but take a look at the growth rate.” And so the tide starts to shift and then you seem to hit an inflection point. Was the — and I've had Roelof Botha on this show before from Sequoia, how important or unimportant was that meeting that you had with Michael Moritz and Douglas Leone?
For people who don't know who they are, these guys are kingmakers. They are the top of the top Wizard of Oz venture capitalists behind so many successes. We could spend the next 30 minutes listing them all off. These guys are absolute icons. So was that meeting important? And then assuming it was, how on Earth did it happen and what did you do in that meeting that made the impression it made?
Chatri Sityodtong: I called it the $100 million breakfast because Sequoia Asia orchestrated it. They thought we were onto something very big. And they said, “Mike Moritz and Douglas Leone are coming and we're only booking a handful of meetings for them.” Because of their very busy schedule.
Tim Ferriss: What was the organization that helped book it for you?
Chatri Sityodtong: Sequoia Capital Asia.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, Sequoia in Asia.
Chatri Sityodtong: It was the acting director. Yeah, Sequoia Asia, run by Shailendra Singh. And he was the managing partner.
Tim Ferriss: How did you connect with them in the first place?
Chatri Sityodtong: This is what I mean about serendipity. Long story cut short, it was around April of 2016 and we had hired a small investment bank. And we said, “We want to now go raise institutional funding.” And we didn't have any institutions at the time, it was still bootstrapping but we think we had enough to go raise institutional funding. We had a slide with our metric, a couple of slides with our metrics. Hockey stick — all these hockey stick charts. And that was, I think, four o'clock the meeting ended with our bank. We walked out and now we didn't think anything of it. Two hours later, the investment banker calls us and says, “Sequoia Asia wants to meet you.” And we're like, “How did you — what?” This investment banker, he walked in to the elevator and Shailendra Singh, the managing partner of Sequoia Asia, was in the elevator. He happened to be carrying the ONE Championship slides, the hockey stick charts. And Shailendra said to our investment bank — Rippledot is the name of the thing, and our investment banker was named, a guy named Atin Kukreja. He turns to him and says, “What company is that?” And he goes, “Oh, it's a sports company called ONE Championship.” “What is that?” And on the elevator ride Shailendra decided, “I want a meeting with these guys. I'm going to fund them.” Off of the metric because he — it's literally like, this is literally what happened.
Tim Ferriss: That's bananas.
Chatri Sityodtong: On Sunday, it was a Sunday, because Sequoia Asia demanded to meet us. To meet me. Meet me. On Sunday I had breakfast. Me and my partner had breakfast with Sequoia. And they told us, as Shailendra said, “We want you to drop the investment bank. We want you not to go on the roadshow. We will fund it.” This is the first institutional funding. And they funded. And it was a small check, I think it was 15 million. But about a year later is when Mike Moritz and Douglas Leone were in town. Only for a couple days, because they were doing an Asia wide tour. Only a couple of days in Singapore. And Shailendra said, “Hey, I want them to meet you. They want to meet you.” Whatever it is. “We want to meet you.” Of course I know who they are, they're legendary.
As Tim said, “Mike Moritz and Douglas Leone are probably the greatest investors Silicon Valley has ever seen.” Amongst the greatest. Sequoia Capital, obviously one of the greatest, if not the greatest venture capital firm in history.
I go to breakfast and it's Mike Moritz, and it's Doug, and Shailendra. It's the four of us. And I'm sitting there and they're asking all sorts of questions. And Mike Moritz asks all these questions. And I will never forget it. At the end of the breakfast, Mike says, “Hey, Chatri, there are founders who, their entire reason for being born on this planet — ” And I think he named Bill Gates or whatever it is for Microsoft that were put on this Earth for that one reason, ” — to go after something gargantuan. And you are that guy for this opportunity.” And he said, “Most founders are there for a business opportunity. They see a pain problem, a pain point in the market, and they solve the solution and they go IPOs or they sell the company, and then they move on to the next thing.”
And he just looked me in the eye and says, “This is going to be a home run no matter — ” Because they grilled me, all these different kind of questions. The funding actually came out — $100 million funding came out of Silicon Valley. This is the first sports investment in the history of Sequoia in Silicon Valley. It didn't even come out of the Asia Fund, it came out of the main fund to invest into ONE. Again, I might be getting the years wrong, but around 2017. And if my memory serves me right, I think that was $100 million at a billion dollar valuation, around there. Man, I was in shock.
Because after the breakfast, which I thought went okay, it was an hour. Literally two hours later, Shailendra says, “We want to cut you a check for $100 million.” Two hours after the breakfast. We had the breakfast at eight in the morning. I remember 10:00, 11:00 in the morning, I'm walking, and Shailendra calls me and says, “We want to cut a check for 100 million bucks. They think you're onto something special.” And, man, I'm eternally grateful to this day. Eternally grateful to Mike Moritz and Douglas Leone. In that one hour, they slice and dice in the business completely, and even me, as a person, I'm telling you, this whole journey has been moments of serendipity, moments of just good blessings for us to get this far. It's mind-blowing to me. And I would never have done it — if you told me do it again, I would never — it's luck.
Tim Ferriss: Of course, the elevator. I hope that an investment banker gets a box of chocolates too every —
Chatri Sityodtong: No. Atin Kukreja. I'm giving a shout-out to Atin Kukreja, Rippledot. He is the best TMT investment bank out here in Asia.
Tim Ferriss: What is TMT?
Chatri Sityodtong: Technology, media, and telecom investment bank.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it. So you did have a lot of luck with that amazing encounter in the elevator. You also had to perform in the breakfast. And those can both be true. There was definitely a skill element needed to capitalize on the luck. And what I'd love to hear about, you mentioned them asking a lot of questions, slicing and dicing the business as well as you personally. I guess two things. What were some of — and it may be too long ago, but to whatever degree you recollect even an impression. What types of questions made them different from perhaps other investors in other meetings? What types of questions did they ask? And number two, what were the main pitch points, from your perspective, that you think made the difference?
Chatri Sityodtong: It was very interesting, because I remember Mike Moritz asking very qualitative human questions about me, about my motivation, about how I hire people. It was just very qualitative. I didn't think the breakfast would result in an investment, I thought it would just be another prolonged process. That I'd have to go to Silicon Valley and da, da, da. It'd be just a long, prolonged process. And he quickly sussed out very quickly, he said, “This thing is so big, this project is so big, but it's going to require a founder with unbelievable resilience. And that's why you got to find the guy who, this is his life's calling.”
He said, “It also requires a founder who can attract and retain the very best people on the planet. And not every business plan needs that,” he said. “But in this case, it requires a founder that can attract and retain the very best.” And he just looked me in the eye and goes, “I think you're the guy. I think you are going to be able to convince broadcasters, athletes, investors, group presidents, chief commercial officers, internal and external stakeholders to build this whole thing.”
I'm like, in one hour, how could he have guessed that about me? I didn't even have that impression of myself. I just thought, I'm a guy who loves martial arts. And I'm a little bit crazy, so I have a high tolerance for risk. And I guess even though I did almost quit in 2014, I guess I do have a little bit of resilience. But I didn't think of myself in the way Mike Moritz was saying.
And Doug, his questions were about the business. And he educated me in that one hour that what I'm sitting on in a sports product is a platform business. He's the ultimate platform business, actually. He said, “Most tech companies, SaaS or platform this, the other, they can get broken.” And he gave a great example. And I don't want to name names of a tech company, but it was a relatively well-known tech company. He's a relatively well-known tech name, but he gave the example, he said, “Three PhD engineers in Stanford, if they come up with the right solution, can dismantle this.” At the time, it was a $10 billion company. “They can dismantle it like that.”
Tim Ferriss: I think I know which one that is.
Chatri Sityodtong: He said, “There are no three engineers in this world that can dismantle what you've created right up at this point.” Because at that point, again, we maybe had a few billion organic video views. And at that point, maybe we were in 117, 120 countries broadcast. We started, there was clearly momentum being built, and clearly we'd broken through a lot of barriers. Governments started getting interested in us. He could see that different stakeholders were going to derive economic value from the platform we've built. But he could also — and he literally said this to me, and I remember it. He said, “There's no engineering team in this world that can dismantle you.” And that was very powerful.
Most companies, tech companies, software companies, can be dismantled by a great team. Does it better, faster, cheaper, or whatever. But no sports property, no global sports property can get dismantled in a heartbeat. We now have about 500 million fans, a little over 500 million fans globally. If I left ONE and I said, “You have to now compete with ONE Championship.” ONE Championship's going to do about 40 billion organic video views this year. They have 500 million fans, they're in 190 countries broadcast live every single week. They have the best athletes across every single discipline.
Where do I begin? Do I fly it to Amazon and say, “Hey, it's Chatri, do you remember me?” Or do I go to our world champions and say, “Hey, your contract's going to end.” I would not be able to replicate this. Or at least, Tim, you'd have to give me — you and I would have to go raise $10 billion together, and you'd have to give me at least another 10 years to gather that many fans, to put out that many videos. We put out about 20,000 videos a year right now, all produced in-house. It's just this — and again, Douglas Leone just nailed it.
On one hand, Doug is this business model genius that's slicing and dicing. And on the other hand, Mike was slicing and dicing the human characteristics, if I was the right founder, if I was the right entrepreneur. Did I have the right skills? And he really narrowed it down to the number one skill for this thing to work is a founder whose greatest strength is to attract and retain resources. Or attract and retain talent, internal talent, the very best people, but the very best athletes, the very best governments, investors, and et cetera, et cetera.
Again, I didn't think of myself in that way, so it's very humbling to think of that. But in the end, Mike and Doug both, and I don't know how they saw it, are dead right. If you ask me, what is the necessary skill required? Even to this day it would be exactly what Mike said, and it's exactly what Doug said about the business. Yeah, in one hour — I don't know if they had prepared or planned, or I don't know, but they slice and dice. And again, two hours later, literally Shailendra calls me and says, “We want to cut you a check for 100 million.” And I think it was at about a billion dollar valuation around there.
Tim Ferriss: Did you give a presentation at the beginning of the breakfast, or was it just conversation?
Chatri Sityodtong: No. No, no. I just sat down and it was like breakfast with your uncles. It was so informal. It was so informal and so casual. And I had a presentation prepared, I had my laptop. But it ended up just being, “How do you like your eggs?” And da, da, da. And it was very —
Tim Ferriss: Flowed as a conversation.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously they're legends in the business and they've earned their reputation that way. And their experience base must be so vast in sussing out business models and founders, and entrepreneurs and whatnot, that they can — it's pattern recognition.
Tim Ferriss: They have a very well-developed water feel for these things. Was there anything that you learned in all of the hundred-plus prior pitch meetings that you brought to bear on that conversation in terms of knowing which points to hit? I imagine they also, by that point, were very much a warm audience in the sense that regional Sequoia had invested, they were probably pre-sold on the metrics, or their analysts or associates at Sequoia had combed over all the numbers and everything ahead of time. But was there anything, after all of your pitch meeting experiences, that you felt you brought to bear on that meeting?
Chatri Sityodtong: I remember that breakfast — I can remember it like yesterday. I just remember walking away feeling like everything was so laid back, almost disarming. I don't know, maybe their line of questioning or how they did it, it's just like, there was no gamesmanship, there was nothing. I was just, like, plump. Whatever they asked, the way they asked it, I felt comfortable enough to just give them the good, bad, and ugly of the business. And versus, in the earlier days, I might have tried to paint the most positive light possible.
I'm sure that if it was my very, very first time meeting Sequoia and I was that way, it may not have worked, but I just went with the flow. And I remember that morning I just went with the flow. And that's why after the breakfast I thought, man, there's going to be a lot more meetings, because there's no way they're just going to invest in it. And actually, they didn't tell me that this meeting was one and done. I had no expectation. They just said, “Hey, come to breakfast.” That was literally it. And they didn't tell me anything. And it was, again, two hours later that they called and said, “Hey, we want to put a hundred million in.” And I was shocked, but Doug and Mike only met me for one hour. But they're legends for a reason. I don't know. They're a lot smarter than I am. What do I know?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I think you know a thing or two, it would seem. Or you're doing a great job of faking it. Either way, it seems to be working out for you.
Chatri Sityodtong: I know a lot about martial arts, how about that? I know a lot about fighting. Doing it all the time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that's true. And I don't want you to over short sell yourself in some other departments. Let me ask you a little bit more about the business side.
Chatri Sityodtong: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: Whether it was before the Sequoia meeting or afterwards, what were the most important broadcaster/platform deals? Of course, I'm based in the US, so Amazon Prime leaps to my mind. But maybe that wasn't the most important. Because sometimes, as you know, to grease the path for all of your future larger customers, you need one marquee customer. And maybe the marquee customer was not in the US, it was somewhere else that de-risked the proposition for other folks like Amazon Prime. I have no idea. I'm just curious what some of the most important initial dominoes were in that broadcaster ecosystem, and how they happen.
Chatri Sityodtong: I don't know where I read this, but I read this saying of, “Go chase your dream and the path will appear.” Okay? “And the people will appear.” Something along that lines. I'm screwing up the quote. But when I started this thing, it is crazy how much luck. Again, just like that breakfast, I said, right? But around that same time a guy named Fabian Stechel from CAA. Which is — CAA's the second world's largest agency business. They do all the media rights for all the major sports properties. They have all the major Hollywood stars. And it's —
Tim Ferriss: A huge, huge talent agency.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah, exactly. Very powerful. But they do all the sports media rights, properties. Literally, in 2016, 2017, around that same time period, Fabian and I, we met over a video call because one of the divisions within CAA was looking at potentially investing in us. And Fabian and I just hit it off. And he's based in New York.
Tim Ferriss: What is his job, or what was his job there?
Chatri Sityodtong: He's still there. He's a very senior person. He's basically in charge of selling media rights for properties for the biggest sports properties. I think he did NASCAR. I forget which ones, but the very big ones, MLB, et cetera. And again, almost 10 years ago he spotted us and he saw — he was in this meeting where somebody wanted to invest. The investment arm of CAA was looking to invest at an early stage company like ours. And Fabian was from the media right side, and Fabian and I hit it off. And he actually was the one that helped orchestrate this Amazon deal.
But that's what I mean, Tim, along the way, so many incredible people appeared and just suddenly believed in what we were doing, believed that the world needed a major global sports property out of the continent of Asia. Because if you think about it, all the big sports properties around the world, global sports property only came from the West. We are literally the first and only global sports property coming out of the East, sending content around the world. I don't know. Maybe they saw the addressable market was huge. Maybe they saw the brand. It's hard for me to know exactly.
Tim Ferriss: How did you initially connect with, was it Fabian?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. CAA
Tim Ferriss: Did you just get a cold email?
Chatri Sityodtong: I might be getting the dates wrong, but I think when Sequoia announced they invested in us, that came with a lot of interest.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure.
Chatri Sityodtong: Mike Moritz, Douglas Leone investing in ONE. Again, CAA's division that invests contacted us and we did a call. But what transpired from there was a friendship with Fabian. And again, he was instrumental in helping us crack the US market. And CAA was also instrumental in getting us Sky Sports in the UK. That's the biggest sports broadcaster.
Tim Ferriss: Huge.
Chatri Sityodtong: It's the ESPN of whatever it is. Of the UK, of Europe. It's literally one thing after another. I'll give you a great example.
I am on this panel for Milken Institute. It's a conference, a business conference. I'm on this sports panel. And literally next to me is a name, now a very close brother, a friend named Hassan Al-Thawadi. Who at the time was chairman of FIFA Qatar, the World Cup of Qatar. And this was also eight years ago.
We're sitting on a panel, and then it's NBA, and then it's F1. And they just sat us next to each other. And Hassan turns to me and says, “Chatri, I want to meet you afterwards.” I say, “Oh, yeah, of course.” We had this meeting. And he's like, “Chatri, I've been doing Muay Thai for five years. I love Demetrious Johnson, I love Rodtang,” da, da, da. And we had this one hour pow-wow. And I'm thinking, this is the chairman of Qatar World Cup, which is going to be happening in, I don't know, four or five years from now. And he's like, “Chatri, hey, why don't you come to Qatar? I want to show you around.” Hassan.
And we became very fast friends, and I did fly. And I flew to Qatar for the first time during COVID, in 2020. Everything was shut down. I got some special visa to leave the country of Singapore and got some special visa to be allowed to enter Qatar. I go there. And now I've been to Qatar, and Qatar is literally a second home to me now. Qatar Investment Authority, the government of Qatar invested in ONE as a result of this. Me sitting in Milken next to Hassan Al-Thawadi. Who is literally like a brother now, we're very close. Who's a martial artist like you, Tim, okay?
Tim Ferriss: Timewise, just to put it on the timeline, was that after or before the Sequoia investment?
Chatri Sityodtong: That was after.
Tim Ferriss: After.
Chatri Sityodtong: Around the same time, maybe 2017, 2018. Sequoia was around 2017, so maybe a year after that. What happened was, after the word got out in Asia, but around the world that Mike and Doug personally — or GGF, it's called the Sequoia Global Growth Fund, which is managed by them, by Doug and Mike. Invested in ONE. That's when we got invited to speak at Milken, World Economic Forum. It just suddenly all the pieces started coming together. But at each of these things was somebody who loved martial arts or saw the purity of what it was doing and how different it was from anything else that existed on the planet.
Yeah, it was one thing after another. And again, when you open this talk you said, “Hey, I have this WhatsApp group with my buddies who are all — ” And your friend Doug introduced you to this one. That is literally how all the dots have connected, is somebody saw that — and then you said, “Chatri, I don't mean to offend you, but it reminds me of Pride in K1.” And of course I know your background, having lived in Japan. I'm sure we're going to end up training together. Just these weird things.
Tim Ferriss: Just go easy on my right elbow.
Chatri Sityodtong: The weirdest coincidences. I'm telling you, man. I really believe that sometimes when you chase a dream that's aligned fully with your passion and your purpose in life. My purpose, my mom told me from when I was five, that I'm here to help the world, or help people. And how do I help people today? You say, well, our athletes, we change our lives. And through the stories of our athletes, we inspire all of our fans to live their greatest life. Every week we give magical memories to families with their fathers and sons, or daughters, watching in front of the TV.
I'll give you something in Thailand, again, which you're very familiar with. In Thailand, ONE Championship is as big, if not bigger than NFL or NBA is in America. The number of fans have come up to me and said, “I spend time with my father more than I've ever spent because of ONE Championship. Because every Friday, as a family, we sit down in front of the TV and we watch ONE Championship.” Man, that is exactly how I got introduced to Muay Thai. My father took me to Lumpinee Stadium, which you have been, when I was nine years old. And despite all the — I had a complicated relationship with my father, didn't see him for decades. A lot of anger, a lot of hatred. But in the end, I'm full of gratitude for all the good he did for me. And without him, I would never have found my greatest love, which is martial arts, when I was nine years old.
And the fact that's my most poignant memory of my father, to this day. And that magical memory is happening all over the country of 70 million people in Thailand where I grew up. I just came back from Thailand and it still doesn't register. It's wild. I land in the country and it's like — imagine, Tim, if you had started NFL and it became popular in your lifetime, let's just say in America. And everyone knew Tim started NFL. It's like that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it's wild.
Chatri Sityodtong: It's the most surreal experience as a kid growing up in Thailand and to see what's happened now. But now I really do believe that my mom's words about helping others, somehow it all feels almost like destiny. My father named me Warrior. He took me to Muay Thai. I was so obsessed with it, and I'm still obsessed with it, that it became my life. And I could have had a very comfortable life in the investment world as a hedge fund manager or an entrepreneur in other business, or whatever. I could have done real estate or whatever. But somehow, it's the weirdest thing, I just feel like my destiny is to be here. Right here at this moment. And everything that came with it. And all the good, bad, and ugly that happened in my life somehow have led me to this moment.
Sorry to be a little bit cornball with you. I'm a very philosophical guy, I think deeply about the meaning of life. And I think deeply about, what is it that I want to do? What is it that I want to do, meaning that I don't own a lot of fast cars. I own a Toyota. I don't have any material desires.There's a G-SHOCK watch. I don't have many material things, almost nothing. And it's because I just learned a long time ago, being poor, that all that stuff is — attaching yourself to material things versus attaching yourself to a purpose, or meaning of life. I don't know, I found much more deeper fulfillment and happiness having found and aligned my passion, my purpose, than I ever did buying anything material.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Well, I also imagine, given your background and experiences, that attaching yourself to material goods or just subconsciously becoming attached to them as you accumulate them and value them more and more highly, feels like skating on very thin ice compared to purpose, which is much, much harder to take away. It just seems like psychologically it makes all the sense in the world.
And I'd love to ask, I have a lot of questions remaining. I am definitely going to ask you, I'll plant the seed about Renzo. I want to hear more about Renzo and his role in your life. Before we get to that though, I want to ask a few specific questions. You mentioned philosophy. I also recall the One Up On Wall Street, the Lynch book. And I'm wondering if there are any books that you have either reread quite a bit on your own or gifted to other people. And this comes to mind because you're attracting talent, you're cultivating talent and stakeholders. And I've been involved with quite a lot of companies since 2007/2008, and I remember visiting the Shopify offices for the first time because I was their first advisor in 2008 or '09. And —
Chatri Sityodtong: Crazy. What an incredible story.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, those guys are incredible. And they have, at least at the time that I visited, they had, for instance, Andy Grove, High Output Management, and a few other books that they would give to everyone when they became an employee. Or at least someone in a management position at Shopify. For all these reasons, I'm just curious if there are any books that stand out to you that you've reread or that you've gifted or recommended to other people?
Chatri Sityodtong: I don't have one book that I go to, but I would say a few books that I think are very interesting. One is a book that recently came out called 32 Principles, by a friend of mine, Rener Gracie. He's part of the Gracie family, the jiu-jitsu family. And the 32 Principles relates to jiu-jitsu, but it's a double meaning. Each principle is also relating to how to live life. And I found that to be a very powerful, almost like Bible of what martial arts has been for me, but also how I also have inherited from jiu-jitsu, doing it for about 20 years, and all the life lessons that applies. It's very simple things.
In jiu-jitsu, if you force something, it often doesn't come to you. If you align and connect and you go with the flow, you'll be able to catch that submission. You'll be able to choke someone out or get an armbar, whatever. But oftentimes when you go for something directly and you force it. It's a very good analogy for life. Certain things that — you can't force passion or purpose. It's either that's your true self or you're faking it. If you're faking to yourself, you only get so far and you're faking to the world. There are things like that, that I — that's one book that I would recommend anybody to read. Whether you do jiu-jitsu or not, there's a lot of powerful lessons in that. And, sorry, it's very martial arts because I'm always martial arts obsessed.
Another person that I think books — and there's a lot of books on Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is someone, and people may not truly understand. Bruce Lee, yes, he was a world-class martial artist, but he was a very deep person in how he thought about life and meaning of life. Reading his philosophies, reading his has always had a major impact. The Tao of Jeet Kune Do is his first martial arts book, but there's a lot of stuff on Bruce Lee about how he lived life and all that. And one quote that comes to mind is he said many years ago when he was alive, “Don't pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a hard one.” And the meaning of that, you're like, why would you want to do that? You pray for the strength for a hard one, because a hard life is often a meaningful life. Love, pain, suffering, because you're pursuing something, oftentimes bigger than yourself, that involves love, pain, and suffering, such that the path is going to be hard. Praying for an easy life means you wasted your potential as a human being, right? “I have an easy life.” Meaning, “I never was given a challenge. I was in the lap of luxury my whole life.” Or whatever it is. “I had food on my plate. I never went through any adversity.”
So Bruce Lee is someone I talk a lot about, I quote a lot. But I also look at even modern day heroes, including our athletes and their stories in terms of whenever we'll have a company meeting, we have — and it's completely unrelated to martial arts, but every month we have an award called Be Like Nick. It goes to the employees, our teammates, who go above and beyond the call of duty in their work and do the extraordinary. And we tell the story of it. And why is it called Be like Nick? Because it's about Nick Vujicic. So there's this motivational speaker who was born with no arms and no legs. I don't know if you know Nick Vujicic?
Tim Ferriss: I think I've shared his videos in my newsletter actually years ago..
Chatri Sityodtong: I think he's from Australia. He's born with no arms and legs, tried to commit suicide when he was nine by drowning himself in the bathtub, because he was endlessly bullied, and had no future, and his mom saved him. Incredible life story, and incredible optimism, and sense of if he can make it and become one of the world's greatest motivational speakers — he has a beautiful wife. I think he has three kids. Incredible life. And we started this Be Like Nick, several years ago, award. And, those are my tools for how to teach, because I just feel like sometimes for me as a leader, if you hand people books, they may or may not read them, but they may or may not be — that's not how they learn.
I find storytelling to be the most powerful way to live and exemplify the values of your company, of your organization by like Be Like Nick, these stories. Rather than say, “Everyone be good. Don't lie. Don't cheat.” Or whatever it is, the values, right? It's better to tell stories of real life heroes within your own company that exemplify your values, that exemplify what it means to do extraordinary things. And hence, Be Like Nick. And so, I know I'm not answering your question directly about books, there's so many books — so if you want to know about investing —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, bridging to the storytelling is great. I mean, I mean, it can be a physical book, but it's more a metaphor for teaching, right, in this particular case, learning/teaching. So I think the storytelling maps into that. Are there any people who you have looked up to or who you admire for their storytelling ability? It could be within the world of business. I remember one of my most nerve wracking interviews very, very early on that I had was with Ed Catmull, who at the time, was president of Pixar. And, he wrote a book called Creativity, Inc. And it talks about storytelling quite a lot. The reason that was so nerve wracking is the first person I did not know who I interviewed on the podcast, I was really, really nervous. But, are there any folks you look up to as storytellers in the way you describe it or otherwise?
Chatri Sityodtong: Outside of my family, my greatest role model is Kru Yodtong Senanan, who is the founder of Sityodtong Camp, Sityodtong Gym, which is where I cut my teeth from Muay Thai. He was a very philosophical man. And, he died penniless. But he didn't die penniless because he was materialistic, or he wasted money, or he was into gambling, or anything. No. He died penniless because all of his money, all the time every year was given to those less fortunate. His whole mission in life was when he built Sityodtong Gym. it was the number one in the entire world at one point in Muay Thai, producing the most number of world champions, the most fierce fighting gym in the world. And his whole philosophy was giving to orphans and underprivileged kids. And he wanted to share the art of Muay Thai. And he would fund their food, their education, and et cetera. And, a few years before he died, I think, five or six years before he died, he won 56 million baht, which is about almost two million in the lottery.
Tim Ferriss: In the lottery? Wow.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. And, the crazy thing, he got the money the next day literally, he announced in the media, “Anyone who wants me to give you money, just come to the gym, tell me your story, and I'll give you what I believe is appropriate.” And I'm not kidding, thousands of people showed up, thousands. And people would say, “My mom is dying of cancer.” And he would give $10,000, whatever. Until it was all gone. And this is a true story. You can even Google it and it's there. And, he was somebody, again, who had the most big impact in my life, and he was an incredible storyteller. He would tell us stories of legendary fighters, and why they became great, and how they lived their life. And he taught. He was someone who never smoked, never drank. And, he did a whole bunch of other tenets. And, to this day, his words are in my head, his lessons are in my head.
So a powerful storyteller for me is someone who tells a story, but embedded in it is a deep lesson, because that's how I think knowledge and experience gets passed on. So I don't have anybody in the modern era, I'm just thinking about who tells good stories. I mean, of course, I have friends who tell good stories, funny stories. But, there's nobody I look up to per se. But, storytelling is definitely a very big part of my leadership, as it is a very big part of the ONE Championship brand, in terms of if you look at our broadcasts on Amazon, you'll see these storytelling videos before they fight, right? Why are they fighting? What is at stake? Is it because their mom is dying of cancer? They've got to pay the hospital bills? Is it because they want to be the greatest in the world and the belt is everything they've ever dreamed of? What is at stake and what is the story?
Because that's what we believe. Okay? Yes, there's going to be a fantastic knockout, and you and your buddies will appreciate it, because it's martial arts at the highest levels.
By the way, Tim, we haven't announced it yet, but we have a major event in Tokyo later this year. We haven't announced it. So this is coming, but I won't give the date yet. But I would like to invite you as my personal guest to come to Tokyo, we sit cage-side together, okay? And Sayama-sensei will be there.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, man.
Chatri Sityodtong: Just because of your background. And I'm telling you that —
Tim Ferriss: Thank you. That's amazing.
Chatri Sityodtong: — when you sit down and watch all the videos, all the live stories, you'll walk away, Tim Ferriss, with a magical memory and some powerful lesson. And of course, you're in the incredible seat of meeting so many different incredible human beings, and you have extraordinary human beings for your whole career that it might not be that special. But I promise you, giving your background of loving Japan, speaking Japanese, loving martial arts, and being who you are, just you'll love sitting there. And then, I'll take you backstage, you'll see the speech, you go meet the guys. That, for me, is storytelling. You walk away with some powerful memories and lessons. And so I'm inviting you for real.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Yes. I would absolutely love to do that. So you can let me know the dates on the Bat phone.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, yes.
Tim Ferriss: And that sounds amazing. And, I think I actually bumped into Sayama Satoru once when I was 15 or 16, because I saved up all my money and went to one Shooto match. And then the announcers were like, “Sayama Satoru Tiger Mask.” And then he came out and did the whole thing. And I just remember being so in awe also of the guy's thighs, the size of his legs and his head kicks, just unbelievable. But, that sounds like an amazing experience. So thank you for the invitation. I would love to talk about that.
Tim Ferriss: So Chatri, I'd love to ask you just some real quick paint-by-the-numbers ONE questions.
Tim Ferriss: On a broadcast and online level, from a distribution perspective, what are your biggest countries?
Chatri Sityodtong: You mean in terms of viewership or in terms of revenue?
Tim Ferriss: In terms of viewership.
Chatri Sityodtong: In terms of the viewership? Well, obviously, the continent of Asia for us is quite large.
Tim Ferriss: If you thin slice it within Asia, are there — for instance, when I'm looking at the podcast, I can go into Spotify or whatever the platform analytics might be and say, “Okay, looks like within the US, these particular states or cities. Then you have this, this, this, this, this.”
Chatri Sityodtong: I think, yeah, so one way to think about it is when we throw events, and it doesn't matter what time of day we throw events, where do we trend around the world is also a very important metric we look at. Because, yeah, I can list our top 10 countries, but surprisingly, they don't always correlate. So for example, again, I'll give you an example. In March, when we were in Tokyo, it's Asia primetime show on a Sunday. We trended number two or three in America. America is not a large market for us, but we have a rabid fan base and a very growing fan base.
Chatri Sityodtong: And there's obviously a lot of local promotions in the US. But, for sure, Asia, countries like China, Japan, Thailand, these are obviously big countries, India. But, what I say to the team is, “Our 500 million fans are scattered all around the world.” So in any given one country it might be small, it may be a million fans. But in another country, if you think Thailand, definitely one of our top markets. 70 million people, population of 70 million people are fans. There's no question, right? So that might be one country that over indexes. But Philippines is the same way. Philippines, we're top two or top three sports property.
Tim Ferriss: I have an assistant in the Philippines who went to one of your shows live in Manila actually.
Chatri Sityodtong: And it depends on who's world champion at the time. So this is another funny thing is when we have a world champion for XYZ country — okay, I'll give you an example. Actually, it's on my Instagram. Although I'm not very social media — that's funny. As a social media expert, I'm not very social media active.
Tim Ferriss: Engaged.
Chatri Sityodtong: — yeah, engaged on my own personal ones, because I just find it to be very laborious and I'd rather focus on the business. But I do have one clip up there where when China won its first world champion, Tang Kai, the first MMA world champion, the CCTV 5, which is the central government of China, came out on TV, and online, and on print, “Jiayou,” which means “Yay.”
Tim Ferriss: Jiayou. Yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: China won its first world championship in ONE Championship. It was all over. He came back home and this is the clip to 10,000 people. The government threw a thing at 10,000 fans and they're all holding their phones. His welcome home was crazy. We did a billion organic video views on that single fight on his account, it's not that big, given that China is a billion three. But the point is that this blob of 500 million is growing. But what we have seen is that the pockets of popularity depends on who's the most popular world champions at the time, where are they fighting, what country? So recently, in Japan, our numbers just blew up, right, in March, as I mentioned, because of the Saitama event. But previously to that, it was Takeru had fought, but he blew up the — because he unfortunately got knocked out in the first round.
So I mean, the best way to think about it's a blob and the blob around the world ebbs and flows based on where the events are, what time zones, because sometimes, we have US primetime events, sometimes it's Asia primetime. And sometimes, we're in Denver. And sometimes, we're in Doha, Qatar. So I think that's the best way to describe it. But, every metric we look at — again, and it's depending on country. I think, that almost every country I look at, because I get these stats across the world, 2X, 3X, 4X, if it's 4X, obviously, usually a small base. These are the numbers. We have hockey stick charts almost every week. I don't know of a country that is down, just off the top of my head. Combat sports is growing so fast,
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally.
Chatri Sityodtong: That's a long-winded answer. I know. But, it's because I'm telling you, last year, a hundred percent it was Thailand, it was our number one. But this year, not necessarily. It depends on the year on what is popular. I know four years ago it was China, for sure, right? Or three years ago.
Tim Ferriss: A few follow up questions. Actually, a comment, then follow up questions. The comment is, and I started thinking this around 2020, 2021, during COVID, but particularly, I'm tracking and invest in some of these companies too, but I'm tracking AI development really, really closely. And, recently dealt with a deep fake video of me promoting stocks and some scam, which was 99 percent convincing. I mean, this is fake video, background, clothing, facial hair, everything except for a few glitches was convincing. And, I think as more and more CGI or AI is produced that, man, oh, man, one of the last places of refuge for pure authenticity is going to be live sports. So I'd be shocked if the growth doesn't continue and it might even accelerate, as people are looking for some oasis where they can separate fact from fiction.
Chatri Sityodtong: That's a very fascinating thing. I mean, I've had deep fake videos of me done as well. And, it's disturbing actually. I was in this big video, it was just last week, my social media team took it down, it was me promoting gambling. I don't gamble. But I think we're moving more and more into a world where you don't know what is the truth, what's real news and what's fake news. There's so much manipulation of the media. And then, on top of it, now you have AI. It's a scary world that we're going to be living in the next few years.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. It's pretty spooky. Let me follow up on the offices where you have important broadcast relationships, because I'd love to hear more about that, because I guess, as an outsider who knows nothing about the broadcast world, I think, well, once you sign the deal, or maybe if Fabian helps put together a deal and you agree on the X year term and when things are going to be broadcast, what is there to do with an office on the ground? I mean, is it just taking people out to nice lunches and making sure they're happy?
Chatri Sityodtong: So when we did our first broadcast deals many years ago, I thought that, “Oh, you just sign the contract and it's done.” But actually, what happens is, every broadcaster has tons of content. In Amazon's case, they have NFL, they have NASCAR, they have WNBA, and of course there's ONE. And, of course, there's a program in the programming schedule, but humans are humans. We have these teams, and I'll give a great example, like I said, our Japanese broadcaster, we have weekly meetings with cross-departmental, so programming, marketing, and sales, blah, blah, blah. Check-in every single week in Japan on ground. And it's to make sure that the broadcaster and the content is at the right hour, the right number of promos, the highlights. What else can we be doing to grow the viewership?
So actually, there's a lot of work that goes behind the scenes to make sure that it's a rating success and that it continues. The types of athletes. I'll give you an example. So our broadcast partner in Japan asked me to sign some Japanese superstars as an example. So having a deep and strong partnership is very important. But also, usually, we have a team, of course, with broadcast partnership, but we'll have a team of social media experts as well, and athlete ecosystem scouts. So there's three pillars that once you establish a very strong partnership with a broadcast partner, you have a broadcast team that manages everything from marketing, and sponsorship, sales, and promos, and highlights, and da, da, da, da, da, and different time slots, and shoulder content. And then, of course, you want to make sure you're blowing up social media, so that you're culturally relevant in that country with the athletes, and there's content you're always making, and of course, the athletes are competing. So you can also do that. And then, the third leg is obviously athlete ecosystem.
So I'd say, those are the three prongs, or three pillars, rather, that, whether it's China, or the US, or Japan, or Thailand, or whatever, or Philippines where we have folks, it's usually those three pillars that are at work.
Tim Ferriss: I'd love to just drop a quick comparison of, say, physical retailers, because I've been learning a lot more about this outside of books. I learned about it within the realm of books and book distribution, but have learned more and more about truly mass retail, which is, I mean, it's just wild how much of an impact mass retail has. Online, yes, Amazon is a big deal, but predominantly, physical retail is still just enormous.
Also, just for food security in the US, which is wild to think about. But the reason I'm bringing it up is that I'm wondering, and different broadcasters must vary widely. But, in the, say, retail space, you go into a large retailer in the US, it's like, okay, if you want an end cap, instead of placement down at the knee, then chances are you might have to pay for it. You want better placement, or you want them to sell internally to store managers or people who make buying decisions, well, you may have to pay for that, co-op advertising fees and so on. They're also going to want to know, in many cases, what you're doing to drive consumers to them as a retailer distributor. And I'm wondering if there are similar asks of ONE from broadcasters.
Chatri Sityodtong: In the media industry, you're either the it content or you're not. And if you look at the history of the 13 years of ONE, there were partnerships in the early days where I just had to give the content for free. I'm like, “Hey, here are the metrics on social, please put on TV.” And Asia at the time was predominantly still free to air TV. It slowly transitioned to digital. But the vast majority, I'd say, maybe two thirds of the continent is still free to air TV. But, as we became more and more popular and going to champion in China or wherever, and the popularity rises, then of course, the ecosystem, whether it's B2B, B2G, it all comes to coalesce.
Tim Ferriss: B2G, I haven't heard that before. What is that?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah, government.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, got it.
Chatri Sityodtong: Governments. Yeah, governments. Yeah. Because, just like F1, we're a traveling circus, and our events in different countries are funded by governments, because they want to attract the eyeballs and the tourism, right?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, interesting. Okay, so it's like hosting the world expo or something.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It's good for the local economy.
Chatri Sityodtong: A great example is Qatar. They did World Cup. And what was the after? Okay, so it's actually ONE Champion — F1, they have a few big global sports properties that the governments, the tourism bodies have funded, right? So we're different countries. So in Qatar's case, World Cup was their big bet in terms of introducing themselves to the world, but also, building economic and political bridges for Qatar's economic and political system. But also, again, an introduction, “Here's Qatar.” Right? What better way to do it than with the Qatar World Cup, where a few billion people watch. And, for the whole World Cup, it ended up being the best World Cup in history, right? In terms of the games and viewership or whatnot.
But how many CEOs flew in, and politicians? And how many deals were done? And it has been a major catalyst for Qatar's economy and political landscape. It just has. And, since then, there's been momentum been built with Qatar. Sports has that power, because sports properties, when done right, win the hearts and minds of an entire country, or entire region, or in Olympics case, the entire world, right? And, that is what I mean about you're either it or you're not. So some sports properties, and I don't want to name names, but they just are never going to be it, they're in a genre that the sport is a snooze fest, or the sport is long form, or it's just uncool or production value is bad, whatever it is, right?
Tim Ferriss: And not being the it thing means you don't have leverage.
Chatri Sityodtong: Correct.
Tim Ferriss: You're not in a good position.
Chatri Sityodtong: Right. And then, in the case of ONE, again, it's shades of gray, just as it is for NBA — NBA's very strong in America, very strong in Philippines. But Thailand, no one cares about basketball. So every global sports property has this shades of gray and zones where they're very, very popular and they're it. And you can command a very big price for media rights. So it's exactly like retail. If you have a hot it product that regularly sells out with a very, very fast inventory turns, the shelf space they're going to give you is premium. And, the retailer will obviously probably give you a rebate back, because it's such a great product. And, it pulls consumers into the stores.
Same thing. So a broadcaster will have 30 different types of programming, news, sports, this, that, da, da, da. But of course, the crown jewels is the ones that drive viewership, drive cultural relevance. These are the ones that broadcasters will pay premium dollars for, right? So it really, really depends on market by market, what the economics are. But, in the early days of ONE, literally, we gave the content for free to everybody. We just wanted to be on air. And then, they would be on air on a delayed basis at two in the morning, and we slowly would persuade them to do it at 11:00 p.m., and eventually live. And the numbers would blow up. And then, they're like, “Oh, this is a hit.” And then, they start investing in the property and then — yeah.
Tim Ferriss: How much funding have you guys raised at this point in total?
Chatri Sityodtong: We've raised a little over $600 million. But the beauty of the sports business, even NBA — NBA has about a thousand employees globally, total, full stop. It's a $70 billion property, because it's an asset-light business that's a platform business, that at the end of the day rests on the brand and the media rights, and of course, athletes. But, it's not like you have to build to scale globally. Okay? We're broadcasting 190 countries around the world every week, okay? Live. It's not like we have to build a factory in 190 countries. We don't need to raise $10 billion. We don't need 20,000 people.
I think, if I'm not mistaken, very mature sports properties might have 2,000 people maximum. A WWE I think has — that's not sports, but it's pseudo sports, it's about 2,000 employees. It's around there, and that's the beauty of this business. So $600 million is a lot of money. But it's not a lot of money when you think about the viewership that we have, how big we are, right? How popular we are in the world. When you think about our status as a top 10 global sports property. Yeah, I think that's also why people love software companies. Although I would argue that, for what Doug Leone was saying, sports properties are far more enduring than a typical SaaS company is or typical tech startup is.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, I've been involved with companies and seen companies that have raised multiple billions of dollars in their seed series or their series A, right? Yes, on one hand, you have the potential for 100X return or, if you're lucky, 1,000X return. That is possible, but also a few PhDs in a lab could design something that completely destroys that company. There's a certain rapid escape velocity that can be achieved if you're the one percent of the one percent, but very, very hard to defend, typically, to develop a moat. Whereas your business has been, on a lot of levels, a motherfucker to build, but once you've hit that critical mass, now you have a beautiful thing to defend.
Chatri Sityodtong: That's why I said it's less than one percent of one percent that I'm actually standing here with my team, that one actually survived the 13 years. The fact that our metrics just continue to explode is mind-boggling to me, but we've hit that point now. Any competitor to ONE would have to invest a minimum, minimum, I think of a few billion dollars and at least a decade to be able to catch up with us, but by then, our own metrics will be multiples of what it is today, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, If people are looking for business opportunities, they'll choose something else, rather than trying to scale Everest backwards.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yep.
Tim Ferriss: We didn't get to say much about Renzo Gracie, but I want to at least give a shout-out to Renzo, because I've only met him very briefly, but what a sweet guy. Also, an incredible technician and teacher. I still remember also some of his finishes from back in the day, like Oleg Taktarov. Oh, my God. From the back, heel to the face. Basically, keep up to run across the ring. It's just incredible.
Chatri Sityodtong: You're right, it's Oleg Taktarov. He was called the Russian Bear, was his nickname. Renzo was on his back and he was kicking, and then Oleg came in and then he got up-kicked, boom, he falls down. Renzo stands up and throws a right hook, and knocks him out. Well, I'll tell you. Renzo is someone who has had a profound influence. Not only did I train under the Renzo Gracie banner and he gave me my black belt, but we joke, “A brother from another mother.” We're always talking at different time zones, all hours of the night. I always say he is the candle that lights up all other candles around the world. The number of students like myself that he has all over the world that are carrying the torch of Renzo Gracie jiu-jitsu, but equally important, carrying his values as a human being of —
He's genuinely, genuinely the most generous person I've ever met, ever met in my whole life. Generous of his time, of his heart, of his — anything he can do. He's just genuinely, he and I have been close friends for 20 years plus now, or almost 20 years rather. Actually, he came to the very first ONE Championship show, that's how much — he flew from New York all the way here just to attend the first one. At that time, we were just a startup, a tiny little show, but that's the kind of guy he is. I don't know if you know. He had his last professional MMA fight in ONE Championship. He was 52 years old, came back and fought Pride legend Yuki Kondo in Philippines. 20,000 people see him, it was crazy, and he wins by the most unbelievable, beautiful submission. Then he's on his cornerman shoulders and he's out there, and the fans go crazy. That's Renzo.
He gave this incredible speech about age is just a number and, whatever you set your mind and your dreams are, go and live your dreams and have the guts to be who you really are. That's his last fight, and he gave that to me.
Tim Ferriss: Did not know that. That's incredible, wow.
Chatri Sityodtong: He gave that to me as a gift. I mean, I'm telling you. Of course, we paid him, but I'm saying he did not have to fight at 52 years old. He came, because I said, “Hey, Renzo, can you fight? I'd love you to have your last fight in ONE.” Again, he's 50, but — just epic. He's such a friend, and he did it because he wanted to help grow ONE Championship, he wanted to grow in popularity. He knew that if he fought in it, he'd bring the Gracie family name with it, and people would be intrigued about, “This is his last fight of his career.” It's a lot of epic stories. He was actually in Qatar in February at our show. He was in Abu Dhabi for something, but then he came over to Qatar. Yeah, he's given me so much about jiu-jitsu knowledge, but he's given much more about how to live life.
It goes back to what my mother said, “You have to help others,” and that's Renzo's to the core. Yes, he is legendary, he's in my opinion, the most complete Gracie out of the Gracie family. That's saying a lot, because there are a lot of monsters and killers from the Gracie family. Legendary life, legendary career. Left Brazil, nothing but the shirt on his back, came to America, went to New York City, got cheated by his first partner who took his passport. Incredible story. Now built the most successful jiu-jitsu academies in America. Fought in PRIDE, fought in ONE, fought in all the promotions, and what a life. What a life. People don't know this about him, he is the nicest, the most generous, the most loving human being, and that's why I said he's the candle that lights up the world.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, he's one of a kind. Deep bow to Renzo, and for people who want to look him up, Renzo, that is Brazilian Portuguese with an R. R-E-N-Z-O Gracie.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. I'm actually wearing his shirt to represent. Represent.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, I recognized it. If you could bring back in their prime a few fighters from the olden days, and these have to be professional competitors, so not Bruce Lee, but Sakuraba, fair game. Ernesto Hoost, fair game. You can pick from any time, really. Saenchai, whatever you want to pick, but if you were to bring people back in their prime to fight in ONE in any discipline who would you bring back?
Chatri Sityodtong: So for MMA, I would get a prime Fedor Emelianenko.
Tim Ferriss: Yes, The Emperor.
Chatri Sityodtong: I mean, he definitely has to go down as one of the greatest in history. I'd bring a prime Renzo Gracie, and maybe even against each other, because Renzo would often give 50 pounds of weight. He'd be fighting at 170 and his opponents would be at 220, but I would love to have Ramon Dekkers, who was —
Tim Ferriss: So good.
Chatri Sityodtong: Right.
Tim Ferriss: The rainbow shorts.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, yes. His left hook, he's one of the greatest —
Tim Ferriss: Sorry. I was thinking of a different Dutchman. No, I was thinking of a different guy. Ramon Dekkers.
Chatri Sityodtong: No, no. Rob Kaman, Rob Kaman, Rob Kaman.
Tim Ferriss: Rob Kaman is who I was thinking of.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, yes.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, Ramon Dekkers.
Chatri Sityodtong: Is in.
Tim Ferriss: What was it like? Seven or eight fights against Coban?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my God. You're crazy. Tim, I had no idea that you knew martial arts this deeply. It's a wonder that we have not met before. I'm telling you, I know everybody in martial arts. You know it cold, man. You're an expert, it's crazy. Yeah, so I would bring back the greats like Ramon Dekkers and Rob Kaman, who were the two first foreigners who came to Thailand. Went to Thailand, went to fight in the toughest arenas, and fought the best Thais in a time, this was when I was training, in the '80s and '90s where there were very few foreigners who could even hold a candle to an average Thai.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Chatri Sityodtong: Today, it's become a truly global sport. You have the likes of a Jonathan Haggerty or Liam Harrison from all over the world, the greats. Even now, there's a sensation in Japan, Nadaka, who's broken all records already at the latter weight divisions. He's a killer. He just joined ONE actually two days ago. I'd love to bring a prime Mike Tyson and a prime Muhammad Ali and do a boxing fight in ONE championship. That would've been unbelievable. I'd bring back a prime — who else? Wanderlei Silva was somebody who was an absolutely killer.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: The Axe Murderer.
Tim Ferriss: The Axe Murderer from back in the day.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. Rampage Jackson and Wanderlei Silva.
Tim Ferriss: I was just going to say Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.
Chatri Sityodtong: When they fought in Pride.
Tim Ferriss: In Pride, yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: That, to me, was one of the — I mean, these guys.
Tim Ferriss: The guard slams alone from Rampage Jackson.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God, come out with the chains. That was so fun.
Chatri Sityodtong: Even grappling, I want to do — one of the greatest of all time, arguably, is Marcelo Garcia.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. My friend co-founded the school with him in New York City, Josh Waitzkin.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. Marcelo signed to ONE, he had his debut in January. He wants to fight Tye Ruotolo, the current welterweight champion.
Tim Ferriss: Ruotolo brothers are nuts to watch.
Chatri Sityodtong: Which I'm really looking forward to.
Tim Ferriss: Nuts.
Chatri Sityodtong: Getting those two guys, Marcelo versus Tye I think would probably be the biggest —
Tim Ferriss: How old is Marcelo now?
Chatri Sityodtong: 41, around there.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: He's in prime, prime condition. Of course, the last couple of years, he was battling cancer, but he's cancer-free now, and that's why he wanted one last big run.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Chatri Sityodtong: If he wins the world title at ONE, he will retire as arguably the greatest of all time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Can I just say a quick thing about Marcelo?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: People can look up Marcelo, he's famous for the — I guess the Marcelotine, as he calls it. A variation of the guillotine where he levers up one of his arms on the shoulder of the person in his guard. Marcelo, number one, absolutely one of the sweetest human beings I've ever met in my life.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, yes.
Tim Ferriss: So soft-spoken and just a deeply, deeply kind human.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Secondly, as my friend described it, is able to turn himself on and off better than almost any athlete I've seen, where he would literally — they'd have to find him before his world championship bout, let's just say in a tournament or a finals match for the world championships, because he would be taking a nap under a bleacher, and they would be like, “Marcelo, you're up, you're up,” and he'd go, “Okay.” Wake up, shake his head, and then just go from zero to 10 and get out there. Similarly would compete against folks, and I guess this is true in like ADCC Absolute Division, and it's true in all Japan Judo Championships, but he'd compete against guys who are like 50, 80, 100 pounds heavier than he was.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Just incredible athlete.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah, yeah. Marcelo will be competing again in ONE later this year, but his debut was in January in Thailand, and he was very nervous backstage, because it was a huge production and obviously it was a major event he was fighting. He fought Imanari leg lock specialist from Japan, legendary leg lock specialist, and because Marcelo had not competed in 13 years, but also went through cancer the last few years, he didn't know how he was going to come back. He put on a flawless, unbelievable, just crushed Imanari, made him look, honestly, like a blue belt. That's no disrespect to Imanari. Imanari is a high-level, world-class black belt, unbelievable leg lock specialist, but Marcelo just — there are levels, right? Marcelo is just on another level. I do want to do Marcelo Garcia versus Tye Ruotolo. I think that will be the most watched jiu-jitsu match in history, because of the epic storylines, but people love seeing —
Tim Ferriss: So different, too.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Tim Ferriss: Couldn't be more different.
Chatri Sityodtong: Yeah. Man, this has been such a fun interview, because I've said a lot of things or told a lot of different stories just unexpectedly, because of the way the flow has been and, at the same time, had no idea how deep, deep you are. Obviously, I did my work on you and I knew you did martial arts, but I didn't know how deep, but that's crazy. It's crazy how much you know, and all the little nuances, too. I mean down to Renzo's up-kick on Oleg Taktarov. That event was called Extreme Fighting Championship or something like that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it was an oldie. This is way back in the day. This is way back in the day when I'd just come back from Japan. It's probably a few years after I came back from Japan. In Japan, I would always go to the bookstore after school, after judo practice, I did judo, and I would try to find Kakuto-Gi Tsushin, which was this magazine that was all martial arts, to see the latest K1 photos and so on to see what had happened. That's basically how I forced myself to learn to read, was judo textbooks and Kakuto-Gi Tsushin.
Chatri Sityodtong: Wow, wow. How long did you study? Because your accent is flawless. It's like literally a Japanese accent.
Tim Ferriss: I was there for 11 months. I studied for maybe five months before I got there and lived with a Japanese host family, went to a Japanese school, wore the seifuku uniform every day, and did basically next to no English for the entire almost year that I was there. Then I came back and I studied a bit more, went to Middlebury Language School, but really, it was that 11 months and just going a hundred percent [inaudible], like get the —
Chatri Sityodtong: Wow. Amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Get the kanji in a poster and it's like, “I don't care how tired you are, if your senpai made you drink or clean the judo floor until you were dizzy, you have to do 20 characters. It doesn't matter what condition — “
Chatri Sityodtong: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: — “you have to do 20 characters a day,” and that was the deal.
Chatri Sityodtong: Amazing.
Tim Ferriss: So people can find all things ONE Championship at onefc.com. Is that the best place to point people?
Chatri Sityodtong: Yes, yes.
Tim Ferriss: All right, great. Then for socials or anywhere in particular you'd like to point people just so they can see the master —
Chatri Sityodtong: Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, it's a hashtag, it's just ONE Championship on Instagram, Facebook, whatever, the usual. YouTube.
Tim Ferriss: Yep, the usual. All right, guys. Check it out, you won't be disappointed. The highlights are ridiculous, as are the stories and everything else that we've discussed. Very last question, if you could put anything on a billboard, could be anything, just to get a message out to, metaphorically speaking, many millions or billions of people, could be a quote, could be anything at all — I was thinking about the “Love, pain, suffering,” of course the Bruce Lee quote comes to mind, but it could be anything. Is there anything that you would put up?
Chatri Sityodtong: Suffering is a path to our greatness. I say this to all my friends and my relatives, and I truly believe this from the bottom of my heart, that suffering is the path to greatness. That oftentimes, God or the universe puts us on a path where, when we are going through it, we suffer, but in hindsight, when you look back on it, it's probably the most beautiful part of the journey. I'm sure, for example, Tim, when you were in Japan not being able to speak English, it was suffering for quite a bit until it became —
Tim Ferriss: Six of the 11 months were brutal, absolute brutality. Yeah, exactly.
Chatri Sityodtong: Suffering is the path to our greatness, because it brings out the best in us, and it's a hard thing to understand when you haven't suffered, but when you do suffer, be grateful for the suffering. That's what I always say to myself. When I'm suffering anything, it's because, as long as I have a very powerful reason or why, then you can almost suffer through anything. I think suffering is a path to greatness.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Excellent place to wrap up. Chatri, thank you so much for the time. This has been so much fun for me, I've really looked forward to this. Can't wait to get back in front of a screen or in front of an actual ring to engage with ONE. Let's definitely keep in touch, and I really appreciate you making the time today for a very, very wide-ranging and super rich conversation for me. I took a ton of notes, so I deeply appreciate it.
Chatri Sityodtong: Thank you so much too, Tim. I had a wonderful time, incredible questions, incredible conversation, and I look forward to seeing you in Japan together.
Tim Ferriss: I'll be there, I'll be there. For everybody listening, we'll link to everything in the show notes as usual at tim.blog/podcast. Just search “Chatri” or “ONE Championship” and it will pop right up. Until next time, remember, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. As always, thanks for tuning in.
