Jack Etienne, CEO y fundador de Cloud9, ha concedido una entrevista en dos partes a Slingshot en la que habla de muchísimos temas de la squad, desde su creación, a su experiencia previa en Crunchyroll, las inversiones de la NBA en la LCSNA, la organización en general, su experiencia como dueño de la squad, el futuro de los jugadores, los imports de Corea y muchos otros temas.
Resumen y traducción de lo mas interesante
¿Tu organización ha crecido mucho, que has aprendido en este tiempo?
La clave para hacerlo bien en esta industria es tener un buen staff, los jugadores, los sponsors y yo mismo dependemos de ello. He trabajado mucho en los últimos años para tener un staff muy fuerte a mi alrededor.
Con las inversiones de los equipos de la NBA en los esports, ¿crees que estas son diferentes de lo que intentas hacer con C9?
Si. Una de mis mayores preocupaciones es que los nuevos propietarios no entiendan lo delicado del ecosistema que se está construyendo, llega y se gastan un montón de dinero.
Hemos visto algunos casos de inversores que llegan y esperan resultados inmediatos, no los ven y se marchan enseguida, cada vez que esto pasa, hace daño al sistema. Así que espero que estos nuevos inversores esten aquí durante un largo período. Espero hacer esto el resto de mi vida, lo amo, lo haría aunque no me pagaran, asi que solo espero que los nuevos inversores tengan unas expectativas acordes con el ecosistema actual.
¿Dirías basandote en tu experiencia en Crunchyroll que la expansion de C9 era algo natural para ti?
Si, sabia que en cuanto entrara en C9 no era posible que solo en centrara en un juego, porque no había ninguna estabilidad en la LCS. Puedes terminar relegado, así que hasta que no haya mas estabilidad en los juegos con los que trabajo, tendré que expandirme y continuar asegurando la visibilidad de mis sponsors.
Cloud9 se ha convertido en una de las mayores marcas en los esports, y eso no es algo con lo que te sientas agusto en este momento, quieres crecer mas y convertirte en una empresa aún mayor. ¿Cuales son las metas que te has marcado como dueño de la marca?
Quiero hacer algunas cosas. Quiero llegar a un acuerdo con alguna universidad en el sur de California donde mis jugadores, si tienen tiempo, puedan estudiar. Eso es algo que quiero hacer el año que viene.
Reginald hizo un comentario en la Semana1 de la LCS entre los partidos de C9 y TSM, dijo que no le parecia que los dueños de las organizaciones que han importado talento de Corea o de cualquier otro sitio no sabian lo que estan haciendo en realidad, y que duda de la efectividad de estos imports. Obviamente, Reginald es un dueño veterano de la LCS, ¿cuales son tus pensamientos sobre este tema?
No puedo hablar por Regi o lo que intenta decir, pero si que se, que si importas, tienes que darlo todo en el import. No puedes simplemente traer a un tipo y esperar que funcione, tienes que entender la cultura a la que lo traes, estar seguro que comprende lo que estas haciendo. Si el jugador no habla el idioma nativamente, preparate para muchos problemas que vienen con ello. Se que TSM se ha esforzado en evitar el problema del idioma porque da problemas de comunicación. Yo hice lo contrario, lo di todo por el import, me lancé de cabeza, busqué el mejor traductor que pude y lo junté con los mejores coaches y busqué a los mejores jugadores sin importar la region. He tenido algunos problemas en el camino, pero es algo que creo que está funcionando muy bien.
Aquí teneis la entrevista completa:
Parte 1
As the founder and CEO of Cloud9, Jack Etienne has been one of the pioneers of North American esports for the last five years.
Cloud9 was founded in 2012 and has since been built into one of the most recognizable brands in esports. It started with League of Legends, and C9 has been a staple of the League Championship Series since its inception in 2013. But Etienne has built Cloud9 into a multi-title organization that has teams or players in nine different games.
As esports has grown significantly in the last year and a half, Etienne has continued to have a large role in the ecosystem. Slingshot’s Andrew Kim had the chance to sit down with Etienne during the LCS last month for an extensive conversation about building Cloud9, how esports has changed and what to expect in the future.
In Part 1 of the two-part interview, Etienne talks about how he started Cloud9, the important aspects of building an esports organization and what the industry was like when he first became a part of it. Make sure to check back Wednesday for Part 2.
Andrew Kim: Cloud9 is now considered one of the NA teams that has been in the LCS for a while and esports for a while. So my first question is how would you evaluate your growth as an organization? And what are some of the lessons you learned that have come through experience?
Jack Etienne: The key to doing well in this industry is having good staff with you. The players depend on it. My sponsors depend on it. I depend on it. Our partners like Riot depend on it. So I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of years trying to hire really strong staff to make sure that we’re well equipped to handle the needs of our players.
AK: You come from a background of being the VP of sales for Crunchyroll, marketing background. That’s kind of reflected with a couple of other owners as well who have jumped to the LCS. How do you find your experience in sales kind of traveled over when it comes to managing and owning an esports organization?
JE: So Day 1 with Cloud9, we’ve been pretty unique among most of the esports organizations in that we were profitable Day 1. I did this by knowing what my sponsors needed as far as packaging agreements I had with them to provide actual value that they could understand, and delivering on what I promised. I’ve done that from Day 1 with Cloud9, which is why I’ve had that consistency with the sponsors we’ve had. I think having that head start across the other esports organizations was really strong for us, and now we’re seeing that more guys with similar backgrounds to me are coming in. They are complementing my efforts, which is really good to see. Seeing other teams provide value to sponsors just makes the whole space healthier. So it’s a good change.
AK: From that standpoint, when you see a lot of investment from venture capital in teams, major NBA teams investing in esports and stuff like that, do you feel like those types of investments differ in the context of what you try to achieve with Cloud9?
JE: Yeah. One of the biggest concerns I do have is that the folks that are getting involved in esports now, they don’t understand that there is a delicate nature to the ecosystem that we have here. They have come in and spent a lot of money. There have a ben a few instances where they expected immediate returns, didn’t see it and have pulled out. Each time that happens, it does hurt the ecosystem. And so I hope with the new folks that are coming in, that they are here for the long haul. I expect to do this for the rest of my life. I love this. I would do it even if they didn’t pay me. And I just hope the new guys getting in aren’t expecting immediate results and are ready to do this for the long term.
AK: So if we want to take the conversation a little back in time, how was your foray into esports? How did it come to be? What was your journey or beginning interest in this industry?
JE: So I grew up playing video games and I helped run Guilds and World of Warcraft, which I spent far too many hours doing. So I was already very interested in competitive gaming, and when I was running Crunchyroll’s ad sales department, I was introduced to Andy Dinh (Reginald), who runs TSM. And I helped him make his business profitable through esports. That experience was a blast. I loved it. It was so much fun, working shoulder to shoulder with Andy and trying to figure out where this business was heading. Because it really was the Wild, Wild West. People say that all the time, but we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. It really was back then. How do we provide value to sponsors? Where is this going? There were no systems like LCS built yet. That experience was really fun, and when I saw the opportunity to build my own brand, Cloud9, I did it. I jumped for it. At some point, maybe a year or so after I started Cloud9, I realized I had to either chose Crunchyroll, which was a passion of mine as well, or Cloud9. And I chose to stick with Cloud9.
AK: Now that Cloud9 has expanded greatly — it’s not just an LCS team; you have multiple players and teams across different games — how does your experience change from managing a smaller group of people into this multi-team body?
JE: You can draw some parallels to my experiences at other companies. At Crunchyroll, I was like employee No. 7 or 8. There were like 10 folks around when I got there. And when I left Crunchyroll, we were around 120 to 150. It’s sometimes daunting having so many folks who are dependent on you. I still think of it as a small family and just trying to have a good relationship with all the players. I’ve done my best to try to move all my teams into, like the Santa Monica/West LA area, so I can have a personal relationship with the teams, because I think that’s really important. But we’ll see where it goes from here, but I’ve really enjoyed the process. I’ve been able to introduce, as we bring on new teams — specifically with Overwatch. A lot of these guys haven’t been on pro teams before, and they come to watch how the LCS team practices and how they interact with each other and how they review how they play. They walk away from it with a bunch of ideas as to how they can use some of the infrastructure we’ve already set up for the LCS and try to improve their practice environment. So there’s a lot of things they can learn from each other, and it’s been fun to be part of the process.
AK: Would you say that based on your experience from Crunchyroll that the expansion of Cloud9 came kind of natural to you?
JE: Yeah, I knew that as soon as I got into Cloud9 that there was no way I was going to stick with one game because there wasn’t any sort of stability built into LCS. You could be relegated, and it’s still that way. So until there’s more stability in the games that I’m working with, I have to expand and make sure I’ve got multiple games that I can point to to make sure my sponsorships are getting the visibility they need.
Parte 2
Andrew Kim: What is an aspect of being an owner of an esports team that a lot of people don’t really know about what it entails? But something you would hope fans had a better understanding of?
Jack Etienne: I think that the Reddit hive mind style of thinking is very dangerous. For every game that you see on stage, we’ve got dozens of games in between to draw information and conclusions on about certain players. It’s sometimes really hard if a player has one game on stage to see the entire community lash out against that player and not realize that the teams have a lot of time spent with that player and see a lot more than the fans do. It’d be nice if the fans would have a bit more faith in their team that we’re doing our best to do right by our team.
AK: You mentioned earlier that you were hoping a lot of new investments or investors would be a little more in it for the long haul. Obviously you have a very growth-centric idea on how esports works in terms of player investment and stuff like that. How do you make that kind of calculus in terms of who to bring in at what times and how much investment or time you have to give to a certain person in order for them to realize the type of potential that you’ve seen in them?
JE: That’s a super hard question because people are all different and there’s no formula that’s “Oh, I’ve got this formula. I’ll apply it to all situations.” And this is why it’s important for me to have a lot of interaction with the team, or staff that does. There’s so much to team chemistry that’s not formulaic. You have to understand the mentality of the player, what motivates him. How he interacts with his teammates. You have to design your system and redesign your system for every person in the organization because they’re all unique. They’re not the same. If you can get some formula down that you use for every team, you’re gonna be in trouble real quick.
AK: The nature of how you approach your team and business has been very hands on, clearly. But I’m sure there are frustrations that come with interacting with people who are much younger than you are and sometimes have egos, immature thoughts — as comes with the territory. What are some of the more frustrating things you’ve encountered, and how do you kind of deal with that element?
JE: I think the most important thing that we have to get across to our players is that looking good on stage is important, but it’s more important to make sure we’re good brand ambassadors for our sponsors. We need to take the time to thank them, make sure we get the visibility they require. Every single thing we do is going to be analyzed, reviewed upon as if it’s a pro or a con for our sponsors. So you constantly have to be thinking of when you’re out there making public statements, is this going to hurt my company? Or hinder our ability to have business? Or can we bring in more? I think it’s just the sponsors are our lifeblood, and it allows us to be able to give our players raises. It allows us to travel to events, and one thoughtless comment can actually remove an entire sponsor from our entire organization from one of our teams. And we’ve got like eight teams. So if one of my teams hurts one sponsor, it affects not just the five guys on his own team, not that one player. But it affects like 40 people. So I try to spend a lot of time with my players as I bring them on board to make sure they understand that they are representing all of Cloud9, not just themselves. And I hope that they respect that.
AK: Reginald made an interesting comment during Week 1 of the LCS between games in the match between Cloud9 and TSM. He said he didn’t feel like the owners of organizations who have imported talent from Korea or elsewhere don’t really know what they’re doing, and that he had doubts about the effectiveness of the imports. Obviously, Reginald is somebody who is a veteran owner when it comes to League of Legends. What are your thoughts on that sentiment?
JE: I can’t really speak for Regi or what he’s trying to say. But I do know that if you do import, you need to go all in. You can’t just bring on a dude and hope it’s gonna work. You need to understand the culture you’re bringing in, make sure the team has an understanding of what you’re doing. If the player doesn’t speak the language natively, be ready for a whole host of problems that are going to come along with it. I know that TSM has made a concerted effort to try to avoid any foreign language speakers because of the communication issues that are part of it. And I did the opposite. I just dove all in, and I found the best translator I could to work with them and the smartest coaches. And I found the best players regardless of their location. It’s had some stumbling blocks along the way, but I think we’ve got something that’s working really well.
AK: So Cloud9 has impressively crowned into one of the bigger brand in esports, and obviously this is not a point where you feel comfortable. You want to grow further and into an even larger enterprise. What are some of the goals that you have as an owner for Cloud9 that you want to reach?
JE: I want to, there’s a few things I want to do. I want to build some sort of partnership with a major university here in southern California where my players, if they have free time, can work toward a degree. So they don’t have to give up on any educational goals they may have. I think that it would be an exciting opportunity for some of their students to provide access to my team, and I think it would be really valuable for me. Sometimes when I’m talking to players and signing, and they’re in their teens, (I wish) I could tell their parents, “Hey, have your child get a GED, but while they’re with me, we’re gonna have them take classes at some major university that’s local here.” Should they not want to be a manager or coach or involved in esports later on, they’re gonna have other opportunities. That’s something I really wanna make happen in the next year.
AK: What’s something you find being the most enjoyable part of owning an esports organization?
JE: Today, we 2-0 against Immortals, and I’m sitting there listening to my team communicate because I can hear the in-game audio. To hear the entire team participating in that communication and really having a full grasp and confidence of the entire game of what they’re doing was just reflective of just the now year of work to try to make this team happy. Because we’ve gone through a lot of changes. And so, the countless hours that have gone into that, it’s exciting to really see it come to fruition.
AK: My last question for you is, what has been your biggest triumph so far?
JE: I’ve had a couple of moments that were really special for me. Winning IEM in San Jose with my LCS team, which is in my hometown area, with my dad in the audience was sure memorable. I’m never gonna forget it. Absolutely love that experience. Winning the ESL Pro League finals for Counter-Strike, one of the first large Counter-Strike events I attended. A North American team hadn’t won in nearly a decade or something like that. To be able to put that together was super exciting. Those events are super special, and they just stick with me. But on a daily basis, the management team with Danan and Reapered, Cain, Beth. I’ll give you a list of names. They’ve all made this happen with me. My wife, who’s also COO of the company. I’m super proud of what we’ve done. It’s amazing to think about.
