Min-Liang Tan, CEO of Razer | The Brave Ones

[Music] as a gamer we're always looking for that competitive edge now that we are we are one of the biggest brands in the world for for gaming can we be one of the biggest brands in the world or entertain what else is ahead of us it's it's like playing a computer game you never look back you when you're a character on the screen you're always moving forward you're always looking for the next challenge and we're always looking for the next bigger challenge we've got this massive ecosystem of hardware software and services that revolves around just one person ourselves the gamer for gamers by gamers that's our motto worldwide gaming market is over a hundred billion dollars gaming for a lot of people is an escape he's designing products that he feels like would benefit the gamer and they had built a lifestyle around gaming he's just written positive and he's always looking for the next deal the next challenge like any of a gamer child I was difficult I was always on the computer I would always be looking at ping computer games that any chance I got my parents are yelling at me stopping you know so much but I'm glad you know some things don't change I'm still playing computer games all the time [Music] he grew up together in the 1980s we shared many things together especially gaming this was something that really bonded us men has always been a gamer at heart ever since he was young he's always been addicted to gaming he was competitive focused as we talked it out over the computer actually it was our 286 computer back then and my parents are pretty strict on trying to control you know our usage of the computer but when they were out we with every switch it all will be playing and then we would know that my mom when she comes back home she would she would touch the side of the monitor and and and this isn't by the way exclusive to us it's a whole generation of gamers then suffered under the oppressive yoke of parents back in the day right we would get ice you know water and and cool it down so that you know there would be none the wiser when they touch them you know it's still cool they should be fine yeah you know we did a lot of that I think the entrepreneurial streak in men started extremely early even in high school during Valentine's they the school brought in you know a flower vendor I think that night before brought in a ton of roses and so those during Valentine's Day then he bought over the vendors flowers at a cheaper price and sold everything back to the school all over again I come from a pretty traditional Asian family and my mom would say you know okay guys you know I think you guys can either be a doctor or lawyer and you know I've got my sister was a doctor while her sister's a lawyer my brothers are a really well-respected clinician oncologist is super smart and and I didn't my law degree so two doctors two lawyers go figure right men took some very big risks and he specifically went against his parents wishes probably at the back of my mind I kind of realized that they might not be too happy when I when I changed my career he went into it first without first telling his parents and then he kind of mentioned it in passing they did not expect him to be an entrepreneur especially in a field that they saw as super risky super confusing not something that they can understand or relate to which is the world of gaming to do what he has done in the face especially of an environment like Singapore which is not what I would call tremendously well known for risk-taking and risk falling flat on his face many many times over I think that takes courage when the opportunity came about I said well life is short I love what I do but I think I'm gonna love gaming a little bit more I don't think was a huge sacrifice to him in fact I think it was his dream come true he could have had a very very comfortable life as a lawyer and he was a good one but this is certainly more exciting isn't it for us he started out with a simple gaming mouse how could we build a better Mouse or in this case the first gaming mouse in the world he reached out to me and he had this mouse for me to try and that was just I don't know the start I mean I was really impressed it started with a single gaming mouse that Razer had engineered to play to high-end and performance gamers one of the most important weapons in a in a gameis arsenal it's the is the mouse you know something as as banal or as a humble as a gaming mouse that's what we kind of conceived it to be we pinged our friends and said who wants one of these the world's first gaming mouse and we we went out there was probably one of the earliest forms of crowdsourcing it just took off the reason why it took off and it took off in such a strong way because gamers immediately realized how great this product was that really spawn of a whole era of gaming mice and then the gaming peripherals market men's innovations at Razer have really enabled PC gaming to take off in a perfect example that is the Boomslang mouse this is a mouse that was designed just for gamers and having a tool having an accessory that was designed just for them has really allowed PC gaming to be transformed men's influence can't be understated and that essentially what he's done is a reimagine a variety of different gaming accessories and peripherals for an entirely new generation bear in mind that when we first founded the company we thought we were just gonna come up with one product and we said well we're not making a product like anyone else it's not one of those geeky tech consumer products it's a product that we know is going to destroy the competition that was our our rallying call and we said what would you know what kind of name would it be that would destroy the competition or eat up all the competition and as a mouse is that what eats mice snakes so boom we started from there we used names of snakes for for our for our mice Diamondback Copperhead Mamba [Music] then we went on to keyboards and we said okay what are we gonna use for keyboards well you know when you're typing on a keyboard your your fingers look like like spiders so here tarantula we've had the Black Widow and stuff like that so you know it started off a bit like a joke but we've actually influenced the entire industry right now myself I have actually not really thought of that well you know a lot of people associate myself with triple headed snake icon that we have and you know to date that's probably that single icon that I've spent almost every waking hour of my life for the past couple of years the triple headed snake icon and I suppose that's what I associate myself closest to these forms it's become massive then it's become a huge spectator sport at the same time and other people of what we do great games it's a competitive sport and the numbers just keep going some of these gamers are playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars and it's amazing [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] International cranes in the US alone are a 30 and a half billion dollar game it has always been there you know anyone who likes an you know fun in their lives gaming has always been part of whether it's some traditional forms of gaming but interactive entertainment or digital entertainment that really kind of took it to the next level and today in recent times it's actually become a an actual sport eSports it's become massive and it's become a huge spectator sport at the same time when other people are watching you play games it's a competitive sport and the numbers just keep going this has become a new phenomenon where you know gamers train in excess of ten hours a day just to get to the top of the league to be world champions for a particular game that's being watched by millions of fans and gamers alike even the spectator community for gaming is almost as large as the spectator community for physical sports today just imagine you're a gamer and you're watching other people play games which is by the way a really popular thing right now there's something called twitch and you can get on and just it sounds kind of strange you don't play the game you watch other people play the game but twitches TV for gamers but usually you watch the best you know the best in the world and you know the best in the world are the eSports players some of these gamers are playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars and it's amazing that gaming has come to this level and that I don't know I just I never thought about this kind of stuff of course growing up is you know just playing these games but when you take a step back and look at it from a business standpoint it makes perfect sense you know there's like 2.1 billion gamers out there in the world at this point of time and that number just keeps growing year-on-year geographically it's grown you know back then it for gaming it used to be just the US Europe parts of Asia but China became this massive massive gaming market what's crazy is gaming has grown over the last 40 years from a cottage industry literally developed out of people's back bedrooms and garages into a 100 billion dollar plus behemoth that's bigger even than the movie industry they've really created an entire lifestyle out of this one brand that everybody can connect with the products that everybody uses and the just just a life the lifestyle that people live while using Razer products is just unbelievable it used to be the stereotype of the teenage boy living in his parents basement playing games all day eating Cheetos and and pretty much not taking care of ourselves but you know about half of the gamers out there today the female now over and above we've got game is getting older we've got game is getting younger because today gaming is really the singular form of entertainment that is the most accessible to everyone be it with us from a smartphone or a tablet or on a PC gaming is actually the easiest way to bring new technologies across to people people who are skeptical when you watch the razor phone because the market is so saturated right now and I know the pitch for razor has been this is a gaming phone so I think we've kind of forged ahead like what we've done with peripherals and what we've done with the gaming laptops and today I think we are the world's first and only gamer phone at this point of time and we'll probably see the entire industry on a smartphone side focusing on gamers pretty soon so we have right at the forefront min at Razer really has been on a buying spree buying an assortment of different companies a mobile gaming platform thx which is an audio technology company so it seems like he's trying to build something bigger far beyond gaming and I get goose pimples and I watched the THX deep mode sequence and when the opportunity came about for us to be able to acquire them it well it seemed like a very natural step for us to take for us to be able to bring together that whole entertainment spectrum from gaming from movies and the future music at the same time and you know it was a very quick decision on our part how man has gonna you know directed us to look at it really is that the opportunity is not about shipping that many titles shipping that many products is really about the number of gamers that we need to touch as a result of the opportunities are huge candidly I don't think we even had the thought that this would last anything beyond a single product you know you know the number one in the world in the u.s. European and China for all gaming peripherals at this point of time it wasn't obvious a decade ago how large this business would become either was going to be very successful or we're gonna crash and burn the key thing about men's success is he didn't just succeed in an established field already he really created an entirely new category an entirely new field we never had any you know proper market reports or studies because this entire industry has always been born out from the grass roots from the community from the moment we have found it you know I would hear people saying isn't gaming a niche everyone thought you know he's gonna fail no one's gonna buy his gaming minds $400 then he launches a keyboard for $200 and one thought he's crazy and they went to do his laptops it ended up to be I don't know two or three times more expensive than any other laptop in the market at the time but that did is basically broke the entire business model that companies were using in their laptop space [Music] if you've only seen his product and then you bet the guy you go oh of course you know what I mean it's like he's he's reflected in the product and then the other way around he pays a level of attention to detail that ensures the quality of the Razr products and this isn't just a product itself it's from the packaging to the to the user experience when he opens that box the one thing that that I've really been able to take from from practicing law cross to to running razor is really attention to detail I'm still amazed by detail that mean can spot on a product even if it's like a pre-production products I'm saying that even having like multiple designers looking at it working on the product him and he can immediately like after a few second is just going to oh this one is not right he can sometimes drive the organization crazy because he is such a perfectionist but this level of detail sometimes is required if you are trying to build not just the device but a brand in many ways razor is to gaming what Apple is to the telecom industry because what it's done very successfully is applied design thinking to completely reimagine the shape of both figuratively and literally some common gaming items peripherals and accessories the aesthetic in the tone that you feel when you when you pick up something for the first time and you open it up and you get it hooked up to your computer and the beautiful lights and the glitz and the glamour just everything that other peripheral companies don't offer razer goes above and beyond so much further into what gamers actually want and they've given us what we didn't even know we wanted until we had it important thing for a lot of these gamers especially the gamers that are competing at the highest levels gamers that want to you know make a living out of being a pro gamer you really have to rely on your tools of the trade so you might as well have the best products available the best keyboard the mouse arcade stick whatever it is you need to have the right tools to be able to take you to the next level or make you get you that big win you always knew having that extra position speed and control makes all the difference to gamers it's that edged between winning is a gamer and he will not push a product or a service that he himself wouldn't want as a gamer and that's very important to men everything can be designed well and if it cannot be designed well he will rather not do it every single thing has got to be executed to perfection that that every single last detail no matter whether somebody looks at it or or notices it or otherwise it's got to be done perfectly it's like in a game you lose concentration you you might lose your life and that is the same as we see it when we have events or when we launch a product it is very important that all details are in place maybe about 10 years ago we had an event or there's a slight problem our logo on the wall is just a couple degrees tilted to the side it's not quite straight where it needs to me so we sent an image a picture to to Ben and he basically told us if you can't fix it take the whole thing down how we're not gonna do it we constantly look for them for the next boss in there in the game or what's the next quest or what's the next thing you're supposed to find and and that's what we do it's like playing a computer game you never look back you when your character on the screen you know back in the 2d scrolling kind of games you're always moving forward you're always thinking about what do we want for ourselves what's the best that we want to have and you know I wish I could tell you more but I'll have to kill you that's the case somebody posted on my Facebook page yet you said myth what if I took to your face oh my I need to choose my face on himself it was pretty crazy you're not authentic this young audience they are ravenous they will sniff you out they understand fully who is here for the right reasons and who is not [Applause] so there are two companies in the world that people - two logos and themselves one of them is Apple about 20 years ago and there's us now we've got thousands of fans out there that the to the triple headed snake logos on themselves that's crazy right having tattoos on their bodies the craziest one so far was very recently when we announced the razor phone somebody posted on my Facebook page and he said men you know I can't get hold of one of your phones what if I tattoo your face on myself right and I said sure I thought he was kidding I said sure if you do that we'll give you a phone I need to choose my face on himself it was pretty crazy any time you're getting your name or your face tattooed on a fan you know you're doing something right it's pretty amazing to see him connect directly with the gamer you know he he hosts his own social network pages he does his own personal outreach and events and trade shows he's very much a common man - the gamer fika razor storm now read the storm what is the razor storm he's very charismatic he thinks like a gamer he talks like one he acts like one when he gets on that stage everybody loves him he knows how to turn the game is on [Music] every time you launch a store for example I'm there we've got thousands of gamers that will line up overnight I remember there was one store we open and I got word that we had 2,000 gamers lining up overnight just waiting for the opening of the store we went out we bought you know hundreds of pizzas it was awesome so we've still got these um what we like to call razor afks or away from keyboards to to meet up with the gamers and and chat with them you know that's what we do [Music] people have no Easter he's present he's very active in social media I don't even think he sleeps min is no Prince to get your outfit black t-shirt and jeans he has a big cult following this is a character a persona that people have become fascinated with and obsessed with we've got you know 8 million followers on Facebook we've got 3 million on on Twitter we're on Instagram I'm messaging them I'm chatting with them I get emails from him all the time where some fan writes to him about a problem he has with his mouse and we basically take care of it right away one of my fans actually he taught me I noticed a min you know there was a family in in Australia a burglar had broken into their home and I stolen all that razor gear that was prepared for their kid that they want to give for Christmas immediately I dropped a note to the team we know that the 23rd of December you know everything's kind of shut down in Australia but we would really like to send you know a set of gear to the kid right and boom you know we put everything together and I didn't really think much about it I just thought would be cool for another fan or you know you would do that for any member of our gaming community right and I'm glad we managed to save his Christmas in the competitive world of a gaming and business it's something that I find very admirable he wants to bring everyone together with him on a journey and I think that's something really it's very real about him that authenticity you just can't ignore it's infatuating I mean you just want to be a part of it because the leader of the entire company truly loves the products that he's creating if you're not authentic this young audience they are ravenous they will sniff you out they they understand fully who is here for the right reasons and who is not as you know gamers tend to be very flippant they tend to be very polarizing they can hit you for a moment and love you the next the gamers or fans believe that for life we're always going to be on the cutting edge of design the cutting edge of engineering and most importantly staying true to our mission of delivering the best experiences for the gamers out there and it's stressful you know for us to just constantly know that they're always watching and and always looking forward to the next greatest or the most kick-ass raise a product out there and we just have to always deliver he wakes up every single day wondering how someone else might be doing better and as long as you keep worrying about that I think you can keep driving this company forward anybody who really trusts their own instincts you know that takes a huge amount of bravery have an idea and then you put it out in the world and you really have no idea how people are gonna react I can't think of anything much scarier than that sometimes you think that the odds against the company are so overwhelming a lot of people would have just given up but he has always managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat in hindsight many would have called it a pipe dream but you know to him it was a mission that he wanted to achieve with with no compromise now everyone is a gamer men played a very important part in that we are just amazed by that he sees gaming growing in all sorts of different ways and becoming far more accessible to all segments the population being able to have the platform and opportunity and a brand like razor to be able to bring forth the vision that we have you know to millions of gamers out there and we've got this massive opportunity to be able to do that and it constantly pushes us it constantly tells us we've got to do better we've got to think bigger we've got to be able to to bring our vision to every single gamer out there despite his success he is still the same guy that I've known for the last 27 years he once told me he runs towards challenges you don't walk you run towards them and when everything is done and dusted he simply says well what's next and with gaming being the fastest-growing segment at this point of time of all entertainment it gives us this great opportunity to potentially be one of the biggest companies of all time and that's something that that inspires us it's something that pushes us constantly we are just barely getting started [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: CNBC International TV

Views: 155,552

Rating: 4.6473432 out of 5

Keywords: CNBC international, CNBC Life, CNBC, razer gaming, razer computer, razer fan, razer fanboy, razer fans, razer ceo, razer ceo interview, razer min liang tan, min liang tan interview, min liang tan razer, min-liang tan, min-liang tan interview, razer ipo, razer business plan, razer business future, razer founder, The Brave Ones, min liang tan story, min liang tan history, min liang tan business

Id: Yjv1jyHER20

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Mon May 28 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Very interesting video!

[u/zoglog]

FOR GAMERS BY GAMERS lulz