Matt Pohlson with Rory Sutherland and Elfried Samba on flatlining, £400M growth and £120M donated

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1:03All right. So this is an exciting episode for us. We like to talk about your company because we see it online all the time. I'm not going to do it. This is a spoiler alert for those that know a little bit about marketing that are on Instagram. But I want to give you the opportunity, Matt, to explain, to own your own narrative, introduce yourself to our audience, and then we can start to talk about the bottlenecks that you've been solving and working on across your career. My name is Matt Polson. I'm the founder and CEO of Omaze. Omaze offers the chance to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences in dream houses and also benefits charity.

1:45The origin of the story is I was a filmmaker before Omaze. My passion was using storytelling to inspire action, And I had done a bunch of big projects in that world. We were the first directors on this thing called Live Earth, which was the biggest concert ever thrown to raise awareness for climate change. It was on seven continents in one night. We had everybody from Beyonce to the Rolling Stones. We did a documentary series called Girl Rising that was funded by Oprah, Queen Rania of Jordan, Meryl Streep was the narrator about girls' education in the developing world. A bunch of big projects like that with Bono and Jay-Z and Bill Clinton, all that.

2:21and then realized we were creating a lot of awareness around those projects, but not a lot of impact. And I was endemic to the space. So I went to business school and tried to surround myself with people smarter than me. I had never even opened Excel before I got to Wharton. I was purely on the creative side. And then when I was in school, I went to this event that Magic Johnson, the basketball player, was hosting, where he was auctioning off the chance to play basketball with him and go to a Lakers game. But it was one of those things that was only available to the high net worth individuals sitting in the room, and we were in the room, but not high net worth individuals.

2:57We were the guys who get invited last minute, didn't come for the free drinks, you know. And so I'm sure you guys have been to a lot of these rubber chicken dinners before. And so we watched as the auction went up to$15 ,000, and Magic was our childhood hero, but we could not afford to participate. And so when we were driving home, we said, that makes no sense. Magic is fans around the world, not just in that room. This is 2011. Why is that a closed event? Why is it a closed event? Yeah, and social media was just starting to happen. Celebrities actually weren't really on social media then, but were like, they're going to be.

3:29And now they're going to be able to reach their fans in a whole new way. So if we make it so anybody can donate$10 for the chance to win, you could raise so much more money, so much more awareness, open up a whole new donor base. So that's how it started. And it's amazing because, so you started in the States. Yeah. And did you expand to the UK or are you based in the UK now? We are. We're only in the UK now. Well, UK and Germany now. We're no longer in the States. It's a crazy story how we moved from the US to UK, but basically I had a near-death experience. Wow. And flatlined for four and a half minutes.

4:02They brought me back to life. That changed the trajectory of the business and our strategy from celebrities to doing prizes. And then there's a whole story of how I went to the UK from that. Does that come from just like the working, being an entrepreneur, or is that just like unrelated and just like a life experience that's happened. Tell us a little bit. That was from, I was supposed to die when I was born. I was born with my stomach twisted. And the scar tissue from that surgery broke off 40 years later, created a bowel obstruction, led to this crazy series of events where I was flatlining in a hospital room, and my mom, who had gone down to get my brother and sister, had come up and heard of the loudspeaker code blue in room 437.

4:48My mom works in a hospital, so she knew that was my... She knew that meant flatline. Wow. And she knew that was my room, so she ran down the hall. She got to the door, and the nurse said, I'm sorry, you can't come in. This is really serious. And she said, look, I was there when he came in this world. If he's leaving this world right now, I'm going to be in that room. So they let her in the room, and I was flatlined on a table like this one in front of us, and they were doing the paddles, the defibrillator. and uh and i've always thought that could be a prize by the way the chance to operate a defibrillator just to say so you know just one city of life the ability to go stand okay okay i don't know i wouldn't want to do it repeatedly sorry that is a terrible suggestion i know you meant to receive the defibrillator like to get the full shot My emotions is in a completely different space.

5:40Yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry. That is hilarious. Welcome to the Bottle Note podcast, everybody. One of those things that everybody should do once. I've always thought that you shouldn't have tube train drivers because everybody would love to drive a tube train for a day, wouldn't they? Okay? So you could actually just make that an auctioned-off prize, drive a tube train for a day. Eventually, you could get rid of... I think there would be safety implications and training implications. Yes, of course. Yeah.

6:08What do you mean? Everyone could be a pilot for a day. Oh, God. Oh, just the emotional rollercoaster that I've just gotten through. Sorry. Sorry. That was extreme later. Come on. That is... Oh, my God. That's funny. I did not... Even I didn't see that coming. Sorry, I don't want to die. Yeah. But everybody who's watched ER has a small fantasy about operating those panels. Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah. Where did he pick up? Sorry, sorry, sorry. Anyway, on to the near-death experience. Anyway, so basically, my mom basically saved me is what happened. She saw me with the defibrillator, the prize, and she said, can I do this?

6:55But she started to crumble, and then basically she looked outside, and she saw all these nurses and staff members and doctors had gravitated outside the window of the ICU. And there was like 40 of them just looking in, sending this positive energy to her son, like sending love to the son that they didn't even know. And she was so moved by these people that it was like a spiritual transformation for her. And she, instead of starting to crumble, she gathered her strength and she just started like basically talking shit to me. It was like Matthew David Polson, these people are fighting to save your life.

7:34They're fighting so hard to bring you back, and you're not fighting hard enough. And basically, because she fought, they kept fighting. And I flatlined for four and a half minutes, but I don't usually go that long. But because she had fought, they kept fighting. And then at one point, basically, the main doctor kind of shook his head to say, this is done, this has gone on too long. And my mom grabbed him and said, please don't call it yet. And then he turned back, and he said, wait a second. And then they said they saw something they'd never seen before in a hospital. Instead of the flatline just going along and then like maybe ticking up, it was just going along and all of a sudden I just popped up.

8:06Oh. Yeah. And I kind of gave like, like I remember looking and seeing all the people looking for the window and then I saw my mom and I kind of gave a thumbs up. Oh, wow. Yeah. But that changed. And they were presumably worried there'd been lasting damage. Yeah, I was supposed to. Yeah. When I left the hospital, the doctor was like, when I finished my career 30 years from now and I'm talking about the most extraordinary case I've ever seen. Yeah. this is going to be it. We thought we had you had 0 % chance of survival. And so the fact we have you going home with full faculties, we have no medical explanation.

8:36Oh, God. So that changed. After that, it woke me up to a lot of things. And that's when the business changed. Okay. So, so Omaze had already started, but it was in the US. It was in the US, just doing celebrities. Okay. And then you decided to change and go to the UK. Because usually the reason I ask is I speak to so many entrepreneurs and everyone's leaving the UK and Europe and wanting to go to the US and wanting to go to different spaces, right? So I'm very curious because you don't often see people going from that side of the world coming to this side. So that's why I also wanted to, obviously, the near-death experience and the business changing.

9:15So it will be really interesting to understand, obviously from a personal perspective, but also from a business side, why you felt that it was the right move. Yeah, it was a very unpopular decision. It was really simple though, actually. We had done just celebrity experiences until that point. Stuff like riding a tank with Arnold Schwarzenegger and crush things or win a Lamborghini where Pope Francis hands you the keys. Like crazy stuff. We're going to get into that. So we had just done that stuff. And then after the experience, I was like, we're never going to be truly world changing if we only do celebrity experiences.

9:48And you just become hyper aware of how short your time is. It's finite supply and yeah, exactly. Yeah, and stepping, I was out of the business for multiple months as I was recovering, you know? And so you just, you get perspective you didn't have otherwise. Like when you're in a day in, day out, it's really hard to step back and say, hey, this might not work long enough over time. And so, and we had done a campaign with Daniel Craig, where you got to go to New York, you got to go to the Aston Martin track, you got to ride around in a one of a kind Aston Martin, and then you got to keep the Aston Martin.

10:16And that was the first prize we had done. Well, basically Mr. Beast before Mr. Beast. Yeah, but he - That's a brilliant, that's a brilliant, Yeah, he's... Without the storytelling. It is an extraordinarily interesting question, isn't it? The whole Mr. Beast, in other words, amazing things that now scale. It is an extraordinary idea. That's brilliant insight. They always say that the reason why Mr. Beast does very well, or the brands that do the best are those that do what people believe the government should be doing. so it's like oh wow so so actually a sound strategy is for the community that i want to serve what does everybody expect the government to do and why don't we do it as a brand right and then that's how you actually get people to to to galvanize and come around the brand because they're doing things that the the the powers that be should be doing so what is he doing that the government should be so basically like going to africa and building schools and building well so everyone's like well the world leader should be doing this yes and Mr.

11:17Beast, the YouTuber, is doing it. And that's the aha moment. You could have predicted, couldn't you, as a good economist, that there would be a Mr. Beast. In other words, it's a winner-takes-all idea to some extent, isn't it? Because the person with the most money can do the most remarkable things, which will attract the largest audience. And so you could have effectively predicted the emergence of Mr. Beast. There's a really interesting idea, by the way, which is invented by an economist called Matt Tabarrok, which is, it's called a dominant assurance contract. And it's a way of getting people to effectively engage in communal activities without a free rider problem.

12:00The idea would be if you had a community which wanted a footbridge across the local motorway, okay, the problem would be that you could ask everybody to donate five pounds to the footbridge. But then, of course, there'd be free riders, people who wouldn't give five pounds because they were relying on everybody else to pay for the footbridge. And the dominant assurance contract works, which I think is that an entrepreneur commits to build the footbridge, then sets out to raise money from lots of individuals. And the deal is, they have the risk, which is if it's underfunded, they take the loss. If it's overfunded, they keep the game.

12:37And it's actually a very interesting solution to kind of coordination problems. I always thought it's an idea that, in a sense, it was made for the internet, in a way. And so, I mean, there's an interesting possibility that you could extend a maze to community projects. Oh, we're doing it. You're doing it. We're building a full hospital wing at Great Ormond Street Hospital right down the street. Whoa! Yeah, yeah. Oh, this is incredible. Yeah, we fund the London Air Ambulances, those helicopters like we fund we fund those yeah um but here's the thing to the mr beast effect is he's just the one that story told it the best well i think so we it's actually it's painful to listen to as you guys are saying because it's probably true because we know he came after us and we know we saw like footage of him with like omaze stuff on their like vision boards and stuff but he did a better job of storytelling it and maybe mr beast is a better brand or whatever it Like he's, what he's built that into is, is probably a space where we probably could have gone, you know, it's a good lesson to learn.

13:36But you can still do it. Oh yeah, absolutely. Like Steve Jobs always says, there's no one more powerful than a storyteller, right? Yes. And the funny thing is, there's a lot of organizations that do a lot of things, but how you storytell in a way that people actually can grasp on to understand and actually see the value that you're providing. I always tell people, whenever you're doing something, yes, you should do the right thing, but you should also think, okay, how do people that are not involved in this thing find out about the good work that we're doing so that it creates that compound effect that other people want to do it too?

14:08That's what Mr. Beast does. So I know that a lot of people are talking about creators and the fact that actually if you do care about the good, then you're not going to tell everybody. But actually, how do you encourage more people to do the same thing, right? So by them having... And I know you talked about the fact that initially people want the house, but then the fact that they're also doing good is also a great thing. Right. Early birds always rise to the occasion for summer vacation planning because early gets you closer to the action. So don't be late. Book your next vacation early on Vrbo and save over$120.

14:40Rise and shine. Average savings$141. Select homes only. We teach storytelling classes to everybody at Omaze, even accountants. Like everyone has to take a full half day storytelling. Interesting. Very, very shrewd. Yeah. Because storytelling is the most powerful, probably the most underrated skill in entrepreneurship. Right? Because it's not just marketing. It's not just product. It's also fundraising. It's setting a vision. It's hiring. And if you think about it, really all social change starts with a story. Just even what's amazing next year is just a story. Because it's a projection forward of a new possibility.

15:18Absolutely. I've always wondered whether the United States just seems to have an advantage in it, in that if you watch, for example, whether it's The Apprentice or Shark Tank or, you know, Dragon's Den, as we call it here, one of the most painful things in the UK variant sometimes is people who patently have a very good idea but have no clue how to wrap it up in a story. And there are various debates about why that is. Is it because American schools have show and tell that, you know, from quite a young age, you're encouraged to basically stand up and give an account of something? We've always debated that.

15:55Well, I mean, I would say the UK like punches way above its weight class in terms of like creative output, storytelling, writing. But in America, you are taught believing that transformation is possible. Yes. Right. And it has geographic advantages in that. Right. It was founded by people that transformed their lives. Of course, you have to be an insane optimist to make that journey in the first place. But we're also like, we are, you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. It's this individual expression of change. This is really... Sometimes I think it's unkind in the sense that, well, no, the narrative that you are the author of your own success and anybody can be anything is, I think, a deeply unkind narrative to people who are unlucky.

16:38Yes. On the other hand, it has net positive effects, I think, because the percentage of people who at least try is that little bit higher. Yeah, I think it is definitely net positive economic effects. I don't know if it has net positive overall societal happiness. Interesting question. Which is because being here has changed my perspective on that a little bit. You know, because like, I mean, community, at the end of the day, what really brings happiness to joy is a sense of connection. We all want to feel a sense of belonging. In America, though, you work so hard to belong by being better than everyone else.

17:09Yeah. I always talk about, like, if you confuse, like, if you have to boil it down, I think audacity is a word that you can... To have the audacity to dream and believe that you can be something bigger than yourself. And I always say that if you confuse American audacity or American pace with European taste, right? I always say that that fusion works really great Because I think that a lot of the times when I speak to my friends that are in the UK, in France, they know everything. Like, you can speak to them about what's happening in crypto, what's happening in the stock market. They know it theoretically.

17:47Yes. But then you ask them, have you done something with that? And a lot of the times they're like, no, they don't want to take the risk. Whereas I have my American friends that'll be like, oh, I heard about this thing. I'm going to try it. Right? I'm going to try it. So if you have the ability to - Yeah. Well, I think that's where the length of history isn't on their side. Yeah. You know, because they build up a series of patterns in a historical context where they like just think, oh, I can't do that or I can't rise up this class system. Our ignorance is a little bit helpful in America, you know.

18:16But also like the end of the day, geography is really powerful. And like we are the land of milk and honey with like 10x more navigable waterways than any other country, which like is 90 % less effective or is more cost effective. So you have like some also systemic things in there that make this mindset a little easier. Yeah. You know, Australia is the same size country, but in order to survive in that country, you have to work with your neighbor to do it. It's not the land of milk and honey, right? So you can't just be this entrepreneurial person going out to create your fortune to the West because you're going to die on the way.

18:46Where in the US, you can. So there's some of that that perpetuates it a little bit too. So you talked about the fact that it was an unpopular decision coming over. So walk us through that. So you come from the land of milk and honey, right? And you decided to come to the UK. And so how was that? Like, why did it make business sense to you? Because I know that a lot of the times in the entrepreneurial space, everyone has an opinion, but when you have the conviction, when you see something, you know that's the right move to take. So what is the thing that you saw that made you want to make the move beyond the life experience change?

19:27It was really purely business oriented. What happened was after I came back from the near-death experience, we did the Daniel Craig thing. We said, okay, let's start doing prizes that we control rather than relying on talent. And so we started doing holidays, and those worked well, and that kind of flywheeled. And then we started doing cars, and that worked well. And we said, okay, you know where it's really at is houses. A car changes someone's lifestyle. A house changes someone's life. and it's all of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in one image, right? Safety, security, status, relationships, self-realization.

20:01And so we said that we can get the transformation of like what a lottery does, but with the storytelling and impact and like sense of like beauty that you didn't have and that hadn't been done. And we launched that in the UK because it was a smaller country, less expensive houses. We thought all the houses would be more relevant to people. We weren't sure how to do it regionally in the US. And we had a good business going with the celebrities and the cars, and we didn't want to kind of mess that up. So we said if it's just houses in the UK, a subscription, that could be really powerful. And then we launched it here while we were still in the US, and it just like took off.

20:35I mean, it was like a rocket. And, you know, like similar to Netflix or Airbnb or Amazon even in their early years. It was really, really fast growth. And it was so extraordinary, they were like, okay, we should just be doing houses. Like we had 25 people doing it here, and 200 people in the US doing the other thing, and they're about the same sales run rate after like 18 months. Wow. Yeah, it was crazy. And so I was like, okay, clearly, we should just be doing houses. And then the question was, all right, should we be doing that in both markets, or just focus on the UK? And everyone's like, you obviously do it in both markets, do it in the US.

21:08But what they underestimated, I thought, was two. One is just like, we have to buy eight houses out in front in order to do a house every single month, and we have to build and design those, So it's a lot of capital. We had probably like just enough to do in both markets. But what doesn't show up on the spreadsheets is the emotional cost that we would have to go from 200 people down to 20 people in the U.S. There was no reason to have so many more people doing this thing that didn't require the same amount. And the emotional toll of all these amazing people that have been together for a decade and then just thinking, oh, you know, our investors like just take the best 20 people and restart it.

21:44And it's like that's not how people work. No. And like that's, you know, so a fresh start, plus like focus is the price of greatness. And if we focus on this market and we get this big, then we can come back to the US much stronger. So that was the decision I made. And I was very, like, I was heavily criticized for it, for the reasons you discussed in the board thought, like that's crazy, you're leaving the biggest market to go to that market. But that was, you know, that was the decision we made. So much so that I thought that Omaze was a British brand. Yeah. I understand. In some ways, it is now.

22:16Like, you know, a brand is just an expression of your culture, right? The culture is just an expression of what people do on day in, day out. And the majority of people that work at the company are now British. So, like, it's kind of a global brand. So, there is an interesting question about an idea, which is to what extent does it scale? I mean, I've always thought that to some extent, U.S. lotteries are slightly insane because the amount you win, you know, And some of those very large lotteries is so insanely disproportionate. OK, so winning a house seems to be about right in terms of changing someone's life.

22:51Yeah, absolutely. Permanently. One hopes for the better, although you can never predict for those wins. Winning$200 million when you've been living in a trailer park strikes me as actually something which is, you know, almost problematic. But also in terms of the geography, I can see a maze working really well in smaller countries. You know, it could work in Ireland, it could work in Denmark, I think. Maybe in the US, if you live in New York, winning a house in Arizona. Yeah, we would do it regionally in the US. You did do it regionally. We would go forward. You would do it regionally, yeah. Yeah, but your point around the jackpot's really interesting, because people can't really conceptualize 200 million.

23:31No. Right? Like, that's kind of why this works. If you think about, like, if you were driving home on the A40 and you saw an advertisement for a lottery for 8 million pounds, it's probably just a billboard that just said 8 million pounds, you probably wouldn't catch your attention because you've seen the Euro millions for 100 million or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you see an 8 million pound house in Cornwall, that would capture your attention. Yeah, absolutely. Right? Because when you think about winning the lottery, what's the first thing that you dream about? Buying a house. Buying a house.

24:01Yeah. So you're kind of shortcutting that. you're taking all the calories out of the processing for people. And then that's why it has the same emotion of the big cash without all the fixed costs of doing that. And did you guys just go straight into it? You bought the eight houses or did you test one first? Like when you did make the step into the UK market and go into housing, because as you mentioned, it's a massive investment up front, right? Did you just go and make the bet and say, or did you guys do some research on like, What did people actually need going back to the monetary economy? So what made you take that first step?