This post is based on our podcast episode with Jacob and Victor Eriksson, the founders of Boxbollen. You can watch the entire conversation here.

1. Strategic celebrity partnerships and personal hustle

Boxbollen’s growth was significantly driven by partnerships with top-tier celebrities, which they secured through direct negotiations and personal hustle. The founders personally traveled and shot content with celebrities like Conor McGregor, Tom Brady, and Khloe Kardashian. This hands-on approach not only enhanced brand credibility but also helped them establish a direct relationship with these celebrities, showcasing the founders’ genuine commitment and passion for their product.

2. Focusing on profitability

Despite their rapid growth, the founders of Boxbollen maintained a strict focus on profitability. They aimed to ensure that every order was GM3 positive, meaning that they avoided scaling at the cost of profitability. This approach allowed them to grow sustainably and retain control over their business decisions, unlike many startups that prioritize growth over profitability.

3. Running a small team

A remarkable aspect of Boxbollen’s success is their ability to achieve monumental growth with a very lean team. Despite their substantial revenue and global reach, the company operates with a surprisingly small and efficient team. This lean approach is not just about cost-saving; it reflects their strategy of focusing on high-leverage activities and ensuring that each team member is a high performer. By keeping the team compact, Boxbollen maintains agility and ensures that each member can contribute significantly to the company’s goals. This streamlined structure allows them to make swift decisions, remain adaptable, and sustain the rapid growth and scalability that they have achieved. Their strategy exemplifies how a focused, skilled team can drive substantial business success without the traditional expansion of workforce size.

Watch episode: How Boxbollen became a global sensation

How Boxbollen became a global sensation – Youtube transcript

[Music] the growth pod is brought to you by Genero a leading growth agency in the nordics we interview marketing experts Business Leaders and entrepreneurs to uncover the stories and strategies behind profitable growth book b and is one of the most interesting DTC brands in the nordics in Just 2 years they grew Revenue almost tfold to $30 million last year they worked with some of the biggest celebrities in the world including people like Tom Brady Conor McGregor and Khloe Kardashian and they did all of this without raising any equity and with a team of just a handful of people please enjoy this conversation with Jacob and Victor Eriksson the founders of Boxbollen.

This is this is the first in our podcast this is the the first time that we have two guests and uh brother brothers nonetheless that’s that’s pretty special is this box balling is that your first Venture that you guys have worked on together or have you had previous projects yes it’s the first what’s the benefit of um I I have two brothers and i’ I’ve worked with both of them as well so from your perspective what are the benefits and are there potentially any kind of drawbacks from for working with uh with family working with with Brothers I think for me at least H it’s the Deep trust that you get you know that you have someone you know taking your back uh you can take you know if something bad happens you are together if something good happens you celebrate together so I think that you have someone that you can trust is is number one for me at least yeah I think that’s so key and it’s so hard to find right it’s so hard to find someone who doesn’t only have like complimentary skill sets but also where you have that trust because it takes so much time to build um so it’s a real it’s a huge competitive Advantage if if you have it and can sustain it and you guys have had a lot to celebrate together I’m sure um so let’s let’s get into that but before we start with Boxbollen I’d be interested just to learn about kind of some background before that everything that led up to that uh for instance you started your first business at uh 19.

It was at Ad Agency I believe so yeah wow you have uh you have Googled around got to do the research so what L you 19 is a very young age to start a business um what kind of made you want to choose the path of Entrepreneurship I think I started very young doing projects online um you know logos and websites and and and I got used to I was thinking maybe I was like 14 15 and I got used to you know doing something getting paid doing something getting paid and and being more like you know task focused instead of getting a job then went to the US uh and while I was studying uh in in college I also did freelance stuff on the side all the time and then a friend of mine wanted to try to start something together uh so I came back to Sweden and we started started our little Ad Agency doing like video ads uh we did like Facebook pages it was a thing back then I think it was around 2010 maybe yeah I guess all that learning since you’ve been working a lot with design and ux and UI and all those experiences have been really crucial in then making box ball the success that it is so it kind of all Builds on on top of each other yeah

I think you know you have the brand branding aspect you have the ux and product design aspect you have the marketing aspect and then you have also the video production aspect and all these creative Fields if you know all of them then you could be like a oneman band which I was for a long time um and when we started box Bolan you know that meant that we already know how to do ads how to do all our like the videos and the the paid ads and the website and the EC you know so yeah it gave a lot in the beginning totally um so box balling then how did that all come about I think this is your fourth or fifth year fifth year yeah how how what was the kind of idea inspiration that led you to to start this the question right we always get this um you can tell it how it started so and and the question you asked before about like the background and for me this entrepreneurship Journey or what we’re going to call that we’re doing H so I was basically thrown into this world H coming from a sport background you know playing soccer for 20 years had huge goals huge dreams H love to win and then at 26 27 years old I realized that okay I’m not going to make the money I want to make playing soccer so I started working with sales for a few years and three years in I did good money but I was so bored at the job and I was you know in my head every day like what should I do with my life what where’s my passion because I was comparing a lot of stuff stuff to soccer and then one day my brother comes to me and he says I think I found the first thing we should do together because we have been talking you know we should do something someday something you know and he came to and he showed me this this thing punching on a ball and I was like maybe but then we started you know with prototyping in China H with samples forth and back and the first time I tried it with my brother we just saw the potential of it and we were like yeah this is what we’re going to do so that is kind of how we fell in in in box balling but yeah you can talk about how you come up with the idea yeah so my brother done football ride soccer I did MMA in my youth I think from like 16 to like 22 H took a break started training again at 27 is U and then I saw this video of a guy who had like a tennis ball Sho string in a cap and at first I wanted it for myself so I Googled and realized [ __ ] there’s no product no one has made this a product and then I went to my brother I was like I think let’s make this let’s you know but a tennis ball is hard and Sho string you know it wasn’t really that commercial so we started exploring in China you know Alibaba AliExpress starting contacting different you know factories and can you make this sample we want a softball a string and headband this is the packaging uh and then we finalized our first version of it h and launched in Sweden done 2018 for Christmas we produced 1,000 units and sold 3,000 units I’m gonna just show the dog quick and then yeah gotta introduce dog this is this is dumla there we go he’s our little mascot in the company big fan of Bo Poland probably as well yeah okay we’re going to lock you in now for a bit we can be quiet yeah if you leave a ball if you leave a ball in an area where he can reach it you know when you come back to the office or you’re gonna for sure see him with box ball in his mouth you know playing test user I’m curious with the name because obviously boxb is a Swedish name so from the very beginning did you have the aspiration of building this International even Global brand yeah I think you know that was one of the first things that we said that this is something that we want to do Global we want everyone in the world to have a box balling at at their household so a global household item has been one of our you know goals where did the kind of ambition ambition come from to to or the maybe the courage should dream so big uh at this very early early stage of the the business I think so I think we both had it in a way way with with Victor you know in football wanted to go all the way right you don’t want to stay at a certain place you want to maximize and it’s the same thing I was always wanted I’ve always dreamed and I don’t really know where it comes from and we’ve talked about it but I’ve always dreamt of doing something big I mean something big and Global and building a brand that’s Global so I think you know succeeding in the US for example is one of the biggest things you can do as a brand yeah it’s that it’s like um what do they say about if you can do it in New York if you can succeed there you can succeed anywhere it’s the most it’s the biggest but also the most competitive market and that kind of belief in the brand I saw in a a pre interview you said that’s been really key in fueling um not just your strategy but also that kind of pers persistence and perseverance facing all these NOS that you’ve had to face and and then just kind of keep pushing forward yeah for us we’ve always said that you know we want to work with the biggest names we want to influence people at scale uh we want to see people you know in Africa or in you know us or in the nordics everyone can you know compete versus each other and play so yeah Big Dreams big goals and big bets big bets big bets but it’s also like for me at least having this feeling that we got something so good and we was just want to come out with it we want everyone to see it everyone to try it yeah and how do we do this the like the fastest the best way possible and that is the big names H going out on TV doing the big bets because we I mean it is risks we’re taking but we are willing to take that because if we succeed with it h and of course we believe that we will H then we know the response and the results going to be so good exactly okay so I think we need to put some some numbers to to what we’ve been talking about here so um yeah first this is your fourth year um last year was a record break fifth year I apologize we’re entering yeah this we’re entering actually the sixth year so we just finalized the fifth year yeah finalized the fifth year it was the biggest by far 28 million US dollars in sales more more okay yeah CL so and it’s new numbers and it’s I mean just been confirmed two days ago so our Revenue ended at 306 million Swedish which is $30 million there you go breaking the 30 million Mark that’s incredible yeah that was it’s so important I mean it wasn’t important until we made it so our goal was $25 million this year or last year um but then when we were at 280 like 28 we were like [ __ ] maybe you know and then our CFO came back you know the books are almost done and the revenue is you know confirmed with the with the accountants and everything and it’s ended at 306 million Swedish $30 million and we’re like yes that’s incredible and you end the year previously you were at about 126 I think Swedish so that’s like two5 2.5x growth the year before that like 36 so that’s like almost that’s like three and a half X um so just incredible incredible growth rate and we talked offline I think the ambition is to continue continue this trend and yeah we’re we’re set to reach $70 million in sales in 2025 with our current uh with our current plan um although I must say that it was not Our intention to stop at 30 million last year um we ran out of stock so we had the demand we had to pause our marketing end of you know middle of December which you know it breaks your heart when you’re building something and you’re scaling and you see that [ __ ] we can sell how we can end at 50 million this year but we don’t have stock we can’t do it we have to pause we have to lower the span you know yeah I I can I can totally understand that um I think it’ll be really interesting to kind of talk a little bit about both the sides of like first of all how how have you able to create such demand and such such a lot of demand in a very short period of time and then also how have you been able to meet that um not fully like you said you’re going to run into some um into some blockers but nevertheless very rapid growth so going back to kind of what has I’m guessing has been kind of the key driver in your strategy you mentioned the big names I’ll list off a few here so we got Chloe Kardashian Conor McGregor Tom Brady Bill Gates um Dr Phil Wayne Roney Evelyn goria Tyson Fury KSAT Snoop Dog Bunch Bunch Bunch more so these are it sounds so good when you’re just Rubble the yeah love it you get a big smile on your on your face because you know man if you knew some of these people how hard they were to close I mean it’s it’s amazing that we all that we did I must say you know being on the being out there and hustling every day and trying to close these people and work with these people but because they’re so big and they get so many opportunities every day and everyone wants to work with them and then you get them to work with your brand not only work with us but loving the story loving the brand loving the product I think you know it it can’t be better that aspect of the business is I think the best I would say yeah I I was trying to think if there’s a a similar you know if there’s any benchmarks I mean Nordic companies of similar size that have been able to do this and not just Nordic like period companies around the world DC consumer goods brands that have been able to work with these kind of celebrities and also doing it without this Mega budget like you guys are bootstrap right yeah I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who has done that so let’s try to break that apart how what was the first big celebrity that you signed how did that come to be the first big one it depends on at what scale so I think you know we had big ones in Sweden and then we went to the UK and had big ones and then we went to the US and had even Biggers bigger ones so where do you want us to like what do you define as big that’s like the ones where you just were like oh my goodness I can’t believe we actually got got that person to you know the where you realize for yourselves like oh this is first time or because I think that feeling has been coming back so I would say the first time at least for us that was a big notice all difference it was first year in the UK with John Terry and his wife how did that deal come about did you Pi him specific before we talk about it I just want my brother to tell you when did we sign the contract and when did we shoot like this this little you know story with uh it was crazy I mean yeah that that’s for sure is the the the name that was feeling like International big name that when you are in the country saying is the name everyone is like oh what really true are you going there H but yeah I mean the story about him is similar to many other stories but that was the first time you know it was happening and we actually ended up signing the deal with him when we were as his at his house and my brother was coaching in playing the ball and I was sitting with his agent in the sofa going through the document signing the deal you know completing everything and they were already ongoing I I hear my brother brother in the background go slow in the beginning find the Rhythm and I look up I see John teres playing and I’m like this is this real is this for real yeah it was crazy was crazy you guys have really been been kind of hustling going traveling about doing these deals right you it’s no no kind of like Partners or um you’ve been negotiating this yourselves right I would say we go always sometimes it’s through an agent sometimes it’s direct sometimes it’s through someone that is opening the contact that’s getting paid that then introduces someone else and then we you know it can it can be so many ways it can be you know that’s why I’m I had an interview yesterday and I I told him it’s it’s all in all ways are open um so there is no one receipt like one like Step One D the step two it’s more like you know you go here you go there you follow someone’s brother on in Instagram and trying to slide a DM you were you found someone through someone’s you know caretaker you know some wife I mean like wherever your mind sees that you might find a way through to the person or the agent go for it and I will say this this uh feeling of working with big names it became pretty familiar actually from the start when we Launch Box band because that was a strategy from the beginning just shipping out product to influencer they were not the huge ones but they were in Sweden and they were famous here and we just chipped and we saw pretty early that it worked and so wrapping it up H doing with bigger and bigger names and after doing it with John Terry and his wife in in our head or in my head at least it was like okay we can do big names there’s like just a matter of finding through and making them want to be a part of it yeah it’s so much about building momentum right it’s like you get that one person that allows you to sign a little bit bigger and bigger and bigger and all of a sudden you got the biggest athletes in the world McGregor Brady using the product yeah I mean I I still think when you level up so I think from John Terry that was big right but then when we did Khloe Kardashian I I would say I felt almost like you know John Terry was not big so I mean you you raise the bar all the time and people always ask us now like okay but how are going to raise the bar now when you already work with the biggest names uh there’s still a lot of big people that we want to work with um and there’s some exciting things this year I can’t tell them right now but it’s gonna happen it’s gonna be cool it’s gonna be really interesting to follow because I I was following you on on LinkedIn and then I just saw like these names come up and I think the one that was like for me was like wow how do they get him that was MC McGregor yeah I saw that that was like um November or something that was just before we went to the us we went to Dubai first to shoot him and I would say that could be one of the most fun shoots I think Conor McGregor and Jon Jones are my and Stephen Gerald were was fun but I think those are my two favorite shoots because it was just so good energy I mean it’s always good energy but it was in another level I think with Connor we fed him for like three and a half hours in the middle of the night in Dubai so we were done in four in the morning I want to talk about you mentioned previously like the big bets right these are these are not these people do don’t you know they they don’t work for free so you’ve uh you had to negotiate I guess some some pretty big deals and yeah because of the the nature of your product the vast vast vast majority of Revenue comes in Q4 specifically around Christmas so you’re doing all these deals investing in media um throughout the year buying up inventory hoping or projecting that you’re going to sell sell all of this stuff yeah so it’s how how are you making that balance is it just you know we’ve got this target we believe in the brand we’re going to make all these Investments or how are you balancing these the risk reward of these these big bets that you’re placing is a really good question I’m going to start by saying that we spent over $10 million on marketing last year uh and it’s a big sum right and I that has always been like a mini goal in my back of my head now someday someday I want to spend 10 million on marketing I love marketing I think it’s one of the most fun things to do I see it as a game almost um but s but okay so every year we sit down me and my brother and I even we even have it on our whiteboard our goal for the year and if you want I can go there and show you it’s been there all year H we have it even you know we don’t have this side out so we we hide it but we ride it so this was for last year this was our goal so you see we seed the goal right um but it’s our guiding stars that these numbers um so it starts there and then we go in like with our CFO how much can we spend on celebrities this year how much does stock going to cost how much money do we for example needing credit to be able to do it we have very good relationships with meta and Tik Tok where we get good credit so all our Performance Marketing is a cost that comes you you know very at the end when we actually scale uh but stock and celebrity is usually UPF front uh and that put some stress on the bank account right so it’s it’s a game of balance and it’s also a lot of and I know data people will be all upset now but it’s a lot of gut feeling it’s a lot of me and my brother were talking um and our CFO says for example okay we were or or like this we wanted so last year we wanted to spend $3 million on celebrities that was our goal uh and we managed to get that budget um unfortunately we couldn’t spend it all so yeah this year I think we would like to have five six million for SBS I think what’s really incredible is that it sounds like you’ve have this very focused very kind of simple I mean very difficult to execute at a high level but the Playbook is fairly simple it’s like top tier celebrity Partnerships shooting the content yourself and then using paid social organic social as well but paid social really to drive and focusing really heavily of course on on the holiday season is that kind of roughly yeah we’re yeah that’s a that’s a good analysis also I would say you know we see Christmas or holidays as a drop you know there’s a lot of drop based businesses that only focus on short amount of time high volume uh so it’s not really that controversial I would say even though everyone’s like oh you do you really want this seasonality oh it’s such a big risk and this and that but I think we’re seeing that now in society that it’s a behavior how a lot of successful Brands release stuff I’m I I like I was so motivated about you know the the fight between Dylan danis and uh Logan Paul right um or was Logan or Jake yeah Logan so what I wasn’t uh it was not the fight itself it was that they claimed that they sold 1.3 million pay-per-views and I remember we talked about it I was like oh it’s just clicks if they can do it I know we can do 1.4 million balls in 30 days or 35 days so it was uh it was kind of a a nice data that they let out that we did 1.3 million pay-per-views in a in a short period of time like a drop around 20 bucks also so it was you know comfortable feeling like okay if they could do it they don’t have that big celebrities they don’t do that much marketing then we can do it that makes so much sense and it’s it’s interesting because I’ve been thinking about specifically the way promotion works in the fighting industry it’s so different and and I think that’s the industry that in my opinion is the best in the world at capturing attention getting people excited building up hype and then converting that on like this huge Revenue basis on a very short period of time which is it’s so makes sense that you kind of like took that element and and built your business model around that very cool okay and so a couple of more in interesting things I think that you guys are doing differently the whole top tier celebrities and and like you said the drop Bas is that’s that’s pretty unique certainly for a brand of your scale another thing that I heard you say is that you want every order to be profitable gm3 positive or you don’t want it and I I I must say I love your detail of uh like you nail it to the word word the words the words matter especially when you’re talking about profitability but you know there’s there’s a lot of e-commerce and consumer Brands who are profitable but very few of them are growing at the rate you guys are growing at and I could imagine that a lot of people if they were in your position they’d say hey we’re growing at this insane rate let’s relax the profitability target let’s raise some Capital you know the investors are not going to care they want to see top land Revenue growth let’s just contain the losses but but it’s fine so you guys where does this this first of all how are you able to M maintain this level of profitability at scale like you must run a very efficient operation I would say that sometimes times we feel a bit autistic when it comes to just that you know if it’s not profitable we don’t want it and I also you know I saw we saw yeah a couple of years ago a lot of companies growing at insane rates uh doing big losses you know loss of and I always wondered and I always we talked about how can these companies be so high valued how can they make so big losses and when do you expect to return these losses because some I I believe that you know profit is one of the big pillars in business right how if you’re only relying on on on external money all the time you’re going to be hooked you’re going to need more more and more a new round and a new round and a new round and is the business really successful then so I think having that as a big goal for us that we want to be able to grow profitable and then of course how much it is we can always be flexible depending on the situation maybe these years we want to invest a bit more in Tech or you know uh but I think that is if it doesn’t work at scale we don’t want to do it because imagine you would go you know minus gm3 so you’re negative gm3 right let’s let’s say you do that for 100 orders not big deal right but what happens if you do that for 1.4 million orders that’s what we we do like everything we start small if it’s good we scale it if it’s good we scale it so we don’t want and we get pitched so much please we can do this and we can do that and I want to do your paid search and you can increase with 200% and and we do tests at small scale and usually it doesn’t work we just say okay we’re not going to do it because if it doesn’t work at small scale it’s not going to work at Big scale so yeah if it if it’s not profitable we don’t want it yeah I I think that that level of discipline also then gives you a lot of freedom because going back to what you mentioned about the budget you’re you’re going to spend on celebrities and our spending if you were at the mercy of your investors having to go to them and say hey look we we believe it’s going to pay off like please give us a couple of million to spend they’ probably say no that’s too big of a bet are you crazy um but now you’re control of your own destiny as a company essentially or at least much more in control yeah yeah we are we and and I think this is a question we ask ourselves sometimes we say when we think about a a big celebrity and it’s a big cost or you know an investment into TV or whatever and we say okay are we going to do this if we believe yes and then we say if we don’t do it what’s going to happen that’s a good question also that’s a really good question and then the second question to that question is also if we do this and it doesn’t succeed what are we I mean if we can’t succeed with this person then who are we going to succeed with so a lot of times it comes down to like we’re are we going to do this or not we ask okay what happens if we don’t do it we’re not going to grow and if we do it and we don’t succeed then we’re not going to succeed with our business anyways basically totally so kind of you know you focused on profitability another thing that relates to that is you’re running I think a very based on LinkedIn it seems like you’re a very small efficient team um yes which is maybe even too small right now I would say I think we need like two or three more key hires that you know because we’re growing at this speed we’re you know we’re a bit you know me my brother and you know some of the the the people are a bit overworked I would say uh but still you know I’ve been in organizations where we grow from like 20 people to 200 in one year and it’s not a good thing usually so we want to keep lean tight you know we want to be so efficient we want everyone that’s in our team to be a high performer I also think that is a key you know that the people that we do find are high performers uh are recent hire that we’re super happy about is our CTO tone so uh he comes from bambuser he was a co-founder there H and he’s been with us for like eight months and it took our whole Tech and our app to Next Level and we want to keep doing that type of hires where we find people that are the best at what they’re do I think that’s so interesting because it’s it’s like if you focus on the really high leverage things you can do so much with so little and you know the partnership model is an example like you can go and get Conor McGregor and that will replace having to a thousand micro influencers because he has that Global reach true and you guys I mean are you you’re you said you’re shooting the content yourself right yes that’s pretty I think also very unique it’s like most people at that scale would be thinking okay we’re let’s hire that creative director let’s build a team for to manage all these different things but you guys are hands on with the most critical thing uh yeah yeah we go in me and my brother we fly all over the world we so I would say you know H people like oh nice you’re saving money on a production like you don’t have to have an agency Etc but okay then our traveling cost goes up instead so but so we we go in we fly in and and also we establish a Rel a relationship with them you know they see that we we we care about this it’s not just selling a product we want we we want them to have a good experience while we’re there we want them to jump and scream and laugh and and one thing that is not talked about that much you know we we run the business we do all these things but it started actually with me and my brother being obsessed with this thing playing against each other competing so we’ve done this we played the Box ball now for like this is the sixth year we know the product we know all the tricks we know all the tips and we know how to get good fast so when we come there this it’s the first time for them it is challenging but you know with some small coaching tips and how to get started we get them pretty good in in a fast fast time so that is a part also why we want to be there we want to make sure that they know the product in a in a short period of time and and there’s no really substitute for that and I I don’t think people appreciate the difference it makes when you have the founders who have skin in the game who love the product on an emotional level and love the brand show up and show that they believe in it like we’re all humans and and that resonates whoever even if it’s a big celebrity they they notice that um they’re so I think this is more this is more usual you know maybe in Silicon Valley with tech startups where you usually have like the founders like at the at the front and on LinkedIn and he’s passionate and having talks and being out there meeting users and I think it’s not maybe that common for like products or Brands you know I I feel it’s more like the the tech part of the world where the founders are more out there on the field right yeah I think so too okay um another thing so so you’ve had this you know massive success and you’ve done it with one product U the same one that you’ve been been uh running out for the going on the sixth year how how are you dealing with because if you Google I Googled box ball and you’re going to get these copycats and and and so on so how are you dealing with that is it about building the brand this is the original this is the the best one or how are you able to how are you thinking about kind of dealing with the increased competition it’s a good question of course because you know copycats are out there but not only copycats there’s a lot of scammers you know online scammers that are stealing our content and driving traffic to Like A Drop Shipping site where they sell some [ __ ] from China and customers they get fooled and they get angry they think they buy the real product that is I would say the biggest problem it’s not actually the other brands that are doing this at small scale it’s when they actually come in and scam people when it’s fraud companies stealing our content maybe with Conor McGregor or Tom Brady or Khloe and they’re pushing their product and it’s hard I mean I would say you know even though we have contact persons at both Tik Tok and meta sometimes it takes too long for them to remove it you know we have all the brand registrations or you know it’s the copyright content but still it takes maybe you know five days or two weeks to get it down and in those two weeks they are allowed to spend a lot of marketing money on that which is not good um but okay so back to the question I would say you know the community that we’re building of over 700,000 people in our app the fact that we are the only ones right now caring about this Sport and if you are you know if you want to show your skills there’s really only one place to show your skills in box B and it’s the official box bin even though people sometimes buy like a fake one or like a copycat one from Amazon they still tag box Bolen on Instagram for example um so I I think that is one of our strongest uh anti competitor you know the community the celebrities the app that were all you know the official thing the the the the official sport the official place where you come with your box ball in the H yeah that makes sense I mean get there are so many people out there who you know they want to get something for their kids or for the dad as it was I think in the case of Bill Gates um you want to get that and of course you want to get the original like it’s not that much more expensive get the real one you know that it works um and yeah okay and you know I think another thing that’s been kind of unique here is that you’ve done this enormous scale with one product like I said are you do you see that kind of continuing what’s the what’s the big big vision is there like a fiveyear plan of like we want to build you know box bow and to be to be this huge huge Global one one product brand or are you thinking about expanding or is it too too early to say um I I would say the big vision is to inspire people to move and have fun it doesn’t matter how really um most of our product development is in our app uh we’re doing some really exciting things with AI and computer vision where you know you could play games that you don’t even need a physical product to it’s going into the the sphere of VR AR um but then of course we’re looking to expand the product line we’re looking at you know bigger versions maybe something you put on the wall or you know maybe something you stand in your office or you know maybe you know we’re looking to do like a mobile stand that is you know because when you play with the app you put the phone up uh we’re looking to maybe do some gloves that’s cool with sensors I mean there’s a lot of it’s a lot of uh potential but we still want to scale our original box balling product and I’m guessing because of the the vision with the brand is that you’re very careful about whatever you expand into it has to be high quality it has to serve that mission that you y you outlined yep okay now as you’re looking ahead in 2024 is it kind of uh just more of the same I mean following the same Playbook that you’ve developed or are you looking to shake things up is there anything on the horizon that’s like coming that you see coming that will maybe have a big impact on how you’re how you’re going about your business uh it will definitely be more of the same so we’re going to double there the revenue and it looks like we’re going to launch at Le we have said that every year we want to at launch at least one new market last year it was Canada and Ireland uh very successful we sold out so that was good and we this year we might look into Asia one of a like an Asian country um or we might launch Australia so it it or both we’re still so the numbers are not 100% in and we haven’t done the budget for the year so we’re in a bit of a waiting you know know we’re going to bit on a what they call we don’t know exactly what we’re going to do this year yet um it almost feels like we’re still in 2023 yeah you know wrapping it up H but we talked you know just a couple of days ago that asume the number is done we need maybe one week in the sun go through all the ideas that that we have all the new markets we want to launch and see okay what is the actual Market we want to open up next what is the actual product that we have time and should put effort in to release maybe this year on the market so it’s there’s so much ideas and thoughts right now that we just want to finalize and then let’s let’s go like yeah let’s do it it’s going to be really interesting to follow from the side uh where you guys are going be get getting up to and also then hopefully we can check back in about a year’s time and then we can talk look at the the results and um hopefully it will be more than we reaching your target uh or exceeding your target which would be pretty pretty wild um just just a final question because I know it’s you know you probably have a lot of investors knocking at your door wanting to buy all or part of the company and you’ve turned them all down is it you know is it is a plan to stay bootstrapped keep stay in control of the company and the vision the plan is actually the opposite so um we are looking to sell uh half the company at least um we want to find I think preferably a strategic partner the buy uh the majority stake in the company and that we can take it to the next level because you know we want to scale uh but we don’t want to build an organization we don’t want to do Supply and logistics and distribution and legal and this and that we want to focus on you know the experience the brand and the marketing um I think the right buyer and we to be completely honest we are in a process already um so yeah it’s all about finding the right right partner who believes in this and can take it to the next level that we couldn’t do ourselves or it would take us maybe five years what they could do in one or two years yeah that makes sense I mean given what you’ve been able to achieve on your own if you have have have the right partner with the whether it’s distribution or some other resources um you know sky sky or as as was a bottleneck last year uh just manufacturing Supply oh yeah yeah it’s um I had a very exciting call with a guy that uh he was part of the team who acquired Guitar Hero and he said there’s a lot of similarities H I think they also they were like maybe at $20 million or something and they just scaled and I’ve seen also other companies Swedish companies like there’s a game studio uh which was sold to a very very interesting toy manufacturer SL digital gaming entertainment company um and they just went from like10 million to poof a billion you know it’s yeah I mean the space you’re operating in is one that’s experiencing so much change and there’s obviously Global H if you get something that that’s I think is really cool is the fact that this breaks geographical boundaries but also demographic you know you see yeah Bill Gates and like um Conor McGregor that’s pretty that covers almost pretty much all of like yeah and even if you go further down you go down to the six year olds in the app were looking at the top leaderboards and you know they will be in two or three years when they’re like nine they will be one of the best in the app we’ve seen that so many times that people coming in at 910 and then be going for one two three years and now they’re like 13 and they’re winning $10,000 $5,000 and they’re building mus the process you know they get this the wings the start to pop out the shoulders growing yeah and before we talked about you know big bets taking risk gut feeling yeah and we’ve done this now over and over year after year so a lot of the big bets and the gut feelings comes from knowing the process like we know the concept now we know what process we know what we need to do to get the results now it’s a matter of how fast and how big can we scale and I think that’s also like the biggest reason why we want to have muscles in the company like we know the concept now now we just want to go open new market do it faster do it bigger so it yeah it will be exciting year this year and that’s so attractive to an investor who can just kind of plug in their resources or Capital whatever it is like you said you know the concept you know what you can do with the right help safe to say you guys are very excited about this year um best of luck to you both it’s going to be really exciting to follow you I I think it’s so interesting the way you’re going about this it’s so unique and I think I hope that Swedish Finnish brands are going to be watching and and try to copy copy this I think it will be very difficult but hopefully it’ll inspire people to rethink some of the ways that these brands have been built in the past I think you know it already does because we are helping a few companies Scandinavian Brands you know working with celebrities in the US and I you know we are open to doing that and we think it’s fun and we have a good Network now so yeah it’s actually part of what we’re doing now so we’re helping few Scandinavian brands that they want to work with the A-list celebrities in the US and they want to go big and I think there’s a lot of learnings that they can learn from us quite easy absolutely y Victor thank you so much for joining me it was a true pleasure uh good luck with everything thank you okay have a good day you too okay bye thank you for listening you can find all episodes of the growth pod on Spotify

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