We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Choi. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.

Daniel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Since I could remember as a kid, I was fascinated by video games and sports. From the Atari 2600 to the present day, playing video games was part of my DNA. I also loved watching and playing basketball, football, and stickball with my friends. As I became a father decades later, I noticed I was spending hundreds of dollars a year on Pokémon for my kids. I’d then watch them throw away most of the cards they got, hunting for the “rare” card they could show off to their friends. They, too, loved playing sports. So, I went to a local game hobby store looking for a sports game like Pokémon. Among the hundreds of titles I saw on the shelves, I assumed I could find a game featuring athletes. I couldn’t find anything. They had trading cards, but that’s not what I wanted. After doing some searching on Google, I couldn’t find any strategic games around sports. The only games were simulators where you play a real basketball or football game on a console. At the time, I was a 16-year veteran of the wealth management industry, working as a regional vice president for Fortune 300 companies. I also happened to be a trading card game player who was ranked in the world. So, I decided to make up my own game. I locked myself in my office for a month, used my experience in gaming to design a game, and printed out the game using my home office printer. I cut out the pieces, taped them to regular playing cards, and started playing with my 7-year-old son.
He liked it.
So, I invited his basketball teammates over to our house for pizza… and introduced them to the game. They liked it as well. Because I used players from my generation in the mock up games, the kids were asking questions like “Who is Moses Malone?” and “Charles Barkley used to play basketball?”
The biggest questions they were asking was, “Can I get more of these? What about Kobe? Can you add him to the game?”
I knew I had something special then.
I got the gameplay patented. Then, I flew with my son to New York City to meet with the sports leagues. They all liked the concept, but they told me to go build a company. I spent the next 18 months building my team, from technology to marketing and manufacturing.
In 2018, my technology team suggested we use Augmented Reality, to bring new features to this old-school genre of gaming. We brought to life the scene from the original Star Wars in 1977 where C3PO and Chewbacca were playing Dejarik on the Millenium Falcon in 3D. Then, they asked if I had heard of blockchain tokens, and how we could prevent counterfeiting, duplicates, and cheating in-game using that technology on each of our tiles.
Fast forward to 2021, with a sports license in tow and a collectibles market booming off the COVID pandemic, we launched to favorable winds and haven’t looked back since. We continue to expand into other sports and sit on the brink of mass media exposure.
Our mission: To bring more joy to this world by deepening the connection between sports and entertainment, using the latest in technology that fuses the physical and digital worlds together.

Daniel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The answer to the previous question addressed how we broke into the business. To expound on some of the other asks in this question:
1. The primary problem we solve is that historical, game companies have tried to make sports titles as realistic as possible. That was popular for a couple of decades. Recently, studies have shown people don’t have time to play these simulated games as they once did. In addition, how much more realistic can these games get? There comes a point when watching a real sporting event is a better use of time. The biggest complaint among sports gamers is seeing a “lack of innovation” in the sports gaming market. It’s the same game, over and over, every year… the graphics get better, the sweat more defined, and the mechanics slightly tweaked. But, it’s the same game every year.
At Sequoia Games, we wanted to reimagine the sports and entertainment gaming industry. We wanted to depict the athlete as a hero, which they are to us. Since we were little, athletes have captivated us, like Achilles or Hercules or Robin Hood.
Now, with our hand-drawn art, engaging turn-based fantasy gameplay, and unique game pieces, we present a new way for fans to engage with their heroes that will take us into the next generation of gaming technology for years to come.
2. There are three areas that set us apart from the competition: gameplay innovation, technology development & the patents/technology that we own.
3. I’m most proud that we started with an idea and pieces of paper cut out from a home printer to a multi-million dollar operation partnering with the biggest sports leagues and athletes in the world. We also have an unbelievably rabid core group of consumers who are passionate, energized and responsive to the movement we are creating.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Throughout the development of Sequoia Games, I’ve had numerous individuals come in and tell me it wasn’t possible without them. Their main point was that I couldn’t do it given the resources we had at the time. Multiple individuals asked for irrational amounts of equity in the company, with several asking for up to 50% of the ownership. I turned those offers down, facing the unknown and the constant rejection that comes with building a startup. Over time, the right people and resources showed up at just the right timing to put us on a freeway to success. If I gave into the fears of failing or uncertainty… or listened to the voices of rejection and doubt that came from every direction (including close childhood friends and other trusted partners), we would not be here today. Every day is filled with opportunity, but also rejection and doubt. The commitment to finishing the journey has to be stronger than the insecurity any founder faces. Resilience is taking action taken to embody the commitment made to a dream despite the reality of what the world is showing us. Resilience is knowing that we are creating the impossible, and marching towards the impossible even though it appears we can’t. If I went through every instance of the rejection, turmoil, potential backstabbing, and negative influence along this journey, I could write a novel. It’s all in my journal, so maybe one day I will!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I left my previous career as a wealth management executive not because I was bad at it. I was really quite good at it, and experienced a lot of success in a short amount of time. I faced two choices: 1. Stay in my career, make good money, save for retirement, take care of my family, provide stability for them, and retire with a gold watch after a decades-long career. Along the way, I’d satisfy my competitive need to excel by climbing the corporate ladder and taking up a sport or hobby where I could express my desire to win. I would also snuff my dreams out with the pillow of security, choosing the safe route versus the path least taken.
2. Leave my career, take up a life of instability, hit numerous bumps in the road, invest my own money and resources to build a company, and seek out fundraising in a brutally rejection-filled process during a global pandemic, all while not knowing if sports leagues would support me, if customers would buy the product, and while fighting off wolves around me trying to hijack large chunks of my company.
What compounded this choice is that I’m not a twenty-something single guy who can sleep on his friend’s couch and eat ramen while living out this dream. I had a wife, a mortgage, two kids, and a lifestyle to take care of.
At the end of the day, I wouldn’t be able to live myself if at age 65 I retired, knowing I gave up on my dreams. I knew I could model for my sons what it takes to be great, or how to handle colossal failure by choosing Option 2. I could teach them by showing them what to do in either situation, win or lose. So then, it became a win-win scenario for me to leave my successful career and start anew.
With the support of my wife, I took the plunge off the cliff and started building the airplane on the way down. The love for my family fuels my strength, and I see the runway getting smaller and smaller as we take off into a new stratosphere of success.

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