Venture Everywhere Podcast: Amanda Stefan with Conor Harbeck
Amanda Stefan, co-founder and CEO of Jawa chats with Conor Harbeck, Associate of Everywhere Ventures.
In episode 63 of Venture Everywhere, host Conor Harbeck, Associate at Everywhere Ventures, chats with Amanda Stefan, CEO and co-founder of Jawa, a community-driven marketplace for gamers to buy and sell their gear. Amanda shares her journey from finance and consumer startups to launching Jawa, inspired by her own struggles building a gaming PC during pandemic supply shortages. Amanda also discussed how Jawa is building trust and fairness in gaming transactions, simplifying the process and making it more affordable for gamers.
In this episode, you will hear:
Jawa's vision to be the go-to destination for instinctive gaming hardware decisions.
How Jawa prevents scalping and ensures fair pricing for buyers and sellers.
Using community moderation to maintain trust and authenticity.
Leveraging tech experts and influencers to expand Jawa’s reach.
Expanding beyond custom PCs including peripherals and accessories.
Using AI to accelerate listing processes experience for users.
If you liked this episode, please give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:34 Conor: Hey everyone, and welcome to the Venture Everywhere podcast. My name is Conor Harbeck, and I'm an Associate here at Everywhere Ventures. And today I'm excited to be joined by Amanda Stefan, CEO and co-founder of one of our portfolio companies, Jawa, which is a community-driven marketplace that allows gamers to buy and sell their gear.
00:00:50 Conor: Amanda, it's great to have you here. I did a little bit of digging into your background and I saw a lot of different things, but gaming wasn't really on there. And so I'd love to kind of start off hearing more about yourself and how you arrived at Jawa.
00:01:03 Amanda: Thanks, Conor. So happy to be here. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Jawa, we're the marketplace for gamers to buy and sell their gear. And no, I am not a gaming industry veteran.
00:01:14 Amanda: I'm from Miami originally, and then spent the first part of my career in New York in finance and consulting and moved over to consumer, both at large CPGs and growth stage startups like Hubble Contacts. And then in 2019, I moved out to Boulder, which is where I am today.
00:01:30 Amanda: And then the pandemic hit shortly after. And so I started gaming again. I grew up gaming with my brother and sister, primarily console and arcade games. And then during the pandemic, we started doing that again online.
00:01:44 Amanda: And I was asking my brother, you know, I was setting up my homework station and asking him what desktop I should get. And he encouraged me to build my own gaming PC for the first time. That got me exposed to the wild, wild west of buying parts and building a gaming PC.
00:02:01 Amanda: At that point, it was the pandemic and peak supply shortage. So you really just couldn't go to Best Buy or Amazon and check out. I was in sub-Reddit forums, transacting, looking on eBay. And that was how I got back into this world and how the origin story of Jawa came to be of like, this is nuts.
00:02:19 Amanda: There's so many gamers who are obsessed with their hobby and they love their gear and they're online talking about it, yet there is no destination for them to transact. So that's how Jawa was born.
00:02:28 Conor: I love that. I had a very similar experience that I was a big gamer when I was younger and fell out of it. And the pandemic brought me back in to connect with friends. And I was a console gamer for many years and wanted to move over to PC. And that was an absolute nightmare of even trying to figure it out. And I actually just gave up on it for a few years.
00:02:44 Conor: So how do you solve this problem when there's such a supply shortage? And I know there's a lot of scalpers with graphics cards and all those other things. So how did you find this problem and decide to solve it and validate that there was a real issue here?
00:02:59 Amanda: I had a very similar experience to you. And there's hundreds of millions of gamers who have entered the category of gaming, have started gaming over the past several years since the pandemic, who continue to become gamers every year.
00:03:12 Amanda: And a lot of them might start out as mobile gamers and then they upgrade to a handheld, a console, and then they start watching Twitch streamers and they're like, oh, I kind of want to do that. And I need a PC for that. And I need all my streaming kit. And it's actually really hard to figure out what you need.
00:03:27 Amanda: And this was not really something I felt I had to so much validate because the evidence was out there. I mean, there are subreddits with millions of people and they were all talking about this. But I did start my own Discord community once I had this idea. I was like, okay, I want to make sure I'm building something that people actually want.
00:03:45 Amanda: And so started a Discord and got some of those loudest voices that I had seen in those other rooms, virtual rooms, to talk about if we were to build something, what would it be, how would it be different?
00:03:54 Amanda: And the number one thing people cared about at that time was we don't want to allow people to scam or price gouge or scalp as they call it, especially with graphics cards. People would wait in line and buy something at Best Buy for $600 and then sell it for $3,000 on eBay.
00:04:12 Amanda: And gamers universally despised both the scalpers and the marketplaces that were facilitating those scalpers. StockX was doing it, everyone was doing it. And so we decided to go to market by being the marketplace that does not allow scalpers.
00:04:26 Amanda: And because of that, we limited our GMV potential, but we got all of this goodwill with gamers really early on. And that got us our initial exposure and credibility within the industry.
00:04:36 Amanda: And then over time, once the supply shortage righted itself, we focused less on that and more that we had these incredibly expert gamers who were our sellers on Jawa, who were building really cool custom PCs, which became our biggest category, as well as these other components and accessories.
00:04:53 Conor: That's amazing. I think there is such a big community behind gaming and the people who are passionate about it are just incredibly passionate about it. I've had the same experience on Reddit forums and people trying to help me out.
00:05:04 Conor: And there's been so much feedback. What strategies have you found to be most effective in growing that community driven marketplace and growing trust within the gaming community? Because that's not always an easy thing to do.
00:05:17 Amanda: I think that it's our biggest opportunity and challenge or like potential threat is that gamers can be very passionate. And then if you do something that they don't find like serves them well, or is authentic to the community, they can blow you up.
00:05:31 Amanda: And so for us continuing to make sure we have our ear to the ground with our Discord community, which is now almost 20,000 gamers, that's super important to make sure we're building something that people want.
00:05:44 Amanda: And in terms of how we've grown this community and our whole user base is everyone hss that one person in your friend group or social circle who you go to to ask for tech advice. Those are typically our sellers.
00:05:55 Amanda: They are highly influential both in their own circles, but then also they tend to be content creators and streamers and sometimes YouTubers. And so what we found is by helping our sellers grow their businesses on Jawa and really use Jawa as their storefront, they are getting the word out for us. They've driven tons of buyers to our site.
00:06:14 Amanda: They're like the kind of the paid subscribers of some of the larger influencers and YouTubers in the industry. They're the ones who are on every live stream and they're like, hey, do a review on Jawa or I just posted this custom build on Jawa. Like, what do you think?
00:06:25 Amanda: And because of that, we've gotten these other very large influencers to give us free coverage, essentially. And so that whole flywheel between you get expert sellers on the site who get the word out for us and then that drives traffic and then they turn into buyers and sellers has worked really well for us to date.
00:06:42 Conor: It's incredible. I think that trust is such a big part of this. And I just want to double click into the scalpers thing. I remember when not the most recent Nvidia graphics card came out, but the one before that came out, it was impossible to find them. And then with the new one again, I don't think it's been as extreme, but there's still been issues and a ton of scalpers.
00:07:01 Conor: So how do you ensure that your transactions on Jawa remain scalper free and they're fair for both buyers and sellers? So the sellers can make their money, but the buyers aren't getting completely scammed.
00:07:13 Amanda: It's come full circle because it is happening again. And this was our whole initial reason to exist. And it's like, the scalpers are out, bat signal, Jawa comes to the rescue.
00:07:24 Amanda: So the 50 Series was just released. And the reason it hasn't been as prevalent is, we're not in the pandemic with the crazy supply issues, but also it's the more expensive tier that's been released so far.
00:07:35 Amanda: Usually you see with the more middle and in entry level tiers that it's more people are in the market for that and the scalping and stock outs get more extreme. But it's happening today with the 50-90.
00:07:45 Amanda: Like eBay, there was this whole thing where you go on and you search either it's like $5,000, which is many thousand dollars over MSRP or if it's somewhere in the realm of what the normal MSRP would be, you go to it and people are actually just selling a printed picture of the graphics card as like their F*you to just bots. And so it's happening today.
00:08:08 Amanda: What we do on Jawa is in our Discord community, we have a feed where every time there's a new listing, it syncs to our Discord. And this behavior that you've seen on subreddits where people just hang out to give advice and opinions on gaming and gear. They're doing that. They're just looking at what people are posting on Jawa.
00:08:24 Amanda: And immediately, if something looks suspect, if it looks fraudulent, you know, if someone says, this is a three-year-old graphics card, but it actually is just a stock photo, or if it's a graphics card that the MSRP is $600 and is listed for $1,500, they alert us immediately and we deputize our community to do that moderation for us.
00:08:43 Amanda: So it's been really interesting. It's not cut and dry. It's not this objective number that we can decide scalping is over X dollars. And it actually drives a lot of engagement within our user base because people have a lot of opinions on like, what is scalping? Is it fair or not? And so we let our community help us moderate for us.
00:09:02 Conor: That's incredible that you've grown such an amazing community that you have the trust and others have the trust and I don't think that's an easy thing to do, especially when people have their online anonymity.
00:09:12 Conor: Switching gears from the community and the marketplace, the gaming industry is evolving rapidly. And where do you see the future of gaming and gaming marketplaces heading?
00:09:25 Amanda: Like I mentioned earlier, there's just been this massive influx in new gamers since the pandemic and then every year. And a lot of people are still unaware that video gaming is the largest industry in entertainment. It's actually twice as large as digital streaming. It's nuts.
00:09:43 Amanda: And so a lot of people don't identify as gamers unless they think of nerds in a basement. But really most people are gamers and every generation, you have more people gaming and they're spending more time gaming.
00:09:54 Amanda: And so a lot of people will start gaming with mobile and then again, they'll get a handheld or a Switch and then a console. And so I see this as a huge opportunity for Jawa to help level up all of these new gamers to figure out, okay, once they want to get to that next level of gaming, what do they need?
00:10:12 Amanda: Where the destination where they're getting their information? And not only the access to the experts and those questions, but then they can actually make the transaction happen on Jawa.
00:10:21 Amanda: And so I see just a lot of movement over the next couple of years of new people entering the console and PC gaming category, especially when the new console cycle is coming up to be the new release will probably happen in the next couple of years.
00:10:34 Amanda: And then in marketplaces, I think in general, we're seeing a shift. I mean, the cool thing about AI in marketplaces is we can get to a huge scale without having to raise hundreds of millions or a billion dollars in venture capital, just with AI enabling you to really help the listing process be super fast, moderation, QA, and especially on the recommendation side.
00:10:53 Amanda: I think what we're seeing is people don't want to be just scrolling through an endless sea of products. They really want that expert guidance in a curated feed based on their interest, the games they want to play, their budget, you know, what their friends are playing.
00:11:07 Amanda: And so I think we'll see that across the board with marketplaces, just more curation and recommendation facilitated by AI. And for us, I think that's a huge opportunity because we have so much of our own data around pricing, around compatibility with these parts, around community sentiment on parts or PCs that I think we can have that extra layer.
00:11:26 Amanda: And the thing that today is happening where a lot of our users, that expertise comes through our community and our users will be productized in a way that can help very new gamers to the category figure out what they need quickly.
00:11:38 Conor: That would be invaluable. I said earlier that I had that experience in some side of AI curation or AI helping you build your PC and figure out the parts that work well together without having to go to one of those websites that if you don't have an extreme depth of knowledge, you just feel lost in would be fantastic.
00:11:56 Conor: Outside of helping the users buy PCs or upgrade their gear, do you see AI playing a role in Jawa itself? Right now you're using community-driven members to help validate these sales. Is there any thoughts or plans for AI to be used to help you guys do that as you scale?
00:12:16 Amanda: Our plans for using AI are one, to accelerate the listing process in a way that can really unlock supply for the casual person who in their house might have gear that people want to buy, but they're not super incented to sell it because maybe they don't need the cash or they think that it's going to take a long time.
00:12:35 Amanda: If we can really accelerate the listing process, and I think we can unlock cool supply, especially in categories like retro gaming. That is very big right now. And I think about sitting at my parents' house, we have our N64, tons of video games, that if we make it super easy, then we can help unlock supply in those categories.
00:12:51 Amanda: And then the other thing for sure, moderation and QA on listings. And then finally, when we're already working on building this recommendation engine, that AI makes that process extremely fast.
00:13:02 Amanda: Like I think everything that eBay has done to create their quick listing and their recommendations has taken them God knows how many years and head count and dollars. And that's something that now we have the advantage of being able to do super efficiently, which I think will just be really interesting for marketplaces going forward.
00:13:21 Conor: I completely agree. It sounds like there's a lot of big things coming with AI and Jawa. What's next? What do you see coming down the line? Do you have any exciting updates or future plans that you're willing to share with us?
00:13:33 Amanda: Yeah. To date, most of Jawa transactions are in two key categories of custom PCs, like the full builds, and then GPUs and CPUs. And so now we are expanding our category reach to the next five categories that our buyers and traffickers are already looking for today. And that is more around the accessories, peripherals.
00:13:54 Amanda: So most people who are buying a PC on Jawa, it's actually their first gaming PC. And of course, they also want to get their gaming mouse and their keyboard and the whole streaming kit. And so we are getting the supply to meet that demand.
00:14:07 Amanda: And then the other thing is we're working on, I alluded to this a little before, but bringing in that expertise that right now lives with our sellers and our community and productizing it. So what that looks like is you'll be able to have your virtual battle station on Jawa.
00:14:22 Amanda: And so we'll tell you like, here's the value of your battle station today. Here is the performance. Here's where your bottlenecked and give those recommendations of you should upgrade your GPU and here's how much you could sell it for. But wait a week because based on our knowledge of the pricing data, you're going to get more for it next week.
00:14:38 Amanda: And so creating that utility that will encourage people to come to Jawa and not just when they're in the market for something, but actually to just see what's my battle station worth today. That's something we're building over the next couple of months.
00:14:51 Conor: That sounds fantastic. My brother has had a gaming PC for years and I know he's always trying to upgrade his parts and figure all of that out. And it's been a challenge for him. So having that kind of virtual battle station, as you describe it, where, without even having to really think about it and you know what you can upgrade or you know where you can sidegrade or whatever it may be, sounds fantastic.
00:15:12 Amanda: And it should be fun.
00:15:13 Conor: Yeah.
00:15:14 Amanda: Gamers are gaming and to the people who are not intimidated by it, it's a game to them. Upgrading is the game. Our sellers love to find a good deal, upgrade it. They're finding things for their friends.
00:15:24 Amanda: And so I want that to be the feeling that everyone gets when they think about upgrading versus this daunting like, oh, my God, I have 25 tabs open and I don't know. I'm going to start over tomorrow.
00:15:34 Conor: Definitely. I know one of the questions that people always ask when someone gets a PC is like, oh, what are the specs? And when you're a new gamer or you just bought your first PC, you're coming in blind.
00:15:42 Conor: And if there was a way to just be like, oh, well, this is what I have without having to list out all of your components in like a text would be a cool thing. I'm sure people would love that.
00:15:51 Conor: So what's one thing that you believe in your field that maybe other experts or other people who are in the community disagree with, like maybe a hot take that you have about the space?
00:16:03 Amanda: My hot take, I won't name names, but some investors think that cloud gaming will make my business irrelevant. And I don't agree with that. I think that cloud gaming will increase accessibility but it's not going to replace dedicated hardware anytime soon.
00:16:20 Amanda: I think that gaming is growing, cloud gaming is growing with it, and it lowers the barrier to getting gamers into higher end games without having to buy a $3,000 PC, but you need to have incredibly good internet connection for it to feel good. It's great when it works, but a lot of times it does not and people are super frustrated by it.
00:16:40 Amanda: Actually, what we've seen, some people who started out cloud gaming go to Jawa to buy their hardware because they loved the experience of gaming and hated the latency and lag. And so to me, I see it as increasing accessibility.
00:16:52 Amanda: Again, it's kind of like mobile gaming gets more people into the category. And a lot of gamers will like it to kind of access their systems when they're not at home and on the go, but I don't see it as a threat to our business in the next 10 years.
00:17:07 Conor: I love that take. As someone who was gaming since they were young, I think there's something almost nostalgic for maybe the millennials where you own the game, you know that you can always play it. You don't have to worry about the publishers or anyone changing it. And as someone who's gone through that and felt that pain, I totally agree with you there.
00:17:28 Conor: A little bit more about you. What's one of your superpowers? What's one of the things that you're most known for?
00:17:34 Amanda: My superpower is my resourcefulness. I will stop at nothing to get something done. And so early days of Jawa, I was meeting on Craigslist with every single person who was selling a gaming PC in this county. I was doing whatever it took.
00:17:52 Amanda: That's part of the reason my co-founder and CTO, he was just contracting early on to help build the MVP of Jawa. And he was like, Oh my God, Amanda's just creating these tens of thousands of transactions out of nothing, like out of this janky site. And that's just how I roll.
00:18:05 Conor: I think what you're describing in yourself is something that we talk about internally all the time when we're meeting founders. It's what we call the archetype of a fast founder, we like to say.
00:18:15 Conor: Somebody who is just so driven about their idea or their company that they're willing to run through walls and won't take no for an answer and are just always hustling. And they go to bed thinking about it. They wake up thinking about it nonstop and that's a quality that we love. And I think that's a quality that's rarer than people think it is.
00:18:35 Amanda: I'm the type of person who, if you give me a thing to build, an IKEA thing, I will just start going at it. Like my husband's there reading the whole manual. He's like, wait, wait, wait. And I'm like, I just start doing it and then I go and I like ask someone to help me and I'm like, just the thing is done.
00:18:52 Amanda: And that's just how I approach everything in life. I'm not going to wait around and have the perfect plan. I'm like, let's just get out there and start building something. And then once you've built something, you have so much more information to know the right questions to ask and where to go from there. So that's just my MO in IKEA furniture and building businesses.
00:19:11 Conor: That's incredible. So for you personally and for Jawa, what does success look like?
00:19:18 Amanda: Success for me is when gamers will just instinctively check Jawa before they make any hardware decision. That's when I know we've won. When you're not just going to Jawa because there is a specific component you want to buy, but it's the moment you think gaming, you think Jawa.
00:19:33 Amanda: And you're like, oh, I heard that this new game was released. Do I need to upgrade or new hardware was released? Does that matter for me? I want Jawa to be the place that people go. And when that happens, we have won.
00:19:45 Conor: I love that. I had a friend build his first PC in high school. I remember that was new egg for us. And I feel like that's fallen out of the picture a little bit. And so I love that Jawa taking the reins there and being the go-to place for that and just upgraded.
00:20:00 Conor: If you had one piece of feedback that you could give other aspiring entrepreneurs, especially those looking to disrupt an industry like you've done, what would it be?
00:20:08 Amanda: My advice would be to get something out there as fast as possible to have your intended audience react to it. For me, building the Discord community first before building an MVP and also building the MVP before building the actual product got me so much information quickly that saved time, saved money, and made sure I was building something that the community actually wanted.
00:20:34 Amanda: And so I think not letting perfection get in the way of progress, not letting great get in the way of good has served me really well of just the quicker you can get more feedback and data, the better.
00:20:45 Amanda: And I think my other piece of advice would be you should charge for your product. I didn't do that at first. And then you have all of this angst about, oh my god, will people pay for this? And whatever it is, I think you should charge for your product.
00:20:58 Conor: I completely agree. I think we see companies who do that from time to time where they say, hey, all of these customers love our product and they're all on free pilots right now. And then they try to convert them and then they find hiccups along the road and a lot of people churn and it doesn't go quite as planned. So I agree with that piece of advice that you're giving to other founders.
00:21:19 Conor: What game are you playing right now? And what's your favorite game of all time, would you say?
00:21:24 Amanda: Well, both because Ms. Pac-Man, so I'm talking about PC gaming. But now anything else on a PC feels like work to me. I am working such insane founder hours that it's nice to do something outside of a computer.
00:21:39 Amanda: So I grew up arcade gaming. I love Ms. Pac-Man. I go to arcades whenever I visit a city. I try to find an arcade and get the high score there. And then for Christmas, one of my employees bought me a Ms. Pac-Man machine, a retro arcade machine that now is in the office. And so that is what I'm playing now, as well as my favorite game ever.
00:21:58 Conor: That's awesome. Those retro gaming machines, I feel like are becoming rarer and rarer these days. And it's incredible that you have one that you can kind of just go, maybe take a little break and hop on and play a quick game.
00:22:09 Amanda: Yeah.
00:22:11 Conor: All right. To wrap things up, we have a couple of questions that we always like to ask founders on this. First one being what's a book, newsletter or podcast that you're reading right now, or you enjoy thoroughly?
00:22:23 Amanda: I’m currently listening to Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm obsessed with him. And one of my goals of 2025 is to somehow meet him or like be connected to him. And this is me being resourceful.
00:22:35 Amanda: I'm putting it out there in the world. If anybody has a connection to Arnold or his publicist, I need him to be involved in my company and in my life. I'm obsessed with him.
00:22:45 Conor: Let's do it. Everybody, let's get Arnold connected to Amanda here. I see you've lived a couple of places from when I did some digging. If there's anywhere in the world you could live for one year, where would it be?
00:22:57 Amanda: Barcelona. I studied abroad there. I close my eyes and think about it and it's just what freedom feels like. Just being in a plaza, sipping on a beer at whatever time that they start that and kids running around, kicking the soccer ball, people strumming the guitar. It's just freedom to me.
00:23:15 Conor: So many people I know feel similarly about Barcelona. I have never been, but it is very high on my list. Next, what's your favorite productivity hack?
00:23:24 Amanda: Adderall, but with a prescription. Honestly though, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. We could do a whole podcast about women and ADHD and getting diagnosed in adulthood. It's insane.
00:23:37 Amanda: So no productivity hacks ever worked for me and now I know why, because my brain doesn't work that way. So I would encourage if there are other women or adults like me, where like, why can't I do this thing? Why am I the ultimate procrastinator? Get a test. It's changed my life.
00:23:56 Conor: As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD as a young kid, I completely know where you're coming from with that one. And it's so true. I know a couple of my friends who are women and later in life that got diagnosed as well, and it's something that we can do a whole podcast on it. Completely.
00:24:11 Amanda: So many Instagram ads for it being like, hey, you should get this. You have ADHD. I was like, maybe I should actually ask my doctor about this. And it turns out whatever targeting that they were doing is spot on.
00:24:26 Conor: And how after working all day with Jawa, how do you unstress or unwind?
00:24:32 Amanda: I have a one year old and I love her and breakfast times and then dinner times together where we're just all in the kitchen. I put music on, she's babbling, we're singing and cooking together. It's very healing for me and I'm super present.
00:24:49 Conor: I love that. Family really, I think, grounds you and makes you forget about all the things that are going on, so that's fantastic. Last question we have is, where can listeners find you?
00:24:58 Amanda: I don't have much to say, but definitely follow Jawa. Join the Jawa Discord. Follow Jawa on socials. A lot of times it's me behind it. But then if anyone wants to connect with me, LinkedIn is the best place.
00:25:12 Conor: Thanks for being on today, Amanda. It's been such a pleasure chatting with you.
00:25:16 Amanda: Thanks, Conor. This was so fun. Appreciate it.
00:25:19 Conor: Thanks.
00:25:21 Scott Hartley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first-check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe, and we'll catch you on the next episode.