Founder’s Quest

Today, I’m talking with Stephen Bell of Gardens. Stephen’s journey is notable in a few ways that make this a really fun discussion. First, Stephen comes more from the world of screenwriting and narrative design and had to learn how to adapt those skills to the role of founder. Second, the founder group of Gardens comes from smaller more indie studios and chose to take a much larger swing — then had to figure out what that meant. ...

Today we’re talking with Eli Allen of Wild Blue Studios. Eli is a unique guest for our show in a few ways. Wild Blue has been operating for 7 years, where many of the guests I’ve had so far are still in the first few years of their company. Wild Blue is also an art service provider rather than a dev studio, as well as a worker co-operative. We talk a lot about what each of these differences mean for Eli’s founding journey and what ...

Today we’re talking with Pavel Afanasiev of Northern Lights Entertainment. Pavel’s founding journey is a fresh one, starting during student protests in Hong Kong, through to a paper written on his way to a Master’s degree in economics and business. And all of this was built on experiences in forums for a large web strategy game, and a passion for bringing political systems to players inside of games. Along the way, Pavel met his co...

On today’s episode, we talk with Bernard Yee, founder of Windup Minds. Bernie has a long history in the games industry working at such places as SOE, Atari, Bungie, Popcap, and more. But immediately prior to starting Windup Minds, he was working at Oculus building early VR experiences. It was through that journey that he found the seed of what he wanted to continue as he started Windup Minds. He shares how he found his cofounders a...

Today we’re talking with Caerie Houchins of Wicked Fox Games. Caerie had what I think is a quintessential experience post-layoffs at Riot, where a bunch of well meaning folks were encouraging her to do a startup. This happens whenever there are big layoffs or downturns in the industry — surely those folks can just start their own studios! As you’ll hear, Caerie went on this journey with curiosity and learned more about what that pa...

Michael Chu, founder of Treehouse Games, is a dear friend of mine. We worked together at Riot Games a decade ago now and have helped support each other on our founding journeys since. He was a graduate of the USC games program where he led a project and met his co-founder. While he spent the next few years learning at Riot, his co-founder went on several entrepreneurial journeys. Michael shares how those two different set of experi...

Stephen MacDonald, founder of Magic Potion Games, is my first guest who self-described as a serial entrepeneur. He’s done two prior startups, pushing hard along those journeys, and in between has worked at places like Disney, EA, and Relic. Each startup brought with it new lessons and experiences, which Stephen was quite introspective about and has carried forward on this journey. It’s really inspiring to hear someone who has that ...

In this episode we talk to Cole Clifford from Pickford AI. This is a little bit out of our normal zone as Pickford is more in the broader entertainment space. However as I’ve gotten connected to Cole and his co-founder Stephen, I found their journey one that share a lot in common with other game industry founding stories. And while its hard to replicate a founding after a successful exit, the path Cole has navigated to learn how to...

Welcome back to Founder’s Quest here in 2025. Our first episode of the year is with Heather Cerlan, founder of NEARstudios. After seeing the announcement of their game Hawthorn last year, I wanted to learn more about Heather’s journey to that moment. An artist being the galvanizing founder of a team is on the more rare side and learning how Heather found the spark to start a studio and navigated that journey was both interesting an...

As the last episode of the year, I sat down with my co-founder at Jam & Tea Studios to have him share his founding journey. Hearing his perspective of the journey that we've shared really emphasized to me how each individual's founding journey is truly unique. I look forward to talking to more cofounders of folks that I've already interviewed next year. For now, we'll be taking a bit of a break over the holidays -- though its ...

Irena is a kindred spirit for me. She founded Unleashed Games in 2023 to pursue making games that tackled social design and brought players together. She hasn’t always wanted to start a studio, but after spending a career at places like Scopely, 38 Studios, and Blizzard working on World of Warcraft, she didn’t see anyone focused on the problems or opportunities she was most passionate about. If no one else is doing it, the sometime...

I've known Jeanne-Marie Owens (co-founder of Critical Path Games, 2024) since 2020 when we worked together at Phoenix Labs. There she had the interesting experience of being the first employee of a startup and going on the whole founding journey through to an exit. It was a remarkable run and amazing learning experience, which she was then able to carry with her as she decided to be in a founder seat fully from the start on this jo...

Ran Mo, founder of Proxima in 2021, didn’t always work in games. He initially spent time as more of a consultant and corporate strategy side of things before transitioning into product management at Electronic Arts. That said, entrepreneurship and games was always the goal and so he spent time learning what he felt he needed to before making the jump. And despite being a very hard jump, Proxima has been successful! Releasing Suck U...

I met Mickael through the local development community in Vancouver Canada. He’s one of the founders of Caldera Interactive which spun up in 2019. As you’ll hear, Caldera really came together in the classic game industry fable way of folks who wanted to make games, doing it on the side, then make a play to do it full-time and succeed. In this case, the play was applying for the Canadian Media Fund, or CMF. I wanted Mickael to come o...

Andy Mauro founded Storycraft in 2023 after spending a lot of time in the "chatbot" tech space, including a previously founded and exited company. He and I got to know each other through our mutual investor, London Venture Partners. I've always really enjoyed his insights from the tech side as he approaches building a game studio and merges his prior founding experience with being a lifelong gamer.  Andy also has spent a lot of ti...

This episode I talk with Guy Costantini who heads up a studio that is still in stealth. His journey is a unique one as he comes from a marketing background into entrepeneur life. He's worked as some major studios - Riot, CD Projekt, and Skydance - and is now translating a decade of lessons and experiences into a unique founding journey. We talk quite a bit about how he jumped in, how he's navigating fundraising in a tough market, a...

In this episode we talk to Jenny Xu who founded Talofa Games in 2021 right after graduating from MIT. I personally haven't run into someone before who said that they started a studio because it was easier than finding a job, but I have now. I think this may be a more common perspective these days with the current job market in games. As you'll hear, Jenny is incredibly driven and that has propelled her on a very different founding...

This episode we talk with Zabir Hoque, who founded Torbie in 2022. He’s a digipen graduate who’s worked at large companies as an engineer both in and out of games, as well as having a front-row seat to startup life as an early employee at System Era Softworks. It was interesting to hear how all of those experiences really molded the kind of journey Zabir has gone on, and what kind of studio he’s built because of it.

Torbie’s firs...

This episode I sit down with Emily Greer who co-founded Kongregate in 2006, and then went on her second founding journey with Double Loop Games in 2019. We talk about how her first journey led to her second, and how both were learning experiences in different ways. 

I think we often over-mythologize successes like Kongregate - which defined web based games for a generation - and (for very human reasons) under-discuss journeys tha...