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 really because I've been fundraising over November/December and haven't gotten a chance to record much until January. I hope you've enjoyed the series thus far and look forward to more episodes in 2025!

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 sometimes you need to take the lead.

I deeply enjoyed my conversation with Irena, I hope you do as well. Let’s jump in

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 journey.

We also talked a lot about the work that DigiBC - The Creative Technology Association of British Columbia does for the Vancouver startup ecosystem and the fulfillment and enjoyment she's gotten from participating and becoming the executive chair of gaming for the org. It really shows the power that local organizations can have on a founding journey, and the power of communities they can build.

Let's jump in.

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 Up, one of the first embodied AI games, earlier this year to strong success and building off of that. Ran’s journey has definitely had some wild turns and was wonderful to listen to. Let’s jump in.

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 on and share his story so that folks could hear about how local ecosystem funding can be a source as much as the classic tales of publishers and VCs. Not an easy road, but a viable one.

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 time both being and receiving Coaching and spends time in the episode to talk about how that experience has shaped him as a founder, and his team.

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, and how his team and co-founders have come together. All in all its quite unique. As a note, the sound here is a little rougher than past episodes -- we'll get that cleaned up in the future. This episode is also a little on the longer side -- Guy is a self-proclaimed talker, and had a lot to share.

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 journey than other guests I've talked to thus far. From having family as cofounders, to learning leadership and management on the fly, to using her passion for fitness and health as a way to network into opportunities, Jenny's path is really amazing to listen to.