Founder’s Quest

Today we’re talking with Lisette Teatree-Montgomery, founder of Cornerstone Interactive which got started in 2023. Her background is that of an incredible art and creative director previously working at DoubleFine, Ubisoft, EA, and more. We talk about her journey from working on award winnng games to starting her own studio, what she’s learned along the way, and how adaptability has become central to her perspective on the industry...

Today, we talk with Oksana of Seeker Entertainment. Oksana and I first met back in the day when she first joined Riot, when she was already a deeply accomplished engineer and leader. Since then she spent 9 years growing and leading at Riot in a variety of roles, getting further and further from development and building new things. She talks about how that drove her to pursue her founding journey, and the learning and experiences al...

Today, we’re talking with Jen MacLean of Dragon Snacks Games, founded last year in 2024. Jen comes from a long history in the game industry at some of the largest players in the space. Microsoft, Amazon, 38 studios as well as a lot of time in the IGDA supporting the entire industry. We talk about what pushed her to start a new studio in this moment of the industry, how the early part of her founding journey has gone, and how she su...

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...