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.