Kun Gao is a serial entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and original CEO of Crunchyroll, the platform that turned anime from a niche US curiosity into a billion-dollar streaming giant (acquired by Sony/AT&T WarnerMedia for $1.2 billion). Now he's doing it again as Co-Founder and CEO of Forge (forge.gg), a San Francisco-based game marketing and loyalty platform that hit 1 million users within its first year. Alongside co-founders Dennis 'Thresh' Fong (the world's first professional esports player) and George Ng, Gao is building the infrastructure layer that indie game developers desperately need: no-code loyalty programs, player analytics, and direct community channels - without the walled gardens.
Simon Carless is a British-born gaming industry veteran who spent 16 years shaping trade media and the Game Developers Conference at UBM/Informa before going independent in 2020 to found GameDiscoverCo - a newsletter, data platform, and consultancy focused on how players find, buy, and enjoy video games. With 43,000+ subscribers on Substack and enterprise SaaS clients including 90+ publishers and studios, he's become the de facto Bloomberg Terminal of game discovery data for the global indie games ecosystem.
Wavedash is a San Francisco-based startup (YC X25) that lets players jump into high-end PC games directly in their browser - no launcher, no download, no install. Built on WebAssembly and WebGPU, the platform acts like 'Steam for the web,' giving indie developers a friction-free distribution channel where they keep 90% of revenue. Backed by Floodgate's Mike Maples Jr., Jawed Karim (YouTube co-founder), Griffin Gaming Partners, and Y Combinator, Wavedash launched its public beta in December 2025.