interactive-storytelling
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Andy Bergmann Has Spent a Career Making Complicated Things Feel Obvious
Before he marketed software that untangles prior authorization, Andy Bergmann made charts behave like stories, turned 37 years of waves into a game, invented a four-ended measuring spoon, and gave a giraffe an orchard. The medium keeps changing. The instinct does not.
Character.AI Built a World of Talking Personas. Then the Model Race Cost More Than the Fantasy
The chatbot company found millions of people would spend an hour inside a made-up conversation. Then compute costs, a founder homecoming and a safety reckoning turned one clever app into a test of whether AI can become an entertainment medium.
Genvid Holdings Inc.
Genvid Holdings Inc. is a New York media-technology company that invented the Massively Interactive Live Event (MILE) - part TV show, part video game, where thousands of viewers vote on what happens next in real time. Founded in 2016 by Square Enix cloud-gaming veterans, Genvid has produced the Emmy-winning SILENT HILL: Ascension, the Webby-winning The Walking Dead: Last Mile, Rival Peak, and DC Heroes United. Backed by $166M in funding, the company is now extending its production infrastructure into studio-grade generative AI tooling for professional creators.
Imprint
Imprint is a New York based education company behind a visual microlearning app that turns dense subjects - psychology, philosophy, history, finance, science - into illustrated, bite-sized lessons you can finish in under 10 minutes a day. Built by mobile entertainment veteran Daniel Terry and developed under the legal entity Polywise, Inc., the app pairs original animation with daily quizzes and visual guides to bestselling nonfiction books. It became one of the highest grossing and most decorated learning apps, winning Google Play's Best App of 2023 and earning Apple Editors' Choice recognition.
Pocket Gems
Pocket Gems is a San Francisco mobile-games studio behind hits like War Dragons and Episode - Choose Your Story. Founded in 2009 by Daniel Terry and Harlan Crystal above a pizza shop while Terry was still at Stanford, the company builds AAA-quality mobile games and a Hollywood-grade interactive storytelling platform, powered by its proprietary mobile-first Mantis Engine and backed by Sequoia Capital and Tencent.
Ben Liu
Ben Liu is the CEO of Pocket Gems, a San Francisco-based mobile entertainment company backed by Tencent and Sequoia Capital. After joining as COO in 2011 and becoming CEO in 2012, he has led the company's flagship titles — the interactive storytelling platform Episode (with 25 million+ registered creators) and the real-time 3D strategy game War Dragons — while overseeing $155 million in total fundraising, mostly from Tencent. A Stanford double-degree and MBA graduate, Liu brings a rare hybrid background spanning investment banking, Disney strategy, EA mobile product management, and social gaming before betting on the mobile-first future of entertainment.
Michael Dawson
Michael Dawson is the Chief Business Officer and Head of Storytelling Studio at Pocket Gems, the San Francisco mobile gaming studio behind Episode and War Dragons. With a background spanning management consulting, clean-tech startups, and entrepreneurship, Dawson joined Pocket Gems in 2011 and helped scale it into one of the most successful mobile entertainment companies in the world — overseeing products that have been downloaded over 325 million times and platforms where billions of story episodes have been read. He holds degrees from Yale (Ethics, Politics & Economics) and Stanford (MBA, MS in Environment & Resources), and has become one of the sharper strategic voices in mobile interactive storytelling.