Forge is a company where gamers go to celebrate their achievements and start earning rewards for their dedication to gaming. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Forge co-founder, President, and CEO Kun Gao to learn more about the company.
Kun Gao’s Background
What is Kun Gao’s background? Gao said:
“My background is in engineering. I completed my undergraduate at Berkeley in Computer Science and Math and a few years of grad school in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. I had the good fortune to intern at HOTorNOT before going to grad school and learned how to build consumer-facing experiences during and have been doing it ever since.”
“During grad school, I founded my first company, Frappr, a location based social network, which was acquired by the founder of PayPal. From there, I founded Crunchyroll, the anime stream service with college friends, and ran it as CEO/GM for over a decade before Crunchyroll was acquired.”
“Now, I’m working in the gaming space with my co-founders at GGWP and Forge, two companies that we founded during covid lockdown.”
Formation Of Forge
How did the idea for Forge come together? Gao shared:
“With tens of thousands of games launching every year, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for game developers to break through and find an audience. We believe that traditional marketing no longer works for games because they have become increasingly expensive, inefficient, and didn’t reach the right audience.”
“We wanted to create a solution that would not only make marketing easier but also more effective by leveraging the power of community engagement. As gamers ourselves, we knew the value of building strong, loyal communities around games. So, we set out to build a platform that could transform everyday players into passionate advocates and promoters.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Gao explained:
“Forge’s core product is our community engagement platform, which includes a suite of no-code, self-service tools that allow game developers to create customizable loyalty programs so that they can reward their most loyal fans and grow their audience. These programs are designed to engage players from pre-launch through post-launch.”
“Key features include gamified rewards for player engagement, tools for social media and community marketing, and detailed analytics to help developers understand their audience. Our platform is all about helping developers build a large audience and stronger relationships with players so they can turn them into loyal advocates and active promoters of their games.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Gao cited:
“We’ve had quite a few exciting milestones since our launch. A big milestone was the successful beta launch of Forge in late 2023, where we drove hundreds of millions of player engagements for our beta partners, which was a huge validation for our vision. And now, with the launch of Forge Season 2, we’re introducing even more powerful tools and expanding our network of partners, which is incredibly exciting.”
“We are really passionate about changing the way developers can market their games by giving them new resources and capabilities to create gamification that attracts players to their game and converts average fans into brand advocates and promoters. This driving goal has led to a recent milestone I am excited to share. We just opened up the Forge platform with the launch of all-new self-service tools that democratize user acquisition for games and use a more gamified user engagement model. Game developers can get started with these tools for free, or upgrade to paid packages to unlock more of Forge’s capabilities.”
Funding
After asking Gao about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“We raised our seed round from top tier gaming VCs in co-leads BITKRAFT, Makers Fund, and Animoca. We also count as shareholders Riot Games, Sony Innovation Fund, Griffin Gaming Partners, along with the founders of Twitch, YouTube, PayPal, Kabam, Guitar Hero, Blizzard, and more!”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Gao concluded:
“We think what we are building with Forge can be something that has immense value for every gamer and for every game. The gaming industry is 250 billion annually, and with Forge, we want to unlock value for every gamer and create new ways for games to grow their communities by giving developers new tools that utilize our social and community experiences.”
“With Forge, we want to be a service that every gamer uses daily to unlock rewards from games and a tool that developers use to launch out-of-the-box loyalty programs so that they can easily acquire, engage and retain players.”
