Building an AI-Native Studio, the End of the MVP, and Betting on Vision

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Most gaming founders come up through product. Yotam Pappo came up through nightclubs, a big nightlife business and a career making hit records as a DJ, before he ever touched a game.

Yotam is Co-Founder and CEO of Peerplay, a casual studio he started in 2023 and runs like almost no one else: born with AI, obsessed with distribution, and built on conviction long before the data shows up. This episode is about building a great game company now that the old playbook is dead and AI has rewritten the rules.

From the DJ booth to gaming
Yotam chased gaming on purpose. After years in nightlife and making hits, what pulled him in was the business of it: monetization, free-to-play, and the way it never lets you coast. "I was enchanted by the business… the fact that it always pushes you to your limits. You need to be excellent." He climbed to GM at Playtika's Huge Casino, deep in the casual side, before leaving to build his own studio.

Casino thrills in casual
He founded Peerplay in early 2023 with his co-founder and art director, Dean, around a simple bet: bring the volatility, the jackpots and the pure excitement of casino games into mass-market casual, where most titles play it safe. Their first game, Merge Cruise, is the proving ground. And he rejects the trade-off most studios treat as gospel. "Retention and monetization are not at odds with each other."

The world's first gay game
Peerplay's real differentiator lives in the narrative and the art. The game is openly, unmistakably gay, from the storyline to the look and feel. Yotam's logic is both personal and commercial: the core casual audience, women roughly 30 to 60, sees this representation everywhere in TV and film and almost never in games. "I think I'm also the first, or the only, gay founder of a mobile gaming company." The next title, he says, will be built the same way.

Why Merge
When Yotam fell for Merge, investors told him it wouldn't scale. The numbers seemed to agree, with Merge Mansion sitting alone at the top around $300K a day. He saw something else: the next match three, a mechanic rooted in the real world with deep layers of asset management underneath. He backed his read over the spreadsheet, and built the company around it.

Born with AI
Peerplay started around the time GPT-3 landed, and it has never had a single day without AI. Everyone codes, everyone builds with it daily, and it's baked into how the company grows its people. The speed is the obvious part. The deeper unlock, in Yotam's telling, is that AI collapses the friction between people. "You have pods of one," and he genuinely can't picture running a company any other way now.

We're all juniors
Ask him where AI falls short and he won't bite, on principle. He thinks everyone, whatever their experience, is a junior in a technology this new, and that humility is the whole engine. "You can't have a culture of curiosity and discovery without people feeling that they're juniors." The risks he does take seriously are the practical ones: token cost, security, and the shaky stability of vibe-coded work once it hits production.


The MVP era is over
The build-a-scrappy-MVP-and-see approach is dead, because users no longer grade you on a curve. You're competing with every other game, with entertainment as a whole, and now with AI itself. "Claude Code is the game." A real distribution thesis and a genuine differentiator can't be an afterthought, they have to be there from day one. As Yotam puts it, "We are like a supermarket," and the launch never really ends.

Vision over data
For its first two years, Peerplay ran on almost nothing but a vision. Yotam is proudly intuition-driven, which he calls the opposite of data-driven, because early on data only answers the questions you already knew to ask. A founder's job, he says, is to stay obsessed with the questions themselves, and to hold conviction and self-criticism in constant tension. "The demon always tells you to double down… it's not an investor, it's part of yourself."

Advice for first-time founders
His counterintuitive tell: the people who worry they're not cut out to be founders are usually the ones who are, because they actually grasp how brutal it is. He'd also tell them to stop building for genres. "I don't think that users play genres." Start from what genuinely moves a person to open the app, and build out from there.

Wrap Up
Strip away the DJ story and the AI tooling, and Yotam is really talking about one thing: knowing exactly who you're building for, and having the nerve to build it before anyone can prove you right. The make-a-game-and-hope era is over. What replaces it is conviction, a genuine reason to exist, and a company humble enough to treat itself as junior to the tools it runs on. Peerplay's bet is specific: casino excitement for a mass casual crowd, a game that's openly gay for players the industry has always ignored, built by tiny AI-native pods that move faster than teams ten times their size. He leads on intuition when there's no map, and holds conviction and self-criticism in the same hand. Everything else is just making games and hoping.

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The Full Transcript:

Amit: Okay. So, Yotam, great to see you here. So our next guest is Yotam Pappo AKA Papito. This is my personal nickname. Yotam here has vast experience, first of all as a famous DJ here in Tel Aviv and Playtika, GM at Huuuge, now CEO and co-founder of Peerplay, scaling very cool, successful, gaming company here in Tel Aviv. Yotam please tell us about yourself.

Yotam: So, so basically you said everything. Yeah, I started my career in a completely different, completely different path. And for that reason I think that, you know, I always thought I chose gaming. You know, like I it's not like I, you know, started my career in, I don't know, like EdTech and then…

Amit: The classic thing.

Yotam: Yeah, the class, the classic move of, you know, I chose gaming. Like I had a very big business, ah, nightlife business in Tel Aviv. I thought you knew that, but I…

Amit: No, no, I just didn't remember if you were DJ.

Yotam: Yeah, I so I was a DJ as well. I made some of the biggest, ah, hits in Israel. Like, you know, some of the songs I made you heard them in the…

Amit: Dance the, like crazy. Dance like crazy probably.

Yotam: You heard them in the, in the kindergarten. Yeah. And then I chose, like it was my dream to work in gaming and…

Amit: Really? In games. Why?

Yotam: I mean, I can lie a bit and say that I was always a gamer and always like… I wanted to work in gaming, which is pretty not a lie even. Like I liked gaming or like from, from the very beginning, but I was enchanted by the, by the business. I love… Like still the business, the not, not, I mean, game design per se, but the business of gaming, monetization, free to play, the fact that it always pushes you to, you know, to your limits. You need to be excellent, which is something that is, you know, ins- that inspires me. This is, this is basically the reason.

Amit: Amazing. Can you tell us a bit about Peerplay and the company now that you co-founded?

Yotam: Yeah. So, I co-founded Peerplay at, in, three years ago, beginning of, 2023. The vision was to, you know, to take basically casual categories. We all come from, you know, the casino ecosystem like Playtika, Moon Active, whatever, Huuuge, like the casino ecosystem, but we all worked only on casual games in this ecosystem, and I think that this is something that is very special. Like obviously in the past few years there are a few successes in casual gaming coming from this ecosystem, but obviously like this is not our expertise here in Tel Aviv, but…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Yotam: … what we know how to do, what the team know how to know, knows how to do is to basically merge this, you know, merge the casino atmosphere, the casino volatility, the excitement that you get in casino games and like take it to mass markets. Like this is, this is what I did in Playtika at Huuuge, and this is, this is like the vision. Specifically we wanted to take categories like Merge, which is our first game, Merge Cruise…

Amit: First out of many.

Yotam: Yeah.

Amit: Hopefully.

Yotam: First out of many. The, the next one will be this year, or we're gonna start…

Amit: Oh

Yotam: … working on that, next year, this year. It was to take casual categories that we felt that are, you know, under-monetized, that the core gameplay itself, that it, that it wants to be, to have more excitement, more volatility, more, you know, jackpot experiences…

Amit: Mm

Yotam: … inside the core gameplay. I personally think that, you know, retention and monetization are not at odds with each other. Like I think that you, that users love to, you know, to have these experiences of, dopamine and volatility, and this was the vision and this is what we built. And basically we built… Like this is, let's say, the core gameplay vision. The distribution vision was to create the fir- the world's first LGBT game. Like the, our, our game is the world's first, game that actually has a narrative layer that is completely LGBT-focused in the LGBT world. You know, like it's not only the narrative but the visual language of the game, the look and feel are very, you know, LGBT, very gay you can say. Not LGBT, like very gay. And this is also something that, I mean, it was important mostly to me and Dean, our, our incredible art director. It was important to us to create, something that we can be proud of ourselves, you know. And I think that these two pillars, like the core gameplay that is very different from, from Merge and the distribution or the, you know, the narrative layer of the game, these are the two things that…

Amit: Yeah, because I think it's highly important because first of all that you have the more personal connection is beautiful, but, you know, business is business and as you think about it… Look, if I will speak now with the company that say, "Hey, I want to build a Merge game," I will say, "What are you crazy?" You know, you have Travel Town, Gossip Power Bell, and this is the kind of, I think, switch that is, differentiate you from the other games. When you look at distribution, first of all, again, you have the personal connection, but probably, it, you can get the users in a very different, probably cheaper way, and good users.

Yotam: Yeah, I mean, for sure, and this is… I wouldn't say that this is an afterthought obviously. Like we thought about it thoroughly, we tested it thoroughly, but it's also the fact that we think that it does, like that this is an opportunity, an apt, untapped opportunity in gaming. Like you basically have this kind of content that is di…

Amit: Everywhere.

Yotam: Yeah, everywhere, that is directed at the same, you know, target audience of mobile game, of mobile casual games. Like women, you know, 30 to 60, whatever. They have so much content that is made for them in TV, movies and so on, that is, that is LGBT, gay, and in gaming you just don't, don't see that. So it's not only the fact that we, that we, that we wanted to stand out. Of course, we wanted to stand out, but it also the fact that we thought that these users actually want that, you know.

Amit: Yeah. Yeah, it's very logical what you're saying. And the next game will be also LGBT?

Yotam: Yeah, I think so.

Amit: Yeah, that's…

Yotam: Yeah.

Amit: You will be the first, company that is launching LGBT. No, it's super cool. Why? What's, …

Yotam: Yeah, I think I'm, I think, I don't know, but I think I'm also the first, or the only gay, founder of a…

Amit: Really?

Yotam: … mobile gaming company.

Amit: Oh, that's, … Yeah, I don't know.

Yotam: I haven't thought about it, but I think, yeah.

Amit: We can ask.And do a survey.

Yotam: Yeah.

Amit: No, but it's, beautiful. And why did you choose… You spoke about, okay, you looked at, territories or genres that, like you said, under-monetized. What else did you check before Merge specifically?

Yotam: I mean, I fell in love with Merge.

Amit: Really? Wow.

Yotam: Merge two and… Yeah, because when, when we started… Now it's funny, okay? But when we started, it feels like ancient history, but it was three years ago. We actually had, you know, investors, for example, who, who told us, like, "We would have invested if you would, you know, do any other category, but Merge is not gonna scale." Like, it was, at the time, the biggest Merge game was Merge Mansion.

Amit: Oh, wow.

Yotam: Yeah. It made like 300K a day, something like that. It was, and traveled down, I don't know, made 150.

Amit: Wow. Different times.

Yotam: Yeah, different times. And and I felt at the time that it's gonna be the next, match three. Like, that this is a category that, on the one hand, the core mechanic is so strong and the users can, like, it's something that comes actually from the user's world. You know? Like, you merge things also in, like, in the real world. It makes sense, but it also has these, you know, deeper levels of asset management and, you know, this discovery that you have that you just don't have in other mechanics. And I think, honestly, that this is the perfect mechanic for a casual game. And the fact that it scaled so fast and so…

Amit: Yeah, like crazy

Yotam: … so much, it doesn't surprise me. I mean, I knew that it's gonna happen.

Amit: Oh, amazing. So for anyone that is listening here, they don't know, but you and I meet very often. So I take a lot of advice from, Yotam about, leadership, management. Both of us are co-founders and CEO. I know the burden of it. One of the things that I most… that I think are the most really amazing that you are doing in the company, the entire Pear Paz team is doing, you are really utilizing AI in a way that I've never seen before, and we are an AI company.

Yotam: Yes.

Amit: I think, I don't want to say it, I hope people from Set are not listening… but maybe you're using AI more than us. You are very AI native in your thought. You have this rule that you told me about that everyone codes from the start. You know, operation, market, everyone codes. So can you tell us a bit how your company operates today with AI and what led you to it?

Yotam: Yeah. So, the company was born with AI, you know, like at exactly the same historical moment. And I think that this is something that really contributed to that. Like, we never had, we didn't have one day without AI. Okay? That's, that's like, I mean, the, like the historical reason, and I remember actually that, like the moment, Dean and I, we, like, we planned the test, like this, test where you do like these, fake stores.

Amit: Mm.

Yotam: Right? Like to, you know, to test the theme.

Amit: To check the conversion. Yeah, yeah.

Yotam: Yeah. To, to test the theme of the game. And we had to actually, like, now you would say generate, but we had to write the, like the description of the fake games.

Amit: Ah. The copy.

Yotam: Right?

Amit: Yeah.

Yotam: So I will remember this like for the rest of my life for sure. Like, and then Dean told me like, "Yeah. Let's go, let's go to Fiverr and ask, like find a copywriter to do it." And then I said, "Let's try with this new ChatGPT thing." It was like that. And, and we generated the text, and it was… Like we were, we were shocked. Like we were amazed, and it was like GPT-3 or something like that. Like…

Amit: Okay. When ChatGPT came.

Yotam: Yeah. But… And, and from exactly the same moment, I think what we had, and still have, is this, you know, excitement, that you, that we all share. And I think also in, … When, when I recruit, new employees, I try to assess this excitement because everyone now, you know, they're in like, …

Amit: In every company. I'm AI native.

Yotam: Everyone… Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Amit: It's impossible. Yeah.

Yotam: But you can feel, like you can see, you can see it on people's faces, like when their eyes, you know, become bigger, and they get excited about it. This is something that we have for sure. So to be honest, I don't think that the fact that we all code and we all, you know, share this, improvement of our AI capabilities all the time, it's not like, it's not a discipline. Like it's not, it's not something that I…

Amit: You enforce. Like you say…

Yotam: Yeah, that I enforce

Amit: … "Do AI."

Yotam: Yeah. Like I think that, I think that this is something that people in the company are really excited about. Also, I mean, if you look on the job market, like let's say five years from now, it's obvious to all of us that we all, we're all gonna need to code, right?

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: It's obvious to all of us. And then basically what I'm, I'm, you know, telling every employee that is coming to the company and every employee inside the company, "You have a, like a huge sandbox where you can actually try and become better at, at doing that. And basically, I'm allowing you, or I give you the, all, everything you need to become an expert in the technology that you're gonna need to-use in five years from now 100%. And, and basically, like, it's their decision if they're gonna stay, you know, ahead of the curve or just, you know, to go with the flow. But they want that. Like, they want to be… You know, they're not gonna take their, retirement pensions from, from Peerplay, right? They have, like, 40 years of career in front of them, and they want to be prepared for that. And, and they have, they have the ge- the tools here, here inside the company. They have the tools to actually become experts in s- in the technology of the, of future. I think that this is something that is overlooked, that, first of all, like, the, it allows you, like, the fa- if, if you become AI native as a company, it allows you to just have better talent, inside the company. You, you give them a value proposition that they don't get in, you know, in corporate, for example.

Amit: Mm.

Yotam: Well, you know, all the processes around AI, AI basically that don't allow you to use anything even. And here they can use everything. Like, if they find a new product, like a new AI product, whatever, they can always ask for it and they will always get it, because this is the, you know, the ecosystem of discovery and curiosity that I really want to, you know, to foster in the company.

Amit: Yeah. I think, you know, curiosity is the main thing. And I have a question. Do you think that Peerplay would have reached… I know that you still have a long way to go, but do you think that you would have still reach where you are without AI?

Yotam: I mean, no, for sure. I think that also, I le- I mean, I don't know how people built companies before AI. I, it's, … it's a mystery to me, honestly. Like, it's so, like, I mean, obviously they have built companies, and it's not like here in Peerplay they work less … than, than, than, than in other companies. But I think that what we manage, what we manage every day to do is to reduce the friction between, between people mostly. Like, this is, this is the big achievement. It's not, it's not only the fact that people work faster. Like, I mean, this is obvious, and it also has, has its price, of course. But the fact that there's no friction, that you can actually accomplish everything yourself, you don't need, you know, the analyst to build the dashboard for you. You don't need the artist to generate the asset for you. You need, you know, their expertise sometimes. You need their, advice. But you can basically, you have a, you have pods of one, one people, you know?

Amit: Yeah, this is amazing.

Yotam: That, that are composed of one people. And this is, something that I honestly, I can't picture a company without it.

Amit: What i- so if we're looking at it like that, and you use really a lot of AI and everyone in the company use, where do you think is the limitation of AI that you're saying, "Don't do that. I experienced it on my own. It's not good there"?

Yotam: No. So, so I will, I will never say that. I will never say that because I don't see myself as an expert, first of all. I think that that's part of the fun. The fact that it doesn't matter where you're coming from, we're all juniors in that.

Amit: I love it.

Yotam: Like, the technology, the technology has, you know, this very clear, point where it started, and we started being juniors there, okay? And I mean, the fact that we're all juniors, it means… Like, like, you can't have a culture of curiosity and discovery without people feeling that they're juniors. So I will never say that. I don't think that… I mean, I hear that sometimes from people. Like, "I think that this use case can't be cracked with AI." I usually challenge that.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: But I mean, there, there are a lot of challenges, obviously. Like, you have challenges of even of cost, which is a big deal. Like, like, people usually don't talk about it, but if you can use, you can use AI in a way that is very cost sensitive, and you can u- you can basically use it like, you know, you know. I mean, …

Amit: We spend a lot of money

Yotam: … yeah, yeah.

Amit: We probably…

Yotam: We, we spend also

Amit: … a lot of money.

Yotam: Yeah. …

Amit: Like, on token cost, it's, like, insane.

Yotam: Yeah.

Amit: It's way, currently because it's not optimized, it's way more expensive than the cloud cost.

Yotam: Yeah, for sure.

Amit: So we're still in the phase that, every prompt can cost you really a lot of dollars.

Yotam: Yes. And so this is, this is a big price and price and because everyone is a junior, everyone makes junior mistakes. I make…

Amit: Mm

Yotam: … junior mistakes all the time, regarding, you know, even security.

Amit: Yes.

Yotam: You know, like we have, we have, we worked hard on building, you know, guardrails for AI and so on. But you can basically ruin everything, like, with, … Now you can't anymore. But until, like, a few months ago, we, like, any, a Peerplay employee would ruin everything. And these are… And, and we ruin stuff. Not everything, but people ruin stuff. I ruin stuff. And this is, the risks are, are big. Like, with great power comes, … great responsibility. Yeah.

Amit: You know, I will also add for this from our side that we see that all of our… everyone in the company also use AI, and they, you know, especially the engineers, and we've built a lot of internal system. Let's take for example the playable generator…

Yotam: Mm

Amit: … a tool that we have internally that we use. What we experience is also a problem of stability in production, when the system is in production levelYou, at the end, even if you're an engineer, you know, you vibe coded it.

Yotam: Yeah, of course.

Amit: So, we experienced a lot of stability issues, you know, bug issues. Of course, we are solving it. It's on the right track. But I would say this is my biggest recommendation for everyone that is now building a company to, you know, to focus more on the architecture of stuff, on the code review actually. Like, I think that we neglected it a bit because you're, you know, everything is so fast. Like, you're running 20 times faster, and you are saying, "Okay, I can do more. I'm not doing it s- more responsibly." But yeah, it's also, security also, like you said, it's, yeah, comes, with a bigger responsibility. Do you… I have a m- very specific question. Do you think that companies… Okay, let's say that I'm a bigger company. Let's say Peerplay was five years ago. You're 30, 40 employees, AI comes into play, or let's take studios that exist now. Do you think it is possible to really bring the power of UI like you are bringing it for already existing company that is not so adopted to AI, or you must be born with it?

Yotam: I mean, it, for sure it's a nightmare to do it. I would never, I would never try, you know… in a, in a corporate. I mean, I, you j- like, I mean, look at Google, for example. They managed to do it with like, I don't know, like, 200,000 employees or something like that. Like, if you are an excellent company, a really excellent company, you can, you can accomplish that. And I think, by the way, like there's, there's this common notion that, big companies need it less because they have more resources and so on. But I don't think that this is, I don't think that this is, … I don't think that it's right at all. Mostly because what I said about the employees, because the, like, now there's still, like, you can still work in a company and not use AI at all. Like, I mean, in, again, one, two, three, four, five years ago, four years from now, it's not gonna happen anymore. And, companies that won't, you know, utilize AI very deeply inside their processes, inside their pipeline, will just won't give us- give, not users, give, employees the opportunity to grow professionally inside the company.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: And no one wants to work in such companies, in a company that you don't, you know, develop professionally. Like, it's like, it's like you can't find, you know, COBOL developers anymore.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: It's not, like, as a COBOL developer, you can find a job in, like, five minutes, right? But you don't want to be a COBOL developer because you don't want to work on technology that was built in the '50s. And that's the point. People j- like, companies will j- will not have the ability to have talent, real talent…

Amit: Oh, absolutely

Yotam: … if they want AI. I think that this is something that is, like, overlooked, but it's the most important, most important thing because, I mean, that's everything for the, for the, for the employee. Much more, by the way, than I think the compensation.

Amit: Yeah, because this is the new world of progression.

Yotam: Yeah.

Amit: You know, maybe in the future we will have a KPI for, AI utilization of a company. I don't know what it will be, but, I see it. And do you think… No, because I'm thinking a lot, most of the listeners here are for sure not using AI like you or, like Peerplay. And I think a lot, like, practically how to enforce it. I've heard some companies that are saying, "Let's say I have the marketing team, I have the BI team, I have the data analyst team, I have the development team, et cetera." Putting aside development and product management for a side, monetization team and economy. So you have this, I heard you have this floater person that is the AI expert, that he's, "I'm in charge of these two departments, that I'm teaching them AI." so more floaters. This is one approach I saw. I saw another approach of, let's have an AI team that implements internal products. I would say…

Yotam: No, but that, but that's not, but that's not use- using AI.

Amit: Exactly. So some of… The floater is more like, we will teach you how to, like trying to implement it in the people.

Yotam: Which is 100% legit.

Amit: Yeah, yeah, of course. And the second one is more like I kind of gave up on building… Because you have to, you have different ways of using AI. Like really everyone is using some kind of chat interface of LLMs. But the question is, are you using AI, you know, for real in the internal processes, in the workflows themselves?

Yotam: I mean, I think that the problem is the fact that, like, if you know, open LinkedIn, you have this AI-generated posts. Like 90% of the posts are… you know, AI-generated posts. They have this, you know, internal rhythm, you know, like s- a long sentence and then a short sentence. Like, now it's changed or something like that. Like everything is… A- and everything is presented as super easy to do. And we talk about the li- about the hype of AI and so on. I don't think there's a hype. I think that, like, 98% of the use cases can be solved. But I think that there's a lot of work in solving them first, and also there's a lot of work required to actually achieve the skills to solve them. And I think that this is something that, like, I… And in companies that I hear about, like, the companies expect the employees to become AI experts in one day. Like this is, it's a one or zero situation.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: It's either you're an expert, like you can accomplish everything like the Linkin… LinkedIn post, or you're, you're, you know, you can't do anything. And I think that I mentioned like the fact that we're all juniors. We're all juniors, and for that reason, we all need to learn a lot to achieve these, these, these skills. And, -The, the, like you have to experiment a lot with these tools. I experiment with these tools every da- like on a daily basis, and the entire team is using them on a daily basis, and they become, like, over time they become experts. But it's not gonna be like, you know, one person who's gonna consult you, like for…

Amit: Yeah

Yotam: … I don't know, for one week or one month or, or whatever, and you're gonna become an expert. And, and I mean, this is part of the development, like the professional development of each employee, of myself included, of course.

Amit: You know, it's beautiful because it remind me like childish, curiosity. Like I personally, me and Yoni, like we love those stuff because curiosity is, in my opinion, is the main thing because unless you are curious, you will have a lot of biases. And in my opinion, biases… And I see as I grow up as a person, like I develop my own biases. So it's the consistent fight between…

Yotam: Mm-hmm

Amit: … curiosity to biases that you're like, "Sure, that I know." And we also see that curious people look at AI, and this is how I know if they're curious or not. If you're in interview and someone is telling you, "Yeah, I've been playing a bit with ChatGPT, and I really want to get into it," those guys I know that they are curious.

Yotam: Yeah, for sure. What, what have you done for the past…

Amit: Can

Yotam: … four years? Yeah.

Amit: The curious ones are telling you that they're spending their weekends, no matter if, you know, they're, they're, over 50 or they're 20, they're, they're like thinking about it a lot. They have this kind of obsession and…

Yotam: Exactly

Amit: … and fear and I don't know what, so those are the curious guys. I want to ask you a question about launching new games. Again, I know that you still have a long way in, a merge course, specifically your first game, but you did a successful launch of the game. It's one of the most, I think, the hardest thing today, and very challenging to launch game successfully and to maintain and to grow like you're doing. So how do you fucking launch a new game ?

Yotam: I mean, yeah. The, the thing is that even, I don't know, five years ago or something, you could be mediocre at so- at least in some, yeah, aspects of the game. And for that reason it was… I wouldn't say it's, it wasn't easier, but it was easier on, like, you could actually launch an MVP, I think.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: This, …

Amit: Yeah

Yotam: … four, four years ago. This is not something that you can do anymore. Users don't play MVPs. They, … We're competing not only with, you know, with games even, we're competing with entertainment in general that becomes the, like, as we speak, becomes much better and more relevant to the users, and more, you know, tailored to their, to their, to what they like. And we are competing also in the past few years, we are competing with AI itself, which is practically a game, right?

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: Like Claude Code is the game.

Amit: Yeah, actually, yeah.

Yotam: So I mean, you just… You, you can't launch an MVP anymore, which is something that is very hard for, like, you know, for everyone who, you know, had- has this, MVP mindset. And you also can't launch with, without a very clear, distribution, distribution strategy.

Amit: Mm.

Yotam: I mean, gone are the days where you can just create a, create a game, you know?

Amit: And hope it will…

Yotam: Yeah

Amit: … scale like crazy.

Yotam: You need to have a thesis regarding…

Amit: Oh

Yotam: … like the, like how you're gonna approach users, how the game… It's not only the UI itself, it's the game itself has to, stand out in a way that, like putting cynicism aside, like that actually, you know, excites users and make them happy. Like the business is about making people happy. And you have to do it. Like you have to have some unique way to appeal to the users, I think.

Amit: How much do you think it's, … If we're doing it, I know the scale is, the spectrum is, imperfect, but if you take 100%, how much do you think that you should research, put efforts on distribution strategy before launching the game?

Yotam: I mean, you mentioned the curiosity, so I don't think it's about before. I think that this is something that you have to be obsessed about all the time. It's not like you are… Like there's no one clear… When, when I started Pure Play, I thought that's g- there's gonna be one clear point, one point where we're launching the game, right? Like this is also what you see in pitch decks, right? Like this point in time.

Amit: It's good.

Yotam: You… Yeah. But you're basically launching the game all the time.

Amit: Mm.

Yotam: And, and for that reason, you have to be obsessed about, first of all, the thesis itself. You have to, you know, make it more robust and try to, I don't know, to use data to validate it. But you also need to be s- like super critical about your… about, about the thesis and about the, your, ways to solve it or to prove it.

Amit: Beautiful. No, it's really priceless. No, what you're saying is priceless. I'm swearing to God. I'm thinking a lot this as I'm look over when. Do you think now it's a good time to launch a new game? Because, you know, the world now is, gaming is, blah, blah, blah, and visitors are indeed putting less money. It s- it seems like they are doubling down on the winners, which is for you, hopefully great. But people are afraid now of launching new games. You see the Turkish, actually ecosystem is still, you know, you have a lot of money pouring in, so they're still launching. You see the Chinese studios, you see the Vietnamese. Let's speak about the West, Tel Aviv, U… Europe, you see less and less. More maybe, native companies, again, I don't know a lot. But what do you think about this, messaging now, launching new games is impossible?

Yotam: I mean, I think that it was never easy. Like, let, let's take, for example, 2021, like the easy year. Okay? Like everyone, talks about the 2021 as the, as the year, as, as the year where, where it was super easy. Like you can… you could do, like you can… you could release a shitty game, but you had so much money. So, like… Yeah. But in 2021, and I remember that because I was a, I was a GM at Huuuge, it was impossible to recruit good talent. The, competition, on good talent in 2021 was like, you know, 10, 10 times more than what it is today. So you could, you know, maybe you had more money, I guess, from, from VCs. You also had like, you know, lower interest rate, rates. You could…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Yotam: … I don't know, take debt, whatever. But… And UA was cheaper, of course. But you couldn't even build a studio, to be honest. Like, people who built a studio of talented, talented people in 2021 are the people who won, basically, because it was so hard. So I mean, each time has its challenges. I don't think it was easy, it w- it was easy in 2021 or, or like… And honestly, like as an, as an entrepreneur, I don't like this… I'm, I'm not, like even, you know, with my husband, you know, when, when I talk about like privately, I don't find any, advantage in like crying about, you know, the situation. And I think that… And, and we see it all the time. We see studios that manage to grow. We see incredible, exciting, successes that were… that we haven't seen before, honestly. So I mean, you have to be good. You had to be good in 2021. You have to be good now. Not good, but excellent. The only difference is now you have to be even probably a bit better.

Amit: Yeah. It s- it seems like you… First of all, my takeaways from this is kind of remove this, MVP launching, …

Yotam: For sure

Amit: … approach. Secondly, really rely heavy on AI. But most importantly, and this is something in my opinion that is, like super intelligent to say, that is you need to focus a lot on the distribution part, and have a thesis really of why this approach should bring me the users more efficiently, because if not, you are, you know, just doubling down on the same wall that someone is doubling down on. And the fourth part is look at launch as a consistent process, not as a milestones that you once, you know, every once in a while do…

Yotam: The, the…

Amit: … you do

Yotam: … fun part about working in gaming is the fact that we are like, as opposed to most, you know, tech verticals, we are, we are like a traditional business. I always tell my, you know, my team, "We are like a supermarket."

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: You know? Like this is… It's, it's not like, it's not more like we are focused on profitability always. This is the foc- like this is what we're aiming for. And the fact that, like if you, if you would open a supermarket, the distribution strategy would be… would, will have to be part of what you think about. Like, you will not, you know, open a supermarket in a, I don't know, in a street where no one, where, where, where no one walks in the street. So it's basically, it's basically the same. Like, if you see the busi- the, like the company or the game that you're building as a business, the, this thesis about distribution has to come. It has to come because it's just a supermarket.

Amit: Yeah. And it seems like it's, like on the B2B side, you know, go to market in this world, eh, everyone would love to say it. And yeah, it's really part of the, let's call it the deal, and you need to… It's basically making some bets. You really need to bet on something that should have this robust differentiation, …

Yotam: Yeah

Amit: … differentiator.

Yotam: You, you have to bet, and you also need to… We always say, all of us, and of course I'm… I will be the same, the first one to say it, but that we're data, data-driven, right? Like the gaming, the gaming industry is data-driven and so on.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Yotam: We need to also be very intuition-driven, which is basically the opposite of data-driven.

Amit: You…

Yotam: Like you're starting…

Amit: … like a smoke, like a smoke

Yotam: … you're starting a game, you don't have any data. I mean, yeah, you do some…

Amit: Yeah, comparison benchmark…

Yotam: … you know, marketability tests and stuff

Amit: … and those stuff.

Yotam: Obviously, but this is like the, you know, 2% of what you're, you're building. All you have is your intuitions as a, as a, as a professional, your thesis, and your, you know, sense of criticism, like self-criticism, that you basically always, you know, try to validate your thesis. But you don't have data, and basically I… You, you know, people who say, "We, we are data-driven" and so on, you don't have data. Like we, for the first two years, all we had was a vision. And this is also something that is very hard for people who've come from…

Amit: Yeah, I know

Yotam: … you know, from Playtika, from, from Huuuge. Like, but that's all you have. That's all you have.

Amit: To embrace it, like…

Yotam: Yeah

Amit: … the intuition. Because yeah, it's just, it's like making uncertainty certain, and you have uncertainty in everything. But yeah, you're… I think it's very, very, nicely put that you look at it as a business. This is how everyone should look at every business. Also us, also a supermarket…

Yotam: Of course

Amit: … also gaming. But it does seems like, and l- I speak with a lot of founders and executives in companies, that they look at it as a build double down mode, and less consistent strategy, consistent new thesis, and to prove or to see that you're wrong, and et cetera, and to move from there. But it's a-It feels like they are, some of them are less curious about the next thing, and to develop more, and to think more creatively, and they are very obsessed on data. So…

Yotam: I'm obsessed. I'm ob…

Amit: I know, but it's le…

Yotam: I'm obsessed about data and product as well

Amit: … they're not… You need to be also… You need to understand that data is an input of a decision.

Yotam: Of course.

Amit: A very, a very important input. But again, intuition and making bets based on your intuition and data is something that… So not making certain out, out of the uncertainty, because everyone is afraid of uncertainty.

Yotam: Yeah. You're, you're… This is like when you're building a game, you're focused for the, let's say two, three years, whatever, you're focused on the questions. You're not focused…

Amit: Exactly

Yotam: … on the answers. Like data is the answers already, but you first need, like, the… First you need to actually pose the questions, but also you need to me- the means to test them, and you don't have them. And for that reason, all you have is this, like, conviction. You have to have this basically balance of conviction and self-criticism all the time.

Amit: I love it. So now we're moving to a game. You have here questions. I don't know what you have on the questions.

Yotam: Okay.

Amit: Re… Take a card, read the question, and answer it.

Amit: It, it can get personal.

Yotam: Okay.

Amit: So I don't know, but let's…

Yotam: What's the smallest part of your job that nobody would guess genuinely brings you joy? What do you mean by smallest? I have, …

Amit: I would assume like, … Oh, smallest? Yeah, something that is not probably well known.

Yotam: Okay. I wouldn't say joy, but I am obsessed and I love basically, like, spending my nights, investigating bugs in the, in the product.

Amit: Really?

Yotam: Yeah. Like, for sure. Of course. Like, I wouldn't say joy because it's like, these are bugs. But yeah, like I can, I can, … And I'm good at that, to be honest.

Amit: Yeah? I love that.

Yotam: Yeah.

Amit: Yeah.

Yotam: Like, I think, I think I could have been a good, QA.

Amit: Let's do another one. The last one.

Yotam: Okay. If your career so far were a book, what would be the chapter you're in right now be called? Wow. Be called. I mean, it's, … I wouldn't say the f-the first chapter. Okay, I started g… Pureplay when I was junior, like after three years of career in gaming. So I still think I'm, like, in the first, 20%, I guess. Pureplay, I… Like, the way I see Pureplay is gonna be, is gonna… Like, the vision is to build a big company. It's not about the game, it's about building a company and ecosystem and, like, a culture. And, and I'm, like, I told you that before, like, I think we accomplished, like, 10% of that.

Amit: I love that. I think that we are, like, five, 10, like you said.

Yotam: Yeah. I mean…

Amit: It's, …

Yotam: … there's so much to do.

Amit: There's so much to do. I'm thinking about it now. What do I need to do after that? And also we want to give you a present.

Yotam: Yo.

Amit: You already drank from the wine, but you have a personal wine for you and your husband…

Yotam: Wow.

Amit: That is…

Yotam: Thank you

Amit: … branded to you, Yotam Pappo.

Yotam: Wow. My name. Thank you. I love it. My husband is in a Vipassana retreat…

Amit: Vipa…

Yotam: … so he's gonna see it only in a few days.

Amit: I love it. So one of the last question I do have that I think that it should be, you know, it's very inspiring for, first of all, as an entrepreneur that thinks about disruption, innovation, it's really important conversation and I personally can, can and learning a lot from it. But if we're taking it for the gaming angle, you have a lot of founders that I meet all of the time that wants to build a studio that have a lot of question, is it the right time? Asking some, let's call it binary questions. What… Imagine that you're meeting now a CEO, a young CEO in terms of experience that is co-founding or founding on its own a gaming company. What would be your most important recommendation to him?

Yotam: I mean, I think that, as I said, he has to be obsessed with the questions. And it's easier said than done. Like, it's easy… Like, everyone wants to be obsessed with the questions, like, for, I don't know, a month. Okay? But at some point you want answers, and you want to get validation from the market, and this is where it becomes hard. And this is also where, when, when it becomes, I guess, frustrating when you don't get the validation, and this is why I don't think it's for everyone. I think, by the way, that it's for, like, the people who think that they are not fit to be an entrepreneur are… These are the people who are fit because they know how challenging it is. Like, people who, you know, start this without, you know, thinking about, … It's not the repercussions of, you know, working, like, for, like, more hours and so on, but it's the fact that you just don't get this validation from the market. So, like, it takes so much time. You know that. Every, every entrepreneur know that, and this is where it becomes, becomes hard, and you need… If you're not obsessed with validating this and you're eager to see the results already, it's not gonna work.

Amit: And how do you think… You, you and I know what is working with investors, and one of the things they push the most is to double down, you know, when something is, seems like it is working. And what you're saying is to be focused and be obsessed about the questions, and do I have the right conviction? Did I want to… D… Even did I phrase it correctly? Is it accurate enough, and et cetera. And when you have this push from investor, you know, I myself didn't know that because I didn't have a company before. You now know it. So what would you recommend to someone that, you know, needs toDouble down and provide a lot of value fast that has this pressure from investors that they still don't…

Yotam: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's about investors, to be honest. I think that this… you have like the, you know, the angel and the demon on your shoulders. Like the demon always tells you that to double down, to push harder. It's not an investor, it's part of yourself. And this is what like this… You have to have this conviction all the time because you're building a business. You also need to, you know, lead people. You can't lead people if you don't ha- if you're not convinced in the, you know, the mission of what we're building together. But you also need to be super critical about, about your conviction, basically. So it's not about an investor is like, is… can be an external voice of this internal…

Amit: Mm

Yotam: … demon, you know? So first of all, you need to work with yourself about balancing this… And, and you have to have both. Like, you can't be too, I mean, you can't be too vain, you know, but you also can't be too conservative, obviously. So you have to balance it. I don't think it's about investors at all. I think it's about… Investors, I think that investors act like that, and I don't, I don't have… It's not like… Our investors are super professional, and they come from the gaming industry, so they know, like we speak the same language. But I mean, I think that sometimes I hear enter-entrepreneurs that talk like that, and they don't understand that sometimes the investors, they just act like this demon that they don't, you know, that they don't have. And this is what some entrepreneurs forget that like you have to have it internally and then like investors, they can only help basically.

Amit: Yeah. Where do you think are the biggest opportunities in terms of genres now in the mobile games industry?

Yotam: I mean…

Amit: Putting aside Merge, of course.

Yotam: Yeah. I don't think that users play genres, to be honest. I think that, we have like we saw many categories like, you know, Monopoly Go, World Match, like successes that basically proven that you can basically carve out your own space within a category, like a very big space within a category without, without any influence on the, on the, on the current, you know, actors in this category. And for that reason, I don't think that users play genres, to be honest. I think that, casual gaming in the sense of, you know, games that are, that have this easy in, easy out out of the sessions is something that is built in inside our, our experiences, our life experiences. And it's gonna stay with us for like, it's gonna outlive us and for that reason, I think that what we as, you know, game makers need to focus on is not the, you know, the genre or the category, but, let's say the motivations of the users, like what the users, … And, and then to reach the genres, but to start with the users themself and what the users, want and that's what I said about, about Pure Play. Like we started with a vision about monetization in gaming, and then we reached Merge, which I'm super happy about, but it's first about that always.

Amit: Amazing. As the last question, it's a pretty vague one, but, how do you think the mobile games industry will look like in, let's do three years from now? How it will operate?

Yotam: I think that the f- the next, let's say big, not big success, but the next… we said that CloudCode is a, is a game basically, and we all feel like that. Like the monetization, by the way, of CloudCode is completely…

Amit: Insane

Yotam: … free to play. Like…

Amit: Yeah

Yotam: … like…

Amit: So fun

Yotam: … it's taken from, from, from free, free to play. And, the growth curve of Anthropic is the growth curve of a gaming company, like of releasing a ga-a game. So I think the next phase would be games, that actually incorporate these kind of mechanics, inside the game of building stuff.

Amit: Oh, wow.

Yotam: Yes, for sure. I think that this is, this is gonna be the next, phase.

Amit: Wow, this is super cool. I didn't even… Look, I do think about building stuff as a game, you know, stuff like Minecraft, some kind of UDC of, games, but…

Yotam: Yeah

Amit: … oh my God, I love that.

Yotam: But I think it's gonna happen in casual, …

Amit: Yeah, in casual? Wow. No, it's going to be cool. Wow, I love it. Why did you say it? Now everyone will take your… okay. As last thing, we have a game that we would love you to play.

Yotam: Oh, wow.

Amit: From Sett Engine.

Yotam: Ah, it's like from the playable engine?

Amit: Yeah.

Yotam: Nice.

Amit: Do you see who it, who it is?

Yotam: Ah, wow. Where did you get… Where did you get it? Okay, you… like it's from my Facebook or something… or from… Ah, it's from the Set, party in London, right, okay. So I'm, I'm happy that only, it's only me who sees it.

Amit: Whatever you…

Yotam: Wow, I love it.

Amit: Is now Yotam is, playing, Pac-Man of himself eating, …

Amit: … cookies. I don't know what you have there. Eating.

Yotam: Nice. You build it?

Amit: Yeah, yeah, we built it for you. I have only also my game…

Yotam: Mm-hmm

Amit: … like my face, but, I don't know where it is. It's, it's somewhere, monetizing…

Yotam: Yeah, let's, let's try to…

Amit: … in the campaign. To put it in the campaign.

Yotam: To, to, yeah, to evaluate that.

Amit: CPI, yeah, sent.

Yotam: Yeah.

Amit: Perfect. So Yotam, as you know, always speaking with you is a great inspiration for me. …

Yotam: That's so kind

Amit: … the biggest thing I'm taking always from you is this, and you have a lot of stuff to take here, but I just want to remind everyone that is listening, junior first mentality. I love it. It's super relevant for everything in life. Not only games, not entrepreneurship, everything in life. Junior first, curiosity. I love you a lot, and I appreciate everything.

Yotam: I love you.

Amit: And, thank you very much.

Yotam: It was fun.