Thank you, everyone, for bringing in such tremendous energy on our GDC Founders' Day! ?? You inspire us to keep supporting the GFR community in the best ways possible! ??
When the crew is in town, you know it's going down! ??????? The GFR Fund team is back in San Francisco for Game Developers Conference 2025! Brian mentioned in passing the Japanese phrase 同窓会 (dōsōkai)—typically used for school reunions—to describe the feeling of close friends coming back together. Even though I’ve only been here seven months (time flies!), there’s a real sense of belonging, surrounded with some of the first people who believed in me early in my career. Their support has meant everything, and I’ve felt it every step of the way! GFR Fund prides itself on community, and we truly believe that no matter how early we meet a founder in their journey, we are always the second believers. The first and most important believers must always be their early adopters—a critical, passionate, and engaged user base. With the ability to foster and maintain a community being one of the most important things we look for in founders, it is also our core proposition to founders. We stayed true to this in GDC 2025 in several ways: ?? Great VCs are at the service of great founders, and I’m glad we’re able to host our Founders’ Day panel and networking session! Mediated by Eros Resmini, the first executive hire of Discord as CMO, now managing the mini fund, our portfolio founders were able to exchange ideas ranging from the state of the industry, distribution, social media growth hacking, and everything in between. Joining the panel is Ken Sasaki, President & CEO of VIZ Media—a key player in bringing Japanese anime and manga to the West. From Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Inuyasha, and Death Note, name your favorite anime or manga, chances are VIZ had a hand in it! And of course, our very own portfolio founders Roby John of SuperGaming and Eve Halimi of Alinea Invest! ?? We’re out and about meeting new folks! Game Changers Social is an invite-only event to founders, investors, and publishers in our network for sips, jigs, and gigs. In our humble little office, we had 130+ people come down as GDC week kicks off! Can you tell I was mostly taking pictures of people’s drip? Looking at you Nikhil, Vishnu, Krithi, and Yuhan. ?? Opened our doors for Office Hours! We’ll never pass up the opportunity to have some 1:1 time with early-stage founders fundraising for the next big thing in gaming & entertainment. What better way to do that than GDC? We met with folks carving a presence in niche spaces to better cater to the hyper-specific subsegments in the giant gaming industry. From helping players do mental health exercises in order to level up ?? cognitive games for agetech applications ???? practical use of AI to empower players through vibe coding and UGC, and adaptive storylines & dialogues ??. The energy and innovation on display this past week at #GDC2025 only reaffirm our belief in the importance of communities founders build. As always, us at GFR Fund are excited to continue fostering these connections and empowering the next generation of game changers!