Reforged Labs (YC W22)

Reforged Labs (YC W22) has raised $3.9 million in seed funding to transform gaming ads with GenAI. Player acquisition is crucial for game studios but has always been challenging and costly. Marketing is a major hurdle, with video ads being key but difficult to manage due to ad fatigue, rising costs, and complex testing. Founded by Robert Huynh and Oscar Xing Luo, Reforge Labs launched in February to address this problem with an AI-powered platform that simplifies and speeds up ad creation and optimization. Reforge helps studios produce high-quality video ads quickly by automating ideation, storyboarding, and development, allowing developers to create new ads in minutes rather than days or weeks. Pilot customers have already seen significant improvements in ad creation speed, reduced feedback loops, and increased click-through rates and returns on ad spend. The company plans to expand its technology to support more game companies and enhance its AI capabilities, aiming to be an essential tool for game marketing. Congrats Robert, Oscar, and team on the round! https://lnkd.in/gS7MhPa4

We're taking off and going big!??????? See our announcement for our incredible $3.9M seed round. We couldn't be more thrilled to be building the next generation of AI-powered adtech for gaming with the backing of amazing VCs and angels. More to come soon!

We're also hiring too! ??

Excited to be a part of the AWS Startups community! ?? Reforged Labs (YC W22) has been selected to join the inaugural #AWSGenAISpotlightAPJ program! ?? With the support of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and our cohort community across the Asia-Pacific and Japan, we'll be showcasing how we are bringing GenAI tools to game marketers to 10x their user acqusition and performance marketing. If you’re a game studio looking to do more effective UA, let's chat! ??

“There’s AI for that” ?? - what I learned about building LLMs from Mistral AI and how they speedran to their $6B valuation. It’s incredible to me that just over a year after they were founded, Mistral has already raised over $1B in funding as a “mere” Series B AI startup ?? I had the privilege of attending one of their recent events at the Y Combinator HQ and was all ears about how they achieved their jaw-dropping growth and what they see in the future of GenAI. What stuck with me were these takeaways: LLMs’ strengths lie in handling three types of work - the repetitive ??, the unseen ???, and the taboo ??. In other words, tedious and time-consuming processes, ‘back-office’ operations that often go unnoticed but are crucial for seamless functionality, and of course, tasks that are sensitive or uncomfortable. And while I can’t speak to the third, ‘spicy’ workflow, at Reforged Labs (YC W22), we’re certainly leveraging LLMs to better game studios’ bottom lines, making monotonous and ‘behind-the-scenes’ UA work far more simple and effective! ?? ? Customization is key. Mistral is leading the way with flexible AI models that can be fine-tuned for different industries. At Reforged Labs, we’re adopting the same principle - every studio and marketing team we serve brings their own set of creative and performance pain-points, and we build the solutions that help them maximize value by embedding AI into their workflows. ???? Make friends with the dev crowd. A large part of Mistral’s success is rooted in their commitment to the developer community. GenAI is nothing if not highly technical, and Mistral ensures their tech is always relevant and impactful by investing heavily in getting the feedback - and meeting the needs - of developers. ?? And finally - the Mistral team believes we’re about to see the ‘hockey-stick’ ascent of AI agents, and they’ll fuel unprecedented AI scaling. We’re already no strangers to interacting with service chatbots and virtual assistants, and this will extend quickly into both more sophisticated applications, and even into industries that have traditionally lagged in tech adoption. Ping me if you are - or know - a game studio curious to see what GenAI can do for your UA. I’m very excited to continue working with Mistral and seeing where their rocketship takes them! ??

Excited to be onboard the NVIDIA rocketship! ?? I’m hyped that Reforged Labs is a part of the #NVIDIAInception Program ?? Reforged Labs is ‘reforging’ the marketing cycle for game studios with our performance and creative AI. Our tools are tailored to supercharge your games’ video ad ROAS and super-accelerate ad development. Our partnership with NVIDIA Inception is a testament to the demand for GenAI innovation in the gaming space, and a strategic boost to our ability to support our customers and push for paradigm shifts in game advertising ???? If you’re a game studio looking to do more effective UA, let's chat! ??

Reforged Labs (YC W22) Labs is heading to gamescom next month! Struggling with UA for your mobile game? Come meet us in Cologne and learn how GenAI can help your video game ads on YouTube/TikTok/IG/FB! We'll also be: ?? Sharing design and performance AI products that can storyboard, create, and iterate on video ads in minutes, not days ??? Talking about the results and traction we’ve seen so far from our (oversubscribed) pilot program ?? Giving demos to showcase our roadmap for even more and better editing, performance, and ad rotation capabilities, and of course ?? Hearing from studios about what features you want us to build, so you can do better UA with fewer resources We look forward to helping you take your video ads to the next level!

??“Just don’t die” and other wisdom from our YC Group Partner Dalton Caldwell I met Dalton three years ago, when he interviewed us along with our three other group partners - Tim Brady, Tom Blomfield, and Harj Taggar Of the many aspects I love about Y Combinator, I most value the opportunities it’s given me to grow by osmosis through learning from its network of illustrious veteran entrepreneurs. I met with our group partners nearly every week during our run-up to Demo Day, sought their advice in office hours 2-3 times a month, and in the three years since ‘graduating’ with my batch (Group 3, Section F!), I still catch up with Dalton every 3-4 months. Over this time, he’s shared countless enlightening insights, and among them these above all have served as my north star: ?? Just don't die: Many now-unicorns endured moments where they almost failed, but persisted and pushed through difficult times. Dalton's simplest but most powerful mantra is to do just that - keep your startup alive. ?? Avoid ‘tarpits’: Ideas that get good feedback don’t always drive success. Concepts that seem glamorous and in-demand may still be riddled with inherent challenges that are too difficult - or will take too long - for scalable solutions. We skirted this problem when we shifted away from AI level generation in the first ‘iteration’ of Reforged Labs (YC W22) Labs. ?? Stick to fundamentals: Regularly remind yourself and your team of the basics. At Reforged Labs, we live by the rule of not swaying to the latest trends in GenAI, but instead, solving the hair-on-fire pain-points of gaming studios. ?? Seek out niche markets: AI moves fast, and new use cases make headlines daily. When you’re immersed in the ‘hype’, it can be tempting to gravitate toward solving for the biggest opportunities. But where startups can make true, lasting impact are in underserved and overlooked markets with systemic inefficiencies. This principle lies behind our focus on the gaming space, and on the high costs and frictions that affect every studio’s UA efforts. ?? Passion for the problem: Founders must care deeply about their product and customers. I, my co-founder Oscar Xing Luo, and our entire team have lived, breathed, and made games, some of us from the earliest days of our careers, if not our lives. We continue to finesse our understanding of both gamers and developers, and channel that excitement into our work at Reforged Labs! If you’re a studio or industry expert curious about our GenAI video ad tools, or want to tell us about what we can build to solve your game marketing pain-points, contact me - I’m all ears!

?? Do you see lots of clickbait game ads in your feeds? As a lifelong gamer and adtech CEO, I spend a lot of time interacting with game ads. It’s a fascinating field that diverges in unique ways from traditional marketing. And with hundreds of watch hours under my belt, here are my observations on the three prevailing types of mobile game ads. ?? Fake ads: If you game at all, you’re familiar with this type of clickbait. These ads are campy, dramatic, or salacious - think of clips that feature laughably silly mazes, rescuing puppies from the rain, and over-the-top love triangles. The common thread among them is an almost complete departure from the true mechanics, storyline, or even aesthetics of the games they promote. Fake ads are designed to spike high volumes of downloads fast - and they’re very good at doing just that. But they’re understandably controversial among players, and have even caused regulators and app stores to intervene, and unless the game itself is in fact exceptionally compelling, the initial curiosity they generate can fade as quickly as it arises. ??? Conceptual ads: Use polished art and short, appealing plots that condense or abstract the core game narrative and features - like a merge puzzle game whose ad shows that completing merges allow characters to unveil mysteries or have a romantic encounter. I find that these ads are particularly common and effective for “cozy” casual to midcore games. These are heavily saturated genres where games share many common elements, so marketing with “stories” that align with the game’s theme can be key to standing out from competition - without misleading players. ??? Gameplay ads: Where what you see is what you get. Gameplay ads are strategic “remixes” of true game content and visuals. In showcasing in-app features and actions, they set expectations that the game can actually fulfill, and attract players who are likely to stay engaged - because they can experience the game they were originally drawn to. Because they’re sliced and spliced from readily-available gameplay footage, these ads also have the advantage of being more affordable to make and easier to experiment with. Each of these ad categories have merits that make them popular - gameplay ads are authentic and sustainable, conceptual ads balance art with realism, and even fake ads can teach a lesson or two about grabbing eyeballs. My personal take is that every game performance marketer should have a healthy mix of direct gameplay and conceptual elements in their ad arsenal. And at Reforged Labs, we’re working on a GenAI platform that automates the process of digesting and identifying gameplay elements that make players tick. If you are - or know - a studio that could use our help with building video ads in faster, more efficient ways ??, check out our website (link in comments) to pre-register for our upcoming beta program ???? or ping me directly to chat more!

Would you be ready to pitch live in front of a full crowd and 3 investors, in 3 minutes? ?? That was what happened this Wednesday morning at Epicenter Store as Singapore Pitch Day 2024 took place, with nine startups taking the stage. Thanks to all the entrepreneurs, long-distance travelers, investors, and audience for attending. Make sure to follow these innovative, promising companies and their exciting growth journey ahead! Connect here: Lumos, CEO: Eu-wen Ding Reforged Labs (YC W22), Co-founder and CEO: Robert Huynh Bizbaz - Intelligent Finance, CEO: Hayk H. Oyika, CEO: Jinsi Lee TwinLogic, Co-founder: Justin Tan Corgi Labs, Chief of Staff: Caitlyn De Rozario OOSH, Founder: Aloysius Cheong Aprisium, Founder and CEO: Raghav Narayan Scent by SIX, Founder and CEO: Jason Lee The investors: Sofia H?gman Stefan Granlund Linda Hellqvist Epicenter Stockholm | Epicenter Helsinki