When Applovin first arrived on the scene in 2012 / 2013, there were definitely some giggles at the Miniclip London offices. I mean, what a crazy name… right? right???
My first meetings with Applovin were through Rafael Vivas in San Francisco in 2013. It revealed a confident and cocky upstart that wasn’t afraid to ruffle feathers. In Berlin, later that year, I met the impressive Heinze Brothers who had sold their Moboqo start-up to Applovin in 2014. In 2015 I would finally encounter Adam Foroughi, who I would have a series of principled arguments with about whether it was ‘right’ for him to 1) and run an ad network business 2) and a game studio after it transpired he had bought a bunch of game studios & kicked off his own hypercasual biz.
At the time I was custodian of Miniclip’s fast-growing nine-$-figure ads revenue business. Back then, I may have temporarily ‘won’ the argument with Adam & kept Miniclip’s data shielded a little while longer. But we all know what happened next. The acquisition of Max Ads from Jim Payne & Dan Sack, the even bolder acquisition of Adjust.com’s attribution platform from Paul Muller & team, the obliteration of MoPub. MachineZone… PeopleFun… Lion Studios… Adam’s list of data-driven victories goes on, and Applovin’s valuation now wobbles between $100bn and $200bn.
So… what’s in a name?
Crazy name - did it matter? Did it feck. Execution, after all, is everything. And Adam executes like no one else I’ve ever met. Just think about what they’ve built over the last 14 years. It’s absolutely incredible, and with their latest foray into eCommerce I think they’re only just getting started.
How does this relate to my start-up, Half Moon Studios? Well, funny you should ask. Here are three more companies with rather unusual names that people could one day be writing stories about. Two I’m testing personally & one I’m very intrigued by. Even as a small studio enabled by software tools such as Claude, Codex, etc… we should avoid trying to build everything. As such, as we continue to scale our operation, I’ve picked three here that you’ve possibly never heard of… but probably should get informed about.
Kinoa. [LiveOPS]
I can only imagine what it might have been like to be Transcend Fund and getting pitched by Elias Sandler @ Kinoa. “Playtika LiveOps Systems & Capabilities for all gaming studios”. It surely was an Instant ‘yes’. I’m sad I didn’t hear about them sooner and got in at an early Angel round.
We started integrating Kinoa over the summer & I’ve been incredibly impressed with how knowledgeable Elias, Hen, Gali and Olesia are. Their product takes a bit of time to integrate, but once you get your head around it - it’s a dream & it just makes sense, even for studios who think they have got LiveOps nailed. And I think we haven’t even uncovered 20% of what their tools can & will be able to do.
Get in the queue now as I don’t think they’re taking on new customers until 2027.
Aghanim. [DTC / Webshop]
A Dota inspired name… Who needs a significant PR & marketing budget if you’ve got a unique name & the right product? This one is a silent killer, an ex-Xsolla crew battling it out on the fiercely contested DTC turf.
I spoke with Conor McLaughlin, their CRO, a while back (I tried & failed to hire him when I was at Miniclip). We haven’t integrated Aghanim yet, but what I saw was an all-in-one off-the-shelf solution. Having asked around a few game studios, it seems like Aghanim is the DTC platform that everyone is bowled over by & winning a chunk of business, even if they’re not the cheapest. The value of a control-your-data & community solution here cannot be underestimated; especially considering how our game’s Discord community is approaching 10k!
For now Half Moon Studios is still benefiting from being part of the Small Business Programme, but we’re quickly running out of headroom there & could add Aghanim into the mix in the near future.
Aurion11. [Ads Monetisation]
As I said, in the age of AI it’s very tempting to build everything yourself. Especially when it comes to your personal expertise (remember: Ad Monetisation was part of my portfolio at Miniclip SA!). But we’re only a small studio, so I’m trying to collab with the right partners where I can. Aurion11 has sprung out of Outfit7 (the company behind the iconic Talking Tom and Friends apps) and at the backbone has a chunk of O7’s expert Ad Tech crew.
We’ve been testing their tech over the summer & continue to benefit from their expertise & insights. We’ve already seen 15-20% uplifts in ad monetisation yield already & I think there is much more potential. Their adtech has been proven at scale, is modular and they are growing their customer base, so hopefully we’ll benefit from the learnings elsewhere too.